Feel My Feelings?

Whoa. Did I ever oversleep yesterday. I grabbed my coffee and got ready as fast as I could. I ended up getting to work about 10 minutes late but, besides The Pro, I am the first one there anyway, so it didn’t really matter.  I was super excited about my breakfast. I talked with Lee about her overnight oats so I gave it a try. I used Bob’s Red Mill Muesli and milk and put that in the fridge overnight. Once I was at work, I popped it into the microwave for a couple of minutes and I had perfect oatmeal without any oatmeal explosions. I topped it off with mixed berries, flax seed and a PB spoon.

Lunch was an unexpected treat. T offered to go pick up sushi from a new place. I jumped all over that one and from her recommendation, I ordered a Happy Roll

and a sweet potato roll.

The happy roll made me very happy indeed. It was tuna, avocado, spicy sauce and crunchies. The sweet potato roll was a little undercooked but it was still tasty. I think this place will be our new fav because it is much cheaper and we both really enjoyed the happy roll. The afternoon was productive and when 3:30 rolled around, I hit the door running. I got home and felt a little hungry so I had a few grapes to hold me over.

For dinner, I made eggs in purgatory again. I overcooked them again but we did enjoy them a little more because I served them over creamy polenta instead of brown rice.

On the side, we had garlicy green and yellow beans with an olive oil drizzle.

After dinner, I made my way to group therapy. This week, we focused on chapter 7, Feelings, in Eating in the Light of the Moon by Dr. Anita Johnston. What a loaded topic this was. I, along with everyone else in the class, felt really uncomfortable with this topic. Avoiding my feelings is what I have done my whole life, how am I supposed to all of a sudden start feeling them now? I even avoid feeling happy by sabataging myself with guilt and anxiety. It feels easier to just feel depressed, anxious or sad than to explore the array of other emotions. Obviously, that isn’t working too well for me but it was really hard to be told to intellectually just feel.

We all agreed at the end of the session that we felt worse than when we walked in. Why is it that just talking about trying to feel is hard? I think it is because I have so many unreconciled emotions that I’n not ready to feel my present life. Or maybe, it is easier to feel anger at my boss for a tiny little thing than to actually feel all of the anger I have stuffed down with food. Ah, a loaded topic, I tell you.

When we left, I was able to connect with a couple of the ladies in the group and it felt nice to talk about ED with a real live person as a friend instead of as a client. I’m surrounded by people that I view as normal eaters and it kills me that I am the screwed up one. Having someone relate felt so good, I hope that we can expand these conversations and become better friends.

By the time I got home, I was ready for bed. I fell asleep quickly which I think is a good sign that even though this is hard, it is good.

I can tell you what I am feeling right now, I feel that you all should get on over to Mara’s blog to enter her 100th post giveaway, I assure you, you want to win this one. And don’t forget, time is running out to enter my Country Bob’s All Purpose Sauce giveaway!

Exciting Things in Blogland

I started the day, yesterday, with a few sun salutations and a cup of coffee as I got ready for work. Once I was at work, I had a bowl of TJ’s high fiber cereal mixed with Quaker oat squares, ground flax seed and dried blueberries.

Work was really busy so it was a great relief to break for lunch to meet my friend. We met at Ukrop’s since it has something for everyone’s lunch time palate. I got a brown rice spicy tuna roll

and a veggie summer roll.

We shared some easy conversation and good food, I was sad to go back to work 😦 Once I made it back, the afternoon flew by. I worked on my pile o’ paperwork and before I knew it, it was go time. I went home and pondered what to make for dinner. I didn’t write a menu plan for the week which always leaves me a little clueless mid-week. I fumbled around the kitchen and finally came up with this:

Buffalo tempeh sandwiches with gorgonzola dressing and pickles. It turned out OK and I think I will make this again but I would do one thing different. I like I would cut the tempeh in half so that it could really soak up the sauce. On the side, we had steamed broccoli with an olive oil drizzle and garlic.

For dessert, we shared a big bowl of grapes.

