Status

Pretty simple day, not too much excitement.
Breakfast: morning oat bran mush - man, I am getting used to this. I have been eating this stuff for past 9 months, but not every day - I would do it anywhere between 2-5 days per week. Now I eat it almost every day. It's actually not too bad with a touch of cinnamon and a few raisins.
Snack: Aaaah, our friend came back from India and brought this sweet stuff. Made with milk, sugar and nuts. No, there is no such thing as fat free milk in Indian cuisine. Had 2 squares (about 1x1 inch) - probably 100 Cal a piece if not more. Also, I had a couple of nuts and a few potato chips during the day.
Lunch: all you can eat buffet! Yup, this time at Jason's Deli (our local shop) and this time it was the all you can eat salad bar. We did a takeout, so I loaded my box with a bunch of goodies. Spinach (did you notice I like spinach?) instead of lettuce, a few tomatoes, onion, green peppers, etc. However, topped it off with a tablespoon of each of potato salad, bean salad, cole slaw and threw some nuts on top of it. No dressing, but I did have about 1/2 cup of various puddings with strawberries and bananas. Not too bad. Ate about 1/3 of it before I went running, finished it within 1/2 hour of coming back.
Dinner: Hmmm, we still have some tortilla chips at home and they need to be eaten. Had a small bowl with salsa.
Exercise: running 2.3 miles, 20:40, did 111 crunches on the exercise ball.
I am really beginning to like stretching after I run. I spent probably 10 minutes out on the lawn next to the bike path doing different leg and back stretches. Feel good about the time, too. Who knows, maybe I can do it in under 18 minutes one day. That would put me at 7.6 mph. I could live with that - somewhere around 8 minutes per mile would be really cool. OK, that's the goal for the end of summer.
Alcohol: none, drank a little over gallon of water - still having another glass right now. Had only one cup of coffee in the morning.

Other comments: Tried to make chocolate out of my chocolate beans. Pretty hard stuff. I have to find something that will crush the beans into a fine powder. It's pretty hard to do so by hand in our ancient ceramic mincer (crusher?), so I tried to grind them in a grain mill - that does not work very well, it clogs up pretty quickly. Finally got it in some kind of almost powder form (about 1/4 cup of the beans), added about 1/2 teaspoon of cacao butter, added 1/8 cup crystallized cane syrup, 6 almonds, dash of cinnamon, dash of allspice, bit 'o coriander and tiny bit of ginger. Mixed it together, heated in boiling water to the point of having some kind of paste out of it and shoved it in the freezer. It tastes pretty good, but the consistency is far from your standard Hershey bar.