Orlando Vacay Part Two

Hey!!!! BOO FOR MONDAY! This week better fly by! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

I’m back in Valdizzy, and even though I love civilization so much better, it’s felt good to be back at the casa and clean! Since we’ve been gone so many weekends in a row, the house has definitely been getting dirtier and ickier, so it felt soooooo nice to make it clean and shiny

Here’s part two of the Orando adventures:

My Uncle and his girlfriend took us out for a day on their boat.

The weather started to clean up as soon as we got out there and the water was beautiful:

The crew (minus me):

We drove around looking at all of the gorgeous houses on the chain of lakes and also went GATOR SEARCHING but didn’t find any! My goal is to see a live gator (from a distance, of course) every time we go to Orlando.

We anchored by a little island and I got brave and jumped in with the boys, even though the water was freeeeezing!

Me trying to stand on the pilot’s shoulders:

(We didn’t know the people in the background and I’m sure they thought we were giant goofballs)

It was so much fun!

We went back to my auntie’s, packed up, and went to one last meal at Whole Foods.

Mango coconut water:

HOT BAR!!!!

I’m determined to make some roasted yucca this week, because that’s by far my favorite part of the Whole Foods hot bar.

We shopped it up, and got on the road at 9:30. The poor pilot drove us home –he was exhausted- and even though I tried to stay up and keep him company, I ended up crashing out. Sorry pilot!

Here are the goods I picked up at Whole Foods:

Quorn cutlets, Ezekiel tortillas, raw goat cheddar, blueberry fig bars, fruit cups, orange bell pepper, bunny grahams, eggplant marinara (!), vanilla creme liquid stevia, ProBars, Amy’s soup

Tons of bars, more soup, Amy’s refried beans, coconut water, Peanut Butter pows, Strawberry spread, Apples, Vanilla Brown Rice Protein (it’s my favorite. I eat the chocolate-flavored one every day in my oats and figured I needed the vanilla too)

Butternut, Larabars, Dandelion greens, nanners and organic wine

Here are the goods from the Nike Outlet:

Running shorts, Tees, a yoga bag, new shoes for teaching and short capris (plus 1 pair of black longer capris that I wore already)

I also went a little crazy at Milennia Mall

This morning, I was jonesing for some oatmeal, big time!!!
I had 1/2 cup old fashioned oats, 1 scoop vanilla brown rice protein, 1 tbs AB, 1/4 crumbled sesame goji ProBar, vanilla stevia and a few goji berries:

I went to work for an hour –the teach I TA for canceled classes!!! YEAH!- then came home to being the cleaning extravanganze.

For snack, I had a mini TJ’s WW bagel with 2 egg whites, hot sauce and chipotle Mexican seasoning:

The bagel is hiding under there! Can you believe that snack is only 150 cals?! It’s so satisfying and full of goodness I love eggs +hot sauce+bread

After cleaning for a few hours (and rocking out to the Aida soundtrack. Any other huge Broadway musical nerds out there????) it was time for lonchi.

I was so excited to try the Quorn cutlet, so I heated one up and topped it with eggplant marinara, raw goat cheddar and fresh basil:

The verdict??? I thought it was sooo good. As you might have noticed, I don’t eat a lot of vegetarian products posing as meat. I stopped eating meat because I didn’t want to eat it anymore (and a lot of reasons I don’t feel like discussing on the blog for fear of influencing people. There’s nothing wrong with eating meat if that’s how you want to roll—there’s a ton of health benefits to eating lean meat protein), but usually meat products taste too much like meat and kinda freak me out! This Quorn cutlet was great because it didn’t taste a lot like chicken. The flavor was neutral, so it can easily be flavored however you like, the texture was soft and not rubbery at all, and it was delicious with the marinara.

I also had a salad with TJs Goddess dressing, tomato and orange bell pepper:

It was a great little lunch!

Now it’s time for me to make a spin cd, go to the post office, teach spin, then go to class!

Hope your week is off to a great start!!

xoxo,

G

Today’s tip: Make the slow cooker your new best friend! Since I”m crazy busy 99.9% of the time, on Mondays and Tuesdays when I have class until late, I’ll usually make something for the pilot in the slow cooker so dinner is waiting for him when he gets home. It’s perfect for nights when you’re working late, or don’t have time to cook at night. You can throw everything in there in the morning, and at dinnertime, a delicious meal is waiting. The slow cooker isn’t limited to just soups, chilis and stews—I’ve made casseroles in there, meatloaf (which the pilot loves. “Mom! The MEATLOAF!”), enchiladas, tacos, stuffed shells, chicken in peanut sauce, even cakes and crumbles, the list goes on and on…

Tonight, the pilot will have chicken cacciatore. It took maybe 20 minutes to prep and it will (hopefully) taste amazing!