I spent the rest of the evening reading and resting my sore hamstrings. I’m starting to wonder if I pulled them. I noticed they were still sore during my sun salutations, I had to even keep my knees bent in forward fold and down dog. I guess I should give them a couple days rest 😦

A couple of reminders about the happenings of blog land:

Mara is hosting the BSI this week and I am SO excited about the ingredient she picked! Zesty is hosting a grill charms giveaway and I am hosting a Country Bob’s All Purpose Sauce giveaway!!

Fabulous Saturday

What a lovely day we had yesterday. It had all the fabulous features a Saturday should have: a sweaty yoga class, a little grocery shopping, a run, some down time, dinner with friends and of course, good food. It all started with a bowl of Trader Joe’s High Fiber cereal mixed with Quaker Oat Squares. I topped it off with ground flax seed and dried blueberries. I’ve almost polished off my Costco size bag of dried blueberries and I can’t wait to dip into the mixed dried berries next!

After breakfast and blogging, I went to my yoga class with Doroda. Unlike last time she taught the class, this class was full of sun salutations, vinyasas, challenging poses and sweat. We never made it into shoulder stand but we did give wheel another try. This time we used blocks up against a wall and I actually made it up for a few seconds! I have faith that with more practice, I will be up into it in a few weeks.

Yoga was followed by a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients for my entry into this weeks BSI contest. I was oh so excited to make my entry, I started on it as soon as I crossed the threshold of home. I made a spinach and crab quiche that I am going to call crabcake quiche because that is exactly what it tasted like.

Crabcake Quiche

9 inch whole wheat frozen pie crust

3 eggs, divided

1/2 cup mayonnaise

2 tbsp white wheat flour

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated

2.5 oz pepper jack cheese, shredded

3 dashes nutmeg

1/2 cup green onions, chopped

1 cup fresh spinach, chopped

8 oz jumbo lump crabmeat, cooked and picked over for shells

salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350*. Lightly beat one egg white and brush the pie crust with it. In a large bowl, beat the remaining eggs,  leftover egg white and leftover yolk.  Add in the milk, mayonnaise, flour, nutmeg, salt and pepper and beat until smooth. Add in remaining ingredients except crab and mix well. Finally, add in the crab being careful not to break it up too much. Pour into the prepared pie shell and bake for 45 minutes until it is slightly golden brown and the middle is set.  Serve warm, room temp or cold for breakfast lunch or dinner.

Let me tell you people, this thing was so good. So good in fact that I felt like I could eat the whole thing and savory dishes rarely make me feel that way 😉 I had my slice with a little pile of rooster sauce to give it some serious heat

and to keep from eating the whole thing, I had some carrot sticks and almond butter.

Then for lunch dessert, I had three chocolate covered almonds.

Once we ate lunch, we watched some of the DVR and then headed out for a run in the beautiful sunshine. It went much better than the last time I attempted running outdoors. The weather was much warmer so my lungs did not hurt as much but the hills still proved to be a big challenge. The dear husband was patient and walked with me each time I need to take a walk break. When all was said and done, we covered two miles and it felt good to be in the great outdoors. For an after run snack, I had a small bowl of greek yogurt topped with peaches and creamed honey. If you have never had creamed honey, my suggestion would to be to stop reading this and go buy some NOW.  Well, you can wait until you have finished reading but really, you should get some ASAP 😀 As the name suggests, it is much creamier than regular honey and it leaves my mouth really happy.

Once we were done with snack time and showers, we headed out to Costco to purchase a few items and then headed to dinner at our friends, Sarah and FJ’s, house. Sarah had prepared quite the spread. We started out with mozzarella wrapped in roasted vegetables and perfectly salty black olives.

For the main course, we started with warm yeast rolls topped with rosemary and sea salt

followed by lasagna rolls with pine nuts

white beans with caramelized onions and walnuts

and THE BEST spinach I have ever eaten. In the spinach was basil, garlic and red pepper. I had never thought to add basil to fresh cooked spinach but I will from here on out.

All of the food was fantastic, my friend Sarah likes to spend crazy amounts of hours in the kitchen and her passion for cooking really shines in everything she makes. For dessert, she made poached pears topped with vanilla ice cream and candied pecans. This was my first time having poached pears and I must say, I really liked them. I was nervous that they would taste like the red wine they were poached in but to my delight, they didn’t. They were perfectly sweet with a hint of spice from the cinnamon and nutmeg. yum!

