I’ve already given my mother the official Christmas list… it’s quite short. New Moleskine planner, new yoga mat, a fleece (in dark gray or black)… that’s about it. The rest of the list is all cookbooks! My list includes:

• Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything
• Nigella Lawson’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess
• Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home
• and Real Simple’s Meals Made Easy

I always try to include a few options in case she can’t find one or if she finds a great deal— my mom is the queen of coupons. What are your must have cookbooks?

Everyone has been posting their goals, and maybe I am a bit cynical (me? never!) but I am referring to mine as a wish list. I know that I am the only one with the power to make it happen, but I really wish it wasn’t going to be so darn hard!

• Do not go crazy.
• Do not overdo it with the indulgent foods. (I didn’t at Thanksgiving and there is no need to start that now.)
• Do not totally forget to exercise. (It’s going to be hard, but I can make time.)
• Drink water. Drink a glass of orange juice. Mostly… keep myself healthy. There is no time for being sick!
• Do not be mad at people because I am busy. It is not their fault.

I have been looking at this holiday season and getting a little overwhelmed. I’m in the heat of dead week right now, with finals next week. Woohoo! Nope. I start a Winter Session the very next Monday. I get about a week and a half off for Christmas, from both the Winter Session and work. Time for family, time for friends and food and presents… oh, and time to go meet my future in-laws. I have not been stressed about it until yesterday when I realized how soon it was. I am very excited to meet them and I am sure we will have a great New Years together.

I am also excited because I AM GOING TO DISNEYWORLD. Anthony and I are going while we’re in Florida visiting his parents. I am considering this my first trip, because the only time I’ve been, I was three years old and I have no recollection of the trip other than eating raisin bran for breakfast every day and watching Crocodile Dundee on tv at the hotel. (I was a weird kid.) Any suggestions for things I must do? I can’t wait.

I have my very first Christmas party of the season on Saturday and I have a feeling things are only going to get more and more crazy from here. What’s on your Christmas list this season?

P.S. I feel like a jerk because I’ve hardly commented on anyone’s blog lately. Mostly I’ve been hiding because I was embarrassed about not blogging, but I’ll be back! I promise!

I’m thankful for my education, but more importantly for the fact that graduation is finally within reach. FINALLY!!

I’m thankful for my enormous family that just continues to grow and grow. There have been two new babies born this year, one wedding, and there are two babies expected in 2010. My family is really indescribable… They really deserve their own post.

I’m thankful for all the amazing opportunities I’ve had to travel this year: Austin, Houston, LA, & New York, plus Orlando & San Francisco in the near future. Not to mention the wonderful friends who made all these trips special. I love you guys!

I’m unbelievably thankful for my Soup, who has been the best boyfriend I could ask for this past year. He’s totally changed my life and I look forward to the changes that are to come.

I’m thankful for my dogs, their health, and their affection. I say it every day, but I wish everyone was excited to see me as my dogs are.

I’m thankful for Macbooks and iPhones and Volkswagon Jettas and red ballpoint pens (for editing) and food television and Cooking Light magazine and my job (even on the hard days) and classic American literature and libraries and DALLAS COWBOYS FOOTBALL!

Oh, and I am thankful for food. Not just for the ridiculously indulgent foods of Thanksgiving, but for the staples of my diet, without which I’d probably starve. Oatmeal, almond butter, bananas, frozen berries, Flat Out wraps, brown rice, frozen Brussels sprouts and green beans, lots of different soups, clementines, Oikos yogurt and Kozy Shack pudding, and most of all, the holy trifecta that is hummus, feta, and baby spinach… I love all of you. I’m also thankful for a healthy relationship with food, that will allow me to bounce back after a day of delicious Southern food.

Happy Thanksgiving, you guys! Eat guiltlessly today… Enjoy it : )

I went back and forth over and over about where to get said hangers. Ikea, Target, Container Store… ugh, decisions. Finally someone told me to buck it up and go to Walmart on a Saturday. Plastic hangers 10/$1.25? Totally worth it.

Keep in mind, I only needed hangers. Plain plastic hangers. I also got a laundry bag, a shoe rack, and some coat hangers.

Oh, and some groceries.

After my beloved Albertson’s was taken away, I have been struggling to find a place to get my staples. The closest Whole Foods or Market Street is a good 30 minutes away. The closest Kroger is about 10, but it’s really nothing special and the entire surrounding area is under construction. We also have Walmart and Target, but I have always been a little bit apprehensive about buying groceries at a place where “grocery” is merely a section of the store. Seem odd to anyone else? I looked around for a bit and decided it probably was an okay place to buy some things… I couldn’t convince myself to buy meat or produce there.

