Well, I am officially on Christmas break from school! I am excited to spend time with Avery, get some blog posts done, and hopefully catch up on my sleep. Since this post is coming out on Thursday instead of Wednesday, you can tell I'm trying hard to stick to that last point. Well really, after the night I had last night, I was beyond ready to go to sleep early. Let's recap: I went to make my usual "just got home from work" smoothie, and I noticed my beloved Vitamix blender was not working right. It was making a high whirring sound, nothing was getting blended, and I smelled a burning rubber-type smell. Not cool. So I did a little Googling and discovered I have a broken "drive socket". How can I tell? Well here's the drive socket below and you see that lovely little crack down the middle? Well that means it's broken. Whammy!
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| The broken drive socket on my Vitamix blender. |
No worries, I thought. My Vitamix came with a rocking 7 year warranty. Even better I saw online how to replace the drive socket and it looked really simple. So I called Vitamix, told them my problem, they said they would send me a new drive socket (for free). But then I heard the words that made me shutter, "You can expect to get that in about 7-10 business days."
Shut the front door! I make 2 smoothies a day, I often use it to make certain things for dinner. What in the world would I do without it for up to 2 weeks. I might lose my mind!
My response, "Is there any way I can pay you extra to ship it quicker?"
Her response, "No, we are really backed up here with everyone getting ready for Christmas."
Luckily I was still Googling while I was talking to the Vitamix rep on the phone, and I saw where you could buy drive socket replacement kits online for fairly cheap ($9). So I kept calm, said "Thank you," and hung up the phone.
This is where it gets even more fun, I knew I wanted it ASAP, but tack $40 Next-Day shipping fee onto $9 and I'm up to $50 just to get that tiny little part, but I don't know what I'd do without my blender for almost two weeks. So I clicked "purchase" and we'll see how quick it gets here.
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| The smoothie that never got made...so sad. |
After that fiasco, things got even crazier when Brandon got home from work and handed me my dinner, spaghetti from Noodles and Company, one of my favorite restaurants that I blogged about back here. I was eagerly awaiting this meal since I hadn't had my smoothie, and didn't have time to make a home-cooked meal, but to my surprise there was CHEESE on my gluten-free rice noodles and spaghetti sauce!
Shut the front door, again!
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| My favorite rice-noodle spaghetti from Noodles & Company, covered in CHEESE. ) : |
I'm not sure why Noodles and Company is content to put cheese on everything, even after you don't specify that you want it, but that's what we got...cheese. Since I'm vegan and my highest food sensitivity is dairy, picking it off wasn't an option. And it was 7:45, so returning it wasn't an option. So Brandon decided to take it for leftovers the next day (occasionally he'll eat cheese when he eats out). That left me with nothing...wah wah wah.
At that point I was done....
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| No smoothie, no Noodles & Company...I'm done with this day. |
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| My crafty dinner: Tinkyada spaghetti noodles, Pepperjack Daiya Cheese, fire-roasted frozen corn from Trader Joe's, and black beans. |
Well, that was quite a night. And instead of getting, well...pissed off, I tried to just laugh at it. Ha ha ha! Truly, to have one crazy thing happen after another like that was quite hilarious. And since I knew I didn't have school the next day, it was all good.
So here we are Thursday morning...I'm rested, Avery's rested, there's no Chocolate Ice Cream Smoothie to start my day with, but life is going on. Let's get on with the food, which was all set and ready to go from Tuesday, but here it is for you now on Thursday. My gluten-free, vegan eats for the day...
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| Just woke up snack: Rice Chex cereal, Trader Joe's Vanilla Coconut Milk. |
Workout: 1 hour of pilates to the DVD: 10 Minute Solutions: Pilates
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| Breakfast: "Chocolate Ice Cream Smoothie" Who would have thought there was spinach in this amazing smoothie? |
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| Mid-morning snack: 1 Food for Life Gluten-Free English Muffin, with organic strawberry jelly and Earth Balance butter. |
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| 2nd Mid-Morning snack: 1 banana |
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| Lunch: "Lentil Quinoa Soup" from The Clean Eating Mama, with 2 slices of Rudi's Multigrain Gluten-Free bread. Although this isn't the prettiest thing I've ever eaten, it tastes soooo good! We love the chunks of mushrooms! Perfect for a winter day. |
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| My gum of choice: Spry Xylitol Gum. Although I blogged about this gum more back in this post over a year ago, this continues to be my favorite aspartame-free, sugar-free gum. Okay, so the flavor doesn't last nearly as long as other popular gum, but I don't have to worry about some of the side-effects that could come from aspartame-infused gums. |
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| Afternoon snack #1: Guiltless Gourmet Black Bean Dip with corn tortilla chips. |
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| Afternoon snack #2: organic Gala apple |
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| Almost time to head home snack: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Larabar. |
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| Just got home snack: "Green Orange Julius Smoothie" with: orange juice, Vanilla Sun Warrior Rice Protein Powder, spinach, 1 1/2 frozen bananas, and ice. |
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| Dinner: Gluten-free Tinkyada pasta with spaghetti sauce and TVP (for those of you who don't know about this, TVP stands for Textured Vegetable Protein and it's a simple, cheap, and quick way to add some "meat-like" crumbles to any meal.) I'll have to post a recipe with this soon! |
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| Dessert: The reason I go to Trader Joe's: Chocolate-covered frozen banana slices! These babies are gluten-free and vegan. And since you know I love bananas, they are right up my alley! |
So that's my eats from Tuesday, my craziness from Wednesday and my thoughts from Thursday...maybe next week things will get a bit more back to normal. If not, it's all good, I will still be relaxing on my break.
How about you? Do you get any time off for the holidays? And more importantly...eat anything good lately? Post below!