I can’t wait until we are invited over again 🙂

Question: What is your idea of the perfect way to spend a day?

Sushi Thursday

Yesterday started with yet another bowl of quaker oat squares mixed with Trader Joe’s High Fiber Cereal. I topped the bowl off with dried blueberries, ground flax seed and milk. Maybe one day I will get a little more adventurous with my morning bowl 🙂

About mid morning, I felt a little hungrier than usual so I snacked on this lovely orange.

Breakfast may have been dull but lunch was very exciting, at least to me! T and I decided to start up our weekly sushi run again despite it being the slow season for golf. During the season, we have lots of errands to run which makes sushi runs much easier. Now days, we rarely have to go anywhere and with civilization a 15 minute drive away, sushi isn’t the most convenient lunch. But we both love it so we are going to try to get out more for it. Yesterday, I chose a kryptonite roll, which is tuna, cukes, avocado, crunchy and spicy sauce, and a sweet potato roll. After the picture was taken, I added a little extra rooster sauce for some kick.

I ended up working really late so our evening wasn’t very exciting. I made shrimp and veggie stir fry with brown rice for dinner

and had a small bowl of chocolate coconut milk ice cream for dessert. I have said before that the vanilla is my favorite but last night I was starting to think that maybe my favorite is the chocolate. I guess I will just have to keep eating them until I am sure 🙂

Question: Do you tend to eat the same things over and over again? I’d say that I do but I am also pretty adventurous when trying new foods to make for dinner. I do tend to eat the same breakfasts and lunches over and over again.

What A Day

Yesterday started out easy and ended up being what felt like the longest day in history! I started out with a bowl of Trader Joe’s High Fiber mixed with Quaker Oat Squares topped with dried blueberries, ground flax seed and milk. Yum. Yum. Yum. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Shortly after breakfast, things got a little hairy. I went downstairs to talk to The Chef about lunch when the F & B Director roped me into doing a coffee tasting. We tasted four varieties that left me zooming around unable to think straight. Kinda like a wine tasting but different 🙂 Finally, about an hour later than normal, I got lunch. At that point, I really didn’t care what it was so I chose the staff lunch. A tuna salad wrap with cheese

and a few, like 5, homemade chips. MMmm….homemade chips.

After lunch was when it all came tumbling down. In my caffeine craze, I made a pretty big work mistake. Assessing it now, I even think it is the biggest mistake I have ever made in this job. Trying to fix the mistake left me feeling frantic and on the brink of a panic attack. I finally settled down once I talked it out with The Pro. Thankfully, he is a good boss and was very understanding and helped me clearly see the correct solution.

I left work feeling edgy which is never good and to top it off, I had double therapy. Once with my therapist and group. My regular therapy session was very productive. We discussed a topic that I’m not ready to publicly talk about but I will say that it was good to get it out there and start the process of forgiveness. I am really on my path to healing.

After regular therapy, I met the dear husband at Moe’s for a quick dinner before group. I had a cheese quesadila with chips (that I didn’t eat)

there really is a quasadila under those chips

and a pinto bean taco.

Yum. It was all fantastic but I was still a little hungry when I left. Probably because my crazy afternoon caused me to miss my afternoon snack. Anyway, after we ate, I headed to group. This week, we discussed spirituality which is another loaded topic for me. A few books were suggested as reading material and I have already ordered them on Amazon.com. What I took most from the session is that I am not the only one that feels the way I do about religion/god/spirituality. I’m wondering if that could be another common denominator between those with ED. Anyway, we made spiritual vision boards and I took a picture of mine for you to see. What do you think?

After I got home, I was still hungry so I had an orange.

Eating the orange felt like a major step in the right direction for me. After an emotionally taxing day, I felt physical hunger and instead of taking that as an opportunity to hang out with ED, I ate and went to bed.

Shout Out, Shout Out, Shout Out

Before I get into the fab food I had yesterday, I want to give a couple of shouts outs! First, to my dear friend, Mara, over at What’s For Dinner for giving props to my new bead page, thanks Mara!  Next up on the shout out list is the lovely Heather at Hangry Pants, they are doing an almond butter giveaway so get on over there and get dibs!! And last, but certainly not least, is Brandi, she just posted the BSI ingredient for this week  and there are prizes involved so get on over there and submit your recipes!!

