Back to the Weekday Grind and an Oldie But a Goodie

(I love to see the Dogwoods in bloom)

Monday is my least favorite day of the week. I am not fond of Monday because this is the day that Dan goes back to the office. *ugh* However I try to remind myself that I have much to be thankful for and one of those things is that time flies and it will be the weekend again before I know it.

Like usual I made Dan’s breakfast and lunch this morning not long after I woke up. He had his usual oatmeal with wild berries and walnuts today. Of course it also contained wheat germ, freshly ground flaxseeds, cinnamon, ginger and little bit of stevia.

While Dan was getting ready for work I quickly checked my calendar, email and caught up on my health and nutrition reading. I am finding that it is much easier to share articles on Facebook as I read them. If you want to follow me there here is the link.

After Dan left for work I chatted with Sofia for a little while and then headed outside for some fresh air and a little moderate exercise. I decided to wind my way through the neighborhood as I walked to Loyola University. This was a good walk since it was up and down hills the entire time. I have been trying to take pictures of the things I see every day to help me to notice the beauty that is all around me.

(Clearly little ones live in this house.  I thought this was adorable and it made me smile.) 

(I love the little crocked streets around here.  Also it is nice that everything is starting to get a little green and beginning to sprout.) 

(This house always reminds me of Hansel and Gretel.) 

(I love old stone houses and this one of my favorites. Don't you just wonder what is beyond the iron gate in the stone fence?) 

(Hard to believe this is a yard in the city isn't it?  A major road, two lanes each way, is in the valley just beyond the yard.)

It is interesting to me how things looks different through the camera probably because I am taking time to actually see them versus rushing through my day to get to the next task.

Then I came home and did some Pilates and used my TRX and then it was time to get some things accomplished.

Breakfast for me was a huge bowl of savory oatmeal. This time I included: oatmeal, water, wheat germ, freshly ground flaxseeds, cumin, nutritional yeast, oregano, no-salt seasoning, broccoli, salsa, marinated mushrooms and cucumber (for crunch). I bet you have noticed that I never seem to get tired of this, and that is because I don’t. ;-)

We were out of non-dairy milk so I made a batch of soymilk since we last had almond milk. I have been trying to switch between the two milks since they have different nutritional profiles. This time I added 3 tablespoons of oats to the recipe and it does make the milk much thicker and richer than when I add my usual 2 tablespoons of oats.

Since I was in the kitchen I also decided to pressure cook a cup of white beans. We hadn’t had the white bean cheese substitute for months so I turned those beans into that. I decided to toss the leftover okara from the soymilk into the bean cheeze and that worked out well. The okara adds an underlying richness to the bean cheese. The more I use okara the more convinced I am that it will work in just about any recipe.

My lunch was leftover lentil salad, cucumbers, and tomatoes. I also had an orange and Brazil nuts (for the selenium) and an apple.

While I was doing laundry I decided to get back to listening “Veganist” on CD. If you haven’t tried books on CD you should give it a try. I find they make it easy to multi-task. Also the library has a much better selection of health on CD than I would have expected them to carry.

Dan ended up working extremely late so at 10pm we had a light dinner that consisted of a salad of: baby spinach, salsa, artichokes, red bell pepper, mushrooms, cucumbers and the bean cheeze that I made earlier today.

No surprise that Dan had a big bowl of strawberry banana soft serve for dessert.

Happy thoughts:

• It was a beautiful spring day and I thoroughly enjoyed my walk to Loyola University and back this morning. I don’t typically walk in that direction so I got to see some unfamiliar sites which was nice and kept the walk from being boring. Okay so my IPod helped too but you get the idea. I saw an adorable group of older people (aged 70+) out walking this morning. There must have been 15 of them or more. It made me smile to see them out for a little exercise. I hope I am that spry when I am their age.  *fingers crossed*

• I spent some time today doing things around the house that I have been neglecting for the last month. It is good to get a few items crossed off my to-do list. With a little luck tomorrow will also be as productive and maybe more so. That is a nice thought isn't it? ;-)

• My oldest fur baby is responding well to the change in meds. It appears that her asthma is under control now. I am apprehensive about scheduling her dental surgery but I know it is for the best. Needless to say I am trying to concentrate on the positives at the moment.

• I seem to be getting the hang of Facebook and am surprised at how quickly I appear to be picking it up. It is more intuitive than Twitter which has a bit has more jargon to learn before you know exactly what is going on. I suppose this proves that you are never too old to learn something new.

Signing out:

Sorry that I didn’t get this up last night. When Dan worked late it threw me off schedule. My pattern is to finish writing the post after dinner, and after cleaning up the kitchen. By the time that all of that was finished it was 11pm and past when we should have been winding down. However being a day behind will make it easier for me to spend more time writing and refining future posts which will be a good thing.

I hope you had a good Monday and that Tuesday is starting off well for you. Talk to you again tomorrow, unless you are following me on Facebook that is. I am going to catch up on my nutrition and health reading now and will be posting links to the articles I thought were interesting on Facebook next.

Happy Tuesday!