Not only did Walmart have the basic things I needed, like frozen berries and popcorn kernels, they had a few things I had been looking everywhere for, like Flat Out Wraps and 4 packs of Oikos. And not just any Oikos, but HONEY Oikos! YES!

So maybe it’s not so weird to buy groceries at Walmart after all. This is what I got there…

Wheat Thins vegetable fiber crackers, HONEY OIKOS!, Pacific Natural creamy tomato soup, Reese canned artichoke hearts, Kozy Shack pudding, popcorn kernels, Sabra, Laughing Cow & Multigrain/Flax Flat Outs

When I got home, I discovered I was home alone. My stomach was grumbling a little bit, so I decided to try something else new… a Green Monster! I am pretty sure my family would think I had gone off the depend, and I didn’t want them saying “I told you so” if it didn’t turn out well. I was nervous.

Still not totally convinced that the spinach taste wouldn’t be noticeable, I went for Angela’s Blueberry Green Monster, subbing mixed berries. I had forgotten about the whole blender situation. This is our blender.

This thing has to be older than I am. I decided to go for it anyway.

I loaded up my spinach, berries, banana, a little 2% milk, and then some ice and went for it. (I only made half a recipe.) Still slightly apprehensive, I added a quick squirt of honey.

It did not go as well as I hoped. 1) It leaked a little bit, which was probably just my own lack of super-old-blender skills. 2) The spinach didn’t blend all the way. It’s hard to forget you’re drinking spinach when there are big leaf pieces floating around in there. Luckily, I love spinach, so I dealt with it.

My first ever greenish brownish monster!

Final verdict? Total win. I couldn’t taste the spinach at all. The flavor was sweet and wonderful. I haven’t tried the regular Green Monster, but I totally recommend this one if you haven’t tried one yet. I loved it. Hopefully, I’ll be having one of these for breakfast a few times a week! Maybe, hopefully, it will warrant upgrading the family blender.

So, while shopping at Walmart and drinking a smoothie is hardly adventurous, I’m still pretty happy with both of the new things I tried. How about you? Try anything new?

Do any of you regularly shop for groceries at places like Walmart, Target, or Costco? Do you buy your produce there too? I’m so used to having a grocery store close by, I’ve never had to before!

One last thing: the other day a coworker told me I peel my banana like a monkey. Whatever that means. I’ve really just always done it this way. Anyone else?

Oh, but it did.

I started the day with some cereal and grapefruit from the continental breakfast, which is pretty ho-hum, but things got pretty great around lunch time.

We drove up to Round Rock, a town just a little north of Austin that I had driven through many times before… why?

Salt Lick BBQ!

This place had been on Man vs. Food and Best Thing I Ever Ate before so we had to have it. The restaurant was busy, but not packed: my favorite atmosphere. We decided to order our food family style and share.

I had one of my favorite things.

We started with delicious fresh white bread. I don’t usually love white bread, but yes, I loved this. That had to be a good sign of things to come.

The amount of food that hit our table was ridiculous. I ate a little bit of everything.

That’s a lie. I ate a whole lot of ribs. Soup preferred the sausage, but together we wiped out that whole table. Yeah. The sauce was tangy, the meat was tender… ugh… totally worth the splurge after doing vegetarian 2 a days.

And maybe (definitely) a piece of the most delicious pecan pie a la mode that was devoured before I could even turn the camera on. I was pretty thankful he was there to share it with me, or I probably would have taken care of it on my own.

We walked off some calories at the Round Rock Premium Outlets. Sadly, I didn’t buy anything, but the boy had a few great finds.

After an afternoon nap, we drove out to one of the Alamo Draft Houses. If you’re not familiar, it’s a theatre with full service food and drinks. We have a few in DFW, but nothing that compares to the awesome menu at the Draft House. (If distractions are a concern, trust me that the food service hardly interrupts.) We shared some red pepper hummus, pita and veggies and a wonderful mushroom pizza, which I didn’t photograph, understandably. We watched Where The Wild Things Are and I promptly passed out when we got back to the hotel.

It was time to go home the next morning, sadly. I was unenthused, but the promise of a delicious breakfast helped to sway me.

We stopped in Round Rock again, this time at the famous Round Rock donut. This place was packed out. Totally worth the wait.

We both had one of these.

