Sausage and Shoes

This was the question of my morning... Are these really sausage links?  

I cooked these up in the microwave (running short on time) this morning to have in my homemade breakfast sandwich and this is what they turned out like...

Now you may not be able to tell by the picture, but after I took these out of the microwave, I threw them onto my English muffin that had an egg and slice of cheese on it and dove right in.  I took my first big bite into  the sandwich and did not even continue chewing after my initial bite.  These sausage links had gone under some sort of transformation while in the microwave that made them turn hard, cardboard-like, and some adjective I don't even know.  They also turned a very dark brown.  After my first bite I took the sausage out and ate the rest of my sandwich.  I was extremely disappointed in the product.  Has anyone else had a similar experience with the Banquet sausage links?  Sans sausage, my breakfast sandwich was delish!

NEW ORLEANS

In other news I leave for New Orleans in 8 days!!!  I will be attending the NIRSA conference in New Orleans, this is going to be my first time attending the national conference so I am very excited to see what it is like.... not to mention I LOVE the Big Easy!  I am hoping we get a little time to do some exploring.  Since I will be leaving in about a week, I decided to do a little shopping to get some professional looking items.  I got myself two new pairs of shoes and a pair of dress pants. 

Aren't they cute?!

 I DID NOT, however, get what I was really looking for, which is khakis.  Does anyone know where I can get some good fitting khakis?  I have very long legs, a flat butt and semi-wide hips... not an easy combo to shop for.  The last pair of khakis I bought was my freshman year of high school and they are really worn!  You can almost see through a few patches in the butt!  I have been searching for a number of years, but have not ever been able to find any khakis that I like, so I am open for any suggestions people might have.

Hope ya'll had a wonderful weekend!  Happy April!  

Tina to the Rescue!

The other day I sent Tina over at Carrots'n'Cake an email asking if she had any suggestions about what I could use to clean up my previous post about my first day of my food diary.  She did an great job helping me out, by writing a post about Jing!  She's so great :)  Here is the product of the clean up session!  

Now I can point out things, like the massive amount of calories I consumed the other day or that my diet consisted primarily of carbs that day. I love all the reports that Livestrong gives you about macronutrient break down and totals up your calories burned and eaten in a day and sums it up over the week. It's a wonderful tool.  Now I need to get back in the habit of logging my food electronically each day so I can find some patterns in my eating habits that may need changing.  Do you have a online food log that you like to use? 

Events

In other news tonight my crew and I put on a Paddle Battle (ping pong tournament) that was quite successful. We had 19 participants and the semifinal and championship game were SOOO intense! I'm not great at table tennis, but I have an appreciation for those who are good at it.  It requires a LOT of hand eye coordination!  Tomorrow we will be putting on a 3 on 3 Basketball Tournament.  Unfortunately there is only going to be a men's bracket, because we could not get enough women's team.  Game on!

Eats 

Some of today's eats...

Oats, banana, apple pie seasoning, caramel and end of peanut butter jar 

The results... OIAJ

Egg white and spinach 

Breakfast sandwich... for lunch :) 

Sweet n' Salty Nut bar

Early to bed for this kid tonight!  Happy Friday!

How to Make Sweet Tea Like a Southerner

My boyfriend used to live in Mississippi and spent a lot of time in New Orleans as well, while he was down south teaching for two years.  In his time there he learned a lot about the southern states and the area he lived in.  For example:

• Where he lived and many other areas down south people are unbelievably kind!
• The food is amazing!
• There is nothing quite like hearing live jazz on the streets and in bars!
• AND there is a certain way you have to make your tea for it to be Southern Sweet Tea.

He moved down to teach at Hancock High School right after Hurricane Katrina and so there were not very many places to stay or live, not even many open hotels.  Luckily one couple was kind enough to open up their home to him and allow him to stay with them.  It was this sweet couple that taught him how to make true Southern Sweet Tea.  Tonight I was sick of drinking water, so I made a delicious batch to get me through the week :)

Southern Sweet Tea

5 bags of tea (Nestea works)

1-2 cups sugar

Water

It doesn't really matter how much water you use (as long as it is less that 2 quarts).  Put water and the 5 tea bags into a pot and bring to a boil on high-heat on the stove.  Once boiling, let the bags sit in the boiling water for 5 minutes.  Then turn the burner off and let water and tea bags sit on the stove for 1 hour.  Once the hour is up, take the tea bags out of the water, squeezing the bags to get any extra tea flavor out of the bag.  Pour the "dirty" tea water into a pitcher and add sugar.  The amount of sugar you use is based on how sweet you want it to be.  I just put one cup in, but my boyfriend likes it sweet and puts 1 1/2 cups in.  (Side note: He said some of his students down south told him they would put in 4 cups sometimes, holy rotting teeth!!) After the sugar is dissolved in the warm water, fill the rest of the pitcher up with water, mix and serve over ice! 

