A day of cooking...

Today wound up being a day of cooking. I got a whole new box of produce from Backyard Produce this past Tuesday, so I jumped in with both feet - butternut squash french fries, sweet potato, spinach and peanut butter soup, carrot and celery soup, and meatless crumbles. My freezer is now stocked and successfully keeping me away from the grocery store for at least another week.

Beautiful!

First off, butternut squash french fries. This gem actually came from last week's produce box and I wasn't sure what to do with it, so I started looking to pinterest for ideas to use it for. In the past, I've made butternut squash soup, that I wasn't that impressed with, and butternut squash mac n' cheese, that was very good, but the scale is creeping up so I wanted to keep it a bit lower calorie - enter butternut squash French fries.

Butternut Squash French Fries
(original post)

Needed:
-butternut squash
-salt

1. Take a potato peeler and peel off all the skin on the squash, then cut off both ends

2. Slice it lengthwise, and scoop out all the insides (if you want you can keep the seeds to roast them!)

3. Cut up the sections into fry-looking pieces. It won't be perfect, just wing it

4. IMPORTANT take the pieces and lay them on a paper towel, sprinkle with a bit of salt and let them "sweat." Let them sit for about 10 minutes you can preheat the oven to 425 during this time. This draws out all the moisture so your fries can get nice and crisp. Once the 10 minutes are up pat the fries dry

5. Place the fries on a lightly sprayed cookie sheet, then give the fries a little spritz of cooking oil and sprinkle a bit more salt on them

6. Bake for about 40 minutes, turning halfway through

I seriously devoured this in less than 2 minutes...and oh yeah, ZERO Weight Watcher points! Say what!!

Next off, I got my meatless crumbles going. This was a recipe from my mom that she gave me in a cookbook for Christmas with all her favorite recipes. She uses it all the time and I can definitely see why. It makes a huge batch of crumbles that you can use in place of the Morningstar Farms meatless crumbles, for a fraction of the price. Awesome.

Meatless Crumbles

Needed:
-2 cups brown rice
-2 cups lentils
-seasoning (I used tandori because that's what I had)
-1/4 cup olive oil
-1/2 cup wheat gluten
-1 cup rolled oats


















1. Boil rice and lentils with seasoning until tender. Drain any excess water

2. Add all the rest of the ingredients and give it a good stir. I also added more seasoning

3. Add to a baking pan and bake at 300 for 1 hour, stirring about every 20 minutes

It says it makes 10 servings, so I separated it into 5 freezer bags and tossed them in the freezer and I'll just pull them out as needed. Too easy.

Moving on to the soups...

Sweet Potato, Spinach and Peanut Butter
(There is no real original post for this one, I just kinda winged it and it turned out great!)

Needed:
-2 medium sweet potatoes
-2 1/2 cups veggie broth
-1 1/2 cup spinach
-garlic
-olive oil
-seasoning (I used tandori again)
-3 tblsp PB2, prepared
-3 tblsp pasta sauce

1. Heat up 1 Tbsp of olive oil and cook spinach in it for about 5 minutes, or until completely wilted

2. Peel and dice sweet potatoes

3. Add sweet potatoes, broth, pb2, pasta sauce, seasoning, and garlic

4. Simmer for about 20-25 minutes, or until sweet potatoes are soft

Tag team it and get both of those soups simmering!

5. Pulse in blender until it reaches desired consistency

I cooked lightlife italian sausages, cut them up and added it to the soup. It kind of reminded me of an Italian Wedding Soup. It was delicious.

Finally, my faithful carrot soup. I got carrots and celery in this last produce box, so I decided just to go ahead and cook them up. It goes along the same lines of this carrot soup just with celery instead of zucchini. You can really make a soup out of any veg you have. It's a beautiful thing!

Another year older.

According to the Army's physical fitness test, my running should continue to peak until I'm 32 years old. Is this true? Because I just turned 25 and I'm pretty sure I'm as slow as I've ever been.

I may be slow, but I'm still pretty proud of my running accomplishments. This past Saturday, I knocked out a 12-miler, which was my first double digit run since the Charleston Marathon Jan. 18. It hurt. It hurt so bad, but I did it! I did the first 5 miles with my half marathon training group, so that part was great. We talked about food for 5 miles. Seriously, for 5 miles. But the last 7 miles were hard. I ran over the Arthur Ravenel Jr. bridge, which come to find out is 823 feet worth of elevation in a 5 mile span. Ouch!

Sunday was my birthday, so all healthy eating habits went out the door because my hubs made all my favorite foods for one meal - poached egg on a bagel with hollandaise sauce and smoked salmon with biscuits and gravy and hash browns. I'm still paying for a 3-pound weight gain that I haven't shook yet, but it was totally worth it.

Monday we did a s-l-o-w 3-miler with Fleet Feet and then they tried to kill me last night.

So unsuspecting of what's to come the next night

Seriously, I did 4 miles in less than 35 minutes and that included a slow warm up mile and 5 slow laps on the track, and it still averaged to an 8:49 per mile pace. That. Is. Fast. For. Me. Maybe the Army is right?

