I did manage to Zumba twice, run once, and strength train twice this past week.  That’s the only upside.  The tip jar is getting full quickly.  I think there’s $13 worth of booze money in there!

But you’re not here to hear how I didn’t meet my goal!  You’re hear wondering how I made chicken chili with no chicken, right??

I had a hankering for White Chicken Chili this week.  You know… the kind with chicken, white beans, green chiles, and whatever else goes in there.  I knew what ingredients I wanted it to include and then searched for a recipe.  Basically, you throw it all in and let it simmer.  Easy enough…  Here’s my version of vegetarian White Chicken Chili:

White “Chicken” Chili

Ingredients

• 1 pkg Gardein chick’n breasts
• 3 cans of beans (I used 2 Great Northerns and a black.  There goes the “white” in my chili…)
• 2 cans of diced green chiles (I used one regular and one fire roasted)
• 3-1/2 cups of broth (I used Rapunzel vegetable broth with salt)
• 1/2 large white onion, diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 cup cheese (I used nacho/taco cheese, instead of a solid white Monterrey)
• 2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp chili powder (or to taste)
• 1 tsp oregano

Instructions

1. Saute garlic and onions in olive oil (maybe a tsp?) until onions become tender.
2. Add cumin, chili powder, and oregano and cook 1 minute.
3. Add remaining ingredients, except cheese, and bring to a boil.
4. Reduce heat and simmer 15 minutes.
5. Add cheese, stir, and serve warm.

• Cardio 5xs!  2 Zumba classes, 2.5 runs, 1 walk
• Strength training 2xs!  I’m back to my NROLFW and loving it.  I’m sore, of course, because I haven’t lifted weights in 6 weeks, but that’ll pass soon enough.

I did okay with my food, but not great.  I’m definitely hungrier with all the working out.  Plus, I had 3 birthday events this week!  I stated my intention to the world (i.e. on Facebook) that I would only spend $5 for the weekend.  As part of the Cinch Challenge you have to pay $1 for every sweet you eat or alcoholic beverage you consume.  I skipped dessert at every event so I could spend my money in booze!!  And I kept it to $5 even though quite a few people offered to spot me some money…

I did make a couple of recipes, but I had so many leftovers around here that not much cooking took place.

I cleaned out the refrigerator and made Roman Candle Peppers…

I don’t have a picture of the finished product because I left for Zumba.  (Side note: this pic was taken with my iPhone 4S and was not edited in any way.  Looks pretty good, I think!)  These were stuffed with:

• leftover brown rice
• leftover Lightlife “meat”
• carrots, celery, onion, & seasonings

I then stuffed them and cooked them at 350 for about 30 minutes.  Neither of us ate one that night, so the BF heated one up the next night for dinner.  Apparently bell pepper stems will catch fire in the microwave!  Who knew?  He said he smelled smoke and went to look and the pepper stem was lit up like a roman candle.  Note to self: take off the top before re-heating

This week I made Kelsey’s Enchilada Saucy Soup.  This was almost like a pantry meal and definitely one I’ll be making again.  Check out the Bites & Bowls blog for the original recipe.  I just gathered the ingredients…

You just saute the onion and garlic, toss in the broth and sauce, thicken up a portion of it with cornstarch and then throw the beans, rotel, and corn in.  It couldn’t be easier.  I served it over rice tonight (my 4th time eating it this week!) and that was pretty tasty.

I also made a great veggie omelette this week.  It’s not a fancy recipe, but I love how filling and delicious, while still low calorie and protein-filled, an omelette can be!

This one was filled with peppers from a friend’s garden, onion, tomatoes, lettuce, and swiss cheese.  Served with a side of grapes and some hot tea.  YUM.

