Mixed bag of updates

Another picture collage from my evening walk.

This has been a pretty good week. I only lost .4 at my WI but thats ok, a loss is a loss. The most important thing is that I am still feeling back in control. I went to the gym three times this week including a great yoga class on Tuesday night. My canning is still going well. A girlfriend and I are doing a bunch more this week so the pantry will be full soon.

I signed up for this great organic produce delivery service www.sunshineorganics.ca They deliver a bin of fresh, organic (mostly local) produce right to your door. I am excited about getting inspiration from these great fruits and veggies and love the idea of less trips to the grocery store (and less temptation). Eating fresh, non-processed, chemically free food has become really important to me over the past year. The effect on my mood, energy level, sleep patterns, skin and hair is amazing - not to mention the obvious weightloss benefits. It is not cheap to eat this way so I am trying to be smarter about my shopping - buying in bulk and then canning/freezing for easy use later. I would like to go to the grocery store only once a week at the most - that will hopefully cut down on the convenience foods and treats that inevitably make their way into the cart. Stay tuned for a picture when my veggies arrive!

DH has been taking advantage of the last few weeks of great salmon fishing in our area. We have tons in the freezer and enough cans to last us through the winter but we went out again today to catch a fresh one for dinner. Here is my big fisherman doing his thing and me and my favourite girl hanging out on the shore.

I can can!!

I am loving my new canner! Those of you who have been reading my blog for awhile know that my DH works out of town four days a week in a teensy weensy town on the northern tip of Vancouver Island. In an effort to help him maintain our healthy lifestyle while he is working long shifts out of town I pack a car cooler full of healthy meals for him to take. I love cooking and enjoying doing this for him because he works so hard and travels so much. But it does take a good chunk of one of our days off together to get these meals ready. I have been reading a lot about canning and discovered how easy it is to can whole meals like chili, stew and soup. So I thought I would make a giant batch of chili, can it in 500ml jars so he can have them for lunch. He won't have to worry about refrigerating them and we can still control the amount of fat and sodium in the meals. I started with chili and it worked great. I did enough in an afternoon for him to have lunch for a month. I will still make him dinners to take up but my prep time will be a lot less! Here are some pictures of the chili.

I also used my crazy growing cucumbers from my garden and made us enough relish to last until next summer. The relish was unbelievably easy to make and so delicious.

I have plans to can every evening for the next week, salsa, stew, Shepard's pie mix, chutney, more chili, soup and spaghetti sauce. The local farmers markets have such great prices on produce right now - I'm going to take advantage of the fresh veggies and fill my pantry with easy meals. I think this will really help get me through those inevitable slumps when making a healthy meals seems so hard. My grandma would be so proud of me!!!

I went to the gym again last night (yay to the exercise bug biting me again!!) and I had a great workout. I did a vigorous 30 minutes on the elliptical - I was sweating like a maniac. I can't believe that I used to hate sweating, I thought it was gross and nasty - now when I sweat in a workout it makes me feel proud of how I can push myself and I see it as a sign of strength. The scale has fallen a little more in the past few days and I think I will be back under 210 by my next official weigh in woo hoo!

Weigh-in... Down 0.8

A loss is a loss and I'll take that .8 with a smile on my face! I went to a Cardio-Kickbox class tonight and it kicked my ass. It has been awhile since I have seen sweat drip from my nose onto my mat as I do pushups and leg lifts (sorry if that was TMI). I feel good though.. strong and in control!

I did a little updating to my blog tonight. So many of the bloggers I had originally linked too have disapeared from blogland and I have discovered many new blog buddies over the past months so I thought an revamp of my inspiration list was in order. I read a lot of blogs but the ones featured are of particular inspiration to me these days, if you have not read any of them you are in for a treat.. check them out!

Finding my inner farmer's wife...

So I have been trying this year to eat 'cleaner'. We have cut down on the amount of processed food we are consuming and are trying to make things fresh and homemade where ever possible. So continuing in that spirit I spent the afternoon turning my great backyard tomato harvest into cans of sauce that I can enjoy this winter. This was my first experience in canning and it was actually kind of fun. Tomorrow I am going to make cucumber relish with the mountain of cucumbers my husband picked from our plants this afternoon.

We had some friends come for dinner on Saturday night. DH caught a beautiful Salmon in the morning so we grilled it simply with lemon and olive oil. I also served roasted potatoes and asparagus. The highlight of the dinner was this Strawberry Cake I made. It is from the Barefoot Contessa's' latest book Back to Basics. The cake was ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS and absolutely not weight watchers friendly, but I feel like it was worth every calorie!Here are the fish DH caught that morning. We grilled up half of one for dinner and he canned the rest (I'll let you know how that worked when we sample one of the jars in a few days). He has been fishing up a storm and out freezer is full. I think I am going to borrow a friends smoker if he catches any more, I love smoked salmon!

On Sunday we went on another all day bike ride. We went along an ocean route heading up Vancouver Island to Miracle Beach/Saratoga Beach near Campbell River. It was a great day of riding, I felt strong! When we finally got home we had ridden 68km and burned almost 2000 calories. Here is a picture of Miracle beach.. beautiful!!

Jazz Hands!!!

This picture was taken at my friends wedding and posted on facebook for the world to see. It is pretty funny and shows pretty much how I a feeling tonight. I did a class at the gym tonight... it was called No Jump Pump (although there was a lot of bouncing involved) It is the first class I have been to since June. I am happy to say that all the biking I have been doing has not let my cardio slip as bad as I thought. My friend went with me (she joined the gym just recently) and though she is smaller than me she was way more winded and sweaty that I was. It felt good to be sweating and huffing and puffing again. We are planning on swimming tomorrow night - one of my favourite exercises but something I have not done at all this summer (except playing in the lake).

Food has been pretty good too, here is a picture of the Turk De Soleil burgers I made the other night (from ESBM). They were delicious!

Weekly weigh-in

I am back to doing an honest weekly weigh-in. This morning the scale read 212.6. Not a huge loss but 1.4 pounds from the same time last week. Tomorrow I am headed to the gym after work with a friend and DH and I have another monster bike ride planned for Sunday - the mapped out route is 80km.

Hanging my head... shuffling my feet... can I come back to blogland?

It has been almost a month since I last posted. That is my longest stretch of non-blogging in 18 months. A lot happened in the past month - some good some bad:

My brother got married!

My best friend got married!

I took 12 days off work to hang out with family and friends

I went on a vigorous 70km mountain bike ride through some really tough trails

I went on two short-notice work trips involving many meals out

I stopped counting points or calories

I did not exercise regularly

I drank way way to many iced lattes

I ate a lot of cake!

I drank a lot of wine, tequila, margaritas, cider, pina coladas

I gained 12 pounds.....

I am really hoping that a good solid week back on plan will take care of at least 5 of those 12. This morning my jeans felt a little tight.... I do not want to fall off the wagon, I am not too far out of control not to be able to reign myself back in.

I made a meal plan for the week, got groceries, made a healthy delicious dinner and plan on a long bike ride or walk after work tomorrow.

Here are a couple of pictures from the weddings, and other vacation goodies... can't wait to catch up on all of your blogs, I hope everyone has not given up on me!