Category Archives: iron

Hooray for iron!

Well, I nixed the gym in the morning.  The amount of snow was not so much the problem, it was the blowing wind.

I knew we had to shovel anyway, so it’s not like there wouldn’t be exercise in there…

I settled in to make a warm breakfast.  Banana custard cream of wheat topped with creamed honey and toasted walnuts.

If you have never tried creamed honey, please do so.  It’s really just honey that is crystallized with super fine crystal and is smooth and velvety.  I am going to try to make my own, I think.  It just takes time and a bit of creamed honey as a starter.

It feels so good to get back to normal eating.  I was eating dinner last night and thought how nice it was to eat my chicken, pears, and brussel sprouts for dinner (yes, I know that seems kinda lame, but I like it).  I ended up not eating a single piece of candy or cookie yesterday.  Not on purpose really, but I think my body had just had enough.  I didn’t even have any honey drizzle on my afternoon latte.  I ended up with a no-added sugar day on accident, so that crosses off 1 goal for the week already!

After breakfast, we went out to shovel.  I bundled up really well because of the wind.  I don’t mind cold too much except when it is windy on top of it.  Meet Nanook of New York:

I actually did some trainer riding as well, just for extra exercise.  After some work and the usual stuff, I was really hungry for lunch.  BBQ chicken sounded good to me, and here it is!

I did feel like a little something sweet today, so I had a white chocolate truffle courtesy of one of my nieces.

Went well with a latte.  Or would have, if I hadn’t finished it first.

The snow stopped and the sun came out, although the wind is just wretched.  We were able to keep our appointment for blood donation. Last one of the year!

I have now gone straight to having a supervisor do the needle stick for me.  I have a very large vein in my arm, but it is a little scarred and rolls a lot, which has caused problems with past donations where they have to fiddle with the needle.  That makes me very uncomfortable (putting it mildly), so I just went straight to the top to have the stick done.  It worked like a charm!  My iron (hemoglobin)  is also really great.  13.4.  Go broccoli!  Not to mention the pot roast we had on Christmas eve probably helped a lot.

I supplemented the iron with raisins after donation.

It was past dinner time when we got home.  I put some clam strips in the toaster oven for us.  I noticed that the nutritional info has these clam strips at containing 70% of the RDA for iron!  Yay!

On a side note about iron and anemia, did you know that your body will store about 2 years’ worth of vitamin B?  That’s why it can take a long time for someone who is a vegetarian/vegan who does not pay attention to their diet enough to become anemic.  Very important to pay attention to that nutrient if you go that route.  Not me, though.  I like my meat.

Evening snack tonight:

Pumpkin ricotta mixture.

I have to work some more tonight, but staying in an snuggled up under a blanket.  Not getting me out again today!

The older I get, the more appealing moving a little more South seems.  Not too far, though, because I like 4 seasons, but it would be nice to have it not quite so cold and windy.

Question:  What iron-rich foods do you like?

Blood donation Day and 4-miler

It was pretty hot and humid this morning, so I decided just to do 4 miles instead of 8 (later this week).  Fueled up with that yummy toast and jam like yesterday.  I could eat 6 pieces of this!  Last of the hazelnut butter.

toast1

I was going to shoot for 10:30 miles and I did that for the first mile.  After that, I was sweating copiously.  The sweat was literally flying off of me (gross!).  I noticed my time slowed considerably to an 11 minute mile for 2 and 3, then I picked up the pace for the last mile and finished in 43:45.  I was totally soaked when I finished.  I definitely do not like running in humidity. Lots of water drinking commenced.

Decided to continue the jam and nut butter combo with some oat bran topped with both of those!  Like a PBJ in a bowl.

oat

Today was blood donation day!  PSA – they are really short on A+ right now.  You can visit the Red Cross site to find a donation happening in your area.

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They had an interesting snack available at the snack table:

snack

Raisins!  They had the usual cookies and cheez-its, but I decided on the raisins.  Normally I get Lorna Doones, but the pack size is now up to 6 cookies, which is more than I want.  So, decided on raisins.

Did you know that raisins are high in iron?  1 ounce gives you 8% of your RDA.  Broccoli is also high in iron, and you all know how I eat it pretty much every day.  My hemoglobin test  was 13.9  – how about that?  Yay me!  Higher than John’s.  I need to get him to eat  broccoli  (good luck with that….)

Note the Friendly’s coupon for donating this month.  A free 1/2 gallon of ice cream – d’oh!!

We went out to dinner afterwards to  Panera Bread.  I got the Fuji Apple salad, which has chicken, dried apples, gorgonzola cheese, and pecans.  It is quite good!

salad

The laziest cat in the world trying to stay cool in the window:

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She’s too big to fit in the sill, but she tries!  I am going to imitate her tonight,  as I get to be lazy for donating blood.  Need to catch up my google reader!