REUNITED - WITH JANICE AND TINA

My cold is gone, yay! It took a whole week and a half and I had to cave and take medication, but I'm glad it's finally gone. Well, technically it's not fully gone; I still have a bit of a mucus problem to deal with but that's nothing compared to before. My throat is back to normal, my sneezing is gone, body pains are without...oh, no wait...what's that pain I feel in my knee.

For some reason, my knee hurts--a lot. I feel like I've run a marathon and put major strain on my knee even though I've never run a marathon (heck, I don't even run) and don't know what strain on my knee would feel like. All I know is that it hurts to walk up or down the stairs and it really hurts to bend my knee. I can't kneel at all. I've attempted to several times today because of some major re-organizing of my closet and under my desk but many attempts were thwarted because of the pain that would shoot up from my knee.

Yesterday started out late with lunch, leftover rice noodles with beef and scrambled egg sauce:This is actually a really small serving so after that I made myself a cream cheese and radish sandwich on rye:
I honestly keep eating these sandwiches because I'm the only one eating the entire loaf of rye bread right now. The rule of thumb at my house regarding bread is that if you buy it, you're pretty much the only one who is going to eat it unless it's whole wheat pita bread or whole wheat bagels. Those are the only two bread items that are consumed on a daily basis in my house.

In the afternoon Sean and I made a trip downtown but before he came to pick me up, I hauled ass and prepared a stack of whole wheat pancakes that were as tall as Quatchi is wide:
And just for good measure:
The best thing about picking Sean picking up concert tickets downtown at Rotate This, is that just a few stores east is a pastry shop that I absolutely love and aspire to be like, Dufflet Pastries. They have cakes, tarts, cupcakes (standard and mini) and have such a following that people will be $3.25 for a large cupcake (see below). I couldn't resist going on this afternoon and looking at all the treats and because my eyes were so delighted, I wanted to do the same for my tastebuds, so I asked Sean if he would split the Harvest Euro tart (apples, blueberries, rhubarb and strawberries) with me. We also picked up a vanilla cupcake for our friend, Janice, who was meeting up with us after she was done work:
Because we had some time to kill before Janice was done work, we headed into Tim Hortons for coffee (I got a mocha, see below) and asked the ladies for a fork, so Sean and I could split our tart. Yummy!
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It was really nice to get together with Janice. I hadn't seen her since a week ago during the dim sum excursion but before that it was in September for a co-worker's wedding!! Sadly, I forgot to take photos of our dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant where we all got our own versions of pho. Mine had rare beef with tendon but don't be disturbed because the very thinly-sliced beef cooks in the wonderfully-flavoured broth. I've heard that some places cook their broth for three whole days! Many restaurants that offer pho will also offer a platter of "acoutrements" including bean sprouts, basil leaves and lime wedges. I take mine with lime and basil leaves.

Dinner talk including overviews of Rec and The Descent and because Janice isn't a fan of horror films, the three of us headed back to her awesome pad to watch episodes of 30 Rock (finally!) We watched the first five episodes, because I was the only one who hadn't seen any of them, and that show is hilarious--but I'm a tad biased because I love Tina Fey.

What an awesome way to spend a Friday night!

Money spent: approx. $11 ($7+ for Dufflet and $3+ for Tims; Sean paid for dinner)

QUICK AND EASY

A very weird post on yesterday's eats...

Woke up late yesterday, sun was shining, decided to pretend it was spring and warm. Made a "springtime" lunch:Cream cheese and radish sandwich on rye with kiwi, baby carrots and more radishes. What can I say...I'm a creature of habit...and good taste. Plus I kind of love this picture:Spent the afternoon making whole wheat pancakes, here's my portion:Delicious and cute.

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Sean and I watched Pretty in Pink yesterday. I've seen that movie a whole bunch of times but Sean had missed out on the ending so I watched it with him. It was fun being able to watch it with someone and pick out things I had previously missed out on, like the couple dancing up a storm on the dance floor in the prom scene. Why have I never seen them before??

