Frog and Quinoa

I know you think I’m serious about the title of the blog and there’s going to be a recipe with quinoa and tastes like chicken frog as the protein, but ok, I’m just teasing.  Sorry I’m not sorry.

The frog that I speak of, we’ll call him Burt since that seems like a froggy kind of name (Count on me to not think of Kermit, straight off the bat.)  I found Burt by accident when I was watering my basil plant.  He was just chilling with the herbs.  I called my 14teen to come see and she decided that he needed to be kissed caught.  After much screaming and chasing a small frog around our back deck, we now have a prince living with us.  Again, just teasing. Sigh.  I love it when I’m the only one that thinks I’m funny.

After our frog shenanigans, we placed Burt safely back in the basil.  I’m excited to see if he’s there again tonight.  Oh I hope so!

(A side note, Burt was awol.  I hope we didn’t traumatize him with our smooches.  I mean, look at that smile!  How could we help ourselves.)

Speaking of basil, I tried Giada’s recipe for Herbed Quinoa on the 4th for our BBQ.  Speaking of smiles, I think Burt’s is bigger that Giada’s.  Yes?

I tweaked it and added asparagus and lightly sautéed mushrooms. I didn’t even use all of the lemon juice and it was still too strong of lemon.  It was good, but I wanted it to be amazing so I’m hoping that someone will read this and have the perfect recipe to send me.  Or better yet, invite me over to try it.  You make it and I’ll even watch you do the dishes!  No one else touched it except for my husband and only because I badgered him in to trying it.  I’m a good cook…just a bit of a lone wolf in the healthy eating around this household.  Must be why I put on 25 pounds since we married? He said it was good but he was too focused on the jalapeno and beer, cheese dip I had made.  I had the salad the next day with a leftover smoked sausage cut up to top it off.  I bet chicken sausage would have been a healthier option but I didn’t have any on hand.

I finally tried a green monster!

With the heat wave we’ve been experiencing here, the protein smoothie I’ve been whipping up for breakfast lately is definitely hitting the spot.  I know this has been all over every form of social media, but in case you live under a rock like me, or I mean, in case you are stubborn, listen up!  If you add spinach to your smoothie, it will only turn it green.  It will not taste all spinach-y.  I swar!  If you can taste the spinach, then you’re some freak of nature.  Or you just have really super duper taste buds.

I haven’t experimented much beyond the recipe below because when I find a good thing, I stick with it until I’m sick of it.  Sometimes that’s a week later and sometimes it’s a year.  I swear, I went for over a YEAR with having oatmeal everyday for breakfast.  I am not kidding you!

My Green Vanilla Sun Butter Smoothie

1 Cup Unsweetened Almond Milk

4-5 ice cubes

One scoop of vanilla flavored protein powder

1 Tbs of your favorite nut butter (I’ve been using Sun Butter)

And a big handful of spinach leaves – JUST ADD IT!

Blend that all up and you have roughly a 287 calorie breakfast that should keep you full for 3-4 hours.

I just pour that baby in a shaker cup and tootle on down the road to work in the morning.  Much easier than the bowl of oatmeal I typically consume while driving to work.

You must have your eyes crossed.  The photo isn’t blurry.  It’s yur eyes.  Fo real.

Have you added any other dark leafies to a smoothie?  I’m curious about adding kale.

Weekend highlights

I thought I’d share with you a few highlights of my weekend before it’s the weekend again.  No?  Too bad.

• Busting out 14 miles on the treadmill
• Finishing up some baby gifts
• Date night with my hubby which included a “progressive dinner.”  Hummus, pita bread, crab cakes, steak skewers and salad from two different restaurants.
• Wait!  There was dessert…make that three!
• This lovely Italian Sunset.  Not sure what exactly was in it but they had me at lemoncello.

• And catching up on some much needed sleep.  I love me a Fourth of July holiday, but the late night plus the heat wave we had the week before that=less than 8 hours of sleep a night for me. You think I’m kidding.  I need a solid 8 hours of sleep to function decently.  If I were to get 9 hours of sleep each night?  I’d be ruling the WORLD!

Looking ahead to next weekend….we will be attending a wedding.  I’m trying to figure out how to get my long run in before we go.  Hmmm…and then that has me thinking that I might need a break from the full marathon and maybe switch it up with a few half marathons.  Then that had me thinking and wondering if it was too late to switch to the half for this year.

Am I crazy?  Don’t answer that.

What fun things have you done this summer or will be doing?  I have an upcoming trip to San Francisco that I am over the moon about!

My dainty tootsies.

Yep, I went AWOL again.  It’s getting to be a little like a broken record around here.  I haven’t given up yet so kuddos to me.  It’s like that favorite saying of mine, “If you’re not failing, then you’re not trying hard enough.”  Fascinating tidbit…I just googled the beginning of that quote as I always thought it was something Jillian Michael’s said…and she did say it or I dreamt it…but it looks like it was something Woody Allen should really be credited with.  Must be why he keeps making one strange movie after another?  Woody Allen Movies= Not my cup of tea.

Speaking of movies, the last movie I watched in the theaters was Monster’s University.  I had my two lovely teen daughters as my dates.  Cute movie, but we were a little annoyed with all of the young kids in the theater.  I mean, it’s a monster movie right? Winky-Wink

Running?  Yeah, I’m still doing it.  I went through a rough patch.  Meaning, I have skipped two long runs due to traveling and lack of motivation.  Also, my midweek miles have been suffering to a small extent.  With that said, I was pretty nervous about my long run yesterday.  I was careful and took quite a few walk breaks and I SURVIVED!  Yup!  14 miles!  My last long run was only 6 miles long (which I had cut short as it was supposed to be 12), the longest I had run in this training season was 10 miles.  I am stupid so don’t do as I do.  However, I will say….no injuries, and my legs feel normal today.  I’m not going to pull that crap again and slack though because you just can’t keep that up and expect to run a decent marathon in October.

In other news, check out my new shoes!  I think I must be the only lamo in the running world that doesn’t run in Brooks or Mizunos.  I can’t be the only one wearing Asics can I?  What can I say?  I did what you’re supposed to do and took my size 10s down to the running store and had a “professional” observe my nice smile or my gait when I first started running five years ago.  Lucky me even gets to run in a size up!  I feel so dainty purchasing a pair of size 11 running shoes.  Dainty, I will never be and at 5’10'” tall, staring down 40, I can only hope that I start shrinking.  Maybe I’ll be a dainty 5’9” when my AARP subscription lands in my mailbox that fateful day?

Oh so the shoes!  Yay to Asics for finally keeping up with the cool kids and giving us non pronating, neutral runners that like a platform of 3 inches of cushion some color!!  In all my excitement to show you my very average sized feet for my height shoes, I almost forgot to tell you that they are Asics Gel Nimbus 15…purchased by my sugar daddy of a husband because he was softening me up to tell me he wouldn’t be running the marathon with me this year he loves me.

What size running shoe do you wear?

Anyone else run in Asics??