Flat Top Grill in Wauwatosa

Last night, I went to Flat Top Grill in Wauwatosa with my friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen since June!

I signed up to receive information from the restaurant and got a coupon for a free appetizer. We chose to share edamame with sesame and spicy dipping sauces. Loved the taste of the sesame sauce!

Our waiter explained how the ordering process works, but I clearly wasn’t paying attention and didn’t bother to read the board in great detail because I missed ordering the bread and would have gotten some greens on the side too. I was able to get a couple of pieces of bread (thanks to our nice waiter) and lettuce (thanks to my friend Kim).

Basically, you get to pick out various vegetables, a sauce and the meat of your choice, brown or white rice and then the cooks mix it all together for you. We had to ask for rice because they were out of it when we went up there. The staff were all so accommodating and sweet when we needed things they were lacking or when we were forgetful about things.

Kim

Laurie

Kelly and Loni

Jenny and Kim

Here’s my meal. I picked various vegetables, potatoes and vegetarian meat. The sauce was customized by someone that works there after I told her what types of dishes I like. I tasted the first version and told her it was too sweet. She spiced it up a bit and it was perfect.

Unfortunately, Loni and I weren’t feeling so good by the end of our meal and I was still feeling sick this morning. Just could have been random, maybe too many veggies or something else.

I would recommend Flat Top Grill, but I do have to caution that buffets where various food is out in the open makes me a little nervous, especially because I have a sensitive stomach and because I did get sick last night from the meal.

In the end, it was so nice to catch up with my girl friends, chat about iPhones, our lives, their kids, travels, weddings and future places people are going to live in (Guten Tag Switzerland for my friend Laurie)!

P.S. my instagram photos aren’t so great and doh, I figured it out. I’ve been feeling so out of it this week because I’ve been going nonstop at work and after work. My temporary plastic cover is still covering my camera lense on my phone, so it all makes sense now as to why the flash wasn’t working properly last night. I need a case stat but I am still researching!

Mopping sucks

Thanks for all of your entries into the B.I.C. bands giveaway! There is still time to enter. I’ll post the winner on Wednesday evening.

I had a very relaxing weekend, like I needed after a week of being sick with colitis problems. Here is a collage of my food over the last two days and I of course ate a lot of food that is unpictured like chobani, string cheese, & pita chips.

I also made Paige’s mug cookie, but I made it in a bowl.

It didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped it would, but it tasted great. I just couldn’t eat it all because it was so sweet!

This morning, I had a big mug of coffee while watching CBS Sunday Morning. The story in the background was on shape up type shoes like Sketchers Shape Ups, MBT, Puma, and Reebook. The final conclusion is that those types of shoes don’t really engage muscles like the shoe companies claim they do. (Sorry Angie)!

I was pretty lazy today overall because I needed to relax and still recuperate from feeling sick all week.

But, I was productive with laundry and the worst task of all: mopping. You see, we’re going away this weekend and I don’t want to leave a sloppy house for my in-laws while they come and check on the cats. I guess the worst part of mopping is clearing the items from the kitchen and bathroom before getting to the task itself.

It’s really nice to have a clean kitchen though!

I did make it to the gym tonight. I followed Jillian’s advice from her podcast and didn’t stretch before my workout. Instead, I warmed up on the BOSU before lifting a full circuit of weights. I also walked and ran the track for 10 minutes. I didn’t need to do a lot of cardio because Craig and I walked almost two miles in the humidity this morning.

And now, I am finishing watching the movie Conviction. It’s pretty good–not one of those movies I was super excited to see, but an intriguing story overall.

Time to sign off and get ready for bed! Hooray for a four day week for me. 🙂

Nutrition Podcasts

I can’t believe the week is almost over! I had a great day at work. That is awesome considering today marks the start of one of my busiest seasons at work. I guess I just needed a change of pace and getting away from my desk most of the morning felt good. The day flew by! I always had something to keep me busy and I kind of thrive on that, as long as I am not too stressed out.

I’ve been listening to nutrition podcasts on my way to work lately (all pictures were taken at stoplights, not while the car was moving) and while this one hasn’t impressed me yet:

There just has been mostly promoting of the podcast author’s books and her being apologetic for not podcasting for a while. I haven’t learned much at all quite yet!

