Spaghetti with a Little Yoga for Flavor

I had a long day today, starting with arriving at work at 5:30AM and ending the day with a workout at my new gym and getting home for about 8:30PM. It was a long day, but a pretty satisfying and productive one.

Before I get to tomorrow's bento, I want to talk a little more about my new gym. I really like the place (which I think I've mentioned in a previous post). After my last meeting of the day, I headed off to the gym. They have great classes there, and this week, I decided to try the Svaroopa yoga class after my workout. I'm so glad I did. I've never been to such a relaxing class! I tend to carry around alot of tension, being the type A personality that I am. This class was just lovely. And I swear I walked out feeling an inch taller. We did these wonderfully gentle stretching exercises. I felt so much straighter and taller afterwards. I just can't say how nice it was! If you want to know more about Svaroopa Yoga, I found this site had a nice explanation and link to an article. Remember if it looks good to you, to consult your physician before starting any type of exercise.

Now, on to tomorrow's bento.

You've seen much of this before. I almost didn't post it but figured that was keeping with my goals. So here are several repeats thrown together.

Since I came home so late, I grabbed a small pack of meatballs out of the fridge. The leftovers with a bit of spaghetti underneath are tomorrow's lunch along with watermelon, grapes, and a salad with cucumbers, carrots, baby spinach, baby romaine, and balsamic vinaigrette on the side. No snack bentos to share since I packed the same thing as yesterday, except with sunflower seeds instead of soynuts.

Link - and - Balance

Currently, I am reading The Insulin Resistance Diet. The beginning of the book explains Insulin Resistance in layman's terms and has been one of the better explanations I have seen to date. Then the authors, a doctor and a registered dietician, go on to explain their "diet" for Insulin Resistance. It's not a diet really. Actually in alot of ways, it is similar to how diabetics eat.

The concept is that to keep one's insulin from spiking, as it does when you have insulin resistance, one should link carbs with proteins in order to balance the carb intake. This will keep insulin in a level state.

So, I've tested the concept for the last two days and it does seem to work. Using the ratio in the book, I enjoyed a few carbs at dinner tonite, which make a nice leftover for tomorrow. I must say, I'm not feeling that typical drag-me-down-to-sleep feeling like I normally do. So, we'll see how this works for me. I'm going to try the concept out until I can get an appt with a nutritionist.

On to tomorrow's bento:

First tier - Homemade mini hamburger (1 1/2) with ketchup packet and psuedo-mac 'n cheese. I call this psuedo b/c I didn't have any milk on hand. So it's made with a little margarine, shredded cheese, elbow macaroni, and ground pepper.

Second tier - Carrots & seedless cucumber with creamy french dressing for dipping. (YUM!)

Morning Snack: Granola with yogurt (blue container). Green container has about a tablespoon of soynuts to help balance out the granola/yogurt.

Afternoon Snack: Crackers & cheese.

I can't believe...

I forgot to post the snacks. Eesh!

Morning Snack:

Granola with a container of yogurt, watermelon and pistachios.

Afternoon Snack:

PB and pretzels, apple slices, 2 sesame seed candies, half a stick of cheese, and a container of soynuts.

All packed with one of my new bento belts! Fun!

The final of the first posts...

I want to apologize for ye few readers of this new blog. These posts aren't formatted well. I'm having some learning curve issues here. Hopefully, we can straighten them out as we go along!

Now, on to today's lunch bento. Today's snack bento was the same as yesterday.

Lunch bento contained mashed potatos with skins and a mini hamburger patty cut in half. This wasn't aesthetics as much as trying to fit everything into this tiny container! Carrots with dipping dressing and grapes as the sides.

But as I think about it, I can share tomorrow's snack bentos with you.

Morning snack: Granola with a container of yogurt to go with. Pistachio nuts and watermelon too.

Afternoon snack:

Triscuits with cucumber and mozzarella cheese slices.

A note about this snack...if you're a cooking enabled you'll probably giggle.

I purchased an inexpensive mandolin V-slicer to help me cut veggies for my bento adventures. Why an inexpensive one you ask? Besides the obvious money reasons, Cooks Illustrated says they aren't bad, and I trust them implicitly. So, off to the kitchen outlet store and a new mandoline slicer now calls my home, home. It looks alot like this one at Amazon:

So, I tried it out with an apple the other day. EESH! Such thin thin thin slices. Nothing I did seemed to work. I thought it defective. Figured it was cheap plastic and was a waste of money. Sooooo disappointing. Tonight, when preparing the cucumbers, I thought, "Let me try again." So, out comes the mandolin. I try again. Pitiful little slices. So, I look at the thing. I see those two screws on the brain and the mechanical part of my brain says, "Maybe the blade is screwed in too tight. It sort of looks depressed a bit in the middle." Off I go to the toolbox, pull out my trusty screwdriver and try to loosen the screws. Only one problem, that durned interchangeable part keeps popping out as I try to hold the thing. So I look at that interchangeable part. I look at the little hooks that hold it in place. Hmmm, I see that those hooks are offset on one side, and if I just FLIP THE PART OVER it gives it more depth. Voila, perfect cucumber slices! Maybe I should have called this blog "Adventures of the Cooking Impaired." LOL!