Fainting Goats and Talking Dogs

Have you seen this video of the fainting goats?

Insane! I love watching random animal videos on YouTube. My sister and I will spend inordinate amounts of time watching “talking” dog videos.

This one is my all-time favorite “talking” dog video:

“I want my mamaaaa!”

Sadie says this all the time… But she follows it up with “Now go get me some chicken strips, woman.” 😉

You may be thinking, “Okay, Julie… why are you posting videos about goats and talking dogs?”

Well, my lunch included goat cheese and that’s the direction my brain went. Quite the tangent, huh?

Let’s get back to my goat cheese-filled lunch, shall we?

Lunch

Lunch today was deeeelish.

I enjoyed a goat cheese and avocado bagelwich on a sweet wheat Alternative Bagel with fresh spinach.

Goat Cheeeeeeese

I am seriously in love with the Chavrie goat cheese I used on this bagelwich. It’s spreadable, creamy, mild and flippin’ delicious.

For some additional color and crunch, I also included a sliced red pepper and carrot sticks on the side.

The Whole Shebang

Eat Me!

Chomp, chomp, chomp.

Calling All Animal Lovers

Feel free to post a link to your favorite animal videos below. Funny, cute, whatever! I love ’em all.

(Or if you don’t want to post an animal-loving link, feel free to tell me how much you love goat cheese. That entertains me, too. 😉 )

Love Affair

When I fall in love I fall in love with a new food, I fall in love hard.

I am so excited by the tastiness of something new that I want to include it in every meal!

As evidenced by my new love for Chavrie goat cheese, which I only discovered yesterday, I simply had to include the creamy goodness in my lunch today since our love affair is in full bloom.

Goat Cheese + Broccoli + Pasta

I need to back off from the cheese a bit because I can already feel myself getting a little too attached, clingy and overly obsessed.

I think the $6 price tag on such a small chunk o’ cheese will help prevent this new relationship from becoming a full-fledged addiction.

I included the goat cheese in a pasta bowl with Carba Nada egg fettuccine noodles and steamed broccoli.

Lunch is Served

Noodle Bowl

On the side I enjoyed a small banana.

Nanner

All Together

Lunch was finger lickin’ good (or fork lickin’ good in this case 😉 ).

Now a question for YOU!

What is your most recent food obsession?

Though this goat cheese is definitely my most recent foodie love, my past obsessions have included Monterey Pasta Company’s ravioli, flourless peanut butter cookies, the Pioneer Woman’s sugar cookies, Carba Nada noodles, pumpkin protein pancakes, Babybel cheese, Mochi frozen yogurt, Jimmy John’s sandwiches, and Lindt truffles… to name a few. 😉

For the Non-Blog Savvy Folks

This morning as I was packing my lunch, I sampled the Chavrie goat cheese I planned to use in my lunchtime sandwich.

Chavrie Goat Cheese

HOLY COW (or should I say goat?). This stuff is insanely delicious.

I easily could have inhaled the entire block.I loved its silky texture and the mild flavor. Though strong goat cheese is delicious, I actually prefer the more muted flavor of this brand.

I probably ate two servings while packing my lunch, but fortunately enough of the cheese remained to include in my cucumber sandwich this afternoon.

Though this goat cheese is freakishly delicious, I’m not sure how often I’d be willing to shell out $6 for it. For a special occasion (like a Wednesday, apparently), it’s definitely worth the extra dough.

Along with my goat cheese and cucumber sandwich, I enjoyed a freshly sliced green pepper and a cup of grape tomatoes.

Cuc + Goat Cheese Sandwich with Green Peppers

Green Pep

Grape Tomatoes

For a little sweetness, I rounded out the meal with a cup of Oikos honey Greek yogurt.

Honey Bee

All Togetha Naw

Mmm, mmm, good. 🙂

For the Non-Blog Savvy Folks

I am not a very computer-savvy or blog-savvy person. It literally took me a year to discover Google Reader and realize you could subscribe to blogs.

If this sounds foreign to you, then this section of today’s post is just for you!

(Picture Source)

If you are a blog-reading pro, then the following content will likely bore you to bits! 😀 Just warnin’ ya.

In talking with some of my non-blog savvy friends, I realized there are a couple of things I should probably touch on that may seem so obvious to those of you immersed in the blog world, but are completely over the heads of those of you  more like me who tend to pick computer-related things up rather slowly.

Let’s get crackin’:

• Subscriptions: If you read certain blogs every day, you may want to subscribe to these blogs. This means that every time the blogger posts, you’ll receive an update. Most blogs have an icon on their homepage that you can click to subscribe (you may see mine at the top, left of this page or simply click here to subscribe to this blog).

