Improving my sleep habits

I realize I haven’t been getting enough sleep during the work week. On the weekends, I sleep in until about 7 or 8 and go to bed around 10:45. That amount of sleep feels perfect. At work today, I wanted to eat sweets and was always hungry. To me, those two elements signal that I am not getting what I need in sleep. I currently go to bed around 10:30 and get up at 5:50, which doesn’t leave me with quite the rest my body needs. My goal for tonight is to try to get to bed by 9:30 or 9:45. Don’t know if that will happen Tuesday through Thursday nights of this week, as I am babysitting my nephews and working Wednesday/Thursday until 9 p.m. At least I will be able to sleep in on Wed/Thurs. Do you crave sweets when you are tired?

My breakfast included one of the new cereals I picked up at the grocery store on Saturday. Kellog’s Fiber Plus Antioxidants Berry Yogurt crunch cereal with fresh blueberries.

It was ok. Didn’t have a ton of flavor, even with yogurt pieces thrown in.

Lunch was leftover Baked Stuffed Shells, a peach Chobani with canned peaches on top, & a string cheese.

As I mentioned, I was craving sweets today and for some reason, that lunch didn’t fill me up completely. After a meeting, I went to buy some peanut butter cookies out of the vending machine. I think I have only bought cookies of out the work vending machine one other time. Not bad for almost three years at my job!

After work, I picked up the third and final Stieg Larsson book from the library, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Maybe I will read two books in January and start my New Year’s goal off on the right foot. As for the other Larsson books–I plowed through the first one, went a bit more slowly through the second and who knows how fast I will read this third and final book by Larsson. He is an excellent writer and I wish he was still around to share more intriguing stories with the world.

Can’t wait to log off of the computer, bake some chocolate chip cookies (so I don’t have to buy any from the vending machine) and dig into this book tonight! Besides Friday, it is truly my only relaxing night this week, so I am going to enjoy it.

Since it was snowing out before and when I left work, the drive home was slow going and I didn’t make it to Boot Camp in time. I just headed to the YMCA on my own and did 25 minutes on the recumbent bike while watching the HGTV dream home special–love watching all of the beautiful touches they add to those houses! I also did 10 minutes on the stair stepper, which I must say is a good workout because I was sweating after those 10 minutes! I also lifted some free weights for my arms.

I already knew what I wanted for dinner when I got home from the gym. My co-worker had some buffalo wings for lunch today and the smell made me want some myself. I had the third and final gardein product in my freezer to try out–meatless buffalo wings. I paired them with a side of baby carrots, broccoli and pepper jack cheese.

They were pretty good! Nice and spicy. I added a little Frank’s Red Hot too, because I’m obsessed like that.

I blogged early tonight and it’s time to read a few blogs, log off, bake and read! Good night! Don’t know if I’ll be able to blog at all tomorrow, but if not, I’ll catch up on Wednesday morning before heading to work.

Baked Stuffed Shells

I can’t believe the weekend is over already! With working four hours today, my weekend and day flew by.

Yesterday, we got home from the grocery store, I finished the Dalai Lama book (yay one book read for my 2011 goal of reading more books) and then we got to work on the Baked Stuffed Shells recipe from Terry Walters’ Clean Food. A couple of months ago, I asked Ms. Walters if I could review one of her books and recipes on my blog and she generously sent me both Clean Food and Clean Start.

Our oven didn’t work for a while and I finally had time to tackle a more challenging recipe like this one.

Here is the filling for the shells–tofu, kale, onions, garlic, topped with ground pepper and a bit of sea salt. I didn’t use the mirin the recipe called for because our grocery store didn’t carry it in the Asian food isle.

All done! The time we spent making the recipe was worth it. I really loved the tofu instead of meat.

I had some two buck chuck with my meal. I went back for seconds of the Baked Stuffed Shells and so did Craig.

Dessert was a bit of Kemp’s Fudge Crunch bar ice cream. Craig and I are addicted to this flavor!

Breakfast today were two halves of different flavors of Panera bagels–half of the jalapeno cheddar flavor and half of the chocolate chip. I went there on one of my errands yesterday. Picked these up and signed up for MyPanera. I used to work at Einstein’s bagels when I was in high school and I still love an occasional flavored bagel from a specialty store.

I tried a new Philly cream cheese flavor on my jalapeno cheddar bagel–spinach and artichoke. It was really good.

Before I headed to the gym, I snacked on some Stonyfield Blueberry yogurt with fresh blueberries on top.

At the gym, I biked for 18 minutes while reading Health magazine, ran and walked on the treadmill for 20 minutes and lifted weights on my legs. My time was limited, so I had to stop there.

I ran home, showered and ate the Baked Stuffed Shells for lunch. Then it was time to go to work for four hours. It helped that my husband came with me because I had a free ticket to something new for him to see at my work.

On the way home from work, I was craving Cousin’s Subs and we were a block away from one, so we couldn’t resist the temptation. We both got their southwest ham and cheddar sub on jalapeno cheddar (apparently, I am really into jalapenos today).

Well this is a long winded post, so I’ll call it quits there. Hope you had a good weekend!