Tag Archives: soup

Reflections and Refraction

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I am back, officially!  I promised some reflecting in the last post, as to why I was being such a naughty blogger –

I am freaking out a bit.  About going back to school, about moving, about not having any idea what I want to do with the rest of my life.  About only taking one class next semester, about that class being too hard for me.  About quiting teaching.  About going back to teaching.  The list goes on, and there are a lot of contradictions.

It does not help that I am beyond exhausted, I don’t sleep well anyways and our new neighborhood is astonishingly noisy.  In the interest of full disclosure, I will also mention that I am becoming very depressed about my foot.  I’ve mentioned that I had plantars worts on my left foot (I am apparently with out an immune system!) and now instead of 3 I have 5.  And I don’t have a doctor’s appointment for another month.  And my foot hurts like heck and I’m afraid it will effect my marathon training.

From these reflections, I realized that I’ve been doing some self-sabotaging.  I’ve been eating crappy food, not working out, not studying.  I had planned on signing up for a week yoga pass (I have to do it now because once school starts my class is all at night) when I realized that I was dreading going.  That is not the feeling I want to have, towards yoga of all things.  I decided I will not do more than 5-10minutes of strength training a day until class starts, and let myself focus on volunteering and chemistry review.  I’ve had a lot of big changes in the last month, I need to allow myself to deal.

Today, I ate an Orange Cranberry Gnu Bar sample on my walk to volunteering.

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Probably the best flavor I’ve tried so far.

For lunch I used my volunteer voucher to get a cup of vegetarian chili, which I topped with cheddar cheese and jalopenos.

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I love veggie chili so much, I have a list of chili recipes I am excited to make this winter.  This was beyond tasty for cafeteria food, but left my mouth pretty spicy so I ate half a sample bag of Sahale Snacks Soledad Almonds Nut Blend.

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This was a much more pleasant flavor to spend the afternoon with 🙂

After volunteering I walked back to a coffee shop in my area and set up shop for studying.  As mentioned, I am taking one class this semester (Gen. Chem. I with a lab).  To prepare I’ve been working on Chemistry for Dummies.  I studied from 2:15 – 5:45 and while I worked I had an iced coffee – 1sugar, splash of cream – and the rest of my nuts.

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The bag had 2servings, 260calories in total, and was just the right amount of munching to keep me focused.

Tonight I have some more to-do’s to check off (including putting away the laundry I did more than 24hours ago!) and I have a 10pm bedtime goal.  See ya for dinner!

What have you been freaking out about lately?

Cold and Not So Hot

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My volunteering meeting went well – I completed orientation and once my TB test gets cleared on Friday I will be ready to start.  I am trying to get in as many hours as possible before school starts so I will be going pretty much full-time for the next three weeks – Monday through Thursday from 8am to 4pm.

After volunteering I came home and met up with the husband for more local exploration.  We drove out to Erie and walked around the waterfront a little bit.

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We spotted a cute ice-cream stand and I bought a lemon ice.

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I ate about half before handing it off to Adam.

We did more house-fixing when we got home and then headed out for our first Buffalo run!  I ate a Stoneyfield YoKids Banilla yogurt to refuel first.

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We did 2miles around the neighborhood in 20minutes.  I am painfully out of shape, I can’t wait until 2miles don’t kick my butt any more!  I kept my heart rate monitor on through 10minutes of floor work (stretching, 100 abs reps, and 50 arms reps with my 5lb weights) and all total I burnt 344 calories.

When we were done we cooked our first Buffalo dinner!  We made cold avocado soup and sandwiches.

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We used our George Foreman to make the grilled cheese sandwiches, I used 2 slices of reduced fat colby-jack on mine.

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And the soup was a Rachael Ray magazine recipe which I will include for those of you who enjoy cold soup, but it didn’t really float our boats.

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No-Cook Avocado Bisque, serves 4

  • 2 large avocados (we ended up accidentally buying “Slimcados” which have 35% less fat and calories but tasted the same)
  • 2C buttermilk
  • 4 scallions, green and white parts sliced separately
  • grated peel and juice of one lime
  • 16 ice cubes
  • salt
  • 1lb tomatoes, coursely chopped (we used three plum tomatoes)
  1. Put 1 avocado, buttermilk, scallion whites, lime peel and 3/4 of lime juice in the blender.  Blend on low speed and then blend in ice cubes one by one until smooth.
  2. Meanwhile coarsely chop the remaining avocado and then combine with tomatoes, scallion greens, and the rest of the lime juice.
  3. Divide soup among 4 bowls and top with with guac.

We were excited to have leftovers for lunch but after tasting it we are less excited!  I ate about half of my bowl (but my grilled cheese was great!).

Now I’ve got to go because we are watching old episodes of “My So Called Life” that we Netflixed, night!

Do you like cold soup?  I had some kind of cold fruit soup a few years ago that I loved but now I’m not sure if I enjoy it.