Anniversary Dinner

On Tuesday Steve and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary. Steve made reservations over a month ago for a window seat at Le Mont, which claims to be Pittsburgh's only 5 star restaurant.

We started the night with a bottle of German Reisling. Reisling is my favorite wine. I much prefer white wines, mostly maybe because I like my drinks to be cold and I tend to like sweeter wines over dry wines.

While we drank our wine, we enjoyed the views of the city. These pictures look just like post cards.

This is the point, and shows why Pittsburgh is called the City of Bridges and Three Rivers. The Allegheny river and the Monongahela river meet at the Point to form the Ohio River.

I started with the house salad and asked for the dressing on the side. The dressing was the house Balsamic Vinaigrette.

I had the Portobello Terrine, which is portobello mushrooms with a medley of seasonal vegetables marinated and grilled with Tofu, gently layered and baked with an aged Balsamic and red pepper coulis. On the side was some roasted potatoes and steamed carrots and green beans.

My husband had the Providence Crabcakes, which is described as twin jumbo lump crab cakes breaded in crispy panko breadcrumbs, sauteed and drizzled with red onion marmalade. Steve said these were really good. I try to get him to rank the crab cakes he has had places, but he doesn't like that game much :)

We were going to pass on dessert, but they brought it to us "on the house". It was a great end to a wonderful meal.

Here we are after our dinner. You can see the Steelers stadium in the background.

Enjoy your Thursday!

10 miles at 10am

So I am preparing myself for the 10-mile race I am participating in at 10 am. My husband signed up for the 15 miles. The 10 mile is part of my training for a 1/2 marathon I'm running in one month. It will be my 2nd 1/2 ever, but I am going to be better prepared last time.

Last night I had a fantastic meal. We picked up food at one of my favorite places to eat out - Aladdin's Eatery. There are a few in Pennsylvania, and besides here, you can find it in 6 other states.

I started out with a bowl of vegetarian lentil soup that was full of flavor.

I love lentil soup, but the one time I tried to make it in my crockpot was very unsuccessful. Anyone have a good vegetarian lentil soup?

Steve and I got the hummus appetizer to split. It also comes with a whole bunch of pitas. I had three spoons of this on my entree.

For my entree I had the falaffel salad pocket. It is served in a pita. There were 3 falaffels that I broke up and spread all over my salad.

This dinner left me so satisfied. Normally I would rather eat at home, but I could eat Aladdin's food every day I think!

See you sometime tonight after my race. I hope to show you the playlist I made last night for this 10 miles.

Playing Catch Up!

I'll start with today and if you want to see what I ate yesterday see further down.

This morning I did 20 minutes on my treadmill to wake up. I had the speed at 4.0 and incline at 6%.

Breakfast was at home at 6am because I had an 8am doctors appointment. I had a yogurt and a mixture of 4 different cereals. Someday I'll take a picture of my pantry and cereal collection, too tired to list the kinds I added here. I measure so it is only about 1/3 cup each kind.

I had a nice lunch packed and rushed out this morning and left it at home. So I had to grab Au Bon Pain, I got a large Vegetarian Minestrone and a wheat baguette.

Later I was hungry and went to GNC across the street and bought this bar:

I also found this at GNC and sampled a little. It is now in my desk for future snacks:)

Dinner was a Garden Burger, veggies, and a tomato. I also had some Kashi crackers and soy cheese.
These were the veggies I used and it said two servings and I ate both servings.

I also had a cookie dough smart one dessert that was yummy:)

I squeezed in another 20 minutes on the treadmill after dinner and then I went to a legal clinic that I volunteer at a couple times a month meeting with people that can't afford an attorney and need 30 minutes to consult with one. I did that from 7pm - 9pm.

TUESDAYS EATS:

Breakfast was a mixture of cereals with chocolate soy milk.

Lunch was an interview lunch at a restaurant called the Carlton. I did not like the interview candidate and was rather annoyed the entire lunch. I had a salad with a mushroom on top and it didn't have any protein. For dressing I asked them to bring oil and vinegar. I also had a piece of bread. I did not get dessert, even though I was very tempted!!