Dinner was with Sean at "our" Chinese restaurant. He had deep-fried squid tentacles in spicy salt and I had rice noodles with beef and scrambled eggs, which is actually more of an egg sauce than actual scrambled eggs.

I'm happy to report that my cold is pretty much all gone. I think I was using some soon-to-be-expired Tylenol Cold that just wasn't doing the trick and switching to one that wasn't expired was a good idea.

Money spent: $0 (Sean paid for dinner)

HEALTHY WHOLE WHEAT PANCAKES

My cold is not relenting. I thought I was getting better yesterday but after finishing what I'd consider to be a big meal and a mug of hot water, lemon and honey, I feel worse than yesterday. I'm afraid of catching pneumonia. So far, so good because I have no signs of a cough but I've now got a slight headache and my chest still hurts. I've added more layers of clothing and have put on thicker sweatpants in hopes that the warmer clothes will help. I've also turned up the heater in my room. Sorry for the increased heating bill dad, but I'm not risking pneumonia again.

For those of you not in the know, I had pneumonia five years ago this month and it was seriously the worst illness I've ever had. I was out of school for three weeks, mainly because it was misdiagnosed as bronchitis the first week. After the first week I finally got the right medication but it took two more weeks to recover from and then after that I was told by my doctor to take it easy at school and work (which was easier said than done). I feel like I never fully recovered. As a result I have a weakened immune system and lower pain threshold. Pneumonia is not something I would mess around with. Five days in I didn't think I was going to make it.

Anyway, what's with the title...well, I want pancakes. Ah, pancakes. What an interesting relationship we have. Let me start from the beginning...

My childhood memory of pancakes doesn't involve a lazy Saturday morning or a box of a pancake mix. In fact, it involves my mom, my brothers and pancakes from scratch. My family makes almost everything from scratch: pasta (when we were younger), tomato sauce, cakes, bread, for a while even ice cream and heck, even fish paste! So it came as no surprise to me when my brothers and I all gathered around a large stainless steel bowl and as my mother let us dump in the ingredients for pancake mix: flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, eggs and milk.

My parents' penchant for making everything from scratch kind of marred my delight of eating-out; nothing really tasted as good. When your parents give you your first taste of bone marrow or beef tongue, it's hard to imagine that an all-day breakfast diner could measure up.

As a result, I kind of hate pancakes; the light, fluffy texture that everyone adores...well, I detest it. I find it repulsive. It reminds me of stuff you eat when you're a toddler. I also hate how bland they are and how "exciting" they become only until after you've poured over a truckload of maple syrup. Oh and don't get me started on maple syrup; that brown viscose liquid you get in those plastic bottles? That's not maple syrup.

But I digress. I will eat pancakes if they're filled with fruit...for example, the strawberry pancakes Sean's dad made for his family and I on Valentine's day several years back when Sean was out of sorts because he had just gotten his wisdom teeth taken out the day before. Or banana pancakes...the last time I had them I can't remember from where, or blueberries pancakes that Sean had from...from...well I can't remember but they were good. I also like pancakes topped with actual fresh fruit or made with whole wheat or buttermilk or just something that tells me that they didn't come from a box and you just added milk and eggs.

And so I found this recipe for whole wheat pancakes that didn't include any oil and used whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose white flour. It also gets bonus points for allowing me to incorporate applesauce and an almost-rotten banana sitting on the kitchen counter!

About an hour, I had a plate of these beauties:Nom, nom nom! Satisfying! The added banana and applesauce gave them a texture that wasn't quite light and fluffy and therefore not "dough-y" as traditional pancakes are, thankfully. They also contain whole wheat flour and will fill you up longer than regular pancakes will and my mini pancakes mean you can dip them into your cute heart-shape silicone baking cup filled with 100% real maple syrup.

Sorry for the long post but the end result was worth it. To me anyway.

