Balls, Zucchini Balls.

I ended up doing 15 minutes of Classical Stretch before work in anticipation of me doing my first leg strength workout in a long time. I’ve talked about Classical Stretch over the years, but whenever my body starts to feel achy, or not quite right, I go back to doing Classical Stretch and all my aches go away. I used to wear inserts for my plantar fascitis (sp?!) but since doing her stretch programs, I haven’t had to in over three years.

I ended up making what I thought would taste more like a soufflé than a quiche for breakfast yesterday. It has just a couple eggs, egg whites, 2% milk, broccoli and Cabot Alpine Cheddar cheese on top. Oh, and the bottom of the soufflé was canned diced potatoes. The stats are amazing – 173 for 1/4 of the whole recipe, but it was kind of plain, and the chopped up broccoli tasted gritty to me. I’ll go back to the drawing board on that one. With the blackberries on the side, this was a surprisingly filling breakfast.

So I just took it easy on the legs for strength yesterday. I did all the reps, but used low weights, and really concentrated so that my knee didn’t go over my toes when I did squats, etc. This took me 20 minutes to complete.

Check out Bite Sized Fitness if you are looking for some workouts and nutrition help. Everything is free! I ended up doing 2 miles for cardio at the end.

I ended up using a bunch of random leftovers in my fridge to make tostadas. Leftover chicken, rice and corn turned into chicken tostadas.

• 2 corn tostadas
• 1/4 cup rice
• 1/4 cup corn
• 2 ounces leftover chicken
• chopped baby spinach
• cilantro
• 1/2 ounce shredded Cabot Alpine cheddar cheese
• 1/4 cup diced tomato
• salsa verde on top

I put the tostadas on the toaster oven pan, split the rice, corn, chicken and cheese between the two, and put it on broiler for about 5 minutes, until the cheese got nice and melty. Then topped with spinach, cilantro and salsa verde.

That whole plate comes in at 398 calories. Love it! But what really made the dish was the salsa verde. My co-worker gave me a jar of it, and within two meals, I managed to eat the whole jar! I’ll have to get the exact recipe from her, but she cooks the tomatillos with garlic and jalapeno in a little bit of water on the stove before putting that in a blender with ONION, cilantro and lime. I didn’t mind the onion you guys because this was so flavorful. And don’t tell me that it’s because of the onion because I won’t listen to you.

I put my workout and lunch on Instagram (because I am an Instagram whore) and love that Bite Size Fitness liked it!

Tony didn’t have much of an appetite for dinner, so you know what that means – Biz food for dinner! I actually wanted to make this cheese fondue baked in an acorn squash I saw on the Chew the other day, even bought two acorn squashes off the dollar rack, but didn’t realize it needed to bake for an hour, so then I went to plan B. I love red sauce, I love meatballs – um, Tony? Not too much of a fan of either. I wanted to get more meatballs so I decided to stretch the meat out with shredded zucchini. The recipe below made 18 meatballs, and I made it two servings – each serving comes in at 265 calories, 8.2 carbs and 23.8 protein.

• 1/2 cup shredded zucchini, squeezed dry
• 5 ounces ground sirloin
• 3 tablespoons Panko bread crumbs
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1 teaspoon oregano

Just mix all that together. Now these meatballs are, lets just say, soft. No one likes soft balls, so I made sure to sear each side of the meatballs in a skillet with a bit of olive oil before having them finish cooking in my marinara sauce. It took about 7 minutes to sear all sides of the meatballs while my water came to boil for the pasta.

My plate – 3/4 cup cooked pasta, chopped baby spinach and the sauce and balls on top. I saved the other half of the meat mixture and threw it in the freezer – next week I’ll make a meatball sammie for lunch.

My kitchen lighting is awful, but my friend Christina sent me a link on how to build a light box – that may be a project I’ll have Tony help me with. Thanks Christina!

I got all my steps in too:

Alright, got to fly – I have 10 minutes to get ready and get out the door. Make it a great day!

p.s.  My live writer wasn’t working right, so not sure this is going to look right – oh well!