I also whipped up a batch of Mama Pea’s Pumpkin Protein Bars.  As usual, I gathered the ingredients…

I left out the sweetener since my protein powder is already sweetened.  I think that was a mistake.  Next time I’ll throw a little maple syrup in there.  I also got to test the automatic overload protection on my Vitamix.  I didn’t follow the instructions completely and my Vitamix had to work pretty hard.  I was pretty sure these would be inedible based on the look of the batter and, quite frankly, the taste of the batter.  Surprisingly, they were very edible when they came out of the oven, but they weren’t very pretty!

And yes, I did cut that edge off before I remembered to take a picture.  I mean… uh… I cut into the bars to show you the texture  I will definitely make these again, because they have a good nutritional profile (something like 120 calories and 18 grams of protein per bar) and were tasty, not to mention easy to make.

I’ll be on the lookout for a new recipe to try this week.  I think I may have one of Ashley’s savory buckwheat bakes in mind…

On to fitness news… did anyone notice that my October Fitness Challenge was not mentioned all month?  Well, it was not mentioned because it didn’t get done.  Every year October is a poof off month for me, full of fun, but not much else.  SOOOO… I’ve got to get back on track this month.  I did get a run in last week around the neighborhood and remembered how much I love running.  I’ll be bringing the run back!  I haven’t eaten too poorly, skipped a bunch of workouts, or become totally lazy, but I really prefer a more structured plan of eating and working out.  Enter the Cinch Challenge!

I’m doing a 10lbs in 10 weeks Cinch Challenge starting tomorrow.  I’ve rounded up a partner to help me stay accountable and we’ll be keeping track of our points (earned for healthy behaviors).  The guidelines are:

1 point daily for each of the following:

-Track your food (I use Sparkpeople.com)

-Drink 8 glasses of water

-Take a multivitamin

-Have a protein shake or bar daily

-Cardio 5x/week and Weights 2x/week

Additionally, there is a $1 fine (I’m calling it the “tip jar”) for every sweet/dessert you eat or alcoholic beverage you consume.  My partner and I haven’t decided what to do with the “tip jar” money at the end, but I’m sure we’ll think of something.  My goal is to hit 30 (of 35 possible) points each week and not have very much money in the tip jar at the end!!

Feel free to ask me about it and hold me accountable

We got there early to make sure we got a goodie bag.  It was a bag… filled with goodies!  There was information, magazines, stickers (bumper and otherwise), and some snacks.

Although, I didn’t eat any of the snacks because my plan was to try all the food!  The fair was held at White Rock Lake…

There was yoga…

A band…

Vendors selling cute stuff…

Some great people watching…

I bet those are pleather... what do you bet?

And food!

That's the mob of people in line for vegan corny dogs!

I had a goal to try one of everything, but I failed miserably!  I missed corny dogs, funnel cakes, both food trucks, kombucha, ice cream, fried pickles, and cupcakes.  I did manage to snag a chorizo tamale with homemade salsa…

Spiral Diner was there so you know I stopped by their booth!

And I had to have some frito pie!  It was DELICIOUS.  I’ve got to figure out how to replicate their “meat.”

Hard to believe that cheese sauce is made from cashews…

It wasn’t low cal, but it was meat-free and completely fabulous.

We made a stop by the Hail Merry booth too, for some macaroons.  Hail Merry products are the bomb!  If you’ve never tried them, you should.

After we had eaten all we planned to could, we strolled around the lake for a bit.  What a gorgeous path.  I’d be running there all the time if it were closer.

This guy in front of us had a couple of little boys on runaway bikes.  Pretty funny.  I just knew the little one was going to crash and burn…

I believe the path is about 9 miles and there’s plenty of picturesque places to stop and sit a while…

and plenty of picture-taking opportunities…

We’ve already talked about hitting up the Texas Veg Fest in Austin this March!!

Unrelated to the Veggie Fair… I also made a delicious oatmeal bowl this week.  It was my standard High Protein Oatmeal Bowl, but with a warm banana topping.

I just tossed a banana, some pecans, cinnamon, and a little butter into a pan and heated up until the bananas softened and the flavors mingled.  Cooking the bananas seems to make them even sweeter and this bowl of oatmeal didn’t require any added sweeteners!