WHERE HAVE THE DAYS GONE?

Now that I'm no longer working I have absolutely no idea what day it is. I used to write the entire date...today being 2010/01/14 at least 50 times a day, usually on Customs forms. Everyday feels like a Friday and I often find myself wondering why my friends aren't around to hang out with. Then I remember that it's Tuesday or Wednesday or as in today's case, Thursday.

I'm still sick and feeling pretty crabby about it. I asked my mom to ask our doctor (she went yesterday for her yearly physical) and the doctor said that while it probably isn't a reaction to the flu shot, I might have picked up another type of virus. I'm to go see her if it doesn't get any better. My game plan (in order to avoid heading downtown to see the doctor, which is a 3-hour commute) is to gargle with salt water, drink copious amounts of liquids (probably hot water with lemon and honey) and stay warm. Sean has this weekend off and we had plans to watch Weeds or Pretty in Pink tonight and I absolutely do not want our plans to be foiled because he only has every third weekend off. I mean, cmon...the next time he has another weekend off is in February? There's no way I'm letting this weekend go to waste! So I'm going to suck it up and make myself better--without the doctor's help!

Now onto yesterday's eats...Sean picked me up after he was done work and a coin toss determined that we were having dim sum for breakfast. The toss was between dim sum or Cora's. I didn't take any photos this time around...it was much of the same dim sum fare that was eaten about a week ago.

So the rest of the day's eats were kind of a bust because I was a) feeling mucho sick and b) feeling really full. Around 5pm my dad fried up some of these vegetarian spring rolls and I had three...And while my dad was frying up the spring rolls, I decided to make mini cornbread muffins from this recipe from Martha Stewart. I think the turned out wonderfully. I didn't have enough sour cream though so I subbed the rest of the amount with Liberte plan yogurt and while it probably didn't save any calories, they tasted fantastic. Even as I went to take this shot, I was helping my mom do something and when I turned around, two of the muffins were missing, in addition to the others that had already been taken! Dinner was quite some time later, what with the snacking of spring rolls and corn muffins. Around 8:30 I ended up digging into dinner which consisted of the following:Rice with free-range chicken, mushrooms and Chinese sausage (all cooked in rice cooker) with a carrot salad along with a slice of carrot cake and water. I didn't think I was going to finish all my dinner but I did. Then I went for the cake but ugh, it was NOT the same carrot cake as Dufflet's carrot cake so I took about three bites and passed on the rest. I figured it just wasn't worth the extra calories. There was a little something extra in that cake...like a layer of apricot jam/glaze or something that I wasn't a fan of. Plus, Dufflet uses coconut in their carrot cake and I'm crazy for coconut.

Money spent: $0 (Sean paid for dim sum breakfast)

GO AWAY COLD!

It's official, I have a cold. I have the sniffles, sneezing, body aches, a sore throat (though not as sore as yesterday) and overall, I feel tired. Wah, I am not a happy camper. I woke up yesterday not wanting to eat or do anything but with plans to go to get my blood drawn, I knew I had to take something to go since it was already nearing 11 o'clock.

Here's a mug of oatmeal with strawberries:
This time I tried the Oats and Flax Seed flavour from my variety pack of Nativa Organics instant oatmeal and I do like it a lot better than the Apple Cinnamon flavour. I was really disappointed with the amount of flax seed included so I amped it up with a teaspoon of chia seeds.

After running a whole bunch of errands and generally spending some (much needed) quality time with my dad, I came home feeling super crappy but made myself the following for lunch:
A cream cheese, cucumber and radish sandwich on rye with a mushroom and onion omelet along with some baby carrots on the side, along with a bowl of barley and chickpea soup. For my omelet I had one egg with extra egg whites from a carton.
I pretty much had to force myself to eat this. I just wasn't in the mood for food. I did manage to eat half of the sandwich and omelet and all of the soup and carrots.