Just kidding.

Not that our box really looked much better though.

We shared a couple of glazed donuts, a sausage roll with jalapeno and cheese, and an applesauce donut. Holy cow. he donuts were soft, fresh, and oh my goodness, so delicious. The glazed were great, but I prefer a more cakey donut and the applesauce was just my speed. I had a bite of the sausage roll, and it was just the right amount of spicy.

I’m not kidding when I say I fell in love with them. It may be worth the trip to Austin just to have these.

I’d do anything to have one now.

The drive home was less miserable knowing that when we got to Fort Worth, we could go to my favorite taco shop, Fuzzy’s. No picture needed. You know I had to grilled shrimp tacos. As usual. My favorite.

When we got back to my house, I had a visitor. We played for a few hours and then it was time to take my sweetheart back to the airport. I did my best not to sob hysterically on the way home.

The next morning it was back to normal life. : (

I can’t wait for our next visit.

After all the craziness that was my Wednesday night and Thursday morning, it was finally time for my sweetheart to arrive. I asked Soup if he was hungry when he got here and he said no, but the minute I mentioned Sonic, his appetite suddenly reappeared.

He had been mentioning Sonic as long as we’ve known each other, so I finally took him. I don’t eat Sonic ever, but I was game for a cherry limeade.

After that, we sat and watched coverage of the Fort Hood shooting until dinner with my parents. The combination of being upset + exhaustion + OH MY GOD MY BOYFRIEND AND MY PARENTS MEETING FOR THE FIRST TIME had me in knots, so there were no pictures taken, unfortunately. I coached Soup on how to say chimichanga correctly while we had Mexican food from Mercado Juarez, a local favorite. (I had shrimp with jalapeno & bacon with rice and a little bit of beans.)

I’ll admit, my fears were in vain. They got along beautifully, no awkwardness, no parental apprehensiveness. When Soup and I started dating a little less than a year ago, my parents were understandably hesitant to accept the situation, but I think they really understand that I’m serious about things and it helps to finally put a face with the name. What a relief.

We called it a night pretty early because I was running on about 6 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours. We got up nice and early to get on the road to Austin.

We stopped at my favorite place on 35: Czech Stop. This is a must-do for our family when we travel. The city of West has a large, proud Czech population and the pastries here are to die for. Seriously. He ate something or another with sauerkraut and swiss cheese and I had a cheese puff and a poppyseed kolache. Great fuel for the drive ahead.

We finally arrived and knew right where we needed to go.

Sixth Street : )

Not only is it one of my favorite places ever, it’s where the two of us really got to know each other the first time. (Awwww.)

We headed to one of our favorites from last year: Casino El Camino. We split a buffalo burger and their famous verde cheese fries and enjoyed the awesome atmosphere. We had fallen in love with this place last year and knew we had to go back.

After that, we walked off the calories, seeing more of Sixth and heading to the state capital.

Gorgeous, isn’t it?

Unfortunately there was a “tea party” going on outside and Soup quickly escorted me away before I yelled at them all too much. We headed over to the UT campus…

… admired the buildings and hung out on The Drag…

…and then took a bus back to Sixth because I was too tired whiney to walk any further. After a quick nap, we were feeling the mood for sushi.

Rather than drive back to downtown, we found somewhere in slightly more suburban North Austin: Kenobi. You wouldn’t be able to tell that this is in a shopping center by looking at the pictures. The restaurant was pretty and the food was pretty delicious too. (Sorry in advance for the crappy pictures.)

We shared:

a bottle of Coppola Director’s Cut Cabernet & lobster and goat cheese gyoza dumplings

pepper hamachi & a few rolls that were eaten before a picture could be taken

creme brulee for me & unphotographed green tea ice cream for him.

And then we got a little camera happy.

After a wonderful dinner and a LOOOOONG day, we headed back to the hotel where we watched a movie and I hit the pillow like a rock.

