Breakfast of champions!

I have oatmeal with chia seeds and fruit every morning during school. It fills me and staves off hunger until lunch. Which is great because stress eating is huge in school. If I'm full I don't roam the hallways like a hangry Visigoth looking for any crumb to eat. Oatmeal with chia seeds also feels good while digesting, and my cholesterol has lowered.

After a brief detour last week of eggs or salmon for breakfast, I am back to oatmeal with chia seeds. Here's the lowdown:

A 1 ounce (2TB) serving of chia seeds contains:

Fiber: 11 grams.
Protein: 4 grams.
Fat: 9 grams (5 of which are Omega-3s).
Calcium: 18% of the RDA.
Manganese: 30% of the RDA.
Magnesium: 30% of the RDA.
Phosphorus: 27% of the RDA.
They also contain a decent amount of Zinc, Vitamin B3 (Niacin), Potassium, Vitamin B1 (Thiamine) and Vitamin B2.

This is particularly impressive when you consider that this is just a single ounce, which supplies only 137 calories and one gram of digestible carbohydrate!

Information from Healthline.

Oats are among the most nutrient-dense foods you can eat. And you already know about blueberries and their benefits.

What I do is make one serving of oats according to the package directions, and add the 2T of chia seeds. I turn on the burner to 2. This cooks it long enough to soften the chia seeds. One thing I like about chia seeds is that in their raw state they are crunchy but definitely chewable, unlike many other seeds. But interestingly when chia seeds are put into a liquid, they puff up the item it's in while softening. Sometimes people make 'chia pudding' that way. It increases the volume of oatmeal.

I set it on 2 and walk away. It doesn't take long for the oatmeal to cook, I make it every day when I school is in. I just leave it for five minutes or so. When it's cooked to the consistency I like, I add honey and milk, though if you are Vegan you can leave off those last two. I put in a tupperware, and go. Or if I'm home I eat it right then.

Look up chia seeds, all their health benefits and uses. Oatmeal is a good breakfast. I strayed into eggs and salmon for a while, and it was good to have a little variety, but now I'm back! I feel the oaty and chia benefits. Now all I need to do is stop at Kroger and buy a jumbo oatmeal package, and I'll be all set.

Brunch, Murray, and summer

For brunch I made broccoli-garden tomato frittata with hot sauce, sourdough toast, and home fries. Cuban coffee on the side. I'll have three more weeks of brunches like this before it's cereal gobbled while I frantically walk around and finish morning tasks, so as to leave the driveway at 7AM sharp.

I say brunch because in the summer my schedule shifts somewhat. I wake up later. I get up around 6 or 6:30 am rather than 5:30 in the school year. I read the bible and pray a while, then I get dressed. Around 8:30 I start making breakfast but as the summer progresses the breakfast gets later and later, around 10 or 10:30. So by then it's bunch.

I eat lunch around 2:30, something light, and then dinner around 7.

The kitties like me at home. They are so funny. During the day I sit at the kitchen table and write, research, and later on, watch Hulu. Luke and Bert, my original two, take turns during the day napping on the table behind the laptop. They like to be near. I like them near. The are polite and well-behaved, and never fuss about whose turn it is.

Murray, my new kitty, well, let's just say he is a piece of work. He is a good cat, but he's a kitty, so he is more rambunctious. Unlike Bert & Luke, who were rescued at 5 weeks, Murray was a stray for three months. He lived on our property, but was independent. He came and went, and had to be hyper-vigilant about predators. You could tell he liked people. He'd come running every day when I drove in after school. He allowed me to comb him (and pick off the fleas) and to cuddle him. Briefly. It broke my heart because when I cuddled him he'd start to relax, but any little noise and he would tense up and then run off. I used to think that was a terrible way to live, never being able to relax and accept some love.

I made it a goal to offer that to Murray when I took him inside.

