Gambling fuel

Ok ok, so I guess I didn’t gamble much at Foxwoods and I guess there was plenty of eats AT Foxwoods, but I decided to fuel myself in preparation for the night ahead just in case  Both my breakfast and lunch came out so delicious that my belly (and mind) were satisfied for hours.  And I even squeezed in a decent workout before the madness began.  I’ve been slacking off a bit lately.  The cold is killing my mood to do anything productive.  Anywayzzzz, on to food…

BREAKFAST

My sister mentioned the other day in one of the comments here that she wanted to make a fruit and whipped cream cheese wrap.  How amazing does that sound?!!!  Inspired by this brilliant idea I made mango/strawberry/whipped cream cheese open faced sandwiches for breakfast on Friday. I used the Baker flaxseed bread (love how grainy it is!).  This was fantastic and so simple!

Closeup… the colors are so vibrant!

And just to show you that you can eat delicious and nutritious food on the go, here is a picture of it in tin foil.  Not blog-pretty but very efficient.  After taking the above pics, I wrapped the sandwiches up (separately) and brought them to work to enjoy there (the picture below is taken from the office – they travelled very well!).  This bread is very dense so it worked well, but I would definitely be aware of the fact that the bread may get soggy.

PRE-WORKOUT SNACK

So I haven’t been to the gym in TWO days.  I felt like a total bum and surprisingly had a lot of energy to burn (or at least that’s what I thought).  About 3 hours after breakfast I made some hummus rolls (2 TJ’s low carb wraps with 2 T homemade hummus, cut up into bite size pieces) and bulked up the snack with rainbow carrot sticks.  Very simple and delicious.

WORKOUT

I thought I had a lot of energy to burn.  I was going to go to a bootcamp class but missed it, so instead I jumped on a treadmill with a plan to do 4 fast miles and maybe another 2 cooldown miles.  Yeah, not so much.  My legs felt like lead and the entire time I thought I was going to barf (sorry!)  I did force down 5.2 miles at a decent pace, then did another 15 minutes on the stationary bike and 22.5 minutes on the elliptical.  Workout stats (I’m still not sure if my HRM works properly.  Is there a way to test it?)

• Duration: 1:25
• Calories burnt: 718
• Ave HR: 145; Max HR: 193

LUNCH

Lunch made me SO happy!  I love it when thing come out a million times better than expected.  This was something I threw together because we had an open can of black beans, but I loved it so much, I may just have to repeat this exact combo for dinner tonight and I wouldn’t mind it one bit (seriously the only thing that’s stopping me is the fear of boring you to death with repeats of same meals over and over).  Here is the final product: black bean cake with light laughing cow cheese, snap peas and avocado on Food for Life english muffin + rainbow carrots and grape tomatoes on the side.

Wanna see progress photos of the most amazing black bean burger ever?  Ok since you asked so nicely

I followed this recipe but substituted black beans for chickpeas, used water instead of broth and omitted the sage (we didn’t have any on hand).  Btw, I have to give credit to Heather for finding this gem of a recipe (she emailed it to me a while back).  So so good!

Mash black beans and olive oil in a bowl (I only used 1 teaspoon here instead of 2 tablespoons!), then add all the spices…

Mash all the spices into the black bean mixture and work with your hands until a giant cake is created (sorry for the mess in the kitchen – I’m a messy girl when I cook!!)

Separate into 4 cakes and pan fry:

I started with 1 teaspoon of oil, then got scared that using so little oil in the cakes would make them super dry, so I added another teaspoon of oil into the pan before flipping these babies over.  I think next time I’ll just use nonstick spray.  The cakes were plenty moist and this little oil didn’t absorb into the cakes anyway – just prevented them from sticking to the pan.

Cooked cakes, resting…

And now my lunch sandwich, open faced so you can see all the goodies:

The texture of the bean cakes was so amazing!  I was afraid they would be dry or crumbly but wheat gluten is apparently magic.  It really “glued” all the ingredients perfectly and just made the texture fantastic.  I also didn’t really measure out the lemon zest (added maybe 1/2 lemon worth of zest) so I’m not sure if it was more than the recipe called for, but the lemon taste was very strong and just made this extra delicious and fresh.  Ok, now I’m hungry so yeah, I’m going to reheat another one of these babies

OTHER SNACKS

On the way to Foxwoods, I munched on a Honey Graham zbar and a small apple (no picture sorry, I still didn’t tell our friends about my blog by that time).  Both snacks held me over perfectly until dinner around 8:30.  And you already know the rest of the days eats…