Come back tomorrow for the barbecue that had my lips smacking and the donut that had my heart thumping… in a good way. : )

Quasi-Recap

The full recap of my weekend will have to wait until later, when I actually have the oomph to do it justice. After posting on Wednesday, my rest of the week went something like this:

• Math Exam
• Write 2 History of World Civ essays
• Study for World Civ exam
• Take World Civ exam
• Rush to get home and pack
• Rush to make sure I was ready (and didn’t smell like the busy college student I am)
• Rush to get my car washed and cleaned out
• Rush to the airport, only to find out his flight would be late
• Walk into the airport to find that the website was wrong and he had just arrived
• Find out about the shooting at Fort Hood and frantically check on my friends there, cry over the news (this lasted for most of the weekend)
• Dinner with my parents (read: my boyfriend and parents meeting for the first time, and yes, we’ve been dating for nearly a year)
• Drive to Austin
• Hang out in Downtown
• Walk and walk and walk and walk
• Drive to Round Rock
• Eat way too much BBQ
• Movies
• Start the drive home
• Fall in love with a donut
• See my niece and nephew
• Drop boy off at the airport
• Fall asleep watching the Cowboys game
• Crash

I’ve been pretty busy since I last wrote. It was all amazing and I can’t wait to share it all with you guys.

WSU Update

Today is the beginning of Week 4. To say I fell off the wagon would be an understatement. However, I did walk a lot and drink plenty of water, but strength training went out the window. I tried hard to stick with my vegetarian 2 a day plan, but Friday I decided to let it slide. I am cutting myself some slack though because it was a pretty special weekend. : )

Links!!!

This is where laziness kicks in and I share the amazing things I’ve found elsewhere on the web instead trying to create something equally brilliant on my own. Here’s what you may have missed over the past week, especially if you’ve been as busy as I have.

• FitSugar’s Eight Habits of the Super Healthy
• Fitnessista’s Interior Design Tips
• Brown Eyed Baker’s recipe for perfect scrambled eggs
• Glamour’s What to Eat When Eating Healthy Isn’t an Option
• Girls Gone Healthy: College Eating 101, the first podcast by two of my favorite bloggers
• More Glamour: 4 Surprising Things That Help Ward Off Colds & Flu
• Simply Savor’s Pumpkin Cream Cheese Wontons… yes please!
• And last, Bakerella’s Sesame Street Cake Pops (If you haven’t made cake pops, you are missing out. They are easy and make a huge impact.)

Seriously, these are too cute. (Photo from Bakerella.com)

Today is unfortunately Monday… the beginning of my week and the end of an amazing weekend. I leave you with this final thought:

HOW. BOUT. THEM. COWBOYS!!!

He’ll arrive in DFW around 3:30 tomorrow- yay! We’re having dinner with my parents and then roadtripping to Austin, so I’ll have lots of fun posts about that when I get back. For now, my Internet use has to take a time out, as I’m too busy to think right now, but I’ll be back full force and catch up on all of your blogs after this weekend.

Hope everyone is having a great week! Anyone else have super exciting weekend plans?

Speaking of winners, I won 2nd place in the costume contest. I was a company cheerleader, which everyone thought was pretty creative. I made the shirt with our logo and I got the skirt last year as a result of a lost bet. I’m okay with that though, because this year, I was a winner. I wish I had pictures of the party because it was a blast. My coworkers will probably upload theirs on Monday and I’ll update this post with them then.

After eating all that chili at 3:00, I wasn’t super hungry when dinner time came around, so I made my first ever (unphotographed) yog-mess: plain Oikos, banana, fruit spread, and some cereal. It was delicious, but didn’t really feel like dinner to me though. : (

This morning I could not decide what I wanted for breakfast at all. That bowl of candy waiting for the trick-or-treaters sure looked enticing. I was home alone, so surely no one would know, right?

Hmmm. Being the rebel that I am, I decided to still have something forbidden: COFFEE.

I gave up coffee as a Winter Shape Up goal, but I’m starting to wonder if I should rethink that and give up coffee most days because I miss it on the weekends. I also celebrated Halloween with a pumpkin muffin. I ate most of it before a certain four legged furmonster gobbled up the rest of it. Happy Halloween to you too, Lucky.

After stopping by Dunkin Donuts (for the first time ever, can you believe it?), I went into CVS to get a prescription and THEY WERE PUTTING OUT THEIR CHRISTMAS DISPLAYS!!! If you couldn’t tell, I got pretty excited. I know a lot of people were super excited for Fall & all of the pumpkin stuff that comes with it, but I am all about winter and Christmas. Hot chocolate, candy canes, gingerbread houses, The Nutcracker, Christmas movies, family gatherings, and Christmas music… oh, the Christmas music. I am so ready to bust out all of my holiday CDs.

I’m going to stop before I get too carried away. I’ll leave you with my two favorite cats in their Halloween costumes. (I made these too!)