The salad and piece of bread didn't keep me full long and I had to go to the vending machine and buy this:
For dinner, I grabbed Pita Pit and brought it to my office, because I knew it was going to be a late night. Whole Wheat Falafal Pita with lots of Veggies:)

I had a Smart One frozen dessert when I got home from my long day. I didn't get home until 8pm and I had arrived at work at 7am. So I didn't get a work out in Tuesday.

Sweet Tooth Day!

For breakfast I ate the last of the Fage (less than 1/2 cup), with oatmeal, a peach, and a crumbled Kashi bar. This is great to keep be full until noon.

Lunch at the Capitol Grille was the same as Friday, two pieces of baked tofu and some sauteed veggies underneath. Today I didn't have a salad, but I did have one roll. I decided to get dessert. I got the Strawberries Capitol Grille, which was fresh Strawberries with some type of liquor and a small scoop of ice cream (less than 1/2 cup). This was great and it didn't seem to heavy, because it was a small serving of ice cream and mostly berries. No picture, because as I said I think I would scare someone interviewing at my firm away if I took a picture of everything I ate!

Around 5pm, I snacked on some Vegetarian Organic Gummy bears I had stashed in my desk. I bought these at GNC last week. No Gelatin in these, so I was so happy to have something gummy for a change. There were two servings in this bag, I had one on Friday and one today. There is 110

For dinner I had a Whole Foods Vegan Oat Scone and some PB and jam. I have Pilates at 8pm and I wanted something that wouldn't stay in my stomach and upset it at Pilates. This was a pretty sweet dinner, maybe too sweet.

Well off to Pilates!

Freely Full!

On the way to work today, we stopped at a cute little drive-thru coffee place called Island Bean Company. I had the sugar-free nonfat almond latte, and silly me asked for a Grande when it is a Medium anywhere but Starbucks.

At work I made a French Meadow Sprouted Bagel with pb and jelly. This was the first time I tried the 100 Calorie Pack of Justin's Nut Butter Honey Peanut Butter, and I liked the Maple Almond Butter much much better. The jelly was just a little sample of some sugar free jelly that I wouldn't buy on my own. The bagels impressed me because they have 13 grams of protein. I spotted them in the Frozen Foods Section at Whole Foods.

At 11am I snacked on a Kashi Blackberry Graham bar to fuel my lunch time gym work out. I went around 11:30 and did upper body weights and 35 minutes of intense spin (in 35 minutes I burned 300 calories).

When I got back from a good gym workout I was ready for lunch. I packed about 1/3 cup oats, 2 tbsp flax, 1 tbsp sliced almonds, and cooked it with 1 banana. I topped it off with some fresh berries and a new flavor of yogurt that was on sale and I normally wouldn't buy based on the unnatural ingredients.

This worked as an addition to my oatmeal, but it was less tasty by itself, maybe because it tastes too artificial?? I prefer the Yoplait White Chocolate Strawberry flavor over this one.

Around 4:30pm I ate my snack pack of grapes.

Steve and I ate out tonight because I had received a free entree coupon at any Big Burrito restaurant for my birthday and it expired today. There are 6 different Big Burrito restaurants, which are all located in Pittsburgh besides Mad Mex because the Big Burrito Company opened Mad Mex in other Pennsylvania cities.

We decided to go to Soba, which is described as "Pittsburgh's premiere example of Pan-Asian cuisine." Steve and I started with sharing the avocado maki: "wok seared corn and herb salad."

I also had a Volcano Martini which included montbisou framboise, blue curacao and sparkling wine.
My main entree was corn, green bean and lo mein noodle stir fry: with patty pan squash, chanterelle mushrooms, and garlic chili sauce. This plate was shallow and I ended up eating it all.

Although I was really full, I also had a free birthday cold stone coupon that expired today. So I got the sinless sweet cream with cherry pie filling, chocolate shavings, and whipped cream. If you live near a Cold Stone you should sign up for their Birthday Club and get a free Love It Signature Creation for your Birthday.

I feel like that was a lot of food, but I can't let a free coupon go to waste:)