Pumpkin Discoveries

I found it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But more on that in a bit.

As my last day to really make something for breakfast for the week, I decided on homemade pancakes! This might sound crazy, but I’ve never made pancakes from scratch before. I’ve always used a mix. But this was super easy and delicious!

Pumpkin oatmeal whole wheat pancakes.

You can’t see them, but I also cooked banana slices into them to carmelize when cooked.

Each pancake was topped with something different.

• Vanilla chobani “frosting”
• Pumpkin butter & cream cheese
• Sunbutter & cream cheese

I like cream cheese on my waffles/pancakes/french toast.

And all drizzled with maple syrup and sprinkled with Banana Nut Cheerios.

These were sooooo good. I never want to use boxed again!

When I finally got around to going to the gym, I ran into a problem. I left my keys in my roommate’s locked car, who had just gone out of town for the day! Ugh. Guess I’ll take the bus. What college town bus doesn’t operate on a Sunday? Oh – apparently mine! Sunday is #1 homework/study day (hello procrastination?). What’s going on bus schedule?

Eventually my other roommate offered to give me a ride there. Where I went:

• 1.5 mile run (5.8-6 mph)
• .25 mile walk
• 1.5 mile run (6 mph)
• Cooldown

3 miles running
4 miles total

Followed by some lower body strength moves for the knees.

I gave my knee 4 days rest after it was more sore than normal last Monday & Tuesday. It felt okay today, but I plan to reduce my mileage and stick to the treadmill dreadmill (rather than the track) for now.

I had a mini-breakdown talking to my dad afterwards. He commented how I need to work with my knee and just find something else that doesn’t bother it as much or just run on the treadmill forever. He said that my body just can’t seem to handle running outside. As he was “lecturing” me, tears definitely started falling. Obviously I know my body isn’t able to overtrain, and go far distances day after day (which is how I injured myself in the first place). But I’m 22 years old! I should at least be able to run short distances outside for crying out loud! I know everyone’s body is different, and not everyone can handle the pounding of long distance, and maybe my long marathon distances are over. But what’s wrong my knee is not normal. It’s been over 5 months now. Grr.

Okay rant over.

After the gym I was starving and whipped up this salad.

• Bed of spinach
• 2 sauteed zuchinis and onion
• Sunshine falafel patty
• Tons of sunbutter hummus (5-6+ servings – no joke)
• Poppyseed salad dressing

I loved the contrast of the sweet dressing with the veggies and patty!

I loaded on the dressing and hummus, so along with the patty, it was quite fat laden – although healthy fats.

Finished off with a pumpkin pie saltwater taffy.

Once I was finally able to retrieve my keys, it was grocery time! Since I’m sticking to my freezer/pantry stock, I really didn’t need much – just some fruit, veggies, milk, and eggs…oh and something my roommate texted to me:

“They have pumpkin ice cream at Ralphs hahahah this is an epic day.”

Pumpkin ice cream!!!! I had all my roommates on the lookout at every grocery store they shopped at 🙂 I’ve been searching for it since the beginning of September! I really wanted the double-churned, but Ralph’s didn’t have it. So I settled for the regular. Better than nothing!

I came home with this loot:

How did these guys sneak out of the picture?

More expensive than I was expecting – $28, especially considering everything I got was on sale (except those dang ‘naners). I guess I did splurge on the ice cream and whipped cream (a must for pumpkin flavored things!) so that upped it a bit.

I was still stuffed from my late salad lunch so I didn’t think I’d be very hungry for dinner. But hunger randomly hit so unexpectedly that I chowed down too much, too fast. I went straight for my leftover Kashi pizza.

(+ 1 other slice that I wolfed down straight from the fridge)

While this re-heated up, I chose the fruit side-dish route, rather than veggies (I’d had my fair share at lunch!)

1 peach + 6 strawberries + 1/4 a super un-ripe pear flavorless crunchy green thing.

Guess I need to let those pears ripen just a bit…

Now onto reading that I didn’t get done all weekend. Must finish that before the Desperate Housewives premiere! Anyone else watching/watched it? Megan just tweeted me that it was weird? Excited to find out!

Hopefully I’ll eventually have room for some ice cream as well. I’ll let you know tomorrow! (Who am I kidding – of course I will 😉 )

**Edited to add**

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Oh Appetite Where Art Thou?

Dear Appetite –

Where have you been, my friend? I understand that you left me the other day when I was sick. But yesterday I felt better, yet you still had not returned. I miss you. I like food. A lot. Come back?

