Hot, Hot, Hot

Yes the weather is HOT. At least for me, I start to sweat when the thermometer hits about 80. While I enjoy summer and the laziness it entails, sometimes I don't want to walk outside in the heat, unless there is a pool or some body of water close by :)

With that being said, today was a typical lazy summer day. For breakfast I had oats. Somehow I can still eat a hot breakfast even with it being ridiculously warm. They contained 3/4c. oats, pinch of vanilla extract, squirt of honey, almond slices, dried cranberries, and some vanilla soymilk. Notice how accurate my measurements are, with oats, you just learn to know how you like 'em.

While eating breakfast I caught up on the Bachelorette. I am addicted to that show, especially since Ali is the new bachelorette because I loved her on the Bachelor. Gotta love reality TV. After my dose of TV I spent the rest of the morning reading Handle With Care, a Jodi Picoult book. I definitely recommend reading her books. They are always intriguing and make you want to keep reading. I'm about half way through the book after 2 days of reading. For lunch I had the leftovers form dinner last night. A salmon salad with spinach, dried cranberries, sunflower seeds, dried snap peas, and walnuts. I love texture in my salad. I topped it with some balsamic vinaigrette.

I also had leftover nut butter parsnip fries. I made them for the second time last night and this batch definitely turned out much better than my first. Maybe it was because this time I used both almond butter and chunky peanut butter. I combined 1 tbsp of both nut butters with 1 tbsp olive oil and coated the fries with the mixture. Then I baked them at 400 for about 30min, flipping them at the half-way point. I also created a little honey mustard dressing for dipping. Perfect combo. I made the dressing my mixing some honey into my dijon mustard. Yum.

After lunch I did some cleaning and tiding up. I seriously wonder how I make the house so dirty sometimes. I mean I am only one person. Oh well, I don't mind cleaning anyway. It's good for clearing the mind. For snack I had a bowl of strawberries and a fiber one bar before hitting the gym for some elliptical and aerobics. I really enjoyed the walk there today since the weather was so nice. Nothing like working up a sweat on a casual walk. When I got back I started working on dinner. I decided to use my Light life "ground beef" crumbles to make meatballs. They consisted of 3/4 a package of "meat", 1/3 c bread crumbs, 1/4 c water, 1 egg (eggbeaters), 1 tsp each of dried minced onion, garlic powder, and italian seasoning. Then I smushed them into little meatballs and cooked them at 400 for 25min.

During this time I also heated up some pasta to accompany my meatballs and some sauce. Then I combined them all and topped it with a little mozz and parm cheese. And by little I mean a lot of cheese, because that is my favorite part of a pasta dish.

Now that dinner is over and dishes are cleaned and put away its time to get back to my book, because like I said it's hard to put down!