La Vida Fresca

I hope everybody who was lucky enough to get a three-day weekend enjoyed it! I sure did!

Not much to report on the food front, but we did get in a great kayaking trip down the river/springs and saw lots of wildlife — the usual turtles, birds, and gators, blue crab, plus some of those elusive otters. So cute! No dolphins, but that’s okay. We sat in our kayaks like 15 feet away from the otters and just watched. Kevin got video but I didn’t get any photos because I had just dropped my point-and-shoot camera in the water about a half hour earlier :-( Luckily I still got the pictures off that day and — I can’t believe this — the camera worked today when I turned it back on (gave it the rest of the day yesterday and most of today to dry). Yay.

Back to work tomorrow!

Lest you thought I quit eating, I figured I’d post a little something just to put your fears to rest. Yes, I am still eating. Very well, actually. I was going to post a photo of my new favorite healthy meal, but I only got one photo the other day (I made the meal again tonight but was too lazy to dig my camera out) and that  photo is of too poor quality to post. What is this tasty meal, you ask? I’ve been eating oven roasted eggplant and zucchini, usually with spaghetti sauce and/or ketchup. I’ve been cubing the eggplant in big chunks (sans skin) and either slicing across the width of the zucchini (little circles) or slicing the long way, spraying generously with cooking spray, and sprinkling on salt and pepper. Mmmm. So simple and sooo tasty. Tonight’s dinner was also beautiful, by the way :-)

Since I don’t have a food photo, I thought I’d make it up to you by posting this really goofy pic of me jumping up off the ground while wearing a bike helmet.

Now don’t you feel better?

:-)

Weekend breakfast:  pork sausage and lots (and lots and lots) of citrus from the trees outside.

Sausage (a very good local brand) in the skillet …

More oranges …

The only way to have orange juice is fresh squeezed.  I don’t know why but the taste is totally different to me, even compared to the good, fresh, not-from-concentrate stuff.

The orange storage facility.  I think I burned my retinas out taking this shot.

And this is the view from above my coffeepot looking down at the filter.  Not sure why I’m putting this up but here it is …

As expected, I flaked out on my Spartan adventure tonight. But I had a perfectly good reason. I wanted Hamburger Helper.

Even though I made cheeseburger macaroni for dinner, I did healthy it up some by using whole wheat pasta and 93 percent lean ground turkey. Technically, I guess this is turkeyburger macaroni. I used the common condensed cheese soup/beef broth recipe, though I have nothing against the tasty powdered chemical Hamburger Helper, except for the tasty powdered chemicals :-)

Until I started writing this, I never actually looked too much at Hamburger Helper ingredients. It was kind of funny that the very first return on my Google search of “hamburger helper ingredients” turned up this Associated Content article with the headline, “Hamburger Helper is killing me (and you).” I don’t know if the product sinister enough to charge the Hamburger Helper four-fingered glove guy with murder, but it can’t be good for you.

Stats for tonight’s meal, which included a side of spinach, are:

538 calories

18 fat

60 carb

40 protein

This was a pretty good sized portion (1/4 of the recipe). If you’re more into eating mini-meals five or six times a day, of course you would probably want to adjust the portion size.

Then dessert (sweetened with a little regular sugar, roughly 66 calories) …

And last we have a little early evening parking lot photography.

The only two photos I took today: trees and lunch. Beware of the long, unnecessary, rambling lunch comparison below.

The fog started early last night and by this morning was very thick. Fog and rain always give the woods a pretty, vibrant feel. I couldn’t resist snapping a quick picture.

Later on, I got hungry about lunchtime and didn’t have any of my food staples handy. I really wanted a banana-walnut-vanilla smoothie but didn’t feel like rounding up the ingredients so I went for convenience food. Since I had to go to CVS, that’s where I got lunch. I ended up with a can of light vegetable noodle soup and one of those little prepared cans of tuna salad with crackers. Not the best thing in the world, with its little mystery ingredients, but it was either that or trail mix.

My lunch:
tuna salad (about 3 ounces)
six crackers
2 cups of vegetable noodle soup

The stats:
440 calories
24.5 fat
45 carb
21 protein

Cutting out the crackers and replacing them with celery or lettuce would save about 90 calories, landing the meal at around 350 calories.

Only eating one cup of soup would’ve saved 60, so you would’ve ended up with 380.

Just the soup would’ve only been 120 calories, and while it’s a decent volume of food, I don’t think it would go very far. I know I would’ve be hungry again soon if that’s all I ate.

Coincidentally, this meal had very similar nutrition stats to a double cheeseburger from McDonald’s:

440 calories
23 fat
34 carb
25 protein

From just the numbers, the double cheeseburger looks like the winner: more protein, slightly less fat, a few less carbs. But to me, the first lunch is superior (even though in the grand scheme of things, this probably doesn’t matter one little bit). Still, I’m going to say why the first lunch is better:

My lunch was about 22 ounces altogether. It looked and felt like a whole meal. A double cheeseburger is a little less than 6 ounces. My lunch had vegetables in it. The only vegetables in a double cheeseburger are ketchup and pickles (and onion?). Even though the McD’s burger has 1.5 grams less fat, it actually has more saturated fat (11 grams) compared to the other meal, which had 4 grams.

And there you have it.

(I figured out what the stats would be if you added a medium order of French fries and a medium Coke to the double cheeseburger. The grand total would be 1,030 calories and 46 grams of fat.)

We spent a lovely afternoon at Pass-a-Grille Beach, which is actually part of St. Pete Beach. It was warm and sunny, and there were quite a few people out. We had some snacks on the beach, did some work, and took a few photos.

More beach snacks …

Some photos of the beach:

The dark photo is one of my favorites from today. That pink building is the Don CeSar.

Me working …

We were famished after several hours on the beach, even though all we did was lay around and get up for some photos. The water was a little chilly, but it was hot outside so it would’ve been fine to swim. I was just feeling very lazy. We ended up at The Hurricane restaurant across from the beach. The food was OK. I was going to go light and get soup and salad but decided at the last minute to go with a burger. It was a good thing too because the food took forever and they kind of forgot to wait on us when we got there, so it was a long time before we ate and we were hungry. There were a few small mistakes with the order, and I didn’t eat the coleslaw that I ordered because it was warm. The mayo they brought out in a condiment cup didn’t look too fresh either, so I skipped it. The place had a fun atmosphere though and it was nice to just relax outside. The burgers were good, so overall it was a nice experience.

Here’re some photos of dinner: H20, burger, and evidence of the fight I had with the ketchup bottle (the ketchup won).

On our way back to where we parked, we stopped in an ice cream shop called Paradise Sweets. I got something called a Pass-accino (I think that was it), a drink of blended ice, espresso, milk, and choice of ice cream flavor. I got pralines and cream. It was pretty good!

We had a great day, and I’m sad to see the weekend come to an end!