Remeber this wonderfulness that we came home to on February 21st? Well, it's been nearly three weeks and I can happily say that it's mostly gone. With very little back-breaking effort from us. Today's high was supposed to be close to 50, and since I had the day off of work I went outside around 10 for about fifteen minutes just to break up some of the bigger pieces that were still left and scrape off some of the top layer of slush and then let the sun work it's magic. And it worked it wonderfully. We still have a little bit of a limp going into and out of our driveway, but that's because that part of our house is NEVER in the sun. But it's supposed to be warm again a few days next week, so hopefully it'll go away on it's own.
The bigger issue now has become the walkway into our house. One of our downspouts drains right on the seam of the front walk and driveway, and it's also an area that receives very little sunlight, so every day that sun melts snow and ice off our roof it flows down onto the layer upon layer of ice already at the bottom of the downspout and freezes pretty quickly. I'm convinced we're going to need some ice melt (or serious manual labor) to get that stuff cleared away--at least if we want it gone before June!
Oh, and don't get fooled into thinking that tomorrow is going to be a good day for the 5K because it's been nice today. South Dakota doesn't work like that. Today's high was 48; tomorrow's is 28. How does that happen you ask? 35-40 mph winds out of the north--which aren't supposed to die down until tomorrow afternoon. AFTER the 5K. Super excited. My expectations for my time keep getting lower and lower.... I think I'm going to have to run another one soon and redeem myself. Otherwise I'll feel like all my training was for naught.
Happy Weekend!
Darrell and I don't usually have evenings with nothing going on. In fact, we never have evenings with nothing going on. And while last night was no exception, we were actually able to cook dinner together, plus the other things we had going on weren't on any set schedule, so we were able to relax and do something a little nicer than we usually do. It started out simple enough--I've been trying to get better about purchasing produce that is seasonally available and subsequently well priced, and this week that particular item was cauliflower. Now, as the world's pickiest eater growing up, I had never touched cauliflower a day in my life before last night. But I found a recipe for roasting it that sounded good (despite my not knowing what cauliflower actually tasted like), so we decided to go ahead and give it a whirl. Darrell's been on a balsamic vinegar kick lately, plus he really thought a balsamic-y red meat would go well with the cauliflower. We dug through our recipe collection and came up with a lamb recipe that we made to celebrate our first year of dating, but haven't ever gone back to since because lamb is a little pricy. So we decided to try the same recipe on a t-bone steak (at least a little bit cheaper...)
The end result? A pretty spiffy meal if I do say so myself. I definitely felt like it was a special occasion chomping down on this meal on a Tuesday night.
I don't have the recipe that we used for the steak, but I will definitely share the cauliflower recipe. Like I said, I've never made it before, so I really don't have anything to compare it to, but I thought it was good enough that we're doing it again tomorrow!
Garlic Roasted Cauliflower
(discovered here, slightly modified)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 head of cauliflower, trimmed and cut into florets
3 tbsp olive oil, divided
salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
3 tbsp pine nuts, toasted
2 tbsp lemon juice
Preheat the oven to 450*. In a large bowl, toss the cauliflower with two tbsp olive oil, garlic, and a few generous shakes of salt and pepper. Spread onto a baking sheet and roast 20-25 minutes, tossing twice, until cauliflower is tender. Scrape everything (any juices included) back into the large bowl. Add the remaining tbsp oil, pine nuts, parsley, and lemon juice; toss until well coated. Season with additional salt and pepper if necessary.
I will say that the easiest way to ruin a nice dinner and a relaxing evening is to try to do four loads of laundry. Especially when one of those loads is whites that need to be bleached--which apparently takes 30 minutes longer in the wash cycle (at least when it is on the "whitest whites" setting). Definitely made for a little bit of a late night, but at the end of it I got all my work done, we got all our laundry done (and the beds remade), and our bellies were perfectly content the whole time. Still a successful evening in my book.
Yum. Doesn't that look so good? It's making me hungry just looking at it, and it's only 8:30 in the morning. We've both had bruschetta before, and realize that it's fairly simple to throw together, but for some reason we've never done it before. We modeled our recipe after the one found here; we liked that it uses grape tomatoes instead of just tomato slices because we buy grape tomatoes for recipes occasionally but never seem to use all of them before they go bad. Wasted tomatoes we will have no more though, now that we have this recipe.
