Day 9 - Spicy Meat Juices

 Weigh-In:  -10.6 pounds

Breakfast: I got a real bagel with butter, but drank a diet sprite, so no Red Bull.  I needed this.  I was STARVING from the night before and I had to drop off GIuliana at the babysitter.  I was already 8am and I had an 830 meeting, so time was of the essence. I will tell you this, it was delicious!  

Lunch:  I was looking through the refrigerator and had an idea . . .. . . . . so I went for it.  I didn't have my typical egg breakfast, so I was kinda in the mood for eggs.  And I saw some spicy Italian sausages in the fridge.  So I cooked up 2 sausages, cut 'em up all small, and then mixed them in with 3 eggs and 2 egg whites all scrambled up.  So my take was 1 piece of sausage (140 calories) and 1.5 eggs + 1 egg white (130ish calories.)  It was awesome and I think that I will do this for breakfast the rest of the week to try to stay away from the bagel thins during breakfast and switch things up a little bit.  It was so good!

(I thought i took a photo of this, but I did not so instead I'll tell you about part of the experience.  I was cooking up the sausages and there was lots of spicy meat juice in the pan.  I decided to just dump the eggs in with it, getting all the spicy meat juices mixed in with the eggs, making it a little spicier all around.  I was telling Kristyn just before we were gonna eat that I was excited because of the inclusion of the spicy meat juices.  Kristyn thought it was the funniest thing - apparently, I said Spicy Meat Juices like 5 times.  I dunno.  But I will say this - after she took her first bite and looked at the eggs with a tint of red, she told me that she could taste and see the spicy meat juices. 

Dinner: It was like 6:15 and we had no idea what we were going to do for dinner, but we both knew one thing.  We didn't feel like having the pork loin.  Neither one of us.  So I decided that I'd make chicken stir-fry.  We had steamable brown rice, chicken breast, broccoli and shredded carrots.  So I'm cooking, cooking, cooking, and testing the broccoli to see if it's ready.  It's not until then that I think about the sauce.  I look in the fridge, expecting to see something I can use and there is really nothing!  So I jump in the car and drive to ShopRite to get teriyaki sauce.  Wow - that made all the difference.  Pretty high in sodium, but i have to say, compared to past diets I've  . . . . . . sorry . . . . . "lifestyle changes" I've been on, I feel like the sodium intake is much lower.  Not as many canned soups, frozen dinners, etc.  Much more fresh food, so the teriyaki sodium was tolerable.  PLUS, when I was choosing the sauce, the one I took had 310mg sodium in the nutrition facts.  The one I ALMOST grabbed had 3,100mg of Sodium!  So I definitely made a good choice, comparatively.  :-)

Snack: While at the store, my mom asked me to get her "Blue Bunny" ice cream cones.  They are usually a pretty expensive item.  $5-6 for a box of 6.  They were on sale for $1.99.  I was like WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!  And I saw Blue Bunny Ice Cream sandwiches with chocolate ice cream and syrup inside.  I had to!  So I had one of these as a snack.  While it sounds like it must be a terrible choice, they are only 180 calories and I'll tell you what, it tasted like it should have been 800 calories.  It was large, tasty and filling.  I am VERY happy that I have this new tasty treat up my sleeve.  

In addition, I was cooking this week's lunch for the week - breaded and baked chicken cutlets.  In checking that they were cooked, I ended up eating 1 piece of chicken.  No big deal, but needed to make sure to list it.

So for the week, I have 1 leftover of Teriyaki chicken (and 1 for Kristyn) and 3 containers of breaded chicken cutlets that I made.  That'll get me through the whole week of lunch!  

Water Intake: I finished the gallon today around 8:15pm.  It's actually been very easy this time around.  I switched water jugs.  I used to get the cheap ones - the ones that look like milk jugs.  But they always felt/tasted old and junky and I felt like they were smelly.  this time, I got the nice clear poland spring gallons.  Not only does it taste fresher, but the opening is much wider, making it easier to drink much quicker.  I end up taking in the water easier through that bottle.  I've been using it one day and refilling it 1 time from the fridge's water/ice maker thing.  Good stuff.  I've finished the gallon all 8 times I tried.  And there was 1 day that I did not even start a gallon - i think that was Saturday - because I was going to be at school with no  bathroom in sight from 11-4:30 and didn't want to need the porta-potty!  :-)

Story of the Day:  We had a professional day today.  They let us work from home.  The last professional day had the same opportunity, but I went in to work because I didn't feel like I would be as productive from home.  Today, I tried to do it from home.  It was a failure.  I really had a hard time focusing.  I mean, it was nice to be home, but I was probably not as productive as I wanted to be.  I did get an SGO done, both my PDPs, hosted a meeting, had a dept meeting, went to a union meeting and dealt with lots of email.  So it was not a wasted day, but I def was distracted.  How have you all done with that?  I have to say - I really don't want to work from home.  I hope that even if the kids eventually have to stop coming in, I can still go in.  It's so much easier to be productive from my office at school than my basement at home.