I have a confession to make. On most Mondays I have the hardest time getting back into my work week eating routine. Why am I always so hungry on Monday?? It drives me nuts sometimes.

Today, overall, I did an ok job getting back into the swing of things. Here is how the day went, food wise:

Breakfast – Lemon Luna bar and 1/2 a cup of fresh pineapple (I had the Luna Bar at 8:30 and the pineapple at 10 o’clock)

Pre-walk snack: a small handful of roasted (unsalted) almonds

(Lunch walk, just over 30 minutes)

Lunch: a cup of lentil soup (with a couple of splashes of hot sauce) 4 saltine crackers, a lot of raw carrots sticks, about 7 cherry tomatoes and a Fage 0% Greek yogurt.

After lunch I was still hungry. I had a piece of Dove dark chocolate and later I had a bag of Utz potato chips (150 calories) and a small forkful of cake, while some of my other colleagues enjoyed pieces of cake and cupcakes.

On the drive home, I had another small handful of almonds. On my way home I called my mom to see if I could convince her to go for a walk with me because I did not feel like driving all the way to the gym tonight. Lucky for me she agreed! We walked for half an hour when I got home…. and we ended our walk heading back to our house in the rain. But it was so warm out (about 70) that the sprinkles felt refreshing.

For some reason I felt like it was quite an accomplishment to survive this Monday back at work. I am not quite sure why…

Back to the weekend. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were sort of a mixed bag. As I said on Friday, I was exhausted during and after work so I skipped the gym, came home and went to bed early (from what I can remember – Friday seems like ages ago!) On Saturday I woke up feeling refreshed and excited for the weekend… I even whipped up some pumpkin oatmeal for the two of us. Mom has not had pumpkin oats yet this autumn, so she was especially excited. This time around, I used Trader Joe’s organic canned pumpkin – it was great.

My bowl was amazing and it looked like fall to me:

Pumpkin, oats, 1% milk, nutmeg, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice and a tiny pinch of kosher salt. Topped with a little bit of brown sugar (which melted nicely) toasted coconut and a spoonful of Teddie.

Mom and I enjoyed a leisurely morning of coffee, reading and some MSNBC news (Chris Hayes makes my weekends sometimes – but I must admit that I miss Rachel Maddow on Saturday and Sunday…). Eventually we got our acts together and headed out to enjoy the beautiful fall day. We did errands, enjoyed a few of our favorite Providence shops and ended up having a late brunch at one of my favorite places – Brickway on Wickenden. I just love this place and they still have one of the best breakfasts around – I should know, I’ve been going here since high school and it has not changed at all.

We really had not planned on going to the Brickway so this was a great surprise, I had been wanting to go out for breakfast food for weeks now. It took me quite a while to make up my mind… I finally decided on one of my favorites – the S Pet:

The S Pet is two poached eggs on a toasted English muffin with spinach, tomato & cheese – oh and a side of great home fries. It was really lovely, I love the fresh taste that the tomato and spinach gives to this breakfast sandwich.

After brunch, we continued running errands until I was struck by yet another severe headache. It was my fourth horrible headache in the last week and a half. I have been under a lot of stress, and the headaches are a direct result. Even though a lot of the stress was lifted on Friday after my medical appointments, there was still residual stress built up which probably triggered what will hopefully be the last headache for a while.

Even though I was in pain, I did not want to go home. I took my headache meds and drank a lot of water and tried to keep going. Mom and I even went to the gym, and I got 25 minutes on the elliptical machine. But after 25 minutes, I had to throw in the towel and call it a day. We headed home and mom made a light supper while I rested in hopes that the pain would finally go away. For dinner we had soup and some sour dough bread from Seven Stars. It was a great dinner, and eventually my headache got better – but I did not want to tempt fate by trying to read, so I went to bed on the early side again.

It was raining, warm and humid on Sunday – not a good forecast for my headaches. But thankfully I made it through the day without a major incident.

Sunday morning I had plans to meet up with my friend Danielle. We decided to have a nice Sunday brunch out, just the two of us which was really a treat. We went to another all time favorite: Rue De L’Espoir, a cute French restaurant that has fantastic food and especially good weekend brunches. Danielle and I studied the menu for a while, and we ended up ordering the same thing:

Look familiar?? Even though this does look really similar to what I had the day before, it was quite different. This is the Rue Melt. Poached egg with a Thai crab cake and lemon grass aioli. It was very different and quite good – I ate the orange for good measure!

The sign of a good brunch is not needing to eat again until dinner 🙂 For dinner mom made her famous pulled pork and baked beans. I made Ina’s roasted broccoli with garlic, olive oil and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. I didn’t really think that the broccoli went with the rest of the meal, but it’s a big hit and it is rather easy for a vegetable. I also whipped up some pumpkin, oatmeal & dark chocolate chip cookies.

Ok, I have to wrap this up and start thinking about Tuesday and getting some reading in before going to bed at a decent time. I hope you all had a fabulous weekend and a decent back to work Monday.