Ok, now that we have taken care of the general blog administration, we can talk about the food. I had a fantastic day of food! I started out with another bowl of All Bran Strawberry fields, but this time, in addition to the ground flax seed, I added a few dried blueberries! Now THAT is what I am talking about, so good!

For lunch, I had The Chef make me a small salad to fill my veggie slots for the day

along with a bowl of black bean soup topped with cheese and sour cream. I pulled the soup out of the freezer which is always good for a quick lunch.

I had a really busy afternoon, so busy, I forgot to eat my snack. I was heading down the highway to meet the dear husband for an errand when my stomach was rebelling against my bad memory. I searched my bags only to find that my bar stash was wiped clean. I called the dear husband to see what he had in his stash and he didn’t have anything either. Luckily, one of the errands was right next to Panera so I stopped in and got a mango smoothie. It is normally just the fruity mix and ice so I had them add in a little vanilla yogurt for some staying power. The smoothie was good but it would be better in the summertime!

After our errands, I was really cold and craving a warm sandwich so we stopped into one our favorite local spots to pick up grilled subs. We got them to go so that we could get home at a decent time. Mine was a vegetarian with lots of toppings. They put these really delicious sweet peppers on it with a really zesty Italian dressing. These things are killer!

On the side, we shared an order of sweet potato fries. They were a little soggy from being in the to go bag but they were tasty none the less.

We spent the evening watching a little tv and reading. I am a little behind on my group therapy book so I needed to catch up before tonight’s session!!

Best Fudge Brownies

Hello Bloggies!

I’m posting a little late today because I slept in BIG TIME. I guess my body needed some extra rest since I am still sick. The dear husband said he tried waking me up so I wouldn’t miss yoga and I said “uh-uh” and rolled back over. Alas, I missed yoga but honestly, I’m not feeling up to much.

So, here is a quick recap of yesterday.

I got to work a little late but still had breakfast there instead of at home. I had a repeat of Thursday since it one of my new favoritebreakfasts. A bowl of fiber one shredded wheat mixed withQuaker Oat Squares and topped off with ground flax seed, dried blueberries and milk.

T and I had decided earlier in the week that we would do a sushi run for lunch. I had been craving a sweet potato roll since the last time I had one. I ordered the veg maki combo which included a vegan roll (cukes and avocado), sweet potato roll and futo maki. I ended up not eating the futo maki because it tasted a little like windex (EW!!).

 

T also gave me a few pieces of her kryptonite roll which was supah good.

Shortly after lunch, I got this beautiful suprise from the dear husband. The card said “Happy Friday”, isn’t that sweet??

Though my lunch really filled me up, it left me hungry on a couple of hours later. It didn’t have much protein at all so I’m sure that is why. I dipped into my greek yogurt and berries about an hour earlier than usual because I didn’t want to be hungry for my after work grocery adventure.

I went to Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods when I left to stock up on some essentials. Once I was home, I baked a couple of butter bean burgers that I pulled from the freezer. We had them on a sandwich thin with ketchup and mustard, holy yum!

On the side, we had steamed broccoli tossed with olive oil, garlic and sea kelp. I picked the sea kelp up from Whole Foods but am not sure if I like it enough. I am salt addict and it didn’t have that salt flavor that I love. It is packed with iodine so I think it may be best to use it in conjunction with sea salt.

For dessert, I wanted to do a test run my “best fudge brownies” that I plan to make for Meghann’s  blogger bake sale to be held February 9th. I had to make sure my recipe wasn’t poison, of course :D.

We had the brownies topped with a small scoop of coconut milk vanilla ice cream.

This little dessert proved to NOT be poisonous at all 🙂 We went to bed shortly after because we are both sick and really just want to be better!!

Fews Words, Lots O’ Pictures

First, I want to give a shout out to a very special person in blogland, Lee, at For the Love of Peanut Butter! She is hosting a secret cupid blogger valentines day gift exchange. Be sure to pop on over there and sign up for the exchange, the deadline is TODAY!!!