In the afternoon I opted for a mug of vanilla early grey and 5 chocolate-covered almonds:
I have no photos of dinner because I literally ate it as quickly as I could. I finished the rest of my sandwich from lunch but not the rest of the omelet. The rest of the family was having rice with bittermelon and beef and spinach so I had a small bowl of that as well. And that was it.

I stayed up later than I should have because I've been destashing pretty much all my stuff...shoes, purses, accessories...now I'm onto my makeup stuff. I have WAY too much stuff; way too much new stuff that is NEVER going to be used by me.

Anyway, I felt like crap and I should have gone to bed at 11pm but I went to bed at like...3am instead, after cleaning, showering, eating an orange (trying to get some vitamin C) and unsalted corn nuts.

Money spent: $13+ (spices, flour, brown basmati rice at Bulk Barn)

OWWWW...MY ARM HURTS!

Just got back home from having some blood drawn to check my thyroid and rubella vaccine from a year ago. Oi. I hate having my blood drawn. For some reason I am no longer immune to the pain of needles. I'm going to make myself some lunch right after this post, but onto yesterday's eats...

The day started late--again. I blame it on the sickness. I just can't seem to get a good night's sleep. Even if I do end up sleeping eight hours a night, I still wake up with my clavicles hurting and my body feeling like I haven't slept at all. So having slept an hour later than I wanted to, I started off the day with "brunch" instead of breakfast.
A really small shallow bowl with Garden Fresh Gourmet artchoke & garlic salsa with their unsalted tortilla chips. So good!

I had some leftover salsa once I was finished the chips so I added it into a bowl of fried rice that my dad had quickly made for lunch:No offence to my dad but this fried rice was really depressing (I think it was literally just rice with soy sauce), so I ate about 2/3 of it and left the rest. I'm trying to eat something flavourful and exciting to my tastebuds so that moments later I won't be reaching for something else to eat. I know that I'm the type of person who, if my tastebuds are not satisfied with a variety of flavours in one bite, will look for something else to eat until those cravings are satisfied. I think it's why I adore savory+sweet combos the most.

Since my throat was still hurting I didn't want to overdo it by making and eating anything that would further irritate my throat, so I opted for a warm mug of oatmeal. This time I decided to try out Nativa Organics instant apple cinnamon oatmeal.
For some reason I had no clue what to expect and was surprised to see little chunks of dried apple in my oatmeal. Along with some frozen peaches that I microwaved for a minute, I added some chia seeds and extra hot water and bam! perfect oatmeal combo. I'm not a huge fan of the apple cinnamon flavour so I'm glad I got a variety box which contains only two packets of each flavour.

Along with my cup of oatmeal I decided to have a mug of hot water, lemon and honey. My throat was really sore yesterday and I was hoping that the combo of lemon and honey would help to kill any bacteria and also soothe my throat a bit.

In between the oatmeal-eating, I began making this recipe for Tuscan barley and chickpea soup, but not having a bay leaf, marjoram or celery on hand, I have to make a few adjustments. I added carrots instead of celery and used organic chicken broth instead of veggie stock, thereby negating the vegan option. Oh well, I tried. About two hours later (because I didn't read the instructions properly), I had this bowl of tastebud-satisfying soup:Complete with chopped parsley and drizzled olive oil. It is thick and it would have been smooth and creamy had my Magic Bullet not been broken but the potato masher did the trick, sort of. I really need to get a blender or a new Magic Bullet. Nevertheless, the taste was there and the amount of barley in this soup (3/4 cups) was really satisfying. I'm a barley-whore...I can't get enough!

Dinner was about an hour later and while I probably would have waited at least another hour before noshing, I had plans that evening. Dinner ended up being a huge mish-mash of random things from the birthday dinner that I missed out on the night before:
Clockwise from top: lettuce wrap with duck meat and other stuff, piece of a "noodle basket," stir-fried gai-lan (dad thought we needed a veggie side dish), snowpeas, cellery, mushrooms, squid, baby boy choy, more mushrooms, fried egg noodles and a couple slices of Peking duck in a rice wrap. Despite knowing that it was too much food, I ate it all. I didn't really want it to go to waste and it had been some time since I had had Chinese take-out.

