February 2014 – Page 5

If you have followed my journey, you know that the past year I have “dabbled” in running. I still don’t think I qualify as a runner, but my cousin says that if I am not laying on the couch and I am out moving my body, I am a runner.

Ok… I guess that makes me a runner.

Right before Christmas I treated myself to a purchase just for me. I bought this book. Runner or not, I am always interested in working with whole foods and breaking the habit of the “fast food fix” that tends to occasionally plague my busy lifestyle.

The Runners World Cookbook promotes eating well if you run 10 miles a week or one hundred. (A hundred!) It also encourages “eating the rainbow” a colorful array of fruits and vegetables every day. Mmmmmm

The book starts out with explaining healthy antioxidants, carbs, grains, proteins and fats. Then the book breaks down into chapters:

Breakfast
Snacks and Smoothies
Salads and Dressings
Soups and Stews
Sandwiches, Pizzas, Burgers
Sauces and Pasta
Meat and Poultry
Fish and Seafood
Vegetables
Desserts

The recipes look delicious! They are submitted from runners, marathon winners, Olympians, doctors, test kitchens and more. At the top of each recipe is a little paragraph of when is a good time to eat this (pre – run, after run, recovery…. daily….). It also shares how long to prep, how many servings, and of course nutrition values. I also like that each recipe is labeled : V: Vegetarian, VE: Vegan, GF: Gluten Free, Many of the recipes are also accompanied by a photo which I love to drool over!

I admit, I have not had a chance to cook out of this book yet although I have spent time over several days paging through and making note of the ones I want to try. A few that caught my eye are: Egg and bean burritos with avocado and yogurt lime sauce, banana oat energy bars, spinach bacon sweet potato salad, Asian Noodle Salad with eggs and peanut dressing, Thai Avocado soup, Smoked Salmon and Vegie Wraps, Jerk Shrimp with sweet potato and black beans… I could go on forever 🙂

Tonight, I think we are going to try the Chicken Mango fajita. Seriously, look at that tasty picture. It is labeled as Fast, Recovery and Low Calorie. Since I am planning on running a 5k today to keep up my motivation for the half marathon I signed up for at the end of this month as well as a walk with my dogs in snow shoes- it sounds perfect. 🙂 I think you may see recipes coming out of this book frequently this year 🙂

I am submitting this post as part of Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking. It is true, I always have more time to make good tasty and healthy dishes on the weekends. 🙂

Hey all! Happy Saturday! I have been up for a couple of hours with the best intentions to write this post. Then… I decide to make coffee. And I am out of the pods that make the regular coffee. And then I decide to list the Tassimo coffee pot on the Facebook garage sale sight which means to bring my old coffee pot back upstairs and take pictures of the Tassimo. (Nothing wrong with the coffee pot just that locally I can not find the pods for it and I am tired of ordering 20+ dollars worth of coffee pods on line… borderline crazy I think 😉 ) I upload the pictures and describe the coffee pot. THEN…. I go on the House Party site and sign up for another house party offer…. then I go on Facebook (you can almost hear the suction noise as I get caught up there…. I chat with a local author… talk with her about Wine and Words… send her the information and then my mind says “Ooh! I should update the Wine and Words website!” Then I send out emails to last years authors asking them if they will shoot me a quick email regarding their experience last year with Wine and Words so I can add their thoughts to the website… in the mean time someone tells me they are interested in the coffee pot…

😯

And…. I am back to this post.

Last weekend I had the awesome sauce opportunity to take a long-term goal off my bucket list. I went with a group of friends into Duluth Minnesota and we went dog sledding! YUP! Dog sledding!

We went to a fairly new place called Endurance Kennels. It was a blast! At first I felt a little sad for the dogs… last Saturday was COLD – I believe it was 6 below zero when we ventured out. Yet once the dogs were hooked up to the sled you could see that they loved this. A couple of them were jumping straight up in the air they were so ready to go!

My friend Belinda petting one of the dogs.

Belinda and Sheila – Sheila was the birthday girl and we were celebrating!

It was an awesome experience! Here’s my tips if you go:

1. Dress Warm – the speed of the sled creates wind and the dogs kick up snow as they go.

2. Snowmobile goggles would be a good idea – at the very least sun glasses. I had sun glasses on but they quickly fogged up and I could not see through them.

Thanks to Saturday Snapshot for giving me an opportunity to show my pictures of a fun event!