I ate breakfast at home again yesterday because I went in late due to ice on the roads. I had a bowl of fiber one shredded wheat and quaker oat squares topped with dried blueberries, ground flax seed and milk. This is becoming my new favorite stand by breakfast. *Edited to add* There is no picture because it is on my other computer 😦

For some reason at lunch time, I was craving my afternoon snack so I went with it. I had greek yogurt topped with mixed berries. I added a few mixed nuts after the photo was taken.

 

To be sure to get in my veg for the day, I had the chef make me a really big salad with oil and vinegar.

I also had some sauteed spinach that was out for staff lunch.

By mid afternoon, I was hungry again so I had a big ole orange to hold me over.

The dear husband was kind enough to make his specialty for dinner since I worked two hours later than normal. Frozen Pizza :)!! This time we had the mediteranian vegetable, so good!

After dinner, I had the last of my mini toblerones from Christmas time. I will miss these little guys.

I was really stressed out because of work so after dinner we just talked and watched tv. Hopefully, I can get completely caught up today so that I can leave the stress behind. I’m sure part of it is because I haven’t exercised since Sunday due to being sick. I’m totally looking forward to sweating out some agression in yoga tomorrow!!

Beware: Long Post Ahead with TWO recipes!

Thanks for being patient with me yesterday, we had a really busy day and I knew I wouldn’t give Friday justice if I wrote about it yesterday.

Friday was a nice day, it started out with a cafe au lait on my way to work and then a breakfast wrap once I got there. I asked The Chef for something different that the egg sandwiches I had been eating and he came up with a great wrap. Inside the wrap was scrambled eggs, potatoes, green peppers and onions. There was also something really spicy inside but I couldn’t figure out what it was, maybe jalapenos. No matter what the spicy element was, it was delicious!

 

For lunch, I had staff lunch again since it was vegetarian pizza. The pizza was topped with every veggie in the rainbow and I had a small salad on the side.

Around 3, my stomach was rumbling again so I had a the coconut cream pie larabar. OMG. I loved this bar, I haven’t been a fan of coconut until recently and this little bar really packs a coconut punch. I really enjoyed it and plan to add it to normal bar rotation 🙂

Last weekend, I  made a bag of dried butter beans and I knew I wanted to try my hand at making butter bean burgers. I googled it and low and behold I found my friend Jessy’s blog.  Jessy’s recipe is vegan and I didn’t have nutritional yeast on hand so I made some modifications. Here’s how it went:

Butter Bean Burgers

Makes 6 burgers

3 cups cooked butter beans (if using canned, should be about 2 cans drained and very well rinsed)

1 diced onion

1 diced red pepper

1 tbsp crushed garlic

olive oil for sauteing

2 tbsp minced jarred jalepenos

1 cup bread crumbs

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

1 egg

garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper (all to taste)

In a medium saute pan on medium heat, saute onions and red pepper in olive oil until the onions are translucent and then set aside to cool slightly. Meanwhile, mash the beans with a potato masher until most of the beans are completely mashed, you do want to leave a few whole beans for texture. Add in the remaining ingredients and combine well with a wooden spoon. Form the mixture into six patties.

Once the patties are formed, you have a couple of choices. You can freeze them for later use or you can cook them right away. When you are ready to cook them, heat a little olive oil in a cast iron skillet (or regular if you don’t have cast iron) on medium low heat and cook the patties about 4 minutes on each side. If you cook them from frozen, it may take a little longer. You can also bake them in the oven for about 16-18 minutes at 350* if you prefer and oilless method.

The butter bean burgers were fabulous! I served them on Sandwich things with jack cheese, ketchup and mustard.

On the side we had sweet potato fries, mmmm.

For dessert, I had a TINY amount of Turtle Mountain coconut milk vanilla ice creamwith a nutella spoon. I would have had a larger portion but it was all we had left 😦 Let me tell you, people, this is GOOD stuff. I love it love it love it! If you don’t like coconut, you probably will not like it but if you do, you are in for a real treat.

