Morning kiddos!

Started today with coffee…

Power Toast and water (to recover from yesterday’s sweaty workout and to hydrate for today’s big workout).

Power Toast on Whole Grain Goodness:

• TJ’s sunflower seed butter
• sliced almonds
• chia seeds

Nomalicious yo!

Took Bailey to the Farmers Market this morning. It was muggy outside and looks like it’s going to rain but at least it wasn’t terribly hot.

Found some good stuff, but light on veggies, heavier on fruits. Hubby is burnt out on squash and zucchini and those seem to be the most prevalent veggies at the market these days.

We got pesticide-free blueberries, organic purple pepper, organic banana pepper, organic cantaloupe and…

Fire Roasted Garlic with Spinach Gourmet Ravioli from the Pasta Wench.

This is going to make for a fabu dinner tonight!

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Did you know today is National Dance Day?! I’m hanging with my dance crew today and we’re going to learn the NappyTab dance! Not sure what that is? Click here to view a bunch of videos on the dance, which was created just for today’s special event!

Are you celebrating National Dance Day? Don’t have a crew to dance with? Why not just turn on some dance tunes and dance around your house? C’mon…you know you want to!

Years ago, I used to like eating unhealthy stuff for breakfast all the time. It seemed like breakfast was when they had the good stuff: chocolate croissants, sticky buns and other delectable sweets. But not just the sweet stuff – Bagels with cream cheese, egg sandwiches.

At some point, I realized that my indulgent breakfasts, while decidedly delicious to eat, were typically not that filling and would often leave me sluggish. So, I cut back on them – a little at first and then more and more. At some point, I fell in love with healthy breakfasts like oatmeal and Power Toast – breakfasts that filled me with healthful food and gave me plenty of energy.

And while I love my healthy breakfasts and truly prefer them over the more indulgent ones, sometimes you just want something a little over the top. Breakfast was pretty indulgent today. Hubby picked up a GH cinnamon roll and I made us fried eggs. I forgot how HUGE that cinnamon roll is! I stuffed myself trying to finish it. Bad idea. The cinnamon roll wasn’t such a bad idea…eating more than I was comfortable with was. Oops. Next time I’ll save some for a snack later.

Lunch = leftover chicken noodle soup and Whole Grain Goodness toast.

And I had some Power Toast for an afternoon snack.

Great Harvest Whole Grain Goodness with:

• Barney Butter
• chia seeds
• hemp seeds
• cacao nibs

Organic cherries, too!

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Guess who came to zumba with me tonight?!

Check out all my bloggie friends: Irene, (me), Katie, Jen, Jen, and Brittney.

We all had a fantastic hour of zumba tonight – the firs time trying zumba for most of these girls. How did they do? They danced like rock stars, of course!

Thank you ladies for coming to class with me! I hope to see you there again soon!

Oh and random note, a lady in class was wearing some sort of calorie counter and said she burned like 850 calories in class tonight! Whoa! Michelle is giving me her old heart rate monitor so I’m going to be doing my own experimenting with calorie burning. Can’t wait to see what the number is!

Post class it was time for a protein shake – Vega Whole Health Optimizer.

Yay zumba! I always feel like a million bucks after class.

Post class hubby and I headed out for dinner at a local Mexican restaurant – 1900 Mexican Grill. It’s probably our favorite Mexican restaurant in town because the food is good, the drinks are awesome (especially the dirty margarita), and the owner is sooo nice. I love to support his local business.

The weather was too gorgeous to not eat outside.

I started with a dirty margarita – made with tamarind!

We started with some cheese dip (starting to prefer guac over cheese dip…who am I?) and chips and salsa.

We shared a combo – beef burrito, chicken enchilada, and rice and beans.

My portion – I barely finished.

Post dinner, went over to hubby’s bacherlor-friends’ apartment to chill out. We ended up watching a lot of Terminator Salvation before heading home. I’m pooped but I have a big day of dancing tomorrow!

What are you up to this weekend?

I was hoping to get into work early this morning, but alas…it didn’t happen.

When it comes to mornings, I typically am very pressed for time. I never seem to wake up as early as I’d like and I always end up rushing around. I used to skip breakfast completely, then I started eating at my desk (meal bars and instant oatmeal) and then I graduated to cooking breakfast at home and eating it there.

Today I decided to take breakfast with me.

Coffee to-go in my Tupperware thermos. Not as good as sipped slowly while I catch up on emails on my iMac, but not too shabby either.

