Caroline Dines

Another week has passed, and boy what a week it has been! As you may remember I was due to start classes on Monday. Long story short, I am now enrolled in two different classes (pre-requisites for the program) and will begin in two weeks. I am going to be taking General Nutrition and Basic Anatomy and Physiology (trying to get into Human Biology at the moment). At first this totally stressed me out because I was all prepared to jump right into my program. However after meeting with my advisor I realized that all the classes will come easier if I take these first. After all, anything worth doing is worth doing right! So needless to say a lot of my meals went unnoticed this week with all the frantic phone calls, meetings, and last minute registering. I did manage to get a few though

Here’s a shot of my eats to get me through a night at work. This is a pretty good representation of the kind of thing I have been eating since the New Year. Pictured here are an orange, a whole wheat English Muffin, a Laughing Cow wedge, Bermuda Fish Chowder, tea, and a dark chocolate Dove Promise.

I have had this jar of chowder on my pantry cart for almost an entire year. My parents brought it back for me after their trip to Bermuda last April, and since I am sometimes known as a “hoarder” of food, I hadn’t eaten it. I ended up eating the entire jar myself (as fish chowders go this is probably one of the healthiest kinds since it contains no cream!) and as I was eating it I immediately wished that I had another jar! Good thing the ‘rents are going back!

I LOVE dipping things in soup and this English Muffin/Cheese combo was the perfect addition to this chowder. The chowder was somewhat sweet, somewhat spicy and had a little zip at the end. Apparently your supposed to top it with a little bit of Dark Rum but since I was at work, I skipped that part.

Later on in the week, I was inspired to make this gorgeous salad. For once I had ALL the ingredients I wanted. I used baby spinach, 1/2 an orange, almonds, goat cheese and my own dressing. For the dressing I mixed balsamic and dijon mustard. So easy, I don’t know why I don’t do that more often. It cut the balsamic tang down just a bit and actually ended up mixing with the orange juice to create a sweet glaze.

YUM. Every bite was heaven and I can’t wait to make it again. Using yet another new dish from Christmas (thanks Dad!) helped make it extra special.

After staring this package of “All Butter Shortbread” down each day, I finally decided to eat one of them (te package had two and I split them over two days).

What better reading material than this?! Sadly, I am no longer enrolled in this class (too bad I did all the assignments for the week by Tuesday and then had to drop it!). I am o.k. with it though since I loved the class and reading and will now be able to look forward to it next Spring as I am finishing up the program.

Pizza night this week turned into will-power night. I was going back and forth all day on whether or not I was going to eat the free pizza donated or if I was going to make a healthy shrimp stirfy. Darin called and said that he wasn’t going to be home for dinner which would normally trigger me to “just do whatever is easiest”. He’s sometimes the one that wants the really healthy meal if you can believe it! So I was just about to say, “Fine, I’ll have two slices of pizza (knowing in my head I would probably eat more than that and end the week feeling uncomfortably full), when I realized, I am worth making a healthy meal for too! I threw together a bag of frozen shrimp and veggies and mixed up a little sweet and sour sauce using soy sauce, agave, rice wine vinegar and ginger juice. Boy was I happy with my choice. I even threw a few cashews on for added protein and a satisfying crunch.

Even though the stirfry was delicious, I still needed a little distraction after dinner since there were 6 boxes of pizza sitting in front of me!

The perfect distraction? An extra large mug of Good Earth Tea. I think I refilled this one bag 3 times! It worked though.

I did decide that it was worth it to try one of the luscious lemon squares that were made on site tonight. I was right, they were heaven.   

So it’s finally Friday again and what’s better a Friday leading into a 3-day weekend! Do you have plans this weekend? Darin and I are going to Maine (quick visit with the fam and picking up Darin’s snowboard gear) and Vermont (snowboarding with friends at Stowe!) This will be my first time riding this year and I am so excited since I finally bit the bullet and bought a board (used) and a proper helmet, jacket, pants, gloves, etc. What’s better is the weather is predicted to be quite seasonable and sunny! And because this Dove Promise message made me smile the other day, I wanted to share it with you all. Have a great weekend!