Routine

It has now been almost 4 weeks at my new job. I still love it! I also discovered that the building we work in has a bike room and a changeroom so I’ve started biking to work. Great excersize! And it’s just as fast as my morning commute! I skytrain home with my bike since I can’t quite make it home yet – but I’m hoping that by the spring I can start attempting to ride home.


Life has settled into a wonderful routine. I bike to work at 8:15am (so much nicer than my 7:05am departure time when I worked at Uranium One), shower and start work at 9am. I work all day at my desk – sometimes meeting friends for lunch, sometimes eating at my desk. I have started having healthy snacks and lunches – veggies & dip and salads each day. Between biking and eating healthy I have a weight loss goal of 1.5lbs a week; 14 weeks to lose 20 pounds, bringing us to 2012.

I finish work at 4pm and take the skytrain home. I’m home by 4:30. I take a break when I first get home – either catch up on some PVR’d tv or read a book. At 5 or 5:30 I start dinner with Karen (our homestay student). We follow a meal plan so we don’t have to hum and haw about what to make – we already know! After dinner Paul and Karen do the dishes (she loves to help – it’s lovely) and I read, tidy or catch up on some PVR’d shows, depending on the day. We usually have plans after dinner – meetings, small groups, visiting with friends. Some nights we stay in, which is also lovely. Many nights we have friends join us for dinner; that’s something I really enjoy. I love to feed people!

With this new low-stress job, in a great work environment, with great new hours (2 hours less a day than my last job), and excersize built in to the commute, I find I am generally happier all round! It helps that it’s still sunny out – which always improves my mood.

I’ve been trying more baking. On Tuesday I made Apple Brownies from Echoes of Laughter – Apple Treat Week which were so tasty! This same blog is where I found a bunch of great tips for cooking and food prep for camping. I love her ideas!

I found a great new website for meals: Skinny taste I have made about 6 recipes from here in the last week and loved ALL of them. I tried her Spinach Lasagne Rolls, Low Fat Ziti Pasta, Baked Eggplant, Baked Zucchini, and Quick Skillet Steak. This week I’ll be making her cucumber/shrimp rounds and Chicken and White Bean Enchiladas. LOVE.

This week we got a new (to us) fridge. My Aunt and Uncle bought a new fridge that worked better for them as a family of 11 (so big!) so we got their still pretty new, and pretty large fridge (though smaller than their new fridge). It is SO MUCH bigger and better laid out than our old fridge. I am loving it! Our old fridge was 60% full before I transferred all the food over. With all the same things in it the new fridge wasn’t even 40% full! It was amazing! Last night I went grocery shopping and for the first time I didn’t have to spend ages trying to figure out how I was going to fit everything in the fridge! It just fit! And there is so much room leftover. What normally filled our old fridge to capacity barely even fills 80% of the new fridge. Love, love, love! I LOVE to organize new spaces. I love to organize food. I am one happy camper!

Today, once I finish off the work on my desk, I’m going to make my meal plan for the next two weeks. Since I always buy the same general things every two weeks, I have the freedom to do menu planning before or after the next grocery shop. I usually try to do it before in case I want to try a new recipe that might need something out of the ordinary but this week I’m focusing on using up what is in my very stocked pantry and freezer.

Meal Plan: