Jenna's Fit, Food, and Fun

January 25, 2011

2011-01-25T20:38:00.000-10:00

So today was a FAIL as far as taking pictures goes, but I had Greek yogurt and blackberries for breakfast, almonds for a midmorning snack, black bean tacos for lunch, and a nectarine for pre workout snack.

Dinner was chicken baked in some of my homemade marinara sauce with whole wheat rotini pasta. It was good :)

And some peppermint patties after dinner.

Workout was 44 minutes on the elliptical at the gym and then some free weights and as when I got home (while dinner was cooking)

Elliptical burnt 504 calories

Weights and abs burnt 104 calories

I will remember to take pictures tomorrow!

January 24, 2011

2011-01-24T20:41:00.000-10:00

Breakfast consisted of something new, a Yogi Bar, which was not bad at all, kind of weird looking though:

and some Greek yogurt with blackberries, NOM!

During breakfast at the office before working hours, I saw one of my favorite things:

Beautiful :)

For snacks, I had almonds and raspberries, but forgot to take a picture in the midst of my working.

Lunch was BBQ chicken as usual on Mondays, but I added some Ezekiel Bread that I brought from home to fill me up a little more:

The portion of chicken on the left is what I actually ate, to the right is my dissection trying to get some good white meat. Ezekiel bread in in the background.

Dinner was something new I thought of. I mixed black beans, corn salsa, a little taco sauce and 1/4 cup Mexican cheese together and put it all in a low carb tortilla I call it a black bean taco, and it was delicious, in fact, I'm taking one for lunch tomorrow :)

I also had a few peppermint patties, something about dark chocolate and mint is just so amazing!

Workout for the day was Jillian Michaels' 6 Week 6 Pack with some added weights and cardio at the end for a grand total of 415 calories burnt.

Back on the wagon

2011-01-23T20:54:00.000-10:00

This week I WILL be blogging regularly! They may be short, but I have to get in the habit of blogging because my eating habits have been slipping and this will help hold me accountable.

I'm going to start focusing more on nutritional content than calories, and I'm really going to try to get processed foods to a minimum. We shall see how it goes :)

A Couple Recipes

2011-01-23T20:44:00.000-10:00

Mexican Meatballs:

1) 1/2 lb ground beef (I use at least 93% lean)

2) Taco seasoning (for ours, we use a little cornstarch, a little flour, a lot of cumin, chili powder, cayenne pepper, garlic powder and onion powder)

3) 1/2 cup Mexican style cheese

4) 3-4 dashes Tabasco sauce

5) 1 can enchilada sauce

Mix the first 4 ingredients together and form into small balls.

Bake at 400 degrees for approximately 15 minutes. I double check doneness with a meat thermometer though.

Remove from oven and place in a medium sized bowl, pour enchilada sauce over the top of meatballs and stir well.

Manicotti:

1) Manicotti shells

2) Small tub of ricotta cheese

3) Italian seasonings

4) Onion powder

5) Garlic powder

6) 1 whole egg

7) 1 cup mozzarella cheese

8) 2 cups marinara sauce

Cook manicotti per package directions

Mix ingredients 2-6 together in medium bowl.

Rinse manicotti with lukewarm water and then fill with the ricotta mixture

Place 1/4 cup marinara sauce in the bottom of a baking pan and put stuffed manicotti on top, than pour the remainder of the marinara sauce over the manicotti and cover with mozzarella cheese.

Bake at 375 for 15 minutes or until cheese is melted and slightly browned

Legends Chinese Restaurant-Honolulu, HI

2010-12-31T14:40:00.000-10:00

Wednesday, we went out to lunch with a bunch of people from another doctor's office. We ate at this Chinese place called Legends. It was easily the most crowded Chinese place I have ever been in. I got some pictures of some of the food, but I couldn't get as many as I wanted. My favorite thing there was this deep fried (ooops) wonton type thing with shrimp inside. It was AMAZING. Here are some pictures :

The table before many people got there, hot sauce/mustard, dimsum (those bun things), deep fried shrimp.

My favorite! I wish I knew what it's called.

Some shrimp/noodle thing. It was okay.

Almond float, the white cubes are like almond jello, mixed with fruit and a little condensed milk.

Pictures!

2010-12-31T14:31:00.000-10:00

Coconut chips, from one of our patients from the island of Molokai

Smoked octopus from one of our patients

Yay for Japanese cookies!

Hello Panda

Above are some random treats from the past couple weeks, and below are some things that I cooked. Recipes to come soon :)

Mexican Meatballs

Baking

Beans and Rice, as always

Plate :)

Hubby's extra dark Guinness

Homemade pizza

Little kitty eating some cheese, isn't she ADORABLE?!

