I can actually say today was a happy Monday for a change. After the terrible week I had last weeks this is really exciting news for me. I expect to go into tomorrow feeling good too because I am finally getting to go to an much anticipated lunch meeting tomorrow.

My afternoon was just as steady as my morning and I was starving once I finally realized I was hungry.

So I munched on one of my favorite new snacks, Triscuits and Laughing Cow. I am completely addicted to these rosemary and garlic Triscuits. I was still kind of hungry but I didn’t want to ruin my appetite for dinner.

Once I got home I waited for Brian so we could take Piper for a walk around the neighborhood. It was so nice to get out and walk, but boy it cooled off. The temperature was so nice at lunch and they seemed to drop really fast.

Dinner was nice and low maintenance. Before work this morning I put a beef roast (not sure exactly what cut of meat), 1/2 onion, green bell pepper, red wine vinaigrette, and water into a slow cooker and set on low. This cooker was packed full. I really could use a bigger one.

After our walk I sautéed some collard greens in sesame oil with some garlic, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and chicken broth. This recipe was inspired by a recipe I found in a cookbook my brother and sister-in-law gave me for Christmas.

Greens are a veggie that I am still working on trying to like. I have struggled with like vegetable all of my life  and greens are really low on my list. These were okay. Tolerable. I ended up eating them mixed with bites of meat and BBQ sauce. B said that he really liked them. They were very different from the collards he grew up eating.

Since I ate all of my veggies I definitely deserved dessert. I really wanted to go to Cold Stone and get some chocolate ice cream with Heath Bar and caramel sauce but did not want to leave the house. If only they had delivery.

Instead I had some Edy’s Somoas Girl Scout cookie ice cream with mini semisweet chocolate chips and toffee chips. This was definitely the next best thing to what I wanted. I may be over exaggerating this in my head but I feel like tomorrow is a big day so I have to go get ready. I need all the beauty rest I can get.

Actually its not so much that I want to go home as much as I just want to get the heck out of here. This entire week I have been in the worst mood and it is only getting worse. I can’t imagine what tomorrow is going to be like. Most of the afternoon my mood has been so fowl I have been on the verge of tears. I just don’t know what has gotten into me.

I have really been trying hard to sit quietly at my desk as to not take anything out on my innocents (sometimes) and unsuspecting co-workers. And my poor husband.

Can a mood this bad count as sickness? I wish.

At the end of my post last night I made mention of making a smoothie.

This guy was a bit chunky, which made it very hard to drink. Otherwise it tasted just fine. I sipped on this while I soaked in the tub and read Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl. Very relaxing.

Despite my poor mood, I was/am having a good hair day so I took some pics before I left the house.Good hair days are few and far between so I have to make the most of them. For breakfast I was craving a chicken and cheese bagel from Chic Fil A, but since I am eating out for dinner I was reluctant to eat out another meal today. Plus, I had to get Piper to doggie daycare. With all the wet weather she has not had any good playtime all week (our backyard is a mud pit because of the melting snow and Piper has already had to have one bath this week).

Back to breakfast. I had a space chicken breast that I seasoned with S&P and cooked up last night. So I decided to make my own chicken and cheese bagel…except without the bagel.

The bagels we have are monstrous and way too big to eat a whole bagel plus chicken so I subbed in Sandwich Thins.

I also put together a little fruit salad.

Kiwi, blueberries, and strawberries.  I was really surprised when I was hungry for a snack just a few hours later. I started with a bog ole carrot and when that didn’t satisfy my hunger I popped a bag of popcorn too.

By lunch I was really ready to get out of the building, but I had no idea what I wanted to eat. Actually, I really wanted to eat some Bojangles fried chicken and mashed potatoes but I knew that was just my bad mood.

Instead I went home and made one of my go to lunches, taco salad. Brown rice, refried beans, wilted spinach, shredded cheddar, 2 tomatoes, Jack’s Special salsa, and plain Oikos with some tortilla chips on the side.

Taco salads always seem to be delicious and filling (as long as I have salsa in the house) and they even satisfy food cravings caused by emotions (no more fried chicken craving here).