After dessert, off to bed I went. We had to wake up early to make it to yoga on time. Once we were up, I had a cafe au lait and a bowl of cereal. I had a mixture of Fiber One Shredded Wheats, Quaker Oatmeal Squares, ground flax seed and dried blueberries all topped with milk. This was a great bowl of cereal, since I had been in a rush all week, I was missing my morning bowl of cereal! I ended up not finishing the whole bowl but the dear husband was there to polish it off 🙂

After last week’s yoga debacle, I received an email from the studio owner letting me know she was sorry for what happened and wanted to assure me that the class IS a vinyasa I and II class. She is also giving me a free class sometime soon, which is always good. I feel so much better now that I heard from her, I really didn’t want to leave my yoga home. 

This week’s class made up for last week’s, that is for sure! We started out with the breath of fire and continued to build heat from there. We did lots of sun salutations (yay!), a gorgeous standing flow that included warrior I, warrior II, triangle, side angle, moon warrior, standing splits into PIGEON!! Oh my, was it ever great. After the standing flow, we worked on arm balances and then she challenged us to give wheel a try. We warmed up with bridge and then gave it a go. I had only every tried wheel pose once before on a yogadownload and I couldn’t get myself up. This time, I could get up but I could not get my head off the floor. Rest assured, I will keep at it until I get it. We ended the class with shoulder stand. I noted during class that shoulder stand had just become a normal pose for me. Six months ago, I could not get myself into it. It is amazing what the body can do with practice!

After the powerful yoga class, I was ready to face the day. Even the dear husband, who normally prefers hatha, said he felt great and more awake after the class. This was unusual for him because he normally doesn’t “get” the mental affects (or should it be effects?) of yoga, he does yoga purely for the stretch. We were both on cloud nine as we went about our errands.

Once we were home, we had a quick lunch. I made Boca Spicy “chicken” patties on whole wheat english muffins with blue cheese dressing.

On the side we had steamed green and yellow beans with “carrot balls”  tossed in olive oil, sea salt and garlic.

And for an extra spicy kick, a hot and spicy pickle. I actually could not finish the pickle because it was just TOO spicy.

For lunch dessert, I had two cherry cordial kisses. So good!

After lunch, we cleaned the whole house, with the exception of the office. The only time the house gets cleaned these days is when we are having company 🙂 While we were scrubbing, I made caramel lattes to get us through.

 

Once we were finished, I had a little food prep to take care of followed by girly maintenance. Our friends, Becky, Cris along with their two small children, Kristen and Reagan, arrived at six on the dot and we started dinner. I planned an easy dinner because I knew we would be busy, and since I am working to find balance in my life, easy was the way to go. I made baked salmon that I marinaded in fat free balsamic dressing

 

And what I am calling cauliflower bake. The first time I had this, my friend Sarah made it and both the dear husband and I fell in love with it. After consulting with Sarah, I figured out how to make my own version.

Cauliflower Bake

16 oz of cauliflower florets, I used frozen

1 package (8 wedges)  light laughing cow cheese

1/2 tbsp crushed garlic

1 tbsp minced onion

1 cup bread crumbs

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste

2 tbsp olive oil, divided

1 cup water

cooking spray, I use a misto with olive oil in it

Pre heat the oven to 350* and prepare a baking dish with cooking spray. In an large skillet, saute the cauliflower in 1 tbsp olive oil until it caramelizes slightly. Season with salt and pepper and then add water to the pan and cover. Cook until the cauliflower is completely cooked through, you can test it by mashing it with a fork, if it turns to mush, it is ready. Drain the cooked cauliflower and place into a mixing bowl. Add in the garlic, onion, cheese and salt and pepper. Mash with a fork until almost smooth.

In a separate bowl, mix bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, a little salt and pepper and the remaining 1 tbsp olive oil. Mix well until you have a fine crumb mix, you may need to adjust the ratio depending on how dry your crumbs are.

Add the cauliflower mix to the prepared baking dish into a smooth layer. Top with the breadcrumb mixture and bake for about 15 or 20 minutes until the crumbs are golden brown.

We also had some kale the escaped the camera because it steamed up my lens and I was too impatient for it to cool down. The cauliflower seemed to be the star of the evening, well, if you exclude the wine.

During the evening, we drank wine

Our friend Cris opening a bottle of local wine

and nibbled on an impromptu cheese tray.

It was a lovely night with friends and we can’t wait to do it again soon.