Later in the evening, Sean picked me up and we headed to Corey's house where we watched A Perfect Getaway, which was better than I had expected--except when did Milla Jovovich get so annoying?! Before arriving at Cory's we stopped off at Starbucks for a couple tall white chocolate mochas with whip and I had a banana once we got to Corey's.

DOWN WITH FLU SHOTS

Having gone through the entire month of December working ridiculous hours, not getting enough sleep, not eating properly (hello 10lbs weight loss!) and not getting sick, how do I now find myself with a sore throat? Well, I blame the flu shot I got almost a week ago during my yearly physical. Sigh. I had no plans on getting one until the receptionist at my doctor's office asked if I had gotten one already and then asked if I wanted to get one today. I figured "why the heck not?" and then filled out the necessary paperwork.

Ever since the shot was done, my arm has been feeling sore, my body has been aching (it feels like I was badly beaten up) and my throat has been feeling worse with each passing day. Not to mention daily headaches which have turned themselves into migraines. I thought the feeling was normal and that it would just pass but my throat is getting worse. I am now sipping on hot water with honey and lemon in an attempt to soothe my sore throat. Oh and I am drinking soup that I just spent two hours making because I didn't read the instructions properly...but more on that later.

Yesterday's eats...for breakfast I opted to split this sandwich with my dad, instead of my regular oatmeal:Another pumpernickel cream cheese sandwich with radishes and this time with cucumber, instead of watercress.

We then headed out to my old workplace so I could pick up some meds, cat litter and other things and so I could also see some of my old co-workers. Man, I miss working with them. A couple of the Sunday crew are so much fun! I miss one guy in particular who would help me do inventory at the post office. He's pretty much the only person who I would trust to help me do inventory--mainly because he'd keep me in check when I'd get all paranoid about missing something.

After that my dad and I came home and had spaghetti and meat sauce for lunch but I forgot to snap a pic of that. Shortly after that we headed back out to the grocery store to pick up some things that were on sale...

Garden Fresh Gourmet tortilla chips in unsalted and blue corn versions. My dad was surprised to see an unsalted version; I was just happy to see that they were on sale (buy one, get one free). So we actually stocked up and bought a total of four bags (two of each). Hey, when something's all natural and contains less than 2mg of sodium per serving, my family stocks up! My dad was actually giving me a hard time about spending $8 on corn chips but I was telling him that normally, I'd spend $4 on a single bag of these.

We also picked up two containers of Garden Fresh Gourmet salsa:

Artichoke & Garlic mild and Wild & Mild salsa. After being out shopping for about two hours my dad and I were feeling rather munchy so we dug right into our tortilla chips and salsa (I happened to grab the Artichoke & Garlic salsa) and my dad was a fan! In the grocery store, I was telling my dad that I might not be able to finish two bags of blue corn chips in two months (the best before date is mid-March), but in the car my dad was saying that the chips might not last two months and that we probably should have picked up 3 bags of the unsalted and one bag of the blue corn. So ta-da...someone is a Garden Fresh convert, mwuahaha *rubs hands together a la Mr. Burns*

Oh and after stopping by another grocery store to pick up one of my brother's birthday cakes, I picked up some energy bars which I am going to keep stashed in my purse and Sean's glove box for emergencies:

Carrot Cake CLIF bar (which I kind of have high hopes for) and on the right are a couple of Luna Bars in Toasted Nuts N Cranberry (top) and Nutz Over Chocolate (bottom). I'll report back with reviews later.

A mild migraine in the afternoon turned into a moderate migraine in the early evening and I was forced to take some medication. While my family went out for my brother's birthday, I decided to have this big bowl of fruit:My bowl contained a pear, an orange, a kiwi and a banana. I was hoping the extra vitamin C was going to boost my immune system somehow. I managed to finish most of it in the dark while on the phone with Sean and then after munching on a piece of rye bread with butter, I went to bed.

