Hi Everyone –

I had a great day at the beach with my mom and our friends. It was cool, sunny and beautiful. I spent a few minutes in the sun before I put my SPF 45 on my body and SPF 50 on my face (even though my huge brimmed hat never left my head!) I had a few snacks while I was at the beach: peanuts, strawberries, and for lunch I enjoyed a wonderful grilled cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread (and the bread was not fried!) with native RI tomatoes… so good!

I got home from the beach at around 4:30 this afternoon. I ran to the shower to get all of the layers of sun block (and sand) off my body – eww! Once I was clean, I started work on dinner which was eggplant parmesan. I had two eggplants from a family friend’s garden and I was so excited to put them to good use.

Eggplant parm can be slightly labor intensive and took me almost two hours to put together from start to finish… doesn’t that seem like a long time?? It is a good dish to make on the weekends and then to have the first couple of days of your work week.

My ingredients for tonight’s eggplant were as follows:

eggplant (no kidding!)

low fat mozzarella cheese (made with 2% milk instead of whole)

bread crumbs

1 egg

olive oil (for cooking the eggplant – usually I bake it instead of frying, but tonight I decided to opt for the latter)

16 ounces of tomato sauce from Trader Joe’s.

I didn’t follow a recipe, but I breaded the eggplant, cooked it and then layered it into a Pyrex dish (9″ x 11″) and layered the eggplant, tomato sauce and mozzarella three times. I baked it in the oven for 20 minutes at 375 degrees. We had whole wheat pasta on the side.

Here is what my dinner plate looked like tonight:

My plate might look really full – but it is important to remember that this is a lunch plate and not a dinner plate 🙂 Somehow I managed to not have seconds tonight… but I will be having a chocolate chip cookie and a scoop of vanilla ice cream later tonight! 😀

Right now I am enjoying a cup of post dinner ginger tea. It definitely feels like fall outside (it is seriously cool out right now – 62 degrees but it feels a lot cooler… fall is definitely in the air.)

After dinner I prepared breakfast and lunch for tomorrow… over night oats for breakfast, and egg plant parm and whole wheat pasta for lunch with an apple. I am definitely going to get back on track this week with healthy eating and exercise. Tomorrow night after work, even though I’ll be walking in the door at around 7 o’clock I am going to get myself to the gym for a quick work out of cardio and weights. I really hope I can make it!

I hope you are all ready to get back to work tomorrow. See ya’ll tomorrow!