Category Archives: Great Harvest

Things I Love: Part I

     I love bread.
I love when Amanda and Andy go to Great Harvest to buy bread, and inspire me to also go to Great Harvest to buy bread.
I love free samples of bread from Great Harvest.
I love that their “samples” are the size of my arm.
I love freshly baked biscuits…
…where the honey…
…slowly melts…
…into each fluffy pillow.
I love cornbread served with whipped honey-butter.
I love sweet bread that crumbles when you bite into it.
I love whole-wheat stuffing.
I Love Bread
The end.

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Filed under biscuits, bread, chocolate chip bread pudding, cornbread, cranberry walnut bread, Great Harvest, savory bread pudding, Things I love, whole-wheat stuffing

Weasel Crap Beer?!?

     I woke up this morning, put on my gym clothes and was on the elliptical at the gym before my brain registered what was happening. 45 minutes at level 9 – I was dying! It was awesome.

I refueled with a slice of Great Harvest Whole Grain bread with peanut butter and some of Trader Joe’s Cranberry Apple Butter! This apple butter is ah-may-zing!
     I went to the library to pick up a book for my road trip tomorrey. I finished “The Girl Who Played With Fire” this morning and wanted more! I had a hold on the final book in the trilogy, but it won’t be in for another month, so I splurged and RENTED the next book, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” for a whole dollar! I think a buck for a week is worth it, plus it supports my local library, which I would die without.
After all the book renting, I needed a big Kitchen Sink Salad to replenish my energy. This had 1/2 a bag of mixed greens, 1/2 of a chopped bell pepper, 1/2 cup egg white salad, 1/2 cup steamed lentils, 1/2 of a zucchini sauteed with herbes de provence and 1/2 of an avocado with a light balsamic dressing. Many halves make a HUGE salad!
     Since it’s my last night at home for a few days, I went out to a local wine shop to pick up some fancy brews. I found the FANCIEST of fancy beers!
Let me tell you about this beer. Mikkeller Geek Brunch Weasel beer is brewed with the most expensive coffee in the world. This coffee is made by feeding weasels coffee berries. The berries go through their digestive tract and come out the other end, where they’re brewed into coffee: yes, the coffee beans are crapped out by said weasels. This coffee was added into this beer, which was then stamped with a $15.99 price for 15oz. 
Sorry to disappoint you, but I didn’t have the guts to try it…yet. With a 7 hour road trip ahead of me tomorrow, it just didn’t seem like a good risk to take.
Next time!
After the search for beer, MORE refueling was needed! We ordered in thai food, because lunch yesterday just wasn’t enough! We split tom kha gai, pad ke mao, pad thai and pineapple fried brown rice. All the dishes had meat in them, which I avoided. 
Luckily, even though I didn’t get the Weasel Crap Beer, I found plenty to try!
Oh beer, how much I’ve missed you!
First up: The Midas Touch! This one was a sweet pale ale, brewed with honey, muscat grapes and saffron. I’m not a huge fan of sweet beers, but this one had enough hops to keep me happy. I won’t be getting this one again, but I’d definitely recommend it to any wine lovers out there! You’ll love the sweet honey undertones!
     I’d love to write more, but I have to finish packing for the long drive to Scottsdale, Arizona tomorrow for my new job! Woohoo! I’ll repeat for any new readers: I’ll be at the Carefree Fine Arts and Wine Festival from November 5th-7th, working at one of the artist’s booths! 
Anyone in the Scottsdale/Carefree area want to meet up??

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Filed under beer, cranberry apple butter, Dogfish Head, Great Harvest, gym, kitchen sink salad, Midas Touch, Mikkeller Geek Brunch Weasel, thai food, Trader Joe's, Weasel Crap Beer

I Eat REAL Food!

     Exercise of the day: I woke up with a headache and sat around for a while sipping tea before I decided that if I was going to feel like crap anyway, I might as well feel like crap at the gym and get a workout out of the way and I’m really good at writing run-on sentences. I fueled up with some carbs:

1 slice of 9 Grain from Great Harvest with some peanut butter and mashed banana. I have no idea how those chocolate chunks found their way there!
     I got onto the elliptical and did the random cycle at level 7 for 40 minutes, then did 30 assisted pullups and 30 tricep dips. I used the evil/wonderful foam roller and tried not to cry as I rolled out my IT bands, then went out and did a few “woodchopper” core weights. Halfway through the workout my headache was GONE! 
     I had an icy Monsta when I got back with 6 cups of spinach, 1/2 cup of soymilk, 1/2 a frozen banana, 1 lemon and 1/4 cup of frozen blueberries. Soymilk has protein in it… Probably not enough for a post-workout refuel though. I also had some reheated butternut squash apple soup with a dollop of goat cheese – yum!
     I spent the day cleaning the house, doing laundry, CLEANING OUT MY CAR (something I haven’t done in over six months) and making hummus!
The can of garbanzo beans gave me some trouble, but I sorted it out.
And the hummus is chillin’ in the fridge, waiting to have fresh bell pepper slices dipped into it.
     I made baked sweet potato fries for dinner.
Half of a huge sweet potato sliced, sprayed with olive oil and sprinkled with garlic salt, then roasted at 450 degrees for 15 minutes.
     At work I got a lovely gift from a lovely friend.
Chocolate covered strawberries from Godiva! Thanks, Jose!
I also started this book: The French Don’t Diet Plan. I really, really, REALLY recommend reading this! I’m only a few chapters in, but this is so interesting! The author, Dr. Will Clower, talks about how the French can seemingly eat everything in sight: bread, cheese, wine, chocolates, and not gain weight, and how their diet differs from the typical American diet.
“They eat real foods, we eat food products.” – Dr. Will Clower.
     If you read the ingredient lists on different foodstuffs, it’s shocking to see how many unpronounceable ingredients, chemicals, dyes and preservatives actually inhabit the products that we put into our body. For instance, let’s look at the ingredients on a simple loaf of Wonder Bread:
I don’t want to put exthoxylated mono and diglycerides in my body – I researched them and STILL don’t know what they are!
Lucky for me, I have a Great Harvest down the street. The ingredients in this loaf? Fresh-ground whole wheat flour, water, yeast, salt, honey and oatmeal. That’s more like it!
     I’ll be going through this book and sharing on my blog as I go along! I’m making a conscious decision to only eat food with real, whole ingredients – starting with making my own ketchup tomorrey! Stay tuned!
How many things in your fridge contain crazy chemicals or dyes? 
My count – seven out of twelve on the middle shelf alone. Yikes.

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Filed under butternut squash apple soup, elliptical, Godiva, Great Harvest, gym, headache, hummus, sweet potato fries, The French Don't Diet