Love,

Tay Tay

After my fruit + yogurt breakkie yesterday, I seriously didn’t get hungry all day. No joke.

Before our Tar-jay roadtrip, I had another slice of cinnamon-raisin Ezekiel with jam just in case I got hungry. I swear toast is a mircale food. No matter how nauseous I feel, toast helps.

Tarj was pretty successful – I walked out $37 poorer, and only bought a few unnecessary items. My shopping bag contained

• gum (a must while at Target – good deal on the 3 packs!)
• Flavored waters, Cranberry juice & a few Vitamin10s
• a new plate (my $2 splurge – but will be featured on the blog soon!)
• $12 sweater (how could I pass up such a steal?!)
• Coffee
• Pumpkin pie candy corn (yes. You read that right. Of course I had to get those – how could I NOT?!)

My two fave purchases:

I also had these two mini-Twix candies that our friend bought. Dark chocolate & Triple chocolate Twix’s?? Had to try them out!

The Triple Chocolate tasted almost exactly like the normal Twix, and the Dark one tasted like a crunchy dark chocolate. I couldn’t taste the caramel in that one. But seeing as how Twix is the best candy ever, they were both obviously delicious!

Once home, I snacked on a few carrots and a little bit of sunflower hummus, just because I hadn’t eaten much – but it gave me a stomach ache. Blah.

And then hurried off to the college mass on campus, followed by a “sandwich making” social. Deli spread of sliced white bread, processed deli turkey, and yucky tin can cookies?  No thank you. But it was fun to meet people and socialize. I think I’ll be going back this year with my roommate.

We then went to our friend’s house for a brownie & cookie making night. I did have a couple small bites of brownie, but it actually was dry and nast-o. The chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, however, where bomb and I helped myself to two. Plus a scoop of dough. And another twix from the candy bowl.

Blurry – muchos sorry. (I don’t know ‘sorry’ in Spanish. Too bad I took French in high school)

I came home at 11:00 still not remotely hungry. Toast at 1:30, carrots at 4:00, and a couple cookies for dinner? Yeah – something’s not right. I did make myself eat some chia pudding I found in the fridge, and a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter. I figured I really would have no energy to run tomorrow if I didn’t get something in my body besides a few mini Twix bars. What’s wrong with me?

Mehhh…sorry for the uber lame post. I have a more exiting one set up for tomorrow night, don’t you worry!

What was the #1 hightlight to your weekend? I didn’t have much of a great one (well, tonight was fun!), so let me live vicariously through you!!

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Sushi Time!

I really didn’t get hungry again until 3:00, and even then I wasn’t very hungry!  I decided on a Pizza Bagel (surprise, surprise!  When I discover a new food I love, I kind of get into a food “rut” with it!).  And a side of honeydew melon:

Multiply that bowl of honeydew by like 4.  I ate half the entire melon!  Plus 2 clementine cuties 🙂  An hour later my tummy was still a little grumbly so I made….

A green smoothie! I was low on spinach, so I put in extra frozen mango chunks.  Surprisingly, it was less sweet with less spinach and more mango.  I would’ve thought the opposite!

I napped, lazed around, and watched some TV for the rest of the afternoon!  Tay Tay was tired!!  Then my roommate invited me to the one thing I’ve been craving for weeks – SUSHI!! Wahoooo!  No question about it, I was going.  But since they weren’t going until later, I had a litte snack around 7:00 so I wouldn’t be completely eating my stomach out while waiting for our dinner:

The end piece of my Alpine Valley bread (about half the size of a normal piece of bread) toasted and topped with my new jalapeno & garlic hummus + sprinkled with some nutritional yeast.  Honestly, I was less than impressed by the hummus.  Not that much flavor, and it’s super thick and almost gritty?  Aww well!

Sushi was a California Roll and a Bonzai Roll (which is pretty much a CA roll + tempura crab).  Yes, I need to branch out more.  But I’m still pretty new to sushi, so I’m taking it slow!  I also tried a piece of my roommate’s Spicy Tuna (good flavor!  But I don’t do well with spice) and some of her Seaweed Salad (yummy dressing!).  Followed by a walk to the most AMAZING candy store ever!  I’ll have to take pictures next time.  And a frozen yogurt treat: York peppermint, Peanut butter & Vanilla flavors topped with oreos, cookied dough & fudge sauce.  Dang good I tell ya!

Well the roommate and I rented Bride Wars so off to watch that!  Have a wonderful Friday night!!

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