So, what we did was after that mile warm-up through the neighborhood, we took it to the track - 1. fast lap, 2. slow lap, 3. fast lap, 4. fast lap, 5. slow lap, 6. fast lap, 7. fast lap, 8. slow lap, 9. fast lap, 10. slow lap, 11. slow lap. Followed by a half-hour ab workout, of course. Today, my head, back and legs HURT. It's supposed to be a rest/crosstrain day for me and as of right now I'm leaning more toward resting, but we'll see as the day goes on.

See!!! I'm excited!

You know you're a runner when...

You know you're officially considered a runner when presents from people start becoming running related, and you are extremely happy about it!

First, my in-laws got me a gift card to my favorite running store for Christmas, which I used for a new pair of New Balance 1400v2, and now for my birthday (this Sunday) my mom bought my registration into the Estes Park Marathon in Colorado for June and my husband bought me a new Garmin GPS watch with heart rate monitor. I have the best family, they know me so well!

With that, I finally got my marathon sign hung up in the hallway. Seriously, this is hands down my favorite project I have ever made. Thank you Pinterest.

"Every day is a good day when you run," Kevin Nelson. 

Roasted Red Pepper and Potato Soup

I've told you about this amazing produce service I use called Backyard Produce, that delivers locally grown produce directly to my door every Tuesday. Well, this week they sent me some amazing looking red peppers, so I hopped on over to Pinterest to get some ideas. I also had some potatoes sitting on the counter that needed to be used soon, enter roasted red pepper and potato soup.

I've been really into soups lately because they're so easy to make, and you can freeze them so that they're a quick meal when you need them. Like I mentioned, I've been away for the past two weeks for Army training, but when I came home I had some carrot soup waiting for me in the freezer to tied me over till I could make it to the grocery store.

Now back to the red pepper and potato soup -

Needed:
-1 onion, cut up
-minced garlic
-curry powder
-chipotle powder
-pepper
-2 red peppers, cut up
-3 potatoes, peeled and cut up
-3 cups vegetable broth

1. Saute the garlic and onions till they start to brown.

2. Add the bell peppers, dash of pepper, curry powder and chipotle powder. Cook for a couple minutes.

3. Add the potatoes and vegetable broth and bring to a boil.

4. Simmer, covered, for 10-15 minutes. Let cool slightly.

5. Blend it in the food processor till it's the consistency you like, then portion it off and freeze the containers that you'll save for later.

I had to blend it in two portions and just gave it one good pulse each, so that I'd still have some chunks

I portioned it into 3 servings and the only thing in it that has a Weight Watchers value is the potatoes and since it's 3 potatoes, I'm calling each serving 3 WW points. That's my logic and I'm sticking to it!

You can still see the chunks of red pepper and potatoes

I wish you could smell how amazing it smells as it's simmering (I guess you're going to need to make it to find out), but you can definitely smell the curry powder, which I love.

I didn't eat it yet, because I made it to bring to work, but I had to taste it and it is so good. There is so many flavors that all play very well together. You can taste the roasted peppers and the curry the most, but then it has a little kick from the chipotle powder and the potatoes give it the thicker consistency.

This is definitely something I will be making again - hint, hint Backyard produce if you have more bell peppers or potatoes coming my way ;)

Celebrating one year meat free!

I just spent the last two weeks at an Army training at the same place I was a year ago...doing Army training. It made me realize that it has been an entire year eating a pescatarian diet. It really hasn't been hard at all, and I really feel as though it makes me more creative in the kitchen finding filling meals, that don't require high-fat red meat, chicken or pork.

I really want to stress to anyone who is thinking about trying this lifestyle, but is scared that it will be too hard, I never have a hard time finding something at a restaurant, I feel better about myself, and I don't feel deprived at all. I highly recommend it, actually.

Even spending the last two weeks with the Army, I didn't have any issues with food. I would have a PB2 and banana sandwich for breakfast, a protein bar for a snack, a tuna sandwich or soup for lunch, and the opposite item for dinner, and a peanut butter apple for an afternoon snack.

I actually found a new brand of vegan soups that I was really impressed with - Dr. McDougall's. I had the Vegan Tortilla Soup with Baked Chips and the Vegan Black Bean and Lime Soup and both were really tasty. I would dip some triscuits in them for some substance and voila, you have a quick, and easy meal while on the go.

Now that I'm back home, I cooked up a homemade pizza crust then topped it with pizza sauce, tomatoes, onions, shrimp mozzarella cheese and garlic.

The crust recipe was too easy and it's definitely something to try again. See, the creativity is alive :)

1. Take .25 oz dry yeast and 1 tsp sugar and dissolve it in 1 cup warm water for 10 minutes.

2. Mix in 2.5 cups flour and 2 tbsp olive oil and mix till smooth. Let sit for 5 minutes.

3. Flatten out and add whatever toppings you'd like.

4. Bake at 450 for 15-20 minutes.

On the running front, I've been pretty consistent lately. I did a 10-miler yesterday and a 4-miler with my half marathon running group today (oh, how I've missed them!)

Oh yeah! And I got my confirmation packet in the mail today for GREECE! I will be running the Athens marathon this November with a friend and I CANNOT WAIT! I will definitely be talking about that more later, but for now, I have a pizza calling my name.