Lisa gave me a fabulous birthday present when I saw her in Victoria; Mama Pea’s Cookbook!

I’ve already made two recipes from it: Thai Veggie Burgers and Pea Daddy’s Jambalaya. Both were smashing hits!

I think my favourite thing about this cookbook so far is how ridiculously easy the recipes are (at least the two I’ve made). Vegan and vegetarian recipes can often involve a lot of complicated steps and take a long time to make. Mama Pea’s recipes are really simple and straightforward and both these recipes took less than 30 minutes and involved just a few dishes.

I am trying to cook bulk meals on the weekends to get us through the weeks lately as last week we relied on eating out way too much. Next I have my eyes on her tempeh chili and cowgirl cornbread I highly recommend this cookbook, I can already tell it’s going to be one I turn to often. I was not asked to do this review, I just REALLY like this cookbook and wanted to sing it’s praises

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On a similar, foodie, note. I’ve started a Tumblr Blog: Girl with the Red Hair Eats. Weight has been a topic on my mind for the last few months and with heavy training being put on the back burner until December/January I think now is the time to get my eating in check. I’ve been indulging in far too many glasses of red wine and bowls of ice cream after work – I just finished eating ice cream and was drinking red wine while I wrote this post last night!

Even though it’s been on my mind the idea of counting calories repelled me. Then I thought about how conscious I am of what I’m eating on days when I record it on the blog and thought, why not do that regularly for awhile so I can get back in the habit of THINKING about what I eat instead of just mindlessly stuffing food in my mouth.

Except I don’t want to take over my precious blog with gazillion’s of boring old food photo’s that would result in multiple posts a day so I started a tumblr, downloaded the app for my iPhone and as of today I will be posting photos of everything I eat on there. My goal is to become more aware of what I’m putting in my mouth and to get back a bit of the balance I’m craving! Not sure how long it will last, maybe just until I start marathon training, maybe longer. We’ll see!

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Questions of the day: What is your favourite cookbook? Do you track your calories or your food intake in any way?

I’ve had a few comments asking me what I’ve been eating/how I’ve been eating since I started my triathlon and half-marathon training. It’s been quite a while since I shared a day of eats with you so I thought now was as good a time as ever!

Plus I really enjoy seeing what other people eat for some reason and these two posts recently popped up in my reader and gave me the idea

Yesterday was a moderately heavy mid-week training day for me, here’s what was on the plan:

First thing yesterday morning I tackled the 6-mile run and did it in 58:30. I’m so glad that a 9:46 pace is starting to feel easy to me again. This spring anything under 10:00 pace felt “hard”.

I then went to the pool and tackled the 1,200 metre swim. I broke it up into a pyramid workout and did the following:

• 300 m easy warm-up
• 25 m hard
• 50 m hard
• 100 m hard
• 200 m hard
• 100 m hard
• 50 m hard
• 25 m hard
• 100 m kick
• 150 m pull
• 100 m easy

According to My Fitness Pal I burned 1,067 calories doing these two activities (and then I sat at a desk all day!) So, what did I eat?

Pre-run – small bowl of cheerios with blueberries and almond milk:

Post-run, pre-swim – banana:

Post-swim – green smoothie with 3/4 frozen banana, 2 cups frozen spinach, 1 cup almond milk and 1 tbsp kraft natural peanut butter + grande starbucks coffee with two half-and-half creamers:

Mid-morning snack – a bunch of raisins, maybe 3/4 cup worth?

Lunch – leftover mushroom-fried rice from Sunday night takeout + 1 broccoli tempura + small tossed salad made with kale and lettuce (picked fresh from my garden yesterday morning) and peppers and mushrooms + approx. 1 tbsp of honey mustard dressing:

Mid-afternoon snack – two small tootsie rolls, approx. 1/2 cup presidents choice greek yogurt with honey, shredded coconut, blueberries and sliced almonds:

I also drank 2.5 L of water throughout the work day (with a few more glasses before work and after work):

Dinner – about 1.25 cups of cooked millet with sauteed kale, swiss chard, 6-bean blend, mushrooms and peppers, all of this was sauteed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic and red pepper flakes. Oh, and a Coke Zero that was leftover from having visitors this weekend (we usually don’t buy pop but I do enjoy it when it’s around )

Dessert- peanut butter chocolate ice cream in a waffle cone. I went for ice cream after dinner with my friend Katie at a delicious, local ice cream shop. I fully intended to have my ice cream in a dish I just couldn’t resist the waffle cone once I was there.

Worth it!

So there you have it. I wouldn’t call this a “typical” day of eats in my world necessarily as I eat differently almost every day (I hate repetition) but this would be a typical day once or twice a week. I am trying to eat more grain-veggie-bean mixes for dinner. Usually after work all I crave are carbs and cheese so it can be hard to resist making something like pizza or pasta or nacho’s But I’m trying!

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Question of the day: Are you interested in seeing people’s eats for the day? It seriously fascinates me which is probably why I’m so obsessed with food blogs!

When I was little I used to love fried egg sandwiches. I can remember asking for them all the time for lunch, breakfast, whatever. Just a fried egg between two pieces of toast and some ketchup. YUM!

I have to admit, as I’ve gotten older my love for eggs has dwindled and we only go through a dozen eggs or so every 2-3 weeks. Lately my childhood love for fried egg sandwiches has returned and I’ve been enjoying them more often for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Eggs are another eating habit I’ve changed over the past 15 months. I used to buy the cheapest eggs I could get. Now, I pay the price for certified organic eggs in the winter and only buy eggs from my local Farmers Market in the summer.

Fun fact: Some of the photos in this post are from breakfast yesterday and others from dinner. Yup, I ate two fried egg sandwiches in one day. I figure if it’s not broken (no egg pun intended here) don’t fix it!

After eating my egg sandwich last night I decided to do some research on the Canadian egg industry. I read a very informative post on Healthy Tipping Point about egg labeling a while back and I was curious to know if the Canadian industry is similar to the American one or not.

Some info on Canadian Egg Farming:

- In 2009 there were 1,015 registered egg farms in Canada generating $588.6 million

- Annual total egg consumption in Canada has dropped from 23 dozen per person in 1960 to 14.4 dozen in 1995. It then increased and reached 16.1 dozen per person in 2009.

- There are approximately 26 million egg laying hens in Canada

- 98% of these hens live in battery cage operations

- Egg labels are very misleading. Here are a few common egg labels in Canada and what they really mean:

• Certified Organic: Hens raised free-range, given perches, nest boxes and bathing areas. Farms are independently audited – these are the best kind you can buy for animal welfare.
• SPCA Certified: Raised free-range or free-run (can roam freely inside a barn but have no outdoor access). Have access to perches, nest boxes and bathing areas. Farms are independently audited.
• Free-range: Hens have access to the outdoors.
• Free-run: Hens roam freely inside a barn with no outdoor access.
• All other eggs: battery-caged hens. Do not let terms like “vegetarian-fed” “omega-3″ or “farm fresh” fool you. Unless they have the labels below they are not coming from audited farms and our likely coming from factory farms.

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In the winter when I can’t get eggs from the Farmers Market I buy Rabbit River Farm eggs, which have all the above labels on there eggs. At $6/dozen they are very pricey but the cost is worth it too me, especially since we don’t eat a ton of eggs.

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Question of the day: Do you like eggs? What is your favourite way to cook eggs? Do you pay attention to the labels when you buy them?