KETCHUP

Oh heyyyy, I'm back!

I am willing to accept anybody to email me - you know, give me a nudge, whatever, reminding me to post.

Ryane.Murray@gmail.com

Haha. I've taken a couple photos but it's been spotty.

I decided a month ago I really wanted to do something special for my mom for Christmas as she's getting a hysterectomy 2.5 weeks before hand, and also because she is my amazing mother ; ) Anyways. I got us (and my sister) very good tickets to see Billy Elliott - The Musical the day before Christmas (I don't plan on giving my mother this link.... is that weird?).

Soooo funds were low for a bit, so meals were quite creative... maybe I should've taken pictures! Haha, I think I ate a lot of lean pockets and cereal... Oops.

Anyways. I was going through my fall clothes the other day and I wasn't exactly appreciating the way things were fitting. So that was a wake up call that I really do need to reign in my eating/work out habits.

So the pictures I do have...

One of my good friends growing up recently moved back to NH this month. She came to hang out last Tuesday and we went downtown for dinner.

Bread of course with a yummy herb butter. My drink was what they described as a margarita meets mojito. It was yummy!
For my meal, I ordered the grilled chicken sandwich with sweet potato fries. Mmm, I had wanted this chicken ravioli in pesto sauce dish, but Kristen ordered it and I didn't want to do a repeat... hate that.

Last wednesday was a little company party. I'm on the events committee, so it's my duty to plan these events and participate... I'm reeeally good at that part. Oops ; )

My work bff got us this to split as a birthday present to me. This night... let's just say that margarita kicked off the theme of the evening. But we wound up at a karaoke place and that's all that matters.

Saturday I went apple picking! Yummy!!!! I'm going to bake apple crisp tomorrow, I went through a couple recipes on cookinglight.com, I'm excited!

Decided to hit up Trader Joe's for some groceries... I'm excited to try the Multi-Grain hot cereal stuff - a mix of barley, wheat, oats...and rye I think? I tend to mix oats in oatmeal and let it sit overnight or for a few hours... this says "hot cereal" will it still work the same way?

OH by the way. I had run out of rolled oats last week. So for my fave yogurt parfait-things, I was using steel cut oats. Soaking in the yogurt for several hours makes them SUPER chewy, it was a very fun revelation! Decided to try Peanut Butter Puffins. I'm in love! I am also in love with Peanut Butter Cookie Larabars! Oh man. The dates add just the right touch of sweetness... and even just half of one is such a nice, filling treat. Now I just need to try the coconut ones!

Oh gosh. I have more, but was just reminded that Heroes is new tonight. I forgot tv shows could be new... I don't think I've watched much at all in like 6 months. Good thing my friend has DVR!

Slowly now...

I really do hope to get more regular about this soon!


Anyways - the past couple days -


Dinner on wednesday night... totally did that thing where I forgot to put the memory card back in the camera and I'm not sure where the actual cord to connect with is, I just upload by inserting the card into the laptop... but here is a shot of the leftovers.

Totally in the mood for mac n cheese! It's the blue box which I hadn't made in... forever, but I saw this wheat kind and decided to give it a try. I also added frozen peas and cooked up some chicken sausages as well. My actual dinner portion had a heck of a lot more peas in it.

Breakfast on September 11th.... still a weird thing to say. Hard to believe it's been 7 years. Even harder to believe that only 7 years ago I was still in high school...

Same as yesterday! 1/4 portion of oatmeal with vanilla chobaniiiii and strawberries. Much better than with the Oikos so worth the extra 15 minute drive for my chobanis!

Josie Grossie. Sideways, this is actually a slimming shot of her, ha.

Boring - same lunch, switched up a bit! Hey, gator!

And my yogurt concoction for my snack/s. Another reason I love the Chobani - the containers! I like the lids, they are much more portable and easily reused. I had to crack the other one open to add to this. So it's like one cup yogurt, 1/4 cup oats, 5 strawberries and the other half of this morning's banana!

Dinner on Thursday night was the rest of my yogurt parfait from my snack and the rest of the tikka masala. Sigh, then I went out with my friend and drank too much. Bought ice cream and ate too much. Ah well. I will survive.

Friday morning:

Need to buy oatmeal! No biggie, I was in the mood for an egg sandwich anyways. I toyed with adding a laughing cow because I wanted cheese on it and that was all I had beside bleu crumbles... but I actually hate that combo so this is cheeseless. SO yummy and totally hit the spot. My roommate made coffee and I've had 2.5 cups... uhhhh.