My no-cook, pack and go breakfast was a Stonyfield Oikos vanilla yogurt (*) and Galaxy Granola in Not Sweet Vanilla (*). (btw, you can get Galaxy Granola either 20% off or with free shipping through July with these coupons: july20pct or julyfreeship in my OpenSky shop. Click here for details.

My quick yogurt parfait made for a delicious breakfast and met my usual requirements: protein + whole grains. I like to add fruit when possible, but decided just to bring a banana for later. Anywho, the parfait totally kept me full till lunch. Nom!

What’s your favorite grab and go breakfast?

It was humid and rainy here, so I thought the weather called for cozy food.

First up – OATMEAL! Plus nice, hot coffee, of course.

Pre-cooking:

• 1/3 cup coconut milk
• 1/3 cup water
• 1/3 cup rolled oats
• 1 tsp chia seeds

Cook stove top till thickened.

Post-cooking:

• handful of blueberries, stirred in at end
• flaxseed on top
• sliced almonds on top
• cacao nibs on top (so glad to have these back in the rotation!)

Remember you can get cacao nibs (or anything else in my OpenSky shop) either 20% off or with free shipping with these codes (july20pct or julyfreeship) in my OpenSky shop. Click here for details.

Lunch was sort of random.

Chips and salsa

Giant salad:

• baby spinach/lettuce mix
• organic celery
• organic red bell pepper
• organic baby carrots
• farmers market cucumber
• sunflower seeds
• TJ’s balsamic

I got stuck in meetings and didn’t get to the rest of my lunch till 4pm. Luckily (or not so luckily), I had a 5-6pm meeting. So, I used my snack tide me over till dinner.

My snack was related to a recent package I got – Barney Butter!!!! Yes! Barney Butter sent me some individual packages of almond butter for me to enjoy! Woohoo!

Yep…Barney Butter + Whole Grain Goodness = fabulous-o snack!

I toasted the bread and spread the BB on top. Love the way the heat makes it nice and gooey.

And for a little something sweet – organic cherries!

***

No workouts for me today. I worked out Sunday, twice on Monday and taught zumba on Tuesday. I think it’s time for a rest day.

Like I mentioned before, I’m still working on cooking more recipes from my cook books, starting with the 3 Ina Garten cookbooks my mom got me recently.

Since declaring my desire to try some of Ina’s recipes, I’ve already made one recipe – Ina’s Strawberry Country Cake – a real winner!

One of the recipes I selected was Ina Garten’s chicken noodle soup.

I used parsley from my garden in my soup.

And to save time, I roasted extra chicken breasts when I made dinner last night and used the leftover chicken to make tonight’s soup!

I adapted Ina’s recipe because I like sauteing my veggies and I wanted to add onion.

Chicken Noodle Soup

Adapted from Ina Garten’s recipe from her book Barefoot Contessa Family Style

Ingredients:

• 1 whole (2 split) chicken breast, bone in, skin on
• Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
• Kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• dash garlic powder
• dash dried rosemary
• 2 quarts Chicken Stock
• 1 tbsp EVOO
• 1/2 large onion chopped
• 1 cup medium-diced celery (2 stalks)
• 1 cup medium-diced carrots (7-9 baby carrots)
• 2 cups wide egg noodles
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place chicken breasts on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Drizzle chicken with EVOO and rub into skin. Top chicken lightly with dashes of salt, pepper, garlic powder and rosemary. Roast 35-40 minutes (you may need to cook longer if the chicken breasts are really big). Set aside to cool. Note: You can also cook the chicken the night before like I did this week – cook extra for dinner one night and more for the soup – use the leftover meat for the soup.
2. When the chicken is cool enough to touch, remove meat from bones and skin and pull into smaller pieces. Set aside.
3. Heat a medium pot over medium heat. Add onion, celery and carrots and cook till onions translucent – about 3-5 minutes.
4. Add chicken stock and bring to a boil.
5. Add egg noodles and reduce to simmer. Simmer for 9-10 minutes or until pasta cooked al dente.
6. Add chicken and parsley and cook to warm through.
7. Serve with crusty bread.

Very easy and tasty!

Hubby and I enjoyed our soup with Great Harvest Whole Grain Goodness toast and a dab of real butter (his had a lil extra butter).

Hubby got his hair did today.

And dessert – hubby picked up 3 mini cinnamon rolls from GH when he was getting bread. They aren’t nearly as good as one large cinnamon roll, which is what he was going to get me until the 2 ladies in front of him ordered the very last 2! Bah! I’m not mad – 3 cinnamon rolls in mini size are way better than none. And they’re pretty darn tasty on their own, too – just not as tender.