• Google Reader: When you choose to subscribe to a blog you can receive email notifications or have the blog updates populate in certain blog-reading programs like Google Reader. I subscribe to a bunch of blogs and check all of them through Google Reader since it keeps everyone’s blog updates in one spot. This allows me to keep up with blogs I love without having to individually check the sites or type in the website addresses every day.

• Bookmarking: If subscribing to a blog isn’t your cup of tea,  you may be more interested in bookmarking a favorite site. To do this, simply hold down the “Ctrl” and “D” keys on your keyboard and click “Done” and the site will be bookmarked!

• Commenting: I was shocked when one of my very best friends told me she didn’t know she could comment on my blog! She was confused by my “Questions of the Day” and didn’t understand why I’d ask them when no one could answer. 😀 Well, you can! At the bottom of a post, you’ll see red text with a whole bunch of links. If you click the one that says “Leave a Comment” or “15 Comments” etc., then you can simply type in your name (or nickname), your email address (which no one but me will see) and your web site (if applicable) and then comment away!

• Twitter: Many bloggers are really into Twitter. I recently started “tweeting” a couple of weeks ago and absolutely love it. It’s a great way to follow some of your favorite bloggers, venues and companies. I especially love it when companies or actual cities “tweet” about promotions and sales. Twitter is a great tool to use to be “in the know.” You may follow me on Twitter here.

I apologize to those of you who were rolling your eyes and saying “DUH!” as you read the above content, but hopefully it helped at least one of you out there have a bit of an “Ah ha!” moment! 😀

Questions of the Afternoon

• Do you consider yourself blog-savvy?
  
• What’s something that took you a while to pick up regarding blogging or blog-reading?
  

Mid-Week Break

Last week I loved the way my body felt after cramming an inordinate amount of veggies into my lunch in the form of a mega-salad, so I decided to keep the fun rollin’ and made another ginormous salad today.

Large and In Charge

“Could this salad BE any bigger?” (Said in a Chandler Bing voice, of course. 😉 )

This time my salad included:

• Chopped romaine lettuce
• Cabbage
• Grape tomatoes
• Carrots
• Cucumber
• Goat cheese
• Balsamic vinegar and olive oil

Pretty Veggies

I’m feeling the veggie vibes throughout my body now! Maybe I’m insane, but after eating a huge salad, I really do feel more energized. Even if it’s all in my head, I’ll take it! J

Along with my salad, I had a cup of Dannon Greek yogurt with honey for protein and a little sweetness.

Yog

Wednesday Lunch

Mid-Week Break

Though I love my job, sometimes I think about what I would do if I had a day off in the middle of the week.

Since weekends are often crammed with social activities and plans with family and friends, a mid-week break sure would be nice sometimes.

With an extra day off in the middle of the week I would:

• Sleep in
• Take Sadie to the dog park
• Do laundry
• Work out and take time to explore new strength training exercises
• Take a yoga class at my gym (The one that they only seem to offer in the middle of the work day)
• Make a more involved dinner
• Run errands
• Finally address our save the dates
• Get a pedicure
• Read my book

What would you do if you had a day off in the middle of the week?

Post That Nutritional Info!

Hooray for HoneyBaked Ham!

Ryan’s mom sent us home with a large bag of leftover HoneyBaked Ham from yesterday’s big Easter lunch. Ryan enjoyed a big ham and cheese sandwich for dinner last night which inspired my lunch today.

I wanted a ham sandwich!

Monday's Lunch

I enjoyed my sandwich with a side of roasted turnip fries and ketchup.

Turnip Fries + Ham Sandwich

For dessert I dug into my Easter candy and enjoyed two Dove dark chocolate eggs.

Dark Chocolate Eggs

So smooth and so creamy!

Free Chavrie Goat Cheese

Are you a cheese love-ah?

Chavrie Cheese

Click here to receive a free sample of Chavrie goat cheese. Yum!

Posting Nutritional Information

How did I miss this!?

Apparently a couple weeks ago, a new health law was passed that will require chain restaurants with more than 20 locations, such as Starbucks and McDonald’s, to post calorie information on their menus and drive through signs.

Additionally, nutritional information must be displayed for foods sold in vending machines.

This information should be available as soon as 2011.

How do you feel about restaurants posting nutritional information?

I think this is awesome. With the growing rate of obesity in the United States, I think it is so important for people to have adequate nutritional information to make educated decisions about what they choose to put into their bodies. Whether they choose to ignore the information is up to them, but at least it’s out there and visible.