There are two definite things I know: (1) I hate cooking anything that requires more than steaming and/or one pot/pan. (2) I have a very patient husband.

We attempted two new things today. First up was yogurt, which we decided to try to make since his mom’s homemade version is so good. We googled to try to find instructions and found this video. It’s still cooling, so I’m not sure how it will turn out … I thinking it will be good, though.

Next on the list was this pesto spinach bread. I printed out the recipe a while back when I was thinking about the low-carb/no-grain stuff, but never got around to making it. I ran across it again today, though, and decided to give it a try. This is where Jon’s patience comes in: I lasted approximately 4 minutes before I started bitching and demanding “help” aka “just do it.”

My final verdict: Eh.

Prior to all of the cooking (non)fun, I woke up this morning craving spinach, so I had sort of a nontraditional breakfast. Spinach, walnuts, feta, (previously grilled) chicken and about 1/2 T oil and vinegar.

We sat outside on the back porch and ate and drank coffee and talked and just generally enjoyed the morning before coming in to take the dog for a walk. He spends the first half of every walk just dying to HURRY and the last half just dying to STOP. He’s so, so, so frantic and then tries to plop down in each yard he sees once he gets over that.

Lunch took about 5 minutes. Sausage, veggies from a bag and an orange. The steam-in-the-bag frozen vegetables pretty thoroughly sucked, so I’m thinking we won’t buy them again. It’s really just as easy to steam fresh stuff. The sausage was good, though. Key here is QUICK since we were heading out to the gym.

I did an hour of cardio alternating 20 minutes each on the stairmaster, bike and track, which was much needed and quite enjoyed.

We stopped at our local food co-op on the way home to pick up a few things and decided to grab a snack (tamari almonds) since I was starving.

Jon cooked dinner again tonight. Salmon and sauteed squash and zucchini (with a little of the leftover spinach from the bread thrown in).

We watched a movie and I ate another snack a few hours after dinner.

Good day.

So, vacation #1 is over. We had planned to go camping in the Atlanta area, but rain derailed it, so we ended up changing plans the night prior to leaving. It was slightly stressful trying to find a new place to go and new accommodations and all that, but it was sort of fun being so spontaneous. We ended up in Nags Head, NC (OBX), which appeared to be the only place NOT being rained on. Lots of fun, but I unsurprisingly came home with 5 extra pounds and a stomachache.

Today’s been good. It started out with breakfast made by my sweet husband.

We split a frittata made with a bunch of veggies: spinach, garlic scapes, bell pepper, mushrooms. We also had some plain yogurt with fruit. And black cofffee, of course.

After breakfast, we headed to the nearby farmers market to stock up for the week. We picked up kale, onions, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, swiss chard, cabbage.

We stopped to do some grocery shopping at Earth Fare to pick up the rest of the groceries for the week and ended up eating lunch while we were there.

My salad had greens, sprouts, carrots, olives, broccoli, tomatoes, walnuts, mushrooms, some balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and a small piece of grilled swordfish. Oh – and a tiny portion of some sort of chicken concoction.

We came home and put everything away, hung out for a little bit, had a snack and then went shopping for new running shoes (which almost killed me when we paid – so EXPENSIVE!).

We did some yard stuff when we got back from shoe shopping – mowed, weeded, watered, etc. My sweet husband cooked dinner after we finished all of that.

He grilled pork chops, we split a sweet potato, and he sauteed the swiss chard with onions.

We’re watching a movie now and are kind of unwinding. I was feeling a little hungry, so I just made a quick smoothie with some frozen strawberries and peaches, a couple T of plain yogurt and a tiny bit of honey. It was tart, but thick and close enough to being ice creamish that it satisfied my late night cravings.

I feel so spoiled – fun vacation, fun weekend.