I finished things off with some Girl Scout cookie ice cream.

We just got this stuff on Saturday and its almost gone!

The happy food feeling pretty much evaporated as soon as I got back to the office. Boo. Maybe I need a window? Do you think some natural sun light would help my mood? I don’t know but I need this mood to lift soon. I don’t even want to be around myself.

Gah! Today has been a day where I have seriously lacked focus and motivation. As unusual as it may sound these even extended into my blogging, which is usually my happy place. I went to delete one photo off my flash drive and it ended up deleting them all!!!

I don’t think a rundown of my eats are particularly interesting without photos so I have tried my best to have something to show you.

After my workout this morning I was surprisingly craving a smoothie. This mornings smoothie was the best yet! I am so upset I don’t have a photo.

My picture looked something like this, but with smoothie in the glass. There was so much that it filled this huge pilsner glass. It was really thick but really fruity tasting. I loved it.

The smoothie didn’t hold me over for long so I pulled some crackers from my work stash.

And later in the morning I had an orange.

Today I had to bring my lunch to work. I had a late afternoon doctors appointment and was leaving early in lieu of a lunch break. I got hungry at 11AM so I decided to go ahead and start eating.

I made an amazing sandwich with Arnold’s sandwich thins, hummus, Laughing Cow, spinach, tomato, and ham.

Sal suggested I use stick figured drawing where I was missing pictures. I didn’t feel like actually drawing and scanning drawing so I grabbed this one off another site.

A little later on I munched on a carrot and BBQ PopChips.

Plus a PB Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie.

All of these goodies held me over until after my doctors appointment, where I sat and waited forever. Its a good thing I brought a book and that my doctor is super sweet, otherwise I would have been really irritated.

On my way home I polished off the rest of my PopChips and then ate some sliced kiwi.

I have a lot more of these little babies to eat. They were a part of last weeks organic produce delivery.

I really wanted a Moe’s burrito for dinner but I knew I had leftovers to get rid of.

Taco Salad! Which is so much better with tomato and salsa. This salad had brown rice, butternut squash black bean taco mixture, spinach, green leaf lettuce, shredded cheese, tomato, salsa, slice jalapenos, and Oikos Greek yogurt. Plus some green beans on the side.

There was so much that I couldn’t finish it all.

But somehow I found room for ice cream.

Edy’s Somoas Girl Scout Cookies ice cream. Yum!

On a slightly different note, guess what I found waiting for me when I got home today?

PB&J Larabars!!!! A big thanks to Katie who found them and was generous enough to share her loot with me.

I know what I am having for breakfast in the morning!!!!

Have a great night!

I can’t believe it is Sunday night already! The weekend has flown by.

I started my Saturday by getting out of bed at 6 AM to head to the Give Thanks Walk. I had to be there by 7 AM to help set up before other walkers began to arrive.

I thought that the city looked so pretty as I was driving down the interstate. I tried to take a picture, and obviously that didn’t work out so well for me.

I decided to try a Clif bar for breakfast. I chose the chocolate almond fudge bar because those a flavors usually very appealing to me.

I didn’t like this at all. I ate half, just so I wouldn’t be starving over the few hours I would be at the walk. The other half went into the trash.

I wanted to take pictures of the walk, but I didn’t want to have to keep up with my camera during set up. It was cold outside and my pocket space was being used exclusively by may hands, whenever possible.

The event went great! Charlotte raised over $33K for St. Jude. I walked the whole 5K although my knee started giving me problems half way through. Going up the hills, even a small incline became pretty uncomfortable.  But I made it and I was happy to show my support, eben if I was limping part of the way.

After closing ceremonies my family decided to hit up Shoney’s for a meal. Two of my Aunts, and Uncle, my parents, and me and Brian all went together. My cuz had to head out with her boyfriend because of some family photos.

Since it was 11 and I am not really  huge breakfast person my Mom and I split  Pepper Jack Chicken Club with some fries.They totally shorted us on the fries. The sandwich was great once I peeled off the onions. Ick.

