Weekend Food and Personal Best

I was doing so well with eating and working out the week of Aug. 21st to 25th - even though I was still recovering from a heavy duty sinus infection the week before. I was in the gym every day and my eating was pretty spot on. It wasn't perfect but pretty darn good for me. I lost a whole 1.2 pounds - the scale registered 132.4 for 5 whole days the week of Aug. 21st to 25th. I was so pleased with myself because I had been stalled at 133.6 for a long time. I really wanted to be just as good the following week in preparation for my boyfriend coming home for the Labour Day weekend. But some how, I just pooped out. I didn't get to the gym AT ALL that week. One reason is we had pizza/sushi day at work and I have to do all the leg work getting it organised. And now I can't remember the other reasons I jammed out of workouts that week. I felt bad about it. I really wanted Bill to see the definition in my arms and torso but it just wasn't there by then. Doesn't take long to lose it!



Oh, but we had a good weekend together. He surprised me by driving all night Thursday from Calgary and he slipped into bed at 4:10 in the morning. I wasn't expecting him until Friday evening - I took the day off work to clean the house for the weekend. But we had a whole extra day together. We had a great weekend full of FOOD INDULGENCES. We dropped my son and a friend off at the swimming pool and went to the only quasi-New York deli in Vancouver. It’s a kosher Jewish deli where they have smoked meat, pastrami, corned beef, turkey, tongue etc. piled high on rye bread. Bill gets the 'hungry' (lg) pastrami (because he says this smoked meat from Lester's in Montreal is inferior to Schwartz's in Montreal) and I have the 'not so hungry' (sm) corned beef. We start with chopped liver served scooped in a ball on lettuce leaf with a slice of tomato and cucumber. The chopped liver is spread on delicious rye bread. I've never had chopped liver before to compare but this stuff is really really good! It’s beefy and oniony. The sandwiches come piled high with a toothpick holding them together and a most excellent dill pickle on the side. You have a choice of Dijon, spicy or regular mustard you put on at the table. We splurged and took home some Florentine rolls and Rugelach. Florentine rolls look like Canolis but are made with a sugar lace "cookie" rolled in a cone shape and piped with a wonderful chocolate whipped cream. Rugelach are a flaky butter pastry filled with jam or chocolate and sprinkled with ground almonds. Had these for the first time and they were awesome. The short large Jewish lady looked me up and down and said I could afford it! It was Friday so it was Pizza Night - we had our usual Flame pizza and Bill and Aaron has spaghetti with theirs.Saturday while doing errands we stopped in at Cobb’s Bread. I have been leery of buying their products feeling that their mass-market approach is muscling out the local baker and the artisan quality is just not there. But we got a loaf of multi-grain bread Bill was pretty pleased with and I quite liked the gooey cinnamon bun. Oh, well. For lunch we picked up a roasted chicken and had that with the huge pitas and feta cheese and olives he gets from a local Greek deli in Calgary. For dinner we bbq'd some buffalo burgers, chicken burgers and a homemade Mennonite sausage he brought back from friend. It was good. (Buffalo burgers were bought frozen locally and I make the chicken burgers)Sunday morning I made pancakes for my boys. The Top Secret Recipe for IHOP pancakes from www.topsecretrecipes.com. These are the best - Aaron loves them and they are easy to make. I didn't have any buttermilk so I just used 1 tbsp lemon juice to sour 1 cup of milk. Worked perfectly. I put blackberries in Bill's pancakes. I like mine with just butter and real maple syrup warmed up. Okay - LOTS of butter and syrup. Sunday night we went to the Keg for supper because Aaron wanted lobster. He got a tail and ate it all. I had a steak with blue cheese and roasted garlic and mashed potatoes. Bill had the Baseball steak. I think he is still digesting that today…Supper on Monday was roasted pork tenderloin with roasted onion, peppers and tomatoes. Bill loves that.



I was back at it in the gym today with some enthusiasm. Not a pumped up great deal of enthusiasm but I was eager. I did biceps today and 20 minutes of intervals on the elliptical trainer. After a week off from the gym I was really pleasantly surprised to reach a personal best in bicep curls. I did 2 x 5 reps at 15 lbs (for sets 3 and 4). Wahoo! Previously I maxed out at 4 times on the first set and maybe only was able to squeeze 3 out on the second set. (from there I do 10 reps at 10 lbs for the 5th set) So it goes to show, definition may be lost from an absence in the gym but muscle building (or memory!) can continue. I then changed to hammer curls and started with 8 lbs weighs instead of the usual 5 lbs and worked through the 10 lbs weights for 10 reps to and got out 3-4 reps at my 15 lbs max. I am pleased.