Money spent: $283.56 (meds/cat litter/stamps)

GRRR...EXPENSIVE FOOD WASTED!

I'm a day behind in blogging--whoops! I actually thought I had posted yesterday with the eats from the 9th. I guess I must have dreamed that post up. Anyway, I woke up late on Saturday morning to find this for lunch:
Catelli Smart macaroni with canned salmon and parsley. Normally that wouldn't be a bad thing, however, I was a little bit irate when I found out that someone had used my entire jar of Catelli Smart pasta to make lunch. So from this entire jar:
only this was left:
I was shocked considering how a box of Catelli costs about $3. I was also not impressed considering that a box of Catelli Smart normally lasts me at least 5-6 meals, if not more. What's even worse is that two days later, there's a stainless steel bowl of leftover pasta on the counter that no one is eating that will more than likely end up in the green bin. What a waste!

In between lunch, I had a bit of this:
Four squares of Lindt Swiss Classic with raisins, hazelnut and almonds. Then I went back and finished my pasta.

A couple of hours after that I had a cup of vanilla early grey tea with two biscuits:
About an hour after that, I split this sandwich with my dad:
Two slices of pumpernickel bread with cream cheese, thinly-sliced radishes and watercress.

Then I had dinner four hours later...some kind of fish with leftover pasta and some kind of Chinese veg:
As usual, I didn't finish all my dinner. As good as this fish was, I have to ask my dad about what kind of fish this was, I couldn't finish it all. I did finish off the veg and pasta, but 1/3 of the fish remained.

I spent the rest of the evening clearing out my closet and underneath my bed. I'm actually trying to downside the amount of stuff I have...shoes, clothes, purses, etc. I just have TONS of stuff. All kinds of stuff and it really is time to downsize. I spent about 3 hours on-and-off clearing out a ton of stuff and it feels really good. Because I'm embarrassed about the state of my room, here's a before and after of just my bed:

I never make my bed so while my bed still looks like a mess, it's actually clean! There was really just a bunch of clothes, calendars and my exercise ball. As you can see, some of the clothes made it over to the sofa chair at the side of my bed and my drums need a major cleaning but that'll be done on another day because it's time for another post.

WAYS TO SAVE

Ever since posting my daily spending on the blog, I've encountered some pretty great ways to save money. Here are some of my tips:

1. STAY AT HOME
   I know this is easier said than done--especially if you work, but staying at home on the weekend is the easiest way to save money. If you're like me and have other people who do or can do the grocery shopping for you, then I say go for it! The only downside is that you end up having a huge list of errands that you eventually have to run. My list involves the bank, picking up meds, picking up cat litter, picking up specific on-sale groceries (only if I'll be in the area), etc.
2. PACK YOUR MEALS
   This also seems like a no-brainer but when I think about how much money I was spending on food on an-almost daily basis, it's kind of appalling. I was spending anywhere from $6.50 to $13 on lunch/dinner a day and while I didn't order food everyday while at work, that amount adds up. Even if that's just twice a week, that's at least $14 a week or $52 that could be saved a month!
   
3. THINK ABOUT THE BIG PICTURE
   It's always good to have a savings goal. My goal? Moving out of the family house and into a place with Sean. When I see something I want to buy (like say, a pair of bronze metallic Puma shoes on sale for $89), I think to myself...do I want these more than I want to move in with Sean...and the answer is always no. So thinking about the bigger picture, the goal you have in mind (whether it be moving out or a trip somewhere or maybe saving up for a puppy), will keep your saving on track.
   
