monsoon

So. Much. Rain. It's unbelievable! It has been down-pouring since about 11 o'clock this morning, and when I say hard, I mean h-a-r-d. Well, now that you got the daily weather report :). The second go at the gym was great, I ran there, spent 45 minutes on treadmill and then walked back. My jogging intervals on an incline really kicked my butt so it took me longer to get home. It was a nice cool-down walk though, in every way possible. I didn't layer as much as I had on the way there because I had been so warm and not only did I look ridiculous in my thin rain coat, thin sweatpants and big red rain boots but I was completely soaked when I walked through the door! So smart ;).

Here's breakfast from earlier in the day, 7:15 am to be exact: Green Tea and a Peanut Butter, Banana, Flax, and Marmalade sandwich. Ten minutes after the photo I toasted up another piece of bread and spread it with more peanut butter and the other half of a banana too. I don't know how other people work out or do anything for that matter before eating breakfast in the morning. I always wake up absolutely starving! By the time I really got to go the gym it was already 11 and I should have eaten a snack before because I was basically hungry the entire time. It may have helped though, you should've seen me go! Once I was home and showered I snacked on a Granny Smith Apple and a handful of walnuts to hold me over until lunchtime at 2. It must have been that one time of the month that the family eats beef so of course I had a special plate :) a Lettuce, Corn, Carrot, and Avocado salad with Tuna... and Rice. I had about 3 more scoops of tuna as I ate my way down until I was finally satisfecho in the best way possible. A few hours later I was itching for something more but what? I walked into the kitchen to find my answer, my cookies. There were only 4 left on the plate, haha, they were definitely a hit last night and throughout the day. I ate one with another cup of Green Tea to keep my energy up. The gloomy weather had me sleepy all day! By the way, my celebratory sweet of choice was four of these bad boys during the course of the party last night. Not only is that totally okay with me because of the fact that it was a special occasion but their nutritional stats aren't half bad.

I started with the ingredients Veganomicon listed- flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, canola oil, sugar, flaxseed, vanilla extract, almond extract chocolate chips, walnuts and then made a few adjustments, the largest of which was using skim milk instead of soy. Next I decreased the one and a half cups of sugar to one and used an extra tbsp of vanilla extract to compensate (3 as opposed to 2), replaced half of the all-purpose flour (1 cup) with whole-wheat flour (1 cup minus 2 tbsp), and upped the amount of ground flaxseeds (4 tsp to 2 tbsp) for added fiber. As for oil, the recipe didn't call for much to begin with, and obviously there were no eggs. Gotta love vegan cookbooks.

Nope, not bad at all, although they tasted like they should've been. "Deep, dark, chocolatey, nutty." Only thing they forgot was, yummy. Omg, I adore chocolate, maybe a little bit too much, eh well :). Speaking of, I think I'm going to grab another one for dessert soon! But before I go here's dinner, a veggie plate almost as those of my talented friend, Em. Almost :). There's some leftover Lunch Salad in the middle, one tomato, Celery salad, and a hard-boiled Egg. So good, so fresh, so clean. And, now for that cookie I was talking about... Haha, wishing you all a great Friday night and upcoming weekend!