Hey bloggies! What’s up? Glad y’all though the wedding we went to yesterday was so gorgeous – it was! Loved all the details. 
I don’t know if it was all the driving yesterday, or if my body was still hanging on to that nasty cold I had a week ago, but I was exhausted today! In fact, we both managed to completely oversleep our alarm and woke up 8 minutes after church started! Whoops!
I had some unpictured raisin bran as I did some housework, then later enjoyed some juice! It had a mix of carrots, spinach, oranges, apple, and pomegranate seeds. Delicious! Extra fruity since I split it with Ross and he’s rather anti-green with his juice.
For a more substantial lunch I had a small La Tortilla Factory whole grain tortilla (50 calories) with black beans, salsa, vegan cheeze and guacamole.
Dinner was our version of take out – sushi from the Fresh Market down the street! Unfortunately Fresh Market has been loving to stuff cream cheese in all their vegetarian sushi and not label it on the package. :/ Poor Ross brought a brown rice vegetarian roll home to me after carefully reading the label, to come home to me immediately spotting the cream cheese. I’m blessed to have a wonderful husband though, because he took it right back to the sushi dudes and they exchanged it, no questions asked. Only problem was that they were out of brown rice. Oh well! I’d rather have a white rice vegan sushi than brown rice with cream cheese!
I got bit by the baking bug in a huge way after dinner. I just wanted to get in my baking therapy! 
I used the recipe on the tube of Publix old fashioned oats, but modified it to make it vegan friendly. Here’s what I did:
- 1/4 cup plus 2 T. Earth Balance
- 1/4 cup organic sugar
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 2 Tablespoons water
- 1 flax egg (1 T. ground flax plus 3 T. water, let sit a few miinutes)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- CREAM THE ABOVE INGREDIENTS TOGETHER
- 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
- 1.5 cups oats
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
Despite consult with Julie and twitter friends I was still torn with making them either oatmeal raisin spice or chocolate chip. So I divided the batter in half and made both! To half the batter I added chocolate chips (didn’t measure) and the other half I added cinnamon, nutmeg and raisins (also didn’t measure). Perfect solution! After they were done baking (at 350 for 12 minutes) I had one of each.
Time to get ready for the week! I have a special post on a current rather hot topic scheduled to come up tomorrow morning. Get ready to get your discussion on about calorie counting!
In the meantime – how was your weekend?
I used to LOVE cream cheese but it grosses me out in sushi, ugh!
Yum, oatmeal chocolate chip is the best. After tweeting with you about calorie counting today, and all the posts & contemplation about it going around the blog community lately, I was totally planning to write a post about it tomorrow too
cream cheese i always horrible in sushi! i hate it when that happens!
and love the cookies…need to make some now; i have a crack ton of oats too!
Oh gosh, I don’t even know where to begin! I can definitely see myself on both ends on the spectrum. I’ll admit that I am a calorie counter. It’s a thought that automatically runs through my head whenever I prepare or eat a dish, but I can’t say that that really bothers me. Like you said, I actually think it’s an important part of living a healthy lifestyle – having that general idea of how many calories are going to be in a certain portion of food. At the same time, though, I’ve been in a place where that counting *did* become too obsessive (i.e. calculating EXACT numbers, tracking every single bite, condiment, etc.). And I can say from personal experience that that was certainly *not* a healthy time in my life. Sure, I was eating healthy, but I was pretty “off” mentally and emotionally.
So where I fall now, which seems to be the same as you, is somewhere right in the middle. If I truly engaged in “mindful eating” without paying attention to calories, I’d probably eat 2500 calories a day, and given my height/build I would gain weight. That’s just how it is. So having a general idea of the calories I consume is something that I will probably always practice. But I will never go back to tracking everything I eat because no good came from it.
I will say that I am most successful with calorie counting when I plan how I’m going to spread out my calories for the day ahead of time. My meals each have a general calorie count (i.e. 350 for breakfast, 400 for lunch, and so on) and that way I am keeping track of my intake without having to disect every single element of my meal. Does that make sense?
Loved this post. And you’re right – calorie counting seems to have gotten an unwarranted bad rap. But the facts don’t lie, and the way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you consume. So counting calories shouldn’t be written off completely. The important thing is to do it the *right* way, because unfortunately there is a fine line between counting calories and getting obsessive with it.
Best of luck with your weight loss goals, I’m cheering you for!! xoxo Gracie