Oh this was 2 eggwhites and one whole egg with a big bunch of spinach.

Lunch to go!

Left over mac n cheese, there's a chicken sausage underneath.

And an almond butter and jelly sandwich (Raspberry champagne peach!) that will probably by my mid morning snack...

I'm bringing one of my vanilla rockstar coffee drinkies for later, I definitely do not need more caffeine right now!

Ugh. Hangover+eggs+coffee=unhappy tummy. Today's going to be sweeeeeeeeet.

Good friends, bad food

Sooooo while looking over my workout dvds, I couldn't help but take notice of my overall movie collection. "Hmm..... when was the last time I sat down and properly watched a movie?" Too long I guess was the consensus! I popped in Old School, grabbed some tortilla chips and vegged out.

It felt nice on the rainy day it was!

Afterwards, I headed to the mall, bought some birthday gifts and exchanged some things of my own.

Met my friend Trish - the birthday girl - her fiancee, and 2 other guy friends at this random Chinese restaurant on the northshore.

As soon as the rest of the table ordered Scorpion Bowls, I knew I wanted one too!

Fortunately it was not as big as I thought it was going to be!

So I figured we would have some time to drink and chitchat a bit before our food came, but nah, it came like 10 minutes later.

My favorite Chinese dish is Chicken with Broccoli. I could probably order it steamed without all the sauce and such, but it's just too good otherwise. I realize there are a lot more worse choices out there, so I'm okay with it! I did ask for brown rice but they did not have any. The waiter wouldn't let me just order the chicken and broccoli entree though, it turned into getting one of the combination plates with beef teriyacki and pork fried rice.... go figure.

So I ate all the chicken and broccoli there plus half the rice. I gave the beef sticks to the boys - who all ended up getting another scorpion bowl 20 min after their first one and wound up pretty sloppy.

And of course I had a fortune cookie!

The drink started to hit me about that time and I had a 45 min drive ahead of me soooooo I decided to chill at Target for a bit to sober up! My wallet wasn't the biggest fan of this decision!

I know I've got my.... little monthly friend coming up and had been feeling those effects already and was desperately in the mood for chocolate. and salt. So I picked up some "moose munch", like toffee'd popcorn pieces and chocolate covered nuts. I broke into it during the ride home MUCH later and had more than I would've liked.

Set my alarm for extra early to squeeze in extra time at the gym.

Before I left I had half a banana with almond butter.

Ran 2 miles at 6.7 mph and then 1/2 at 7 mph before moving onto the stairmaster for 45 minutes. LOVE the stairmaster.

I hadn't worked out in a week (I got stung by jelly fish and couldn't walk right until last thursday!) so I was surprised my legs could handle what they did. Rather than do some strength, I stretched A LOT just to counter act any soreness. I did sneak in some 21's and tricep extensions.

I like to have protein after the gym, so I took half of yesterday's saved portion of oatmeal (so 1/4 serving, are you following?) and mixed it with a vanilla Oikos.

I don't like these as much as I do Chobani - for the texture, taste, protein and I hate the containers - I find them annoying! I also chopped up 5 strawberries. I nuked the oatmeal for a bit before mixing in the yogurt. It made it even more creamy - it was a nice breakfast!

Packed my lunch... stuffed down some spinach, cut up the rest of the large tomato, shaved half an ear of grilled corn from friday night (Getting pretty good at not wasting food!!) and then a cup or so of the leftover Chicken Tikka Masala. I plan on microwaving this at work, I like when the spinach cooks down and gets wilty.

I also packed a yogurt parfait with half a LARGE vanilla chobani I purchased last night. I like buying the bigger ones for whatever reason and bought two last night.... there will be a lot of yogurt in the next couple days....

Added 1/4 cup oatmeal with 5 strawberries and the rest of this morning's banana.

I am looking forward to both of these!!

One thing about me, I always have a song of the day. Most of the time I wake up with a song in my head (this used to drive my ex crazy!) or it's one that really kept me going at the gym or just fits the mood I want to find myself in for the day....

Today's song is The Passenger by Iggy Pop. I can't help but bop to it : )

Rainy day off!