I have plans to try a couple of new recipes this week: Enchilada Saucy Soup and Pumpkin Protein Bars!  Stay tuned…

This goose bit a little kid trying to feed him. The kid was fine and the adults were laughing!

Many of the trails were not paved. It definitely had a park feel.

Me trying to take a picture of myself with the giraffe statue

They had many small ponds.

A shot from the tower before I headed down there.

Trying to get a shot of myself with the background down below.

I kept hoping this guy would turn around... but he didn't.

The elephants were adorable!

This baby kept falling over. He was WAY cute!

The deer were just running loose through the park and campgrounds.

After the cheetah ran and got her reward (rabbit, I believe) she started licking both the trainers. Cleansing her palate?? That was her "companion dog" with her. He runs first so she'll feel safe.

I don't know what this guy is called...

The lion was sleeping the whole afternoon on top of this vehicle. The Safari Park logo on the side makes me think it's some sort of product placement

They had great tables all over the park where you could sit and enjoy the beautiful view.

Beautiful flowers

I LOVE this photo! Something about the colors and the reflection.

A wide angle view of the african savannah part of the park (I think).

I don't know what this guy is called either, but he's very pretty!

I hope I could capture just a hint of the beauty there.  If you get a chance, it’s worth making a day of it!

I went to the 2nd annual Texas State Veggie Fair today.  Stay tuned for pics soon…

We had our “welcome reception” on the beach!

Free beer!

BBQ (veggie burgers), beer, a bounce house, and a velcro wall.  I attempted the velcro wall and have video proof of my sad attempt.  My boss deemed me “the worst velcro wall person ever.”  I will not be sharing the video here

The hotel was old, but the grounds were very nice.

The theme of this year’s conference was on impulse control and all the lectures were very good.  They had some celebrities (people and dogs)…

Victoria Stillwell of "It's Me or the Dog"

"Chopper" who rides around raising money for charity

There was also an expo for shopping and some service dogs there, in case people went into dog-withdrawals (no dogs allowed at the conference except service animals)…

Friday we went to the San Diego Safari Park…

Saturday was more lectures and then sightseeing at Seaport Village!

It was a fun, touristy little area with a walk along the harbor and lots of street performers, small shops, and restaurants to check out.

Sunday was the highlight of the conference for me.  I trained a CHICKEN!  ”Chicken Camp” is a pretty well-known thing among dog trainers.  It was traditionally a week-long experience where you improved your training skills, criteria-setting, hand/eye coordination, record keeping, etc by training chickens.  Dogs are so forgiving with our mistakes and intuitive in reading us that it’s easy to be sloppy.  Not so with chickens!  You get exactly what you reinforce!  The original “chicken camps” are no longer around, but they have been re-created by Terry Ryan in Washington.  She also does 1/2-day seminars for folks like me, who can’t make it to chicken camp.

I was a little nervous about handling a chicken, but I had a good partner and “Rose” (our chicken) was very nice!

That's not a cooking apron! That's a "protect yourself from chicken poop" apron

Overall it was a great conference and a wonderful trip to San Diego.  Plenty of great memories!

After eating out for a week, it was hard to get back on track with cooking.  I saw a new recipe that sounded good and since I can never have too much Mexican food…

Spicy Lentil Enchiladas!

You just cook the lentils with some water and salsa until tender.  Once they are done you stir in some green chiles and refried beans.  Then use that mixture as your filling, roll up in some tortillas, top with sauce (I didn’t like this brand) and cheese.

Cook until the cheese is bubbly!

Um… yeah… there’s one missing.  I may or may not have forgotten my manners and inhaled one before I thought to take a picture.  Oops  Check out the original recipe for instructions and some prettier pictures!

Have a great weekend.  I’ve got Shaklee training this weekend, a dog halloween party, and the Texas State Veggie Fair to come!