This one did impress me today! The subject was “The Dark Side of Soy.” I can’t wait to keep listening. I kind of like the speaker’s voice though because she’s from Minnesota and I find her Midwestern accent soothing. I know, I am weird. 🙂

They were cautioning using soy for menopausal treatment and eating too much of it in general.

Do you ever listen to nutrition/fitness or other podcasts? Any favorites? I like language podcasts too. I am sort of a language geek though.

While I lived in Switzerland, I missed hearing the English language, so I used to listen to podcasts on my iBook each night. I looked forward to it while having dinner most evenings.

Back to last night–I did go to the gym and I lifted some weights and ran/walked on the treadmill. I set an incline on the treadmill to sort of prepare for Sunday’s 10K run. I did pretty well with the hills! I guess I am used to them from living in San Francisco and running two half-marathons and Bay to Breakers there.

After the gym, I needed a quick dinner, so I had a veggie masala burger on whole wheat bread with spinach.

Dessert was Stonyfield vanilla yogurt with berries, which is what I had for breakfast this morning too. One of the strawberries was from our garden and it just smelled so delicious!

Right before we went to bed last night, Craig and I went for a nighttime walk. It was fun to walk under the street lights. Kind of romantic too! 🙂

Today

Breakfast was Stonyfield Vanilla yogurt with strawberries and blueberries. This was exactly what I wanted!

Lunch was a nice potluck one at work. I brought the veggies. I haven’t purchased baby carrots in ages, but they were easier to just bring instead of preparing some for the lunch.

This was our wonderful spread of food. I had turkey meatloaf, fruit, carrot cake (heavenly), gummies, doughnut holes, veggies, and pasta salad. We had a celebratory goodbye lunch for a volunteer that has been in our department for years. It was sad to hear her reminisce about her wonderful time at my workplace.

Clearly I am feeling better today because I enjoyed a nice big plate of food and wasn’t too worried about what I ate. Sometimes when I get sick like I have been the last couple of days, I am ravenous for the next couple of days. I swear it’s because my body isn’t processing food correctly or something and then it craves all of these nutrients.

After work, I was trying my hardest to make it to Zumba class at 5, but due to a baseball game, I had to take the long way home. I just decided to take a rest day because I usually do on Wednesdays anyway. Craig and I went on a walk around the neighborhood instead.

Dinner was late and quickly made-the pizza bagel with basil, bruschetta sauce, pizza sauce, and provolone cheese.

Time to go read some blogs and then call it a night!

Feeling “off” with food this week

I’m behind on my blog again, but here are my eats from yesterday.

I’ve had sort of an “off” week with food. I don’t know if it’s our extreme weather changes from hot to cool, but I wasn’t feeling eating certain foods this week.

For example, on Friday, I didn’t feel like anything in particular for breakfast, so I went with what sounded good: the Caramel Apple Breakfast cookie I won from Living Lindsay. It was really tasty and filled me up!

The one thing I was feeling all week was the need for iced coffee. I had it at work maybe every day. On Friday, I even caught someone stealing from the coffee stand while waiting for my coffee, so that was an interesting moment. One of those in which you wonder “is that guy really stealing that bag of popcorn or am I imagining things.” I gave him the benefit of the doubt at first and then I saw him trying to hide it. Luckily, he got caught because I told the guy at the coffee shop what I just witnessed, but not much could probably be done.

Lunch was a piece of Trader Joe’s pizza, a peach chobani, a date and red peppers and broccoli.

I’ve been really good about getting veggies in my lunches this week. Love eating the broccoli and red peppers together simultaneously.

I really felt like a Cousin’s sub for dinner, so of course Craig couldn’t say no to that idea.

I got a club, my fav sub on Parmesan asiago bread.

Last night, I watched Food Revolution per usual and took notes again. My favorite quote from Jamie about fast food was “It’s a treat, not a structure.” He helped a dad and his two sons break their fast food habit (hopefully). They were definitely treating fast food as a structure.

The other cool way to teach about food to high school kids was when Jamie had them pick a snack. They could choose from an orange, soda, pizza and a chocolate bar. Once they ate their choice, Jamie took them outside and had them walk the track to reflect what they ate and burn off those calories. The orange eaters only had to walk 3 laps of the track where the chocolate bar eaters had to do something like 11 laps. Great way to teach about healthy food choices, huh?

Ok, off to write a different post about today and then another about a fun health and fitness fair I went to on my lunch break on Thursday.