The rest of the afternoon was fairly uneventful. My stiff lower body did not want to move. My Mom and I did a little shopping.  We are looking for deals on maternity clothes for my sister in law. Sophie and my brother live in Germany and apparently maternity clothes are expensive over there. We found a few really cute things at Target, but nothing substantial enough to keep her warm through a cold German winter.

We also made a trip to The Fresh Market to pick up some stuff for dinner. We ended up buying some french bread and spinach artichoke dip. We all munch on this throughout the afternoon.

We also picked up some hot italian sausage and whole wheat gnocchi. I was feeling pretty uninspired and was having a hard time deciding on what to cook with the sausage. We decided on meatballs.

3 links of sausage made 8 meatballs. We made the meatballs using the sausage, 1 egg, and a 1/2 cup of a combo of regular and panko bread crumbs.

After boiling the gnocchi I sautéed them in butter and dried sage. I don’t like doughy gnocchi, but I love them this way. We just used some Ragu Garden Combination marinara that we had in the fridge.

Plus some green.

Drizzled with Ken’s Steak House Healthy Options Oil and Vinegar dressing. I picked around the onions.

And for dessert….

Edy’s Slow Churned Vanilla Yogurt Blends. I  made a strawberry sauce as a topping by heating up some frozen strawberries with water and about 2 tbsp of sugar on the stove top. Then I pureed with my immersion blender. Plus a few semi sweet chocolate chips. So good.

I desperately needed and wanted some sleep last night. All was well until 6 AM when Piper woke me up. She was having stomach issues again. She is so good and I hate she is having so many problems. Nobody knows what to do.

After I cleaned up a little bit of a mess and got Piper back inside and settled I got to get back into bed and stayed there until 8 when Piper heard my parents and Zeke rustling around and wanted to join them.

On a completely different note… my mom and I found some more doggie fleeces at Target for $2.50! I got Piper another one and my Mom got Zeke 2. They are adorable!

Now to breakfast. I felt all ick from my early morning wake up so I kept it simple. Toast with Nutella.

Nutella is so yummy. But I wasn’t into this and only ate about 3/4 of it.

I ended up eating some nuts once I got down to my Pawpaw’s house later in the morning. Brian had to work so I decided to go down with my parents and hang out for a while.

Not long after that we went to lunch. We went to a local mexican place. Of course there was chips and salsa.

Me and my Mom split the lunch fajita plate.

We each got 1 tortilla to stuff full of these goodies. Then we just ate the rest by itself. These fajitas had squash. I have never seen that before but I love it!

And for dessert…

My grandparents always kept a candy drawer stocked for me and my brother. There have always been goodies like fruit roll ups and milky ways stashed in there for us. I usually have at least one anytime I am down there.

My Mom and I did a little more shopping, but I was so stiff and tired I wasn’t motivated to do much. I did fund a cute Kristen Davis sweater for 10 bucks a Belk. I love a good deal!

On my way home I munched on a Kashi granola bar that I got from the walk yesterday.

I thought it was pretty bland. Way better than the Clif bar yesterday though. It just didn’t taste like anything. It wasn’t particularly sweet, salty, or nutty; but that didn’t stop me from eating the whole thing.

Brian hadn’t eaten lunch at all and was ready for a snack when I got home. I made some french bread cheese pizzas with the leftover french bread rounds from yesterday.

Supper simple and yummy.

It was time for dinner in no time. Brian let me watch this past weeks Top Chef on DVR while he cooked.

Dinner was just a random pairing of foods that we had on hand and that sounded good individually. None of them made sense together.

Boiled shrimp (they were huge!), Green Giant green bean casserole, and Betty Crocker Ranch Bacon Pasta Salad. Plus Brian made some spicy cocktail sauce.

It may have been random but it was delicious. Plus Brian cleaned up too! He is so good to me.

And for dessert…

More FroYo! It was even better tonight because the strawberry sauce was cold.

That is all for my weekend. It is time to get some rest so I can prepare myself for the 1 1/2 days that I have to work this week. See you in the morning!