I spent most of my weekend at home relaxing, cleaning, organizing and catching up on SA blogs. It’s amazing how inspiring they can be! I was away on vacation at the shore in NJ during the second week of August and was tired from re-entering real life last week, so having a lot of downtime felt good. I’ve been exhausted lately and I’m not sure why. I may have been fighting an illness of some sort. A cold sore broke out on my lip and that’s usually a sign that something is going on.

I prepared a lot of food on Sunday to eat this week. My goal is to pack my breakfast and lunch for work and to eat a healthy dinner each day, so as not to spend money eating takeout. I cooked the following:

1.25 cups quinoa
¼ cup steel cut oats
½ cup chickpeas
½ cup lentils
4 hard-boiled eggs
my fave cherry tomato/feta cheese/sage dish

On Sunday, I picked a little over 2 pounds of blueberries ($6.50 and ½ hour of my time – they were selling for $4.99 a pint at the local store!) and raided my friend’s garden again. I got green beans, red kale, 2 cukes, 2 zucchinis, leeks, basil, dill, flat-leaf parsley, a big carrot, snap peas and one small tomato (all free!).

Breakfasts will be oats with sunflower seeds, walnuts, flax seeds and currants (all of which I already have in my fridge), plus a serving of blueberries.
Lunches will be a salad w/lettuce, cucumber, carrot, snap peas, green beans, red cabbage, quinoa, parsley, basil, chickpeas, a smidge of goat cheese, and a hard-boiled egg.
Dinners will be either the tomato/feta/sage mixture over quinoa or lentils and chickpeas over quinoa plus steamed zucchini and kale.
Snacks will be watermelon, peaches, blueberries and feta cheese.

Lest I appear to be a perfect eater, I will confess to a habit of bingeing on junk food. If I could dive into a vat of chocolate milk and swim around in it forever, I would! I tend to waste money on comfort food I don’t want to be eating and not planning what other more satisfying things I could be putting the money towards. I would like to be able to add a piece of chocolate or cookie to my lunch, but I haven’t figured out a way to keep a bag of cookies or fun-size candy in the house without consuming the entire thing at once! I sometimes go thru periods of buying a Snickers bar each day at 3:00 p.m., but that’s .97/day that I’d rather not be spending. Maybe I’ll keep a fun-size bag of Snickers in the freezer and take one out each morning to pack with my lunch. I don’t enjoy frozen candy bars, so maybe that would keeping me from eating one in the moment when I’m home, but one would be thawed and ready to eat by lunchtime.

Another goal this week is to exercise at least three days. Yesterday I walked/ran for an hour after work, which was great because my original goal was 30 minutes. Today, I hope to do the same – at least 30 minutes of walking/running with additional time if I’m up for it.

I’m supposed to visit a friend on Cape Cod this weekend, but Irene may upset that plan. I might push the trip to Labor Day weekend, driving there on Thursday afternoon and leaving early Monday in an attempt to avoid some of the holiday traffic. That option is looking better and better since I am really tired this week, I have a lot of work projects to tackle, and my Cape friend will be adopting a new golden retriever puppy just before Labor Day weekend. How can I resist that?

Hope everyone had a good weekend!