Breakfast for lunch, Junk Food for dinner

I slept in until a little past 7 yesterday, I would have slept longer but I had to get to yoga. I drank my cafe au lait while eating breakfast. In the bowl was Barbara’s shredded spoonfuls, ground flax seed, dried blueberries and milk.

 

After breakfast, I headed to yoga class. The class had, yet again, another new teacher who had suffered from some miscommunication. She thought the class was supposed to be a gentle hatha flow class for beginners. We didn’t even come to standing until about 45 minutes into it. At that point in the class, she said “we are going to come into Warrior I” and immediately, we came into warrior I. She looked up and said “oh, you are already there” because she was expecting to have to teach us the pose. A few moments later, she seemed very confused about what was going on and said something about us being more than beginners so I finally spoke up. I told her that the class was normally a vinyasa I and II class. She looked like a deer in headlights and said, “so this class has been way too easy” and we all agreed that it had. Then she said she wish she had known because she normally teaches vinyasa and was having a hard time teaching a gentle class. We finished out the class with a few sun salutations but by then, time was up.

After class, we all sat around and had a long discussion about the class. It was a complicated discussion that I’m still not even really sure what happened.  In the end,  I’m not sure if it is the studio for me anymore. With all of the teacher changes and style changes and level changes, I’m just not sure I can keep paying the high price. I like vinyasa and feel that, for the money, I should get what I pay for.  Confusion like this has happened many times over the past couple of months and it only leaves me frustrated. I have been told that maybe these gentle class come by to teach me something but they only teach me that gentle yoga is not my thing. I just sit, lay or whatever in the poses and feel frustration. I like vinyasa because it doesn’t give my mind time to wander; it is very much a moving meditation for me. I do yoga to ease my anxiety and depression and those gentle classes just make it worse.

I have found another studio in the area that is a few minutes further away, but they have a vinyasa class on Saturday mornings. Once my session is up at my current studio, I may give it a try.  I wish I had another r option but at this point, I don’t feel like I do. I have talked to Laura, the studio owner, about the problem but it isn’t being resolved. It actually makes me really sad because it really feels like home to me. It is the only studio I have ever practiced in so I feel emotionally tied to it. Yoga changed my life so walking away from the place that made that happen is hard.

After yoga, I came home and caught up on my blog reading and then made lunch. I saw lots of omelets in blogland and thought that would be the perfect way to use up some things in the fridge. I made a mish mosh fritata with shrimp, corn, black beans, onions, broccoli, light cream cheese and mozzarella.

On the side, we had toasted english muffins with an olive oil drizzle. This was a eggs-ellent lunch 🙂

With a full belly, I made a menu plan and shopping list for the week and then we headed out for errands. While out, I had a venti caramel latte to help keep me warm. It was very frigid outside! Once we got home, it was almost 5pm and we knew we wanted to get in a good workout. We met upstairs and he rode the recumbent bike and I did a run on the treadmill. I am very proud of this run because it was the longest I have ran in a couple of years. I walked for 5 minutes, ran for 26 minutes and then did a 4 minute cool down. It was awesome.

When I met the dear husband, I was an avid runner. I typically ran about 5 miles a day and it was just part of who I was. Once I moved into my current neighborhood the running stopped. The hills here are insane, more like mountains and the adjustment made havoc on my hips. It was just too painful to run anymore. Now that I have yoga in my life, the running doesn’t seem to bother my hips the way it did back then. Of course, I haven’t run outside yet so we will see when spring comes. Even if I have to run on the treadmill forever, I am glad that running is back in my life.

Once we were fresh and clean from our workout, I made us some junk food for dinner. I made a batch of morning star farms buffalo “wings”

a pan of sweet potato fries

with carrot sticks

and blue cheese dressing for dipping.

What a fun dinner this was. Even my carnivore husband thought that the “wings” we good and the sweet potato fries were killer! It was all pretty spicy so we wanted something sweet to balance it all out. Since it was so cold, I really wanted something warm. I made rice pudding with pecans and topped it off with chocolate chips.

It was a warm and comforting dessert. I made it from a box with the exception of the nuts and chocolate but I will be seeking out a recipe for homemade. I want to have this treat again!

Have you ever felt so frustrated with something you love so much? What have you done to resolve it?