Well hello FitFeat Friends!  Happy Monday! 

Despite all the craziness that ensued this weekend between Riley (aka Conehead) gouging her cornea and also getting the blog moved over, it was still a GORGEOUS weekend.  The weather was absolutely perfect! 

We did get the dogs out for their much-needed wogging at a local ‘backcountry’ trail on Saturday so it was 90 minutes of uphill and downhill - my favorite form of exercise!!  Great workout for the backside!  ;)   MSP and I (and the dogs) were sufficiently tuckered out afterward. 

To fill you in on the haps, Riley either scratched her eye on a bush while hiking or something made her eye itch and she scratched it herself… we flushed her eye really well because we could see SOMETHING on the cornea that looked stuck or lodged.  Our home-vet emergency handbook said if after flushing it doesn’t come out, take a dampened Q-tip and lightly try to dislodge it.  (After having the ER vet determine it was in fact a tear and not a piece of backcountry bush, I felt terrible that we were trying to ‘remove it’… here Riley, let us pour liquid on your torn eyeball and then proceed to poke, prod and scratch it further with a Q-Tip!!  Poor dog…!!)  She’s now wearing the crazy lampshade cone, which means all of the work I’ve done this summer on painting door trim, baseboard and walls is quite effectively being UNDONE by her running into walls and doorways every 45 seconds.  :)    Although, watching her try to get through the dog door is full-on comedy.  (I’m really a terrible person, aren’t I??)   I did finally just open the sliding door though… hopefully that redeems me a little. 

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With all of the hub-bub, I didn’t get a chance to relay to you that my millet-sprouting experiment went totally BUST.  :(   Once I saw those teeny tails on about 5 of the millet seeds that I’d put out a picture of last week, they promptly stopped doing anything.  Here are my lessons learned:

  1.  Try something OTHER than millet next time
  2.  Use the jar method as opposed to the tray method
  3.  If ever attempting tray method again, use thicker cotton cloth than the cheesecloth I used this time
  4.  Drive car to local King Soopers and purchase a package of beautiful sprouts just waiting to be eaten, and admit I just am not meant to GROW things. 

Mind you, I’m not just saying I don’t have a green thumb based on this one attempt. 

This little story should sum it all up:  In May I had read about some really good plants to keep in a bedroom, one being aloe vera.  (The other one escapes me at the moment.)  I happened upon some teeny tiny versions of these plants while out on errands with MSP one day.  I asked if he would mind me adding a couple of them to his cart.  His response was, “How ’bout you start with ONE and we’ll see how it goes first?  If you can keep it alive, we’ll come back and get another one later.”  (Oh…snap!!) I think that should give you an idea of my horticultural skills.  (Someone who IS an expert in that area is reader Joan… you should check out her blog “I’m In The Garden Today” – especially take a look the amazing backyard transformation she’s made!  I think I would feel like I was in paradise every time I stepped out back if that was my garden.)

So far I haven’t killed my aloe vera (maybe it’s just ‘black-thumb-proof’.)   But I will confess that MSP is in charge of all other plantlife in the house.  ;)

On the topic of plants and sprouts… check out my LAVA SMOOTHIE:

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This one turned out SO thick that when I turned off the blender and took off the lid, it had bubbles making their way to the top and ‘gurgling’ like hot lava does!  Definitely an ultra-GREEN smoothie:  2 stalks celery, 1/3 cucumber, 1/2 avocado, sprouts (store-bought, ha!) 1/2 pear, 1/2 apple, fist o’spinach, 8 oz water.  I almost needed a spoon instead of a straw.

Most of the weekend eats were random and uneventful.  MSP scrambled some eggs for Sunday breakfast which I made into a ’breakfast taco’.  I’ve made breakfast burritos before (with flour tortillas), but I am definitely now a fan of the breakfast taco (with a small corn tortilla, guacamole, sliver of raw goat cheddar and tomato sticks.)

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We did have a few Sunday treats, as we often like to do.  I had a spicy scallop and shrimp takeout dish for a late lunch/early dinner (and a too-greasy eggroll):

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And then when it would have been dinner time, I had a couple of these:

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I am happy to see some of the larger food companies wising up about what they put in their products.  (Shown above are the Pillsbury “Simply…Cookies”.)  While a homemade batch with subbed-out ingredients like whole-wheat flour would have been an even better choice, we were having a lazy evening watching the Bears/Falcons game so it was nice to just open the package and pop them in the oven… and NOT ingest HFCS or trans-fatty acids.

Well today I will be doing some shopping for the …

FIRST EVER FITFEAT GIVEAWAY CONTEST! 

To thank you for being loyal readers of my blog and making the move over with me to my self-hosted site, I’ll be putting together a “FitFeat Care Package” containing things you see featured on the blog (and maybe a few other things — we’ll see what the shopping outing brings!)

There will be multiple ways to enter, so get your Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blog, blogrolls and email accounts ready!  ;)   Details coming this week!

Have a MARVELOUS MONDAY!

– Shari B. =)

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