Breakfast of Champions

And no I'm not talking about Wheaties.

I wouldn't be what you would call a 'health nut' by any means.  But there are some aspects of it that I try to follow.  For example I try not to eat aspertame.  For one it gives me headaches if I ingest too much. And two, if it's giving me headaches it can't be that good for me right?

Another thing I do is try to buy food like bread for example, that has only ingredients I can pronounce.  So I check the back:  Enriched bleached flour?  No thanks.  A list of a thousand ingredients and additives?  I'll pass.  Same thing with my oatmeal.  I recently ran across a company called Better Oats who have a few different lines of oatmeal.  I LOVE THEM!  I started with Oat Revolution.  SO GOOD. 

Besides the fact they taste delicious, they come in these pouches that have the cooking instructions of course, but they double as a measuring cup so you always put the right amount of water in!  GENIUS I tell you!

And the calories are decent too.  I started with the apples and cinnamon Oat Revolution which had like 130 calories or something.  So yummy.  Seriously, my favorite ever.  Then I tried the 100 calorie Oat Fit maple and brown sugar, which now I realize will have artificial sweeteners (oops).  It was good, but not nearly as flavorful as the apples and spice.  So it's definitely worth the few extra calories in my opinion.

Then I tried the Lavish brand.  I've never had dark chocolate oatmeal before, but it's good!  It has real chocolate chips that melt in.  I was pleased.  It gives me my chocolate fix, and I still get whole grains, fiber, and it's only 160 calories.

Back to Oat Revolution straberries and cream.  Also delicious.  I'm starting to believe you can't go wrong with any of these.Today I tried Oat Revolution cinnamon roll.  YUM!  They have some other lines that include RAW, Organic, Muffins...They sound way good too.

Oh and did a mention they're just over $1.00 for a box of 5 pouches?  So I can eat breakfast for a whole week for $1?  NICE!

The point is they are good.  And I realize I this must sound like they asked me to write a reveiw or something...which they did not.  This is my own opinion and I bought every box myself. 

But I just found their website that has all their flavors and nutrition facts if you wanna take a look.  They really are tasty!  CLICK HERE

And That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles

-Random, unrelated thought that popped in my head as I typed that title...is "way" one of those words you do or do not typically capitalize in a title?  It seems small enough that I would say no, but yet important enough that I'd say yes.  Whatever, I don't know why I even care.

So as the "chair" of the Training & Morale committee at my work, and through some great suggestions I got from fellow co-workers, it was decided to have a cookie party.  That party taking place yesterday.  Just a fun thing where everyone brings cookies to share basically.  We had some GOOD ones!  I failed and forgot to make mine, but I stopped by Paradise and made up for it. :)  It was a good time.  Except just as the PIE contest, the table containing these delicious treats was located right outside my office. 

YAY, except for the fact that on Monday Remy and I worked our butts off at the gym. Literally.  I usually spend a little while doing the weight machines and then about 45 minutes on cardio plus cool down.  Well this time Remy did his weights, I spent 35 minutes spinning (ouchy on my tooshy!) then figured Remy would have like 20 minutes or so left on his cardio.  Oh no.  He had 45!  So I jumped on the elliptical next to him and pedaled my legs off.  I got SOOOO tired!  The longest I had ever gone was 60 minutes so an extra 20 minutes passed that and I was beat.  BUT, it paid off on the scale!

That is...until we had COOKIE DAY!  (see how I brought that full circle? :) ) I thought I'd have some stronger will-power to resist cookies.  Yeah, that's a no.  Now I COULD have eaten a lot MORE that's for sure, but still I shouldn't have had what I did.  I justified it by eating cookies for my breakfast and lunch.  Sick.  Yet delicious.  The bummer is that I wasn't able to get to work out yesterday, so I have a feeling I'm going to have to pull another long one today.  That's okay. I figure it can't kill me.  There is this girl there who does 90 minutes on an elliptical-type machine at full resistance and incline and then runs at a 12 or something on the treadmill after that for like 30 minute or more.  GAG!

But despite all my cookie eating...I've lost 13 pounds since we got home from California in January!

Mmmmm....Pie....

So I don't think I've mentioned this here, but in August I got a new job. I had been working at the University of Utah Human Resources as an HR Rep.  And I really did like my job, but the time had come to move up and out.  So right before I left for China this summer (which I also don't think I've mentioned here) I sort of applied for a job on a whim.  Long story short I ended up getting it.  YAY!  Which I feel like I owe to all the people in HR who gave their recommendation of me to the hiring department.  So as of August 2nd I'm the new Staffing Coordinator at the Housing & Residential Education department at the U.  For those of you who may not know, they run the student dorms. 

Right before I started the department had put together brand new committees which would be headed by members of the Leadership Team (which I'm part of).  So I'm the chair of the Training & Morale committee (which I'm SOOO glad that's the one I got!).  Anyhow, for November we had a Tastiest Pie contest the week of Thanksgiving.  It was DELICIOUS!  And I got lots of great feedback, which made me feel good.  We had really good entries too...some were so fancy like the raspberry ribbon with homemade crust and someone who made a s'mores type pie with homemade marshmellow on top....HELLO!  We had a panel of judges with score cards and they tasted and rated each pie on things like presentation, crust, taste, level of difficulty, etc.  It was actually hilarious to watch them because they had their little plates and glasses of water and it was dead silent in the room they were sitting.  They took their jobs very seriously.  :)   Then we let people vote on their favorites and awarded a crowd favorite.

You want to know the hardest part of the whole thing was picking the prizes.  Seriously, I have a love/hate relationship with that.  All I wanted was a sliver pie scoop.  Is that so hard?  Apparently yes is the answer to that question.  I'll spare you the details on how many freaking stores Remy and I went to looking for one.  In the end I had to concede to a black handled one which I blinged out with some awesome stick on rhinestones.

Here's the pics...you KNOW you wish you could have been there!

P.S.  My pie is the ugly one right on the end here, with the whip cream swirl thingy.  Yeah, it got the least amount of points on appearance.  :)  But was a crowd favorite!

Do you have any other great office party/morale/fun/cheap things to do?  I'd love to hear some ideas!  We did a coloring contest for Halloween which was a huge hit thanks to my SIL Kim for the idea!  Then we had a potluck in December and we want to do a chilli cook off around the Super Bowl.

A Random Adventure