4. DO NOT WINDOW SHOP
   Don't tempt yourself by window shopping. While I did a few days ago browsing the Eaton's Centre and parts of Yonge/Bloor, that doesn't work for everyone. If you know that shoes are your temptation (mine usually is), don't tempt yourself by walking by Bloor St. with Davids and Capezio staring you down with their post-Christmas sales.
5. TELL SOMEONE ABOUT YOUR DEBT
   If you're saving to work off debt, tell someone about it. It might be embarrassing (it was for me), it helps to have someone support you. I chose to tell Sean. It helped having Sean work out a budget with me because I certainly had no clue how to go about one. It also really helped knowing that my ability to be debt-free was closer than I had first thought.
6. CUT UP OR FREEZE YOUR CREDIT CARDS
   If you live off your credit card(s), freeze them (literally). Put them into a ziploc bag and fill that with water and stick it in the freezer. Or better yet, cut them up. Make yourself completely incapable of being able to use it until you are debt free. If you choose to freeze your cards, having to defrost them will give you time to think about whether you really want that purchase or whether you are just going through something else, which brings us to...
7. WHY DO YOU SHOP?
   Are you a retail therapy shopper? Do you shop after a crappy day at work? Does the purchase of a new pair of shoes or a new dress make you feel like you're on top of the world? If you're answer is "yes," you're probably in a bit of trouble. That was definitely me. That was definitely why I shopped a lot.

I hope some of those tips help you out. Happy saving :)

OATS FROM START TO FINISH

The plan for the day was to wake up bright and early, apply for some jobs and then watch Sherlock Holmes with Sean later that evening. He didn't know about the plans yet though...I was going to call him at some point in the early evening to see if he was up for it but he beat me to it when my dad woke me up at 9:30 to take a call from Sean.

About 30 minutes later Sean was at my house and we headed downtown to pick up concert tickets to see Vampire Weekend and Japandroids in late-March and early-April, respectively.

I had excellent plans for breakfast. Knowing that I'd have to get ready "on-the-fly," I prepared myself some oatmeal to go (instant organic oats with chia seeds in a mug) but was too tempted when offered breakfast by Sean. So instead of eating this bowl of free fiber and goodness: I ate this a McDonald's bacon egg McMuffin plus not one but TWO hashbrowns and I washed it all down with an apple juice. Sigh. It's the 2 for $5.98 coupon that totally lured me in. Had Sean not had those coupons on him (which expire at the end of the month anyway), I probably would have passed. I really have been indulging in McDonald's way too much this month but Sean and I figure (or I anyway), that once we move in together, my days of fast food will be over--once and for all.

After our trip downtown, in which we grabbed a couple grande white chocolate mochas (which were free because I used a Starbucks gift card), we headed back to our homes and instead of sleeping, I made myself lunch. I had two small bowls of watermelon salad, which was really just watermelon chunks with mint, olive oil and salt:And a medley of mushrooms (shitake, button and king) stir-fried with onion and a 1/4 of a leftover tomato:
I ate half of the mushrooms and intended of saving the rest for dinner. In the afternoon I got a little bit of a sweet tooth so I decided to give this giant Lindt chocolate bar a go (a gift I received for Christmas from my parents)Check out the nutrutional list:I wouldn't consider it too bad. If you can't read it vertically (*shakes fist*) it says that four squares are 160 calories, which for me is perfect because I normally don't crave sweets or chocolate for that matter. So I ate about 3.5 squares because half a square fell into the garbage can by accident.

Dinner was served a couple of hours later but I dug into something completely different because I had leftover free-range chicken to eat. I paired my chicken up with the leftover medley of stir-fried mushrooms and made a quick salad of watercress and cucumbers. And I washed it all down with a small glass of organic 2% milk:
I don't know why but I felt hungry a couple of hours after dinner so I didn't want to let the oatmeal I made in the morning go to waste. I added some boiling water to bring it back to life:
And then added in the usual suspects:
But about an hour after that I was STILL hungry. So I decided to finish off the remaining slice of pizza I had from a couple of days ago. I also decided to cut it half so I could enjoy it longer.
And after that I decided I needed to call it a night of eats.

Money spent: $5.80 (McDs) and $2+ (meter parking)