I have five minutes.

I know it doesn’t seem like it, but sometimes I do put a lot of thought into this blog.

Well, maybe not thought. But definitely time.

Not tonight. I have to post, set up the coffee pot, make muesli, eat some soy ice cream, peel some carrots, get my gym bag ready, and take a shower, all in the next 12 minutes. No problem, right?

I’m doing this because, for the first time in a month, I’m going to really make the effort to actually go to the gym tomorrow morning. Which means getting up at 4:50. NO PROBLEM. REALLY. It’s good training for Thursday when I will stay up almost that late to see Dark Knight the SECOND it opens.

I made it back to kickboxing, so my toe is back to normal. I also did another abs class, which kind of felt like I set my torso on fire on purpose. But whatever, it means I’m tough enough to get back to my morning gym routine.

I’m trying to stretch our food and our dollars this week, so I rummaged around in the freezer this morning until I found some ground turkey, which I thawed for turkey burgers. With them, as usual, we had sweet potato fries. And some roasted broccoli since the oven was at an obscenely high temperature anyway.

My turkey burger was kind of little, but that’s really probably because that bun (one of those Ezekiel buns) was massive. And delicious.

Six minutes! Okay GO.

Tulips and stuff

The tulip festival in Wamego was awesome because I came home with:

• coffee
• tea
• a giant box of cookies
• the most expensive piece of jewelry I’ve ever purchased for myself

I took a picture of it, but it also captured my shadow and my pants, and I’m just not sure if I’m ready to take that step here. But it’s made out of typewriter keys.

On the way back, we stopped by our storage unit to get spring clothes and to frantically search for my spring and summer shoes, which I was sure were in there… somewhere. Matt looked through about 894 boxes and couldn’t find them and I was sad (read: secretly excited to have an excuse to buy all new shoes). Then we got home and I immediately found them in the closet. Oops.

There was more cheeseless pizza for lunch, and maybe a cookie or three. They’re big, too. I’m ashamed. Then, my mom and I ran errands and I tricked Matt into walking three and a half miles with me so that I could buy earrings.

Then I made this totally American dinner:

Turkey burger on one of those square bagel things I love so dearly, sweet potato fries, baby brussels sprouts. Also, another piece of cake for dessert.

Now, I need to go entertain my mom before she reorganizes the whole apartment.

I have several things to talk about

I’ll break them down for you:

Cinnamon Toast

As my mom (a loyal reader) can attest, cinnamon toast was my top choice for breakfast every day during my sophomore and junior years of high school. I burned myself out on it then, and I haven’t really had it since….

Until now.

Seriously, what was I thinking? It’s probably the greatest thing you can make in about 3 seconds. I’ve been using my mini bagels, and I learned last week that having 1/2 of one prepped cinnamon toast style is probably the greatest 5:00am pre-gym snack I’ve ever come up with.

Also, it’s an excellent choice for weekend lunches. Here it is, featured with a delightful pear (also w/ cinnamon - it’s an addiction).

Are you bored yet?

Target

I did grocery shopping in four separate locations today, including: Target, Dillon’s, Eastside Market and People’s. I actually did pretty well at Target, sticking to my list and not getting really excited and buying superfluous cleaning supplies or makeup or other things I ultimately won’t use. But, I just have to ask - what’s with the Target “wear to work” line? I mean, what exactly is it that these people think we do for work? Are we all meant to be professional… teenagers? Or peasants or something? Though I do remember that girl on Project Runway Season 3 who was involved with Target in some way and she got eliminated relatively early on, I think, so maybe that explains it.

Hummus

I have no idea why I’ve been avoiding hummus for all these years, but I think I must have had some kind of negative experience at some point. Anyway, I’ve had such good luck recently with trying foods I have always considered gross (pears, plain yogurt, mangoes, etc.), I decided to give it a shot.

It’s so good. I mean, really. I made a pita sandwich with it, and I threw in other things I love, just in case the hummus part didn’t work out. So here it is with a tiny yellow pepper, spinach and feta. Mmmm.

Also with it, I had this Fage, which I’m showing you to prove that I really do eat them sometimes.

Sorry for the weird flash/color issue. But, you know, at least it’s shiny.

Special Selection Sunday Dinner

Donna joined us for the NCAA tournament selection and bravely stayed to witness my preparation of a new recipe from the Veganomicon cookbook that I recently got from the library. Yes. We are vegans now.

Here’s the spread:

Salad (prepared by Donna, with baby spinach, grape tomatoes, colorful peppers, and some kind of delicious basil-y vinaigrette dressing), baked sweet potato fries (sliced perfectly by Matt) and Black Bean Burgers on square bagelbread. With swiss cheese. Ooops. We are not vegans anymore.

Oh, and apparently, swiss cheese is naturally lactose free. Do you understand that? Because I don’t.

This was my first attempt at homemade vegetarian burgers. I’ve always thought they would taste too much like dirt. Wrong! These are awesome. I think this will be my new go-to meat substitute (sorry Morningstar Farms meal starters). I can imagine a “ground” version being really good in chili and other similar things. Check out the Veganomicon if you can get a hold of it. There are about 200 other recipes in there that I’m excited to try.

I followed it up with my favorite thing about Easter:

Shiny.

Okay, this post, with its several different parts, took a lot out of me, and now I’m going to pretend to clean and then go to sleep.