It's been a while now, six months. He has started relaxing for longer periods when I hold him or comb him. He isn't as skittish. I never held or combed him longer than he wanted. I made sure to always stop before he fussed. Hopefully this would assure him that he wasn't trapped. Hopefully it would leave him wanting more.

He'd incrementally relax longer each time. That was good to see. A couple of weeks ago he began seeking it out. He never lets me pick him up from the floor. He always, and I mean always runs away when I call to him or approach him. I have to train him to come, like I did with the other cats. He is not there yet.

But when he does want company he runs to the table and sits on the right side, with his back to me no less. (The other two always sit on the left side, funny). I hold him and blessedly, he has started purring. A non-purring cat is a heartbreak, but a purring cat is a blessing.

While he purrs, Murray will relax a bit. You can feel his muscles collapse. He throws a paw over my arm. I can almost hear him sigh. I love this. It feels so good offer safety and love to a little vulnerable thing. Murray is a good cat. He'll come along. He'll settle in at some point on the range. Luke will let me hold him all day. he never wiggles out. Bert loves to be held but only for about five minutes. But during those five minutes he loves it totally and completely. LOL, sometimes he drools he purrs so hard.

My new neighbor has sheep. I love to watch them graze in the pasture next door. They are big animals, and funny too. I knew sheep 'baa'd' but I had not know how guttural and sound-carrying their bleats were. I like that too. I really enjoy having animals around. Life in Georgia is always interesting.

Murray marauding. He's in constant motion, until he drops dead in a nap.

Wot? Wot? Mom's laying on the rug? Gotta check it out!

He sits down for a moment but it won't be long until he moves...

And there he goes. Now's a good time to clean myself up, till I make the next mess!

He sure is a pretty kitty!

A quiet day

We had no school again. Though the staff had to show up, the students didn't. That means substitute teachers stay home too! The night before a day I know I will not be working, I often stay up late. That means midnight instead of eleven o'clock. That one hour seems to make a huge difference. I can't get along as well on 6 and a half hours of sleep as I can seven or seven and a half. So I feel guilty like a kid, sneaking, when I stay up later!

left, we are almost back to this, blooming flowers we had the week before this snowfall that downed poles and crushed roofs.

Boston Legal was on last night and I truly enjoy the writing on that show. It makes me laugh out loud. In one scene, Alan Shore is at a bar with his girlfriend, and a neanderthal looking guy approaches her when she is alone for a moment. Alan steps in, and says, "I saw her talking with a tree, and I'm an arborist, so I thought I'd help translate." Enjoyable television at its best. So of course it was canceled this season.

This morning dawned clear and sunny. The rapidly melting snow is making a racket on my metal awning shutters in a comforting way. For breakfast I boiled two eggs and toasted wheat bread, hard. I peel the eggs, and mash them over the hard toasted bread, and top with pepper and salt. I love that breakfast. It seems to satisfy all my meal delights: the warm eggs, the lively bread texture, the salt. Mmm. Coffee by my side of course, and I set off on cleaning up the apartment.

Not that it needed it, I am clean and neat by nature. But I put away the dried dishes, cleaned out the kitty litter, made the bed, fluffed the sofa pillows. When I walk into each room I like seeing things neat and orderly. It comforts me. Maybe it is a latent response to the disarray in my childhood home growing up. As for work life, there are some teachers who are simply a pleasure to sub for, because their rooms are clean and you can find all the teachers' manuals and papers. And it seems the neat teachers' rooms have the most orderly kids, too. Hmmm, a connection there. ;) I like neatness, anyway.

I have a job for tomorrow and Friday so today is the last day to get caught up from the storm damages and missed work. I went over to an elderly friends' house again and shoveled the ice build-up and mopped the defrosting fridge water on the floor etc. There are still many without power! I am lucky to have it back.

Well I got a call, and my elderly friend is in the hospital. I knew it was coming, she has been failing lately, being 83 years old with heart and kidney trouble. I pray for her now.