Stay tuned for Safari Park pictures…

I usually do the Fort Worth walk, but since I’ll be in San Diego next weekend I did the Grapevine walk. It’s a much smaller walk inside Grapevine Mills mall. Their goal for the Grapevine walk this year was to raise $57,250. I just checked the website and we have raised $56,326. They are still taking donations if you want to help them meet their goal! The FW walk is at Trinity Park next weekend if anybody wants to walk… I’m just saying

My stepmom went with me again this year.

The opening ceremony is so sad, as is the t-shirt contest. Did you know that Alzheimer’s is the 6th leading cause of death and the ONLY one of the top 10 that cannot be prevented, cured, or even slowed? This year we had flowers to symbolize whether you had lost someone to ALZ, were a caregiver, or had ALZ. This old man in a wheelchair was holding a blue flower (meaning you have ALZ) and crying. It was a pretty emotional morning. As if it wasn’t dreary enough, they had a guy come through playing bagpipes!

Finally the walk got started and the event got a little more upbeat.

After all that sadness, I definitely needed a beer! As part of my birthday gift, my stepmom had gotten us tickets to Beerfeast at the Flying Saucer. My dad dropped us off so we didn’t have to worry about driving.

With our first beer taste in hand (we got 10) I had her take my picture…

She spilled beer on her shirt and cut my head off. As you can imagine, this did not fair well for picture-taking after beer #1…

We split that humongous pretzel. And some potato salad. And the sauerkraut off her bratwurst. Then we went to Reata’s for dessert in between beers.

We came back and had more beer. I kept saying the “beer” sure made me full, but it might have been all that crap we ate Please ignore the fact that it does not fall under ANY “kind of healthy”!

I tried a few new beers (not 10… I gave my card away to some happy guy). There was only one I hated – the Smoked Hemp. Talk about horrible! The chocolate and the pumpkins were pretty good. I was excited to try Dogfish Head Punkin’ as I had heard a lot about it.

It was like pie and beer together. In a good way.

We were all done having fun by about 6:30 and called our taxi dad. I’m pretty sure I was asleep by 7:45 on a Saturday night. PARTY ANIMAL. Woke up after 11 hours sleep feeling like a million bucks though!

And I’m back on track with healthy eating…

A healthy, home-cooked breakfast!

Have a wonderful Sunday! If you’re looking for a healthy new recipe to try, I suggest Emily’s Vegan Vegetable Lasagna. I made it Friday night and it’s DELICIOUS.

Y’all have heard me mention how much I love my natural cleaning products.  I’m sure you have seen the link on the blog to Shaklee (the button on the right and the banner at the top!).  So hopefully you’ve put two & two together and realized that my favorite natural, non-toxic, and very effective cleaners are from Shaklee!

Shaklee has been around for 55 years and they offer a variety of products to help me (and you!) live a healthier life.  I heard about them on Kath’s blog and ordered a cleaning kit.  Once I started cleaning with them, I fell in love.  I also figured, “If the cleaners are this great, I wonder how good their other products are?”  I gradually started trying items in the other lines when I would run out of a comparable product at home.  All of it rocks!  And it’s all super eco-friendly, safe, non-toxic, proven to work, and 100% guaranteed.  I could send back an empty bottle and say, “You know… I don’t really feel 10 years younger and more energetic” and they’d give me my money back – no questions asked!  I learned last night that they’ve always had this “empty bottle” guarantee and yet their return rate is 1/3rd of 1%.  I also learned that the average customer has been using Shaklee for 17-1/2 years.  There are a lot of happy Shaklee customers out there.

I was so excited about the products that I started telling people about them.  Then I realized it was silly for me to not become a distributor.  I could make money doing what I was already doing (telling people!).  So about 6 weeks ago, I became a distributor.  Yippee!  It just so happened that Roger (the “huggee”… and CEO of Shaklee) was making a few stops in different cities and Dallas was one.  Sign me up!  So I went to hear him last night and he was just as engaging as I expected.  He talked about how he chose Shaklee to buy 5 years ago (a choice he didn’t take lightly) and why he’s so excited about it.