So I have a less than regular work schedule.
I have saturday and tuesday off, and my hours are 11:30-8 pretty much. The times I eat my meals then is usually a couple hours later than others. Before summer, when I was a little... healthier than I am now, my routine worked out to be a decent break fast in the AM, Lunch was divided into 2-3 mini meals graved over the period of the day but would've been a large lunch if combined, and then a small-medium dinner around 9-10 pm.
I'm trying to get back into that but it's a little harder now that I have more friends living nearby then I had and I have a difficult time turning invitations down! Oh well. You're only young once!

Anyways, so it's Tuesday and thus, a day off.
My big plans for today were to glom and read in bed for awhile (before working last week, I had been a traveling fool so hadn't really been home doing nothing in a long time!), go to the gym and then head to the northshore to the mall, buy my friend a birthday present and then meet up with friends at a chinese restaurant to celebrate.
The rainy morning made my morning lay in with a new book pretty enjoyable but it killed my motivation to go the gym, especially when it started to pour.
Tomorrow morning definitely...

It was a nice, cool morning so I decided to make some oats - it's been a couple months!

I made two servings with half a banana while cooking, and cut up the rest over my single portion for this morning and saved the rest for breaky tomorrow.

Since I'm not at work, I tried to go for a typical lunch schedule and put together a large spinach salad with half a large tomato and Annie'e Goddess Dressing. I like this but in sparse amounts. I'm more of an oil & vinegar girl and even then - the teeniest of splashes is all I need.
I also reheated the last bleu cheeseburger patty.
Then I realized I had never put the memory card back in the camera after uploading the past pictures.... so there you go. I'm learning! I'm excited for everything to become habitual.

Suddenly got the urge to do some pilates... so I'm going to pop in a dvd, shower and then off to do some damage - I mean, shopping!

First couple days...

So I started taking pictures and then it took more time than I thought it would be putting the blog together!
I'm finding that so far (just the first 5 days or so!) that getting my dinner shots is difficult.. or maybe that's just because it was a weekend... I'll get the hang of it really soon!!

I started taking pictures Friday September 5th... so here we go.

Tried a new cereal... not as good as Kashi Heart to Heart, but not terrible either!
I made the switch from Vanilla soymilk to Plain a couple months ago. I like this brand as it is still sweet so you don't miss out on the flavor that much.



I eat lunch in parts pretty much, depends on my hunger level when I'm at work. My breaks are divided throughout the day. I find I am more satisfied with the mini meals (especially for some reason my brain is wired to think "Eat!" during break time, whether it's lunch or just a 15 min...


Decided to try these Arnold Sandwich Thins. So far I've only tried them with peanut butter or as a naan substitute, so I'm not sure how they'll work with Turkey but I like the cal/fiber/pro count...
Oh and I am obsessed with champagne. When I saw this jam, I knew it was a must-buy!
The non-salt is the only kind of cottage cheese I like, and I love it. I can't find it everywhere, but it's worth it when I go to my *favorite* grocery store that is a little over 20 minutes away (opposed to the one right down the road).

My favorite morning pick me up (the drink)... I'm sure it's totally bad for me, but it costs less than starbucks and is only 100 cal for the can... so I'll take it!

I had the nectar bar later on in the day on one of my breaks... it was very sweet and a little tart from the lemon. I'd get it again in a pinch, but wouldn't buy it for stocking up.



No friday night... ahhh, I had a cookout right after work - not a good idea as I was running around prepping - but it was a lot of fun. Also explains why my choices earlier were a bit lighter than usual (not that you know the usual yet...).
I do like to cook when I have time and was trying to show off for my coworkers/friends. I think I probably had a handful of tortilla chips with hot salsa (a fave!), half an ear of corn, some salad and a Indian-spiced turkey burger on a wheat bun. The turkey burgers came out great! Oh and I had a chocolate chip cookie aaand 2 Coke Vanilla Zero (love!) and Rum drinks, and an Oktoberfest... :( summer is not over in my book!

Saturday morning breakfast to go!
Had to drive up to Portsmouth to check out wedding gowns with my best friend.
NOT me obviously - I'm the maid of honor. I was a little hung over, but not bad.
Grabbed the larabar for later just in case. I had planned to stop for a latte or something milky along the way, but decided to go without!


After drooling over wedding gowns (unfortunately there were no exact decisions made... she is slightly picky...) we headed downtown for lunch and met up with another of our college roommates. I loooove Portsmouth!

Hummus and Veggies plate for an appetizer. I probably had 4 carrots sticks and a couple cukes.