Mmmm, so good.

Holiday Coke, so bad for you, but so good.

Homemade peanut butter balls.

Manicotti beginnings

Noodles


Finished Manicotti

:/

2010-12-21T20:28:00.002-10:00

Ahhh, I've been super busy. BIG post coming soon :)

December 13 and 14, 2010

2010-12-14T19:31:00.000-10:00

Monday was a typical Monday. Filled with work, bad lunch and Zumba :)
Lunch was BBQ chicken...again. Ugh.

Then someone brought my coworker and I birthday cupcakes :)

For a snack, I had a little homemade veggie tray.

And dinner after Zumba was tortellini with my homemade marinara...but I forgot to take a picture until I was halfway done eating it, hahaha

Zumba burnt 501 calories, but Tammy and I figure we're probably burning calories for at least an hour or two after the class as well.

Tuesday was okay, coworker is sick and making me nervous that I'm going to catch it, nasty.
Bfast was 2 hard boiled eggs and a red plum, which I didn't take a picture of.

Lunch was Japanese food. I had a teri chicken bowl

No real snack, and for dinner, we're doing whatever, so I am mainly eating this:

Nom nom!

No workout today, but I'll make up for it tomorrow, that's for sure.

Pasta!

2010-12-12T21:06:00.000-10:00

Last night was a pasta night. I made something a little more unique than regular spaghetti, I'm not even sure what to call it. In my house we just call it broccoli sausage pasta.

Ingredients:

Penne pasta
Frozen broccoli florets
Smoked turkey sausage
Homemade marinara sauce

For the marinara, I mince a Maui onion and a head of garlic and sautee them in a pan with some olive oil until they are translucent. The reason for this is that the garlic can be a little spicy, in a bad way, if you don't cook it long enough. After that, I add some tomato puree and let it simmer for at least 20-30 minutes.

Sauce ingredients

Garlic, onion, and olive oil

This particular night, I added some grated parmesan cheese to the sauce just to make it even better :)

To make the pasta part of the dish, I boil some penne pasta for about 10 minutes, and about 8 minutes in I add the broccoli just to let it thaw and mix in well with the pasta before draining. I also thinly slice the sausage and when the pasta/broccoli are done, I drain and return the mixture to the same pan along with the sausage. After that I mix everything together with the sauce and add some cheese on top, and it's delicious :)

Pasta mixture ingredients

All mixed together

My bowl

And there you have it, unique delicious pasta.

Ooops

2010-12-10T19:41:00.000-10:00

Sorry I've been slacking on the blog this week, working full time and going to the gym every night is quite time consuming. Instead of going over every day and describing the meals, I'm just going to post my pictures from throughout the week and what my workouts were. Next week I will do better :)

Some Breakfasts:

red plum, hard boiled egg

crab apple, jonagold apple

Some lunches:

bbq chicken

panya turkey sandwich

blazin steaks regular steak plate

Some Dinners:

salad with chipotle ranch and PIZZA!

mac n cheese

pb toast and popcorn

Workouts:

Monday: Zumba-burnt 430 calories
Tuesday: Elliptical, weight, and stationary bike-burnt 767 calories
Wednesday: same as Tuesday-burnt 787 calories
Thursday: Same as Tuesday and Wednesday, but not as much weight lifting-burnt 700 calories

Here's to doing better on the blog next week!

December 6, 2010

2010-12-07T06:27:00.000-10:00

Ahh, my first day back at work in a week. It was actually a pretty boring day as far as work goes, which is good, cause I wasn't really in the mood to be running around like a crazy person.

For breakfast I had a hard boiled egg and two red plums:

Don't you love my glamorous ziploc bags? :)

Lunch was the usual that we normally get on Mondays, a little place called L&L Drive Inn right down the road. Many people love this place, but honestly I find it quite gross. The food is super greasy and not very tasty either. When your boss is buying lunch though, you just have to deal with whatever he wants to eat. I always try to get something with some semblance of nutritional value, so I got the BBQ chicken plate:

I peeled the skin off the chicken, because I HATE skin on chicken, almost as much as I hate bone in chicken, ughhh nasty. I never eat the sides, mainly because mac salad has way too much mayo for my taste and the rice is just...plain. I need more flavor!

After work, I met up with Tammy at the gym just in time for Zumba class. According to the heart rate monitor, I burnt 430 calories, yay!

For dinner, I decided to do BBQ chicken my way, since I already had some cooked chicken left over from the chicken tacos in last night dinner.