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Remember I scored you guys some deals on my OpenSky shop (20% off Galaxy Granola anyone? What about cacao nibs?) – click for details

And check out my latest recipe – marinated kale! Nommm

Do you like to eat anything in particular when it rains? I always seem to think comfort food – oatmeal, soup, casseroles, cobblers…you?

Wow you guys are so inspirational!

I loved reading your Own Your Strength stories! Click here to view them or add your own.

***

I heard an interesting song on the radio today – “Head Full of Doubt” by Avett Brothers. Good tune. The line that caught my attention was:

“Decide what to be and go be it.”

I love this quote. It’s so simple but so true. I think sometimes we hold ourselves back from achieving a goal because we let self-doubt, worry and fear get in the way. Sometimes we think we need to put 10,000 years of planning something before we move forward with it. Sometimes we procrastinate. Most of the time, I’m guilty of all of these things. And sometimes the problem isn’t the “go be it.” Sometimes the problem is being able to decide what to be. Know what I mean?

Do you know what you want to be?

Hubby made breakfast today – scrambled cage-free eggs and WW toast with coffee.

I had lots of water and a banana to help recover from my double-workout-day (yoga and zumba in one day!) and they totally helped. Especially the water – it really helped my muscles loosen up.

Later in the day I remembered I had 3 precious Green Monster muffins left in my fridge. I heated (in my over-fresh-encore style) 2 up for me and 1 for hubby.

Someone help me- I think I’m addicted!

Lunch started with a huge veggie salad: baby spinach, farmers market cucumber, carrots, celery, tomatoes from our garden, and sunflower seeds.

Lookie what Girard’s sent me! I got 4 salad dressings (*): Champagne, Peach Mimosa, Creamy Balsamic and Apple Poppyseed. (there will be a chance for you to win these same flavors very soon, so stay tuned!)

Hubby and I decided to try Girard’s best-selling Champagne dressing (*). We both really liked it. Hubby said it reminded him a bit of Italian. I could see that except minus all the spices. The dressing was sweet but not sweet. Light yet flavorful. It was really good, even though it’s a bit hard to describe.

I also had leftover Lemony Lentil soup and more WW toast but with a dab of real butter.

A Cashew Cookie Larabar was my pre-workout snack today.

Pre-workout for what??

For teaching my FIRST Zumba class! I mean, I’ve led songs solo and I’ve even led classes solo, but tonight was the first class I led as an official instructor. It was too cool! Class was with a local company who signed up for some private sessions so sorry if you’re local and were hoping to go. I’m hoping to have a public class soon.

Anywho, here are some of my fave songs from the night:

• La Colegiala
• Let Me Think About It
• El Alacran
• Billionaire (my cool down)

Class was a blast! I surprised myself with all the energy I had give my intense workout schedule the last couple days. Guess it’s easier to find energy to share when you have so many people to share it with! Luckily, I have a rest day planned for tomorrow. Phew!

This is the exact type of place where I put the above quote to good use. I decide to be an energetic, enthusiastic, loud and fun zumba instructor and just be that way in class. Seriously, that’s what I try to do for real. Since I have a little stage fright, this is easier said than done for me, but I try to push out of my comfort zone to be a better instructor. It makes things more fun, too!

Post class I had a half scoop of Vega Whole Healthy Optimizer mixed with just water to help recover from class.

Then I hit up the grocery store.

Here are some buys:

They had this Pacifica body butter $6 off!

Chocolate syrup to top my homemade vegan ice cream. Also on sale.

Sweet Cacao nibs were on sale.

A mini Justin’s Natural Maple Almond Butter.

Organic spelt flour

More hemp seeds.

Organic cherries.

And plenty of applesauce so we hopefully don’t run out next time I’m baking.

Got some other stuff, too, but you don’t need to see everything….riiight?

Dinner was Robin Miller-esque. I roasted 4 chicken breasts – 2 to eat tonight for me and hubby and 2 to make something different tomorrow! Need it twice, cook it once, right?

And since I went to Earthfare for groceries tonight, I definitely got a vegan WW chocolate chip cookie for dessert. (Hubby got a PB Choc chip). Nommm!

***

I get the feeling I’m going to be saying the quote in the title of this blog post a lot. Could it be a new motto for me for awhile? Maybe?

What’s your current motivational motto/quote?