PS. Elsewhere in the blogword, Lainie of Deliciously Fit has returned and Allison of Balance in Bites is hosting a great Oikos giveaway. Have a happy and safe Halloween : )

So how did my first A Day go? Swimmingly. Until I got home for dinner. I worked so hard to plan my eats during the day, and I came home with the just right amount of appetite for dinner, but my family decided they wanted Jack in the Box. I was sort of screwed. I only planned for breakfasts, lunches, and snacks, not dinners. (Looks like I found my next project.) I made a spinach, feta, and mushroom omelet and it did the trick, but I definitely could have used some more vegetables in my day.

On to the next day… B Days are Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have class in the morning and then I head to work on Tuesdays, and sometimes on Thursdays if I have stuff I need to work on.

B Days: I do not have all the appliances I do on the other days, plus I’m super rushed during lunch, so I need to pack accordingly. I also need to bring snacks that are discreet for the morning in case I don’t have time to eat them between classes.

Plan: Pack a sandwich/wrap/pita that I can eat quickly between school and work, with a side I can eat easily in the car, if necessary. Pack cheese and trail mix for a quiet snack. Again, pack ahead of time.

In Action: Today was a B Day, but I was so rushed to get to school (I did not pack ahead) so today’s lunch and snacks were unphotographed. Lunch today was a spinach-feta-cilantro hummus Ezekiel pita with carrot sticks + an adora disc. My snacks were a piece of good white cheddar and some 365 Hullabaloo trail mix in the morning and then a clementine and some unbuttered popcorn in the afternoon. I was really happy with this amount of food today. It’s not dinner time here yet, but I’m not feeling ravenous or overstuffed. Hopefully fast food will not be on the menu for tonight. Eep.

SO! About my next set of plans… in exactly one week, my boyfriend will be here for a visit after two long, torturous months apart. We are having dinner with my parents in Fort Worth next Thursday and then heading down to Austin, the city where we met for the first time nearly a year ago now.

I AM SO EXCITED I CAN HARDLY STAND IT.

There are lots of plans for food that probably isn’t exactly good for me. Long distance relationships are weight-loss sabotage and I plan to enjoy the brief few days we get to have together… but don’t worry, I’m not going to totally throw all my progress out the window

I still plan on packing a few healthy snacks to take along with us (mostly so I am not tempted to gorge at my kolache shop). What are your favorite road trip snacks? Any tips?

However, I don’t plan my food ahead. Ever. I go into most days having no idea what I’m going to eat after that morning’s breakfast. Well, not anymore.

I realized how detrimental my lack of food planning was when last week I went from breakfast at 8:30 am to dinner at 7 pm consuming nothing more than a Larabar I found in my purse and a few glasses of water. I just didn’t make the time to stop and get anything. I felt sick to my stomach all night after scarfing down dinner and I didn’t sleep well at all, which negatively impacted the following day as well. I sat down Sunday to make a plan for the following two weeks so that I could ensure that would not happen again. I knew that I knew what to eat, I just needed to make it happen.

First, I divided my week up into three types of days for lunches and snacks:
A Days: days that I work first and then head to class afterwards
B Days: days that I have class first and then go to the office
C Days: days that really have no planned schedule (read: weekend!)

Then, after considering the details of those days, I came up with a plan of action for each day. First I’ll share what I planned for my A Days, which are Monday, Wednesday, and half of Friday. (No Friday classes for me!)

A Days: I am at work first, so I have access to a refrigerator, microwave, and toaster oven, which means I can bring pretty much anything I choose. Unfortunately, these days start earlier than the others, so I usually (always) fail to plan ahead and end up eating something from the unreliable (and often disgusting) office cafeteria. In the afternoons, I run at the gym, so I need to pack my gym bag and a snack for before and after.

Plan: Pack Nutritionista-style “homemade tv dinners” to be warmed up at work. Bring cold items as a morning snack. Put lunch & snacks all together in my lunch box so I can grab it and go.

In Action: I just finished preparing tomorrow’s eats. For lunch, I have a mix of cannellini beans, brown rice, spinach, feta, a little extra virgin olive oil, and seasonings + an Adora disc. For my snacks I have a Voskos honey yogurt and unphotographed Granny Smith apple in the morning and half an almond butter sandwich and a coffee fruit water for the afternoon/evening. It’s all tucked away in the fridge and ready for me to take with me first thing tomorrow morning.

I realize maybe an entire post about the fact that I packed my lunch is a little lame, but I’m really excited to see how it all goes tomorrow. I’ll let you know tomorrow night. : )

What are your tips for successful food planning during the week? Any great lunch-to-go ideas?