Annie's mac and cheese

crescent rolls

plate: shredded chicken with Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce and my sides.

It was SO much better than lunch, hahaha!
Now it's off to work for me, and then to the gym tonight.

December 4 and 5, 2010

2010-12-07T06:05:00.000-10:00

December 4 was zipline day :)
It was very fun, but didn't last as long as we wanted it to. There weren't really any meals on that day either because we left home so early and got back fairly late, it was mostly a snaking kind of day, but we did indulge in one thing that they have in maui that they don't have here on Oahu, and that would be...Krispy Kreme!

I was so excited, I took a picture.

My breakfast

After that we drove around and enjoyed the scenery for a while, because Maui is so much calmer and rural that anywhere on Oahu, it was amazing and very peaceful. No traffic or anything. Then it was time to zip!

Mom ziplining

Zach ziplining

Zach and I ziplining together

It was a fun day.

December 5 was my mom's last day here, so we wanted to get in as much stuff as we could. That morning we got up and went to the Pali Lookout and to Diamond Head, and to a lighthouse near Diamond Head that she wanted some pictures of. After that, we went to Macy's and she got me a steam mop, so that should be much better than the old fashioned one I had that doesn't even have a thing to wring it out with, haha.

The original plan after that was to go to North Shore, but we decided to forgo that, as there was most likely far too many people out on that side of the island. Instead, we ate a small snack (sour cream and onion chex mix, which was interesting...very strongly flavored for sure), and decided on chicken tacos for dinner.

For the tacos, I boil a chicken breast (one chicken breast was enough to make 6 tacos) and then shred it up with two forks. While I'm shredding, I put a can of tomato juice and some spices on the stovetop to let it simmer and reduce some so it's thick enough to really coat the chicken when I add the chicken. After that, I mix the chicken in and let it cook down for about 5-7 more minutes.

Spices and whatnot for the taco mix

Spices added to a can of spicy tomato juice

shredded chicken added to tomato juice mixture/black beans on the back burner

spanish rice, of course

My plate :)

December 3, 2010

2010-12-03T22:12:00.000-10:00

Today we slept in a little later then we have been since my mom got here to visit. When we got up, we went to Target, my favorite store, then to Ross and the bank. When we got back to the house, the popular opinion for lunch was Denny's so we went there and I had scrambled eggs, hash browns and wheat toast. It was okay. I didn't take any pictures though.

After lunch, we decided to go to the beach at Ko Olina Resort. It is very beautiful out there.

Don't mind the horrible farmer's tan :) It's from hiking

Aw, I love my hubby

After the beach, we came home and I made spaghetti and meatballs with homemade marinara sauce and garlic bread.

tomato puree, half a Maui onion, whole head of garlic, and spices

meatball spices/seasonings

meatballs: pre baking

post baking

my bowl

Tomorrow we are going to Maui to zipline and I am very excited about it. I'm glad my mom said she wanted to do it, so the next blog will be full of awesome pictures I'm sure :)

December 2, 2010

2010-12-03T00:44:00.003-10:00

So this post is going to be a culmination of the last 3 days that I didn't get to blog.

On November 30, we got up at around 7 a.m. and went to the gym. I did 28 minutes on the bike, 28 minutes on the elliptical (my favorite cardio machine) and 20 minutes in the weight room. I ended up burning 865 calories according to the amazing heart rate monitor :). After that we came home and had breakfast. I made a very quick and easy breakfast burrito of sorts: tortilla, 1 scrambled egg, mexican cheese, and salsa.

After our breakfast, we went to the North Shore of the island to go to Waimea Falls. It's a nice trail with a botanical garden that leads to a waterfall.

When we were all done with that, we were pretty tired and not really in the mood to cook, so the decision was made that we would go to one of my favorite restaurants of all time...CPK! I had their white corn guacamole, and 2 pieces of Zach's chipotle chicken/tostada pizza. It was amazing. For dessert we decided to top it off with some red velvet cake :)

YUM!

December 1 we went biking in the morning (461 calories) and met up with my good friend Tammy and did a hike up the Makapuu Lighthouse Trail in Hawaii Kai. It was beautiful and we even went off the trail and climbed up part of the mountain surrounding the trail. We love hiking, so it was awesome, even though we took the wrong route back down the side of the mountain, haha. All together this hike burnt about 738 calories for me.

Mom and I

Tammy and I

Makapu'u Lighthouse

After that, we came home and made roasted pork tenderloin, brussels sprouts, cheesy cauliflower, and mac n cheese for the hubby.

