Tuesday = One Long Day

Late, late Monday night a storm system starting rolling through bringing high winds, rain and a tornado watch. Combine the storm with overnight temperatures of 71 and that meant I had trouble sleeping Monday night. There is nothing like being up for 2 ½ hours in the middle of the night to start my day off on the wrong foot. Honestly I had far too much to do on Tuesday to start the day off sleepy. I seriously considered making self a double shot of espresso but I know that doesn’t fix anything it only jolts my adrenal glands so I resisted the urge to indulge in caffeine. *sigh* I am proud of myself for resisting the call of my semi-automatic espresso machine.

Aren't my boys precious? To bad I couldn't curl up with them in their cat bed.  My fur children are very good sleepers.  I need to get them to give me lessons on how to sleep through storms apparently.

Dan had a large green smoothie for his breakfast this morning.

I started my day with an orange and two Brazil nuts. Nothing substantial for my breakfast but I also didn’t start my day with exercise which meant that I didn’t need as much to eat. Goodness knows I had more than enough calories to eat Monday night but they were good. ;-)

While I sipped my Tulsi and white tea I worked on the last post about the un-chicken stock. That is a really good stock by the way I hope you try it. Needless to say being sleep deprived didn’t help with my productivity so it took me much long to write that post than it should have. Due to my lack of sleep I was having difficulty focusing on the post and opted to distract myself by accomplishing some of the tasks on my to-do list.

Lunch for me was a small bowl of Greek inspired bean soup, no grain. I topped the soup with diced raw cherry tomatoes and fresh parsley to add freshness to the long cooked soup. Adding a fresh garnish to soup changes it, I hope you try that.

Once the post was up it was time to really get busy. *sigh* This day would have been so much easier with a little bit more sleep. After I did some organizing and cleaning I decided to pressure cook a pound of black beans since those are always good on salad, sweet potatoes or in veggie burgers. As you probably already guessed I had no real idea what I was going to do with the beans just that I needed to make some. I find beans to be very versatile, and to freeze well which is why I also make a pound when I cook them.

Today the beans were used to make a pot of black bean soup similar to this but as soup. It seemed like the easiest thing to make today given my almost continuous yawning. Some days I don’t feel like making a production out of dinner and this was one of those days. In addition to the black beans this soup contained: onions, garlic, tomato, chipotle in adobo, cumin, no-salt seasoning, chili powder, hot peppers, oregano, cocoa powder, and cinnamon.

While the soup was simmering I decided to see if I could figure out how to have go between my personal and Vegan Epicurean Facebook accounts. This may have been better to do when I was a little more alert but I wanted to cross if off my to-do list. It is a bit of pain to go between the two accounts so I may just use my personal account for everything unless I can figure out how to make it easier to switch between accounts on my phone. If any of you have multiple Facebook accounts and have any tips I would love to hear.  Also I am wondering how many of you are on Facebook and are interesting in following me there?

I served the black bean soup topped with a little fresh cherry tomato and parsley on top for freshness. Are you starting to see the soup garnish pattern?

Happy thoughts:

• Being exhausted today it was tough to think let alone come up with happy thoughts. I will admit I was a bit too tired to be upbeat most of the day. However it occurred to me that if I worked outside the home or had any appointments that I couldn’t reschedule my day would have been ten times worse. That leads me to my happy thought which is that I could take it easy today since I know not everyone has that option when they are sleep deprived.

• I was proud of myself for skipping the espresso this morning. In my less healthy days I would not have thought twice about grabbing a double shot of espresso to get myself going. It is good to know I have conquered that addiction. While this may not seem like much to some of you there have been many days where I had 8 double shots of espresso in a day so for me this is huge.  :-)

• I am happy to be caught up with my posts which I thought would never happen. It is nice to have something crossed off my to-do list that I expected to take much longer.

• It was nice surprise to get on the scale Tuesday morning and not see an uptick from going out to eat. When I go out to eat I never know what to expect but always brace myself for weight gain from water retention due to consuming more sodium than normal.

• While I wasn’t terribly productive today I did manage to get a few things accomplished. Based on how I felt today I got a lot more done than I expected to. *literally yawning as I typed that*

• Wednesday I have more fun planned which I am looking forward to. It is good to have things in your schedule that are fun to break up the monotony.

• We are also having dinner with our friends Walid and Jackie in a few days which will be great fun. Jackie is one of the funniest people I know. By the end of the evening I am sure my cheeks will be hurting from laughing so much.

• Wednesday morning was cold but sunny and with beautiful cloudless blue skies. It was a nice way to start the day.

Signing out:

Now that Dan if off to work and I have finished my exercising it is time for me to get busy and get some things done. Today is going to be a busy one but I also have some fun planned so that makes it all worth it. I hope your Wednesday is good. Talk to you again tomorrow. Happy Wednesday!