Meghan and I both ordered the Turkey Spintacular wrap... smoked turkey, spinach boursin, tomatoes, bacon... and something else.... in a wrap, panini-style. I ate the whole thing plus half the mini bag of potato chips it came with (150 cal for the bag, 8 g. fat)


Parted ways after lunch and spent about 3 hours at Borders... it was a rainy day!
PLUS I received several big gift cards there for my birthday last week so I definitely went a little crazy - I thoroughly enjoy book stores.
After some other shopping, I had the larabar on my way home around 6 PM... Key Lime Pie - a little sweet, but not bad!
Then I got home and realized I needed to leave ASAP for a concert I was going to that night in Boston. Fortunately my roommate's boyfriend was driving us in through Hurricane Hanna.
I had a burger leftover from the cookout - bleu cheese burger! Oh man, sooo good. I used my mom's secret recipe. I'll make them again soon, since the only one I had was just the patty and I missed the whole "burger experience" of it!
DEFINITELY should've eaten more. I got a little drunk at the concert (My Morning Jacket - GREAT live band, lots of dancing!). But a cute boy was buying me drinks, and that was a treat ; )

Sunday breakfast was the same as fridays, picture that. Cereal with blues and soymilk.

I had salad left over from the cookout that I had intended on bringing to work (yarrr, I work on Sundays... hmm).
But my slightly hungoverness wanted something else. So I hit the grocery store on my way and made a salad-bar salad instead... They didn't have most of the fixing's that I usually choose (and the point in forgoing the leftovers!) but it was still nice and fresh.
And I really just love the Salad Bar.

Gorgeous, sunny day!


For dinner Sunday night I DID have leftover salad, reheated one of the turkey burgers, cut it up into tiny bits in the salad and topped the whole thing off with hot salsa. Oh and some tortilla chips.
I was too busy geeking out over the VMA's and Britney (omg) to take a photo I guess!

Breakfast Monday morning was another Almond Butter and Banana sandwich.
My roommate and I have a nice agreement that when her bananas get too ripe for her liking (anything NOT green pretty much) then I am welcome to them. Well, we all know how fast bananas ripen up.... ; ) I repay her by buying the neon green ones though sometimes, so it works out!

I snapped this picture after eating pretty much a whole cucumber's worth of slices. My coworker was a little weirded out so no retake.
I had been in the mood for a big, hot melty sandwich... so made due with a lean pocket I still had leftover in the freezer at work. I could've ordered calzones like the other girls... so for this, I'll consider the lean pocket a good choice ; )

Decided I was totally in the mood for Indian and made my favorite - Chicken Tikka Masala!

Does not look very appetizing... especially the Spinach Dal... it was from a box. I thought I'd make it from the box first and then figure out how to recreate it myself... but it was very thin and runny, not how I get it from Bombay down the street! Lots of leftover chicken though, which was the plan.

Later on, I had about 1/3 cup of cookie dough slow churned (the rest of the carton). It is dangerous for me to have this around! Actually, I think I now recall having some when we got back saturday night... oops.

So that was a long recap. Good motivation to keep regular with the posting!!

An Introduction...

I am finally starting my own blog - chronicling every bite I take (or most of them!)

I guess I've been following several food blogs for the past 6-9 months and find it fascinating! I was always the one friends came to for recommendations on what to eat and questions about nutrition (despite no formal education - please don't consider me someone as licensed, studied or otherwise!). But it was finally a relief for me to catch a glimpse from people who were fully committed to a healthier lifestyle. I have already learned a ton and have changed some of my habits.

The main point is I know I can do better and be better about what's good for me and my body.
I'm still at a point in my life where I choose to be carefree over structured, going out rather than staying in, eating cereal for dinner over cooking a nice meal, 3 drinks instead of one, etc, etc!
I still don't wish to compromise alllll of those activities so I'm merely seeking to find a healthy balance (it's been a long, GREAT summer!)

Also, as I pretty much live on my own - food shopping, trying new products/food items and lots of eating out all need to fit into my budget! My personal agenda is to crack down on this - I have a history of being frivolous at the grocery store! - and figure out a way to better structure what I'm buying, what's cooking and making sure it all makes it way into my mouth and is not wasted... so sad.
I've come up with some habits already that have helped me, but hopefully will figure out more as I go - AND, like I said, I am totally open to suggestions and very much appreciate feedback!

Those first couple paragraphs are a little stuffy, and I promise that I am not a formal person at all. I intend for this blog to be fun - a snapshot of the "bright" and "sunny" person that I am... with a couple salads mixed in!