Monday Munchies, Part 31: In the Bleak Midwinter

This post is a continuation of the Monday Munchies series where I show everything I eat over the course of single day. These eats took place last Thursday on my first day as the new registered dietitian at the Mettler Center in Champaign (more on that later).

Breakfast, 6:45 am:

Bircher muesli with sliced tiny banana and a half-handful of frozen mango and pineapple. Topped with chia seeds and served with hot coffee and a splash of skim milk (yes, for the first time since this day).

I tried to remind myself why I decided to eat frozen fruit on a day I woke up with a nose colder than a frozen pineapple, but every reason boiled down to either (1) I was too lazy neglected to leave time for defrosting the fruit, or (2) temporary insanity (which works as an excuse more times than you might think).

The sun was mostly up at this point, hidden behind clouds shooting freezing rain all over the roads and over our poor dogs who must have thought they had stumbled into a battlefield. I know it’s technically not winter yet, but I couldn’t help thinking of this hymn at points throughout the day:

After breakfast, I headed off to my first day as the new registered dietitian at the Mettler Center in Champaign. I’ll be working alongside their superwoman RD, Robin Allen, who has more expertise and charisma than one person can hold (if that person wasn’t Robin, of course). We’ll be counseling clients and holding special events and weight loss challenges for an amazing group of people. I’m excited to see what creative ideas we come up with! You can check out the Mettler Center on Facebook and Twitter, too.

I’ll still be doing everything else, including working with Head Start and Strawberry Fields. Joining the Mettler Center team is an exciting new challenge!

Lunch, 12:30 pm:

An un-boring salad topped with kumatos, mozzarella, and leftover turkey. As I type this up, I realize the addition of the homemade cranberry sauce would have made this meal even more epic. The turkey is NOT from Thanksgiving, fortunately. While I was grocery shopping the day after Thanksgiving to pick up some beef and ice cream for Bonnie, I noticed some crazy cheap turkey in the refrigerator case. Chicken/turkey soup is one of Peter’s specialties, so I bought the smallest turkey I could find. Peter made seven or eight meals worth of food for less than $12 in ingredients. Good for when you’re busy, distracted by other matters, and low on funds.

(Yes, I realize I just blabbed on about Peter’s awesome soup between pictures of salad that are decidedly NOT soup. Variety beats stagnation, folks.)

I also enjoyed a few dumplings from our favorite place to eat, with just a little of the dipping sauce because boy, with the amount of salt in there, I’m surprised I haven’t shriveled into a dessicated husk.

Oh, and there was a glass of skim milk in there. So concludes the most disorganized meal description in the history of THIH. I’d like to see anyone top that.

… Challenge accepted! See below.

After lunch I drank a mug of hot Yorkshire Gold with milk with an awesome shortbread cookie from Peter’s sister.

I alternately caught up on work the rest of the afternoon and planned what to make for dinner. Then, Peter and I received some very disappointing news during the course of the afternoon. We took it pretty hard – well, I did, while Peter did a great job keeping up my spirits.

Neither of us felt hungry for dinner, but to avoid waking up with growling stomachs, I had us eat a little of what we had on hand (thank goodness for leftovers!). I ended up chowing down on a couple more dumplings alongside a token carrot. And that’s okay. Not every meal will be perfect and it shouldn’t be. Both guilt and an “all-or-nothing” mentality have been the enemies of healthy food relationships since, oh, forever.

Because I didn’t take pictures of my dinner, I thought about scrapping this Monday Munchies and doing a different day, but then decided to keep this day in all its disorganized, raw glory. It’s a reminder of how fast life changed in the few weeks since my last MM when Peter and I enjoyed a gorgeous fall day.

That’s why I leave you with this final image of my post-dinner mug of hot decaf coffee with a spoonful of bourbon cream. We are warm and comfortable, the Christmas lights are aglow, and we have a few more cozy evenings with our pups. For that, I am grateful.