Wow. What a week. I thought the week before last was busy, but this week put it to shame. First of all, an update on the topics discussed last week:
- Meals
- I DID make the Crockpot Coffee Ancho Chile Short Ribs. I think they turned out fine, but I wasn’t blown away by them, which was really too bad because Tim has been knocked out by a severe stomach issue for the past 7-10 days, so I had to eat all 4 pounds of this by myself. It was tasty at first, but after about the 5th meal of ribs and sauerkraut (which Tim made and which turned out SUPER awesome), I was very much over it.
- I made Heavenly Paleo Meatloaf, leaving out the onions, red pepper, and cayenne to protect Teeeeeeem’s tummy. It still turned out really good. It seemed to sit well with Tim, too, who got all creative and made meatloaf and sauerkraut soup with some homemade chicken broth (recipe from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman). The meatloaf recipe can no longer be found online, but if you want a copy, let me know in the comments.
- Paleo Fudgy Brownies. A large portion of my favorite recipes are from Health-Bent; however, this one did not turn out well for me. I baked the brownies for 18 minutes as indicated in the recipe. They still looked very under-done when I took them out, but I didn’t take the time to really test them. I waited for them to cool and realized that they were still completely doughy in the middle. I refrigerated them and was then able to scoop out bars and microwave them for about a minute (they burn something fierce if you microwave them for 2 minutes, fyi). They get a little more cooked that way. The flavor is pretty good – but very nutty. These won’t stay in my dessert rotation, especially since they call for 1 cup of almond butter. These are some EXPENSIVE brownies. In fact, after failing this recipe, I went through my recipe binder and tore out all the recipes calling for full cups of nut butter. I’m trying to be more thrifty with my cooking. More on that in a later blog post.
- I didn’t get around to making the Cowboy Breakfast Skillet, but that’s on the docket for this week. Since I’m trying to be more frugal, I didn’t plan many official meals this week; we are just going to scrounge around and eat what’s here. That means we’ll have a lot of scrambles, stir fries, and tomato soup. If I can get our monthly food spend below $700, I’ll be happy!
And to tie up some more loose ends from last week:
- My water kefir turned out!!! YAY!!! I’m so excited. I did a double ferment which means I fermented the water for 2 days, then transferred it to a flip-top bottle, added 1/4 cup of organic cherry juice, and let it sit for 6 days. When I opened it up on Thursday, it shot carbonated water 6 inches into the air! Out came fizzy pink, delicious water kefir. The flavor was great. The only disappointment is that the kefir didn’t stay very carbonated after I transferred it to a regular mason jar. Maybe I have to keep it in the flip-top bottle for it to stay carbonated. I need to get some more of those bottles. The single-fermented water kefir is way too sweet for me, so I’m going to have to double ferment everything. I’m so excited that this turned out.
- Yoga – We didn’t go on Monday, but we did make it on Wednesday. There was a different teacher this time, and instead of telling you exactly what to do, she allowed you to make it “your workout.” That meant that she described several variations of what you could be doing at any point in time. It was very confusing to me. I just want to be told to do one thing, so I can look at the teacher or the other students and figure out exactly what I should be doing. We are trying a different class with a different teacher on Tuesday to see if we can find something more our style.
- Swimming – We actually made it to the pool yesterday! We went to the Y at 9AM, and had no trouble finding a lane. The water was tortuously cold though!
- CBRC Chili Chase – The 4 mile run last Sunday was an adventure! The sun was out, but the temp was only about 20 degrees. The course was damn hilly too! The finish line is at the TOP of a hill, which is just so painful and cruel. I probably would have stopped and walked if there wouldn’t have been so many people watching the finish line. As it was, out of 123 female runners, I came in 39th, which means I got a free CBRC coffee mug! It’s the first time I’ve won any award for a race, so that kind of made up for being extremely cold while simultaneously hot and sweaty and generally miserable. This was our first CBRC run, and it was actually, all told, a really fun time. The crowd was in good spirits, very supportive, and they gave us beer afterwards. 🙂
So there’s my update! This week looks to be another busy week – yoga on Tuesday, drinks with coworkers on Wednesday, Wine & Art at the Figge on Thursday with my Mammacita, and then a trip to Monticello to visit the folks. HOW do people regularly exercise and/or take exercise classes in the evening?? It seems impossible to get anything else done (like making supper). I can’t wait until the weather warms up so I can start running in the AM again. It makes me feel so much better all day, and then my evening is free.
Wow, this is kind of a long post. Maybe I should start writing more than once/week.
I want to thank the new subscribers to my blog – thank you for reading! I’m used to my blog only being read by my Mom, husband, best friend, and occasionally one or two of my brothers. While I’m sure they are always RIVETED by the content, I realize they are bound by love and duty to read this; whereas, you are not. So thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the posts and find them useful.
Have a great week!