Morning workout success

I got back to the gym this morning and it felt great. I got up around 5:40, meditated for 25 minutes and then was getting my workout clothes on when Craig yelled my name and said, “I think Osama Bin Laden is dead.” I replied “are you sure it’s not Gadhafi?” Of course, I looked it up right away on my nytimes app on my iPod and sure enough, it was the top story.

Anyway, back to the gym. I ran the three miles I was supposed to run yesterday and I did ok. I only ate half of a cherry pie larabar before leaving the house and I think that was perfect amount of food for my sensitive stomach. Towards mile 2, my right hip started hurting. This is the hip that seems to bug me lately, especially if I haven’t done yoga for a while. That is why I am incorporating at least two yoga sessions into my workouts this week. Once I was all sweaty and warmed up, I lifted mostly arm weights and felt pretty weak. Maybe it was because I only lifted once last week and the rest was all cardio? Anyway, noticing that made me want to stay consistent with my workouts even more now, plus try to do Body Pump more often.

It felt good to get my workout done in the morning and go into work a little later for a change. Maybe I will try that off and on throughout my work week.

Breakfast was the rest of The Greek Gods yogurt plus some plain Stonyfield yogurt with chia seeds and Bonne Maman wild blueberry preserves.

Lunch was an Amy’s Vegetable Pot Pie, string cheese, carrots, grape tomatoes and a small apple. Running this morning made me super hungry, so I grabbed a lot for lunch today and I am glad I did.

For dinner,I was just craving a smoothie, so I whipped up a strawberry banana protein smoothie using almond milk.

Well, I am heading to a Vegetarian Indian cooking class tonight through the local rec dept. I am looking forward to it because I love Indian food and want to be able to cook it for Craig and I once in a while. Here is what we are supposed to be making: Vegetarian Dahl, Basmati Rice, Vegetable Korma with Cashews, Yogurt Raita and Apple Chutney. YUM! I’ll recap the class in tomorrow’s post.

With that, I need to go to class now! Have a great Monday night.

Feeling lucky

I guess it has been my lucky week! I just logged onto WordPress to write this post and saw that I had a lot of referrals from Clean Eating Chelsey. Some of them said winner in the link and I clicked over to discover that out of 200 people, I won her blog giveaway for Jessica’s Natural Granola! I am super excited to try it!! I’ll definitely post reviews of all of the yummy flavors I get to taste. Love that Jessica’s is a Midwestern company based out of Michigan!

image source

Yesterday, I went into work late in the afternoon and logged onto my work computer to find one lonely e-mail in my inbox (believe me, this is rare and this occurred because I had checked e-mails from home before going in, so I cleared a bunch out). The subject said that I won a book from a blog giveaway. It is a blog that is specific to my field and the author of the book writes the blog…she’s one of those people that is doing great things in my field, so I am excited to learn more through reading her book!

So, I guess a super busy week that flew by and seemed exhausting at times ended up being really lucky for me. 🙂

After working the last two evenings in a row and then babysitting on Tuesday, it feels so good to be home, sitting in my sweats and blogging from the couch.

This morning, I woke up pretty tired after about only 7 hours of sleep last night. Breakfast today was cereal and much needed coffee.

At work, I had another cup of coffee, half of a granola bar and a delicious brownie that someone brought in for us to munch on during our event.

Since I worked part of the day on Sunday & additional hours during the evening events, I was able to leave work at 12:30 today and that was so nice! I wish I could do that every Friday. 🙂

I ate lunch at home–a Boca cheeseburger on an Arnold’s Thin with pepper jack cheese, tomato, chipolte mayo and a bit of Frank’s Red Hot.

I also had some Stonyfield Blueberry yogurt with fresh blueberries on the side. I am trying to use up the blueberries before they go bad!

Dessert was one of the chocolate chip cookies I made earlier this week.

After washing some dishes, throwing in a load of laundry, and a brief nap with the cats piled on top of me, it was off to Kohl’s to use this bad boy:

Alas, I wasn’t lucky finding anything there. It always seems to be that way when I have the 30% off! I was hoping to find some cute shirts to wear on our upcoming trip to Florida. Oh well.

I got some fresh veggies and fruits from the grocery store, headed back home and made white cheese and noodles for dinner.

Ate it with a side of lots of veggies because my body needed them today.

Oh and I picked up some raspberry Kefir at the store to make my tummy happy.

