Race to Live 5k

MC and I decided to run a 5k, even though our training regimen has been a little sub-par for running lately. It was a cool morning, but the race wasn't until 10 am so it was actually about a perfect 50 degrees when we ran. Some decent hills as we looped through campus, and we stayed running for the entire race, minus a quick stop at a water stand. Lynn and Matt came out too and Matt ran with us and Lynn ran with some of her work buddies. My calf started bugging me about half way through but never really hurt too bad. And though not by a ton, MC got a PR, which is always awesome :-)

31:16

MC - 31:16 (PR)

Top Chef Night... with guests!

So, as has been the case, we cooked for Top Chef night. Usually it has been MC's night (and I'm still trying to get her to start a blog to at least log her cooking too) but she had a lot going on so I volunteered to take care of it. This was a little different too because we had guests!! Ian and Caitie are avid Top Chef watchers as well, so we invited them over to join in dinner and watch the show. It was a lot of fun!

I tried a recipe from the Biggest Loser cookbook called Southwestern Pileup or something. Usually I am very rigid about following every direction and measurement, but I just sorta winged it through most of this one. It was pretty simple so it wasn't hard. It called for a pita, but I liked the look of the flatbread better. I seasoned some chicken with mexican spices and garlic and grilled it, then toasted the pita a bit in the oven. I spread a layer of roasted red pepper hummus, then added the chicken, red peppers, cilantro, tomato, black beans, and cheese. Bake for like 7 minutes and voila! It was pretty darn scrumptious, especially for being so simple. I also had some guacamole and sour cream for people to add to taste and paired it with some chips and salsa.

At the time I actually forgot to take pictures, but luckily the flatbread pack had 5 in it, so there was one left over for me to recreate the meal for my lunch today. I had to get a snapshot somehow! :-) I'll probably be a little more adventurous when friend's lives aren't on the line ;-) and will have some more complicated recipes in the future. For now, this'll do though!!

Quick Valentine's Blurb

MC and I decided to go pretty low-key for valentines. It WAS our first valentine's, but cash is kinda tight so we thought we'd just keep it simple. We had a wonderful day of just hanging out and enjoying each others company. We were going to start the day off with a 5k, but it got canceled due to rain (weenies!). So we came back to the apartment complex and did a short jog on the treadmill. After the jog I fixed us up some breakfast and made MC a special plate. Notice the hearts on the toast on the left as well! She saw this recipe and it looked absolutely perfect for a little valentines meal. :-)

Top Chef Wednesday!

Usually this would be MC's day to cook and I would get tomorrow, but with Valentine's day being this weekend we modified our schedule a little bit. Also, MC had a little dinner shindig to attend in the evening and we wanted to get a run in before Top Chef/dinner so it made sense for me to make something quick and easy. I decided I would make some soft tacos since it would be easy for MC to just grab one or two since she didn't need a whole meal.

It wasn't anything fancy, but the twist was that instead of ground beef, I tried a tofu crumble meant to resemble it. I cut up green and red peppers, tomatoes, and onions and tossed it all in a skillet for a while. I heated up some black beans and chopped up some spinach and wrapped each up in a wheat tortilla. It was very scrumptious! I have been intrigued by meat alternatives, but haven't really tried that many. It was healthier (the 10 oz package had like 220 calories and very little fat) and it had a different flavor, but a good one. A simple, but successful, meal indeed! It was a great recovery meal too since MC and I got a little lost on our run and what was supposed to be like a light 1.5 miles, turned into about 2.9 miles. Fun!!

Taking after my sis

So MC and I have decided that we are both going to work on developing our culinary skills. Since we watch Top Chef every wednesday, we thought that would be a good cooking night since that show always makes us super hungry anyways. I don't know if I will keep track of MC's cooking or just log what I am doing, but we shall see how it develops. Since we were having a cold spell, we thought that during our dinner and show on wednesday would be a good time to christen our fireplace!

We just made a simple little fire, but it was fun doing it for the first time in our new place and the spinach stuffed chicken MC made was super scrumptious!! And this picture is a bit of a prelude to the apartment post I swear I will make sometime soon. We hope to clean stuff up this weekend and take some good pictures so I can show everyone our new snazzy living quarters.

So thursday it was my turn to do some cooking. We have several cookbooks that we have been perusing a lot lately and two of them I have been looking at especially. The Biggest Loser and Quick & Healthy. Both are really nice because they not only have recipes that are pretty good for you, but they have the nutritional information, which makes keeping the fitday journal up-to-date through our culinary exploration much easier. I decided to cook pecan-crusted chicken from the Biggest Loser book and I paired it with german red cabbage with apples from the Quick & Healthy book.

The chicken was very good and flavorful, though the recommended serving size was a little small (1/4 pound of chicken). The cabbage was definitely on the experimental side. I think I could have used a larger skillet and I think I "simmered" at a little bit too high of a heat. In the book the apple slices looked intact, but in mine they started becoming more like applesauce than apple slices. Overall, it was still pretty good! VERY flavorful, almost too much so. I think having larger pieces of chicken so it would need less of the cabbage as a side would have been about perfect. All-in-all it was a pretty successful meal and pretty good on the health side as well!

Maybe having a set day with something specific to post (like back when I did weigh-in posts) will help me keep this thing a little more up-to-date as well. We shall see!