little legs on a quest for basil

I was cut early from work this evening so I decided to just chill out at home instead of trying to find someone who had the night off that would want to go for dinner. My plan was to go to The Kitchen Table to pick up cherry tomatoes, basil, balsmic vinegar, bocconcini, and some milk for tomorrow's cereal. Organic 1% part skim milk was on sale for $1.99 (score!), but there wasn't any basil. So I got everything else and made my way up to Queen Street thinking that the fruit market at Portland would have basil. Maybe it did, but it was closed. That place keeps such erratic hours. I passed by a Wine Rack on the way back to my place so I decided to stop in and now I'm sipping on some Sawmill Creek Autumn Blush. The guys that were working there were in the midst of kicking out a drunk bum and telling him never to come back. I appreciated the live entertainment. Anyway, I ended up going to the Fresh 'n' Wild at King and Spadina for basil which basically had me walk in a loop from work, to home, and basically almost back to work again. In the end, I got my basil and had the lovely salad pictured below.

I sliced the cherry tomatoes in half so I wouldn't be chasing them all over the plate. Drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic reduction.

I had pulled some meat sauce out of the freezer so I had that over whole wheat spaghetti as my main course. I usually make a big batch of meat sauce, eat three meals of spaghetti with meat sauce and freeze the rest for later. I don't have a microwave right now so I do have to plan ahead if I want to eat the frozen stuff. I pulled this out of the freezer three days ago and let it thaw in the fridge and reheated it on the stove.

I cooked my pasta for 11 minutes because I like it a little past al dente. I use two jars/cans of tomato sauce (what ever is on sale) and add browned ground beef, onions, mushrooms, garlic, and fresh herbs and simmer for an hour or so. Sometimes I'll use hot Italian sausages instead; I pull the meat out of the casings and brown it like I would ground beef. By adding all the extras to store bought sauce, it really stretches it out to multiple filling meals. I'll cook once and eat at least six times.

As for the "little legs" part of this post, it is referring to my little legs, of course. A few of us at work started wearing pedometers because we were curious as to how many steps we took in a shift. I put my pedometer on when I got to work at 10:30am when I got to work this morning and just unhooked it from my belt before I sat down to start this post. So far today, I have taken 11 526 steps which equal 8.06km and 439.53 calories. I recently stepped on my bathroom scale for the first time in months and I discovered that I have gained back the 10 lbs I lost last summer. Time to get stepping!! Regular progress reports to follow...