Time to turn on the Wii and do some EA Active 2. I figured I have neglected it lately and have been to the Y so much in the last two weeks. After that, it’s time to catch up with blogs in my google reader because I am behind on reading them. And finally, since I am a nerd and a homebody on the weekend, I’ll read more of my Stieg Larsson book. It’s getting good! Just a nice chill Friday night here.

Have a wonderful Friday evening and a great weekend.

Holiday pot luck & my first Zumba class

Today’s breakfast is pictured here.

Lunch was a holiday pot luck party, so there is no picture of my plate. I ate little portions of lots of things. I also had lots of fruit desserts and surprisingly, wasn’t craving chocolate at all today!

I brought something to the potluck that I knew I would eat–fresh veggies. Cucumbers, grape tomatoes and baby carrots. Everyone loved the Santa plate I brought too.

After a food coma at work, I knew I needed something peppy to add to my afternoon. I looked a the YMCA schedule and decided to try Zumba for the first time tonight.

It was a lot of fun. I was a little nervous, as I told my friend, who is a Zumba teacher, I am not so coordinated. The class was packed and the women in my class seemed to love Zumba (they even wear shirts that say I heart Zumba, etc.) I loved the first song and the moves best–Enrique Iglesias’s “Baby I Like It” and the Indian inspired dance. There were some other songs that I couldn’t follow the moves with as well. I think it would take me about 6 or 7 classes to get the dances down pat. At one point in the class, I said to myself, “I feel like I am at a middle school dance trying to dance naughty to get noticed.” Maybe it’s just me, but the moves reminded me of that time of my life!

To learn the steps, I watched people in front of me because I don’t do well with watching teachers who are facing the class. I am sure I will try it again. I really do like Boot Camp, Body Pump or Yoga better, but Zumba will be fun to change up my workout once in a while.

I arrived home from the Y with tons of energy. Craig laughed at how chatty I was.

I made a nice red quinoa dish with feta cheese, tomatoes, roasted red peppers and chickpeas. I mixed it with some Penzey’s spices, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Oh and a glass of red wine was perfect with it!

Now it’s time to relax and read with my adorable Karma sleeping by my side.

Feeling pampered

I spent my morning getting pampered. Don’t you just love spa treatments and haircuts? I had a free “balancing treatment” for pre-booking my haircut today and it was so nice. The Aveda salons always have Chakra treatments and my husband says true Chakras cannot be achieved until you do years of meditation and yoga. I honestly don’t know anything about chakras, but the subject does interest me. I chose my Chakra based on the colors, design or words I liked on these flash cards. I picked three and then my stylist had me smell the three with my eyes closed. My final selection was Wisdom. She said I seemed happy and the card told her I could either be feeling very wise and at peace today (which she could tell I was) or I could be seeking wisdom. She then sprayed the smell around my head and did a scalp, neck and shoulder massage. Aaah, it was so nice!

Then it was haircut time! I never realized I had so much hair until it started to get thick in the back of my head over the last couple of weeks. When I went to see her in August, my stylist had asked me if I normally get it thinned out. Well I didn’t know, because no stylist ever told me they did that, but I guess I normally do, because she didn’t thin it in August and it got thick! This time, she got the back nice and thin and just updated my layers with a small 1/2 inch trim. I love a fresh haircut and style!

When I woke up this morning, I still felt full from the pizza and breadsticks we had last night! I still was craving pumpkin oatmeal and made myself a nice bowl before heading out for the spa. This was the first time I used Pumpkin Pie spice in my oatmeal and it definitely was the flavor I wanted to taste! I added Libby’s pumpkin, half of a banana, oats and then raisins, a spoonful of greek yogurt and nutella on top.

Craig has a friend over this afternoon, so when I got back, we cleaned as much as possible. I vacuumed, did the dishes in the morning, cleaned glass on windows and then so did Craig. Like a nice spa morning, I also love a clean house!

All of that cleaning left me hungry for some veggies! I made myself a nice spinach salad with fresh mushrooms, tomatoes, red peppers, cucumbers, hummus, sharp cheddar cheese, broccoli, and the last of Annie’s Asiago cheese salad dressing.

I’m indecisive about whether I want to go to the mall to check out the Banana Republic sale or if I just want to stay home to read, get caught up on things and organize in general. We’ll see…I am leaning towards shopping so Craig can hang with his friend all alone. But, then again, shopping can wear me out and I still want to get to the Y today.

Hope you are having a good Saturday!