And then we had some post dinner cupcakes from a little place called Cake Couture in Aina Haina. Delicious!

Faux-stess cupcake


Mocha cupcake

And then today, my 23rd birthday, we got up and went to Target to see if they had a new shipment of Kinects in because that's what my mom wanted to get Zach and I for Christmas...and they had 4! So we got a Kinect and it's pretty fun :)

After the Kinect we went on another hike, Koko Head. This is referred to by many as nature's stairmaster, or stairway to hell, hahaha. It's pretty intense, but it burnt 980 calories, so it was very worth it, and the views are beautiful as well.

After that, we came home, played Kinect, and got ready to go to my birthday dinner at Los Chaparros, a small mexican restaurant that has the best tacos on the island for sure, and their appetizer, the Jalapeno Wontons are out of this world!

Jalapeno wontons

Taco/enchilada plate

Birthday Flan: Sombrero:


Family :)

And then I had another cupcake. Hahaha.

Until next time :)

Novemer 29, 2010

2010-11-29T22:33:00.000-10:00

Today was a day full of frenzied working to make sure I got everything taken care of before my 4 days off that I have due to my mom's visit. Her flight came in this afternoon and when she got here we went to the commissary and the Navy Exchange to get gorceries and other necessities.

We ended up getting organic mac and cheese, coffee for her morning routine, oatmeal, salad, tea, water, yogurt, many veggies and ranch dip, many many fruits including red plums, danjou pears, kiwifruit, bananas, and something I've never tried before, a pummelo--it looks like a huge lime. We also got things to make dinner this week as well, but you'll see that as we make it :)

For luch today before I picked up mom from the airport, one of my coworkers decided to go to a lunchwagon near the hospital and get lunch for everyone. I tried something very different that I have never tasted before. It was a Japanese dish called chicken sukiyaki, and it looked like this:

Chicken sukiyaki

This dish consisted of sliced chicken, various veggies, and rice noodles. It was just okay.

For dinner we had turkey burgers.

Ingredients

Meat mixture

Zach's specialty: fried onion strings

My plate :)

We're hitting the gym at a bright and early 7 a.m. tomorrow, and we'll figure out the dinner menu at some point throughout the day.

Lazy Day: November 28, 2010

2010-11-28T20:36:00.000-10:00

Didn't really do much today, no workout or cooking, just a lot of snacks. My mom is coming to Hawaii to visit us, she arrives tomorrow afternoon, so we have mostly been prepping for that. You know, trying to get the house in order and nice looking. There will definitely be many a food and workout post (and fun Hawaii posts too!) this week though, as my mother is just as interested in health and fitness as I am. She is amazing and has recently lost over 30 pounds. I am very excited to see her tomorrow and see how far she has come in her weight loss and fitness journey :) She says she still has about 15 pounds to lose, but I know she'll look great.

On the dinner menu tomorrow: Turkey burgers with some side dish that has yet to be determined.

Until then, here's one of my favorite things I consumed on Thanksgiving:

YAY for red velvet cupcakes!

On the menu: November 27, 2010

2010-11-27T18:59:00.000-10:00

TACO NIGHT!

Yay tacos. Flour tortillas for me and crunchy shells for the hubby. Here are some pictures of the process:

Browning the turkey

Zach making the taco seasoning

Finished taco seasoning

Turkey: post seasoning

Beans and rice, a necessity for any taco dinner

Hubby making himself a margarita

Taco fixings :)

pre folding

Delicious!

For the seasoning, Zach uses flour, cornstarch, cumin, chili powder, cayenne pepper, pico de gallo seasoning and black pepper. Spicy and delicious.

The Beginning-November 27, 2010

2010-11-27T14:03:00.000-10:00

I am starting this blog as a way to keep track of my workouts. I believe that it will also motivate me to continue to work out and be active and fit. This blog will most likely also end up being a little bit of a food/everyday life blog as well. I enjoy going to classes at the gym. The classes that I attend (with my gym buddy) are Zumba and Bootcamp on Mondays and Wednesdays, respectively. On Tuesday, Thursday, and some Fridays, I meet up with my gym buddy Tammy and I do the elliptical while she bikes or runs, then we go hardcore in the weight room, hahaha, and last week I started adding the bike to the end of my workouts. On the weekends, I normally try to hike with my husband Zach and Tammy and her husband Matt. I recently invested in a Polar FT4 heart rate monitor and I LOVE it. It's the best addition to my workout ever. While I do not count calories or diet obsessively like some people, I just HAVE to know how many calories I burn in a workout. I like to keep track of it and try to improve on my amount of calories burned and my cardiovascular endurance.