Fortunately at the end of the night I was able to snag a hug, a picture, and a brief chat!

Deb & Roger Barnett, CEO of Shaklee

Last night was probably the closest I’ll ever stand to a billionaire.  Glad I got photographic souvenir

It was 2 hours of dancing to raise money for Susan G Komen.  WAY fun.  I got a new shirt at Canton the day before because they said to wear pink…

It had pink on it…  I also wore my new bling watch and painted my nails a bright color…

And was pleased with my attire.  Until I arrived.  And realized… I didn’t properly understand “wear your pink.”

They were really, really pink.

It was a total blast though and even better, it was for a good cause.

After Zumba I rushed home to make a new recipe:  Lentil “meat” for the homemade tacos dad was fixing for my birthday dinner!  The birthday person gets to pick their meal, so for 2 years in a row I’ve requested: tacos, chips & guacamole, bananas foster, and beer.

I assembled the ingredients…

I used Kelsey’s recipe and it was PERFECT!  Thanks Kelsey

[You should definitely check out her pictures because they are much prettier than mine!  She's a pretty fun read too ]

This was about as pretty as they got for me  The liquid cooks away and you just have deliciousness for your tacos!  Even the meat eaters thought they were yummy.

Of course, tacos are really about the shell and the toppings.  My dad fries up the shells and they are fabulous!

I loaded up Kyra and drove over to dad’s.  I was met at the back gate with a beer (thanks WSM!) so the rest of the photos I took were done with my iPhone while having a good time

This year’s birthday beer of choice.

Blue Moon's Pumpkin Harvest Ale

My date was also given a beer.  At 10, I think she’s a little young for it.

(Getting a picture of the two of us smiling/looking straight ahead is nearly impossible!)

After the beer, I checked out the decorations.  They were re-used from an earlier celebration.  Is it odd that I dropped off my own gift bag (sans gift, much to dad’s dismay) and decorations earlier in the week??  Trying to be green…

Yes, the wall is 2 different colors. WSM likes to paint and wasn't *quite* done

I got gift certificates to put towards a point & shoot camera for those times I don’t want to haul my big DSLR around and some fun workout gear!!  My dad (also a photography fan) got tired of seeing me use my iPhone for the pics so here are some more from the rest of the evening taken with a real camera…

can't wait to run in this

I messed up the pictures with the flames. You can imagine how it looked on fire!

the "Porn for Women" book - THANK YOU WSM!

It was a great birthday Saturday!!

The thing that’s great about digital photography is that you can take a million pictures and it isn’t wasteful!  I took over 400 pictures that morning, but narrowed it down to some of my favorites for you.  Some I think are pretty, some funny, and some because they had a story for me.  I hope you enjoy them!

To prove I was there

My friend fell in love with this horse! He was a cutie

They were having a “miniature horse” auction so we took a stroll through those stables.  We found these two horses asleep in the first stall…

Then we wandered over to the area where the Longhorns are kept.  They have twice daily cattle drives at 11:30am and 4:30pm.

While we were over there some of the “cowboys” (people that ride the horses during the cattle drives) were hanging around.  This guy was running some energy out of his horse…

And this horse looked a little concerned…

What you talkin' 'bout Willis??

We decided to head on over and get our spots for the cattle drive.  It was pretty sunny, so my friend suggested we sit in the shade… under a tree… that contained a bird… with some stomach problems…  All I heard was a big *splat* and then my friend’s cries of distress.  I was laughing so hard I could barely help her!  That one amazing bird managed to poop on her neck, hair, one arm, both legs, and down her shirt.  Pretty impressive!  And can you believe you wouldn’t let me take a picture of that greatness??

We got her cleaned up and got back on the street… NOT under a tree.

Here they come

There they go

We didn’t meet back up with the others because I had a Zumba-thon to attend, a new recipe to make, and a birthday party to go to (blog post to come), so we stopped by the jail and then headed back to the car.

I’m pretty sure my friend was still reliving the bird poop incident…