Food Diary Day 1

What I have used in the past and what I decided to use this time was Livestrong.com to track my diet. This site has a lot of cool tools and is definitely worth checking out.  Sometime this week I will give you some of the highlights of using this site! As for now, this is the product of yesterday's food diary... until I can find a better way to display it.  

Have a great day!

Food Diary

Healthier Quest Update
Since my quest for a healthier diet I have come up with bigger and better reasons to be on this quest... my bowels are all out of whack.  A few years ago I went to the doctor because my stomach would get incredibly uncomfortable and painful and my bowels would be all out of sorts.  Despite their efforts they weren't EXACTLY sure what was wrong, but they thought it was irritable bowl syndrome.  Since then, I haven't had quite the issues I used to, but it has recently started acting up.  This being said I am going to start a food diary.  I wish I could just use my blog, however, I haven't been keeping very good record on here. I have used food diaries in the past, but have never went back and studied my records, but this time I intend to so I can see if there are any patterns.  Have you ever kept good records of your diet?  How did you evaluate and "study" your records afterwards?  Any tips or good resources would be much appreciated!

On another note, Luther, my beta fish is still alive!  He hasn't really been eating though, makes me nervous :-/

Happy Monday!

State Champs

This weekend was the first time in a long time that my weekend actually felt LONG!  But it was a good long! The reason it felt so long was because my boyfriend was on spring break so he came to visit me early (Thursday)!

Thursday night we watched the Wisconsin game... a disgusting performance... at the Eagle's Nest.  It was super packed, so it took a while anytime we wanted to get any food or drinks from the bar.  Since he got to town later in the afternoon, that was about all we did.

Friday I had to work, but I left a little early so we could get to Madison to watch the state basketball games.  Eau Claire County had three schools down at state, which is incredibly rare!  Regis (my old high school), North and Altoona were all down there for the tournament.    While we were in Madison we were able to visit with a number of community members and old friends at the tournament. It's always fun to catch up with people you don't see very often.  After the state tournament games we headed to the Nitty Gritty and got some food, I had the black bean burger with fries, which was good and a TON of food!  The burgers on the menu all sounded great, however it was Friday and I'm Catholic, so no meat for this girl... oh well, next time I'll try out a juicy burger :)

Getting ready to receive their medals

Saturday was an exciting day! Regis and Altoona both took home the gold, but unfortunately North couldn't pull out the first game. The Regis girls haven't been back to state or won the gold since I was there with the team in 2002 and 2003, so it was fun to relive the emotions and excitement I felt back in the day.  I also have a big soft spot for this particular group of girls because I helped coach them last year.  Great group of girls to win the gold! We headed back to La Crosse later that day, after Regis and Altoona finished playing and after the Butler game was over (CrAzY game by the way!!).   By the time we got back to town we were both exhausted so we rented a movie and stayed in to snuggle.  We haven't had a relaxing movie night in such a long time, I loved it! If you are wondering, the movie we rented was Due Date. I highly recommend this movie... it is hilarious and has a very cute ending.  For any guys out there, it's not a chick flick, my boy loved it! Have you seen it already? What did you think?

Today was a relaxing day full of watching the NCAA games. March Madness is more "Mad" than ever this year!  Is anyone's bracket still intact? Mine is donzo!

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Back to the HP Lab

Yesterday in the Human Performance Lab we did sub-maximal VO2 testing. This is a way of getting a good estimate of your VO2 max based on your heart rate, without doing extensive VO2 max tests with all the fancy tubes, computers and calibration equipment.  Here is the protocol we used, which is an 8 minute procedure.  You start out at a pace on the treadmill that can get your heart rate to at least 110 bpm (for me it was 4.2 mph).  You need to keep this pace for 4 minutes and then check your heart rate, at which point it should be at least 110 bpm. (Note: If your heart rate is not pretty close to 110 bpm around the first two minutes, you should bump up the pace and start your 4 minutes over again.)  After your first 4 minutes, increase the speed 1.0-1.5 mph from the speed you are at.  Stay at this speed for 4 minutes and then take your heart rate again.  Once you have those two data points, there is a series of calculations that are made to estimate your VO2 max based on your heart rate.  If you are interested in knowing how to calculate this send me a message and I will send you more information.  My results showed that my VO2 max was 39.59 ml/kg/min.  So what does this mean, how does it compare?  In comparison to the rest of the class, I was in the middle of the pack of the girls in the class. Based on some standard fitness classifications for women I was ranked a 5 out of 6, in the "excellent" group for VO2 max.  Not too shabby!

I have really been enjoying this lab that I am taking for school.  It is fun learning how to administer as well as being a subject for a variety of fitness tests. Have you ever taken a lab similar to this or had the opportunity to learn about fitness testing?