POINT OF BALANCE for today: I heart glamour.com. Check out “10 Things Every Woman Should Know About Her Body” by Mehmet Oz, M.D. Lots of good tidbits to remember!
This Saturday, I remembered I had a cinnamon raisin bagel in the freezer from my last visit to the West Side Market. This bagel was GINORMOUS, so once I nuked it a bit, I attempted to cut in half. Instead, I cut it in two not so equal parts. I took the piece that was about 65% of the original bagel and cut it in half, then toasted it. I nuked some frozen raspberries to make a nice spread to go on top of the cream cheese, which I topped with cinnamon. Accompanying is the usual large mug of coffee with 1% milk and splenda:
the usual pre-workout saturday breakfast
You should know Grady talked me into a special breakfast of his own:
a healthy balance for the pup!
Right before leaving for Bally this AM, I ate a banana (one of those previously pictured on Thursday) with a few smears of TJ’s crunchy organic peanut butter. Today’s workout was a Saturday classic:
- 5 minutes on the elliptical for warm up
- 70 minutes of cardio kickboxing
- 5 minutes on the elliptical to cool down
- 3 sets of 15 on the captain’s chair for abs
- 5 minutes of stretching
For the post-workout lunch, I was craving a turkey burger, but wanted a flat-out wrap – so I made it work!
a spin on the usual
I grilled the turkey burger, then once done, cut it up into bite size pieces. Inside the wrap: turkey burger, sprouts (why the wrap became so HUGE), hummus, one Babybel wheel and wilted spinach. A measuring cup filled with TJ’s butternut squash low-sodium soup rounded out the meal.
Since Hans carved is pumpkin this afternoon, we had seeds to roast!
two versions: one savory and one sweet
The pan on the left was sprinkled with salt & garlic powder. The pan on the right had sugar and cinnamon. Both were delicious. Thanks allrecipes.com! Hans and I enjoyed taste testing to decide which type we liked better. He liked the savory and I liked the sweet. Before heading out for some quick errands, we shared a gala apple (the picture came out gross).
While Hans got ready for the trick or treaters to arrive, I made our Halloween inspired dinner: pumpkin gnocchi with pumpkin brown butter sauce, served with veggies!
On the Hans meal scale: a 9 out of 10!
The gnocchi was purchased on my last visit to the Ohio City Pasta stand at the West Side Market. I was saving it for a special occasion such as this pumpkin filled holiday! However, I needed a sauce that wouldn’t overwhelm the pasta’s flavor. After some research on Food Network’s website, I decided to make my own version of a brown butter sauce with some left over pumpkin puree! The sauce was made with
- approx. 5 Tbs. of butter or margarine
- approx. 1/3 cup pumpkin puree
- generous sprinkle of cinnamon
- salt to taste
- a sprinkle of nutmeg
I ate all the veggies (broccoli, carrots and corn) and about 2/3 of my gnocchi – which I had a small serving of in the first place! It was incredibly filling without being too heavy.
Tonight: we’re going to the annual Halloween party we always attend… although we’re both slowly falling into a gnocchi coma! I better get up and moving. Pics tomorrow of our costumes and their CRAZY backstories! Happy Halloween!
I see a Golden Retriever! I have one too.
[...] Check out my post from last Halloween when I made their pumpkin gnocchi with a pumpkin brown butter sauce. YUM! [...]
[...] who were around in the early days of the blog will remember this pumpkin gnocchi dinner from last [...]