I don't actually have exact measurements to give you; the website I borrowed the recipe from made enough bruschetta to feed four people, and we certainly didn't need that much, so we just combined the ingredients in reasonable proportions for our tastes. To start we tossed the grape tomatoes (cut into smaller pieces) with olive oil, fresh chopped basil, minced garlic, balsamic vinegar, salt, and freshly ground pepper. Then we spread the tomato mixture on to pieces of French bread and topped with fresh mozzarella. To give the bread a little crisp and melt the mozzarella we baked them in a 350* oven for 8-10 minutes. So delish. I will say, though, French bread maybe wasn't the best choice--when we put the tomatoes on the bread the juices that they were tossed in soaked right through and made it really hard to eat. Of course, it also gave the bread really good flavor, so it wasn't a total loss. I think next time, though, we'll try it on ciabatta bread like the recipe calls for.
Enjoy!
Monday was a very unwelcome guest at our house this morning. We both had nice, relaxing weekends (albeit we weren't together for most of it), and capped it off we a nice evening together on Sunday night. I'm a sucker for fresh produce, so when we saw strawberries on sale while we were grocery shopping I just knew we had to get some. Then we subsequently planned our entire evening around these strawberries. The original idea was to do chocolate covered strawberries, so we knew we needed a lighter dinner. Cue bruschetta. So delicious. Then Darrell decided that we also needed to finish off the vanilla ice cream in our freezer, so the strawberries went under the chopper, got drizzled with some chocolate, and topped off our ice cream (actually, there may have been more strawberries than ice cream. Whoops). It was divine. I didn't think to get a picture of our concoction (guess we'll just have to make it again...), but we also used our laid-back evening as a chance to cross another item off our 101 in 1001 list. Since we weren't really doing a sit-down dinner we didn't want to open a bottle of wine (especially since most all we have is heavy reds), and we just weren't in a beer mood, so out came our drink mixer. Darrell had the foresight to pick up some grenadine at the store, so without any difficultly we were able to whip up a Tequila Sunrise.
To be completely honest, I wasn't completely blown away by this drink--Darrell has concocted a few specialized drinks of his own which I definitely think are better. But it was still a good way to close out the night, and now we've officially made a drink listed on our mixer (despite the fact that it was one of the first gifts I bought Darrell when he got his first apartment over three years ago).
I do promise to have some recipes coming up in the next few days; I've got two or three of them ready to go but just don't have the time to get to them today!
How'd you all like my negative Nancy rant this morning? Pretty spectacular, huh? I figured I should redeem myself a little bit since I'm actually in a fairly good mood today, what with it being Friday and all. Plus, I actually have exciting plans for the weekend! Not only do I get to visit one of my good friends who has the cutest baby ever (hopefully I'll remember to take my camera!), but I also get to make a dent in my "to cook" list because I'm helping my mom out with some food for a party she's having. And when I say dent, I really mean an unnoticeable scratch--somehow my list grew to 241 recipes long! And it's pretty easy to tell what I prefer cooking the most--over one-third of the recipes are sweets! So as long as nothing is a major disaster (although that might be fun to write about too...) you can look forward to some recipes (and pictures!) next week.
Speaking of pictures, I feel like it's been awhile since I've posted one. So I'll commemorate another item that we checked off of our "101 in 1001" list--here we are last fall at a Husker's game!
I am seriously done with winter. Seriously. I'm done with the cold, done with the snow, done with the piercing winds the penetrate to your bones no matter what you are wearing (which, while we're on the topic, clothing is a whole beast of an issue right now. I'm sick of wearing sweaters and warm clothes. My long johns should be retired by now. The only clothes that sounded cute this morning were my tees--which worn alone would cause me to freeze and I've already exhausted all my cardigans over the course of this week). I'm done with it all. Unfortunately, it's not done with us.
Forecast for early next week? A "major storm system" which has the potential to bring twelve more inches of snow. TWELVE. That's a whole additional foot. And high winds. And possibly freezing rain and sleet. And we still have 2-3 inches of ice on our driveway from the last storm. I don't want to deal with this. And I especially don't want to run a 5K on Saturday through all of it (although a 5K in snowshoes might be interesting...)
I'm ready to start packing and move south this weekend... Who's with me?
Well, we're a week and a half away from the big race, so I figured it was time for an update about how the training was going. I known I've thrown a few snippets in here and there, but since I have nothing else to talk about (yes, our lives are THAT exciting), I figured to dedicate a whole post to my training.
And really, it's not been that spectacular. Sometime about seven/eight weeks ago I came up with a plan to follow, with the logic that I'd be more likely to stick to my workouts if I made them with a consideration of my schedule (squeezing in a three mile run when I work a twelve-hour shift is just a recipe for disaster--or skipping a workout). And for the most part, that held true. I've been pretty good about getting long runs in when I scheduled them, and cross-training days have fit in nicely. Sometimes my cross-training ends up being a walk with Darrell... But at least it's something. However, while I've been sticking to my running pretty well, the whole lifting thing totally fell by the wayside. It's not that I don't enjoy lifting, but lately I've been rushed at the gym, and since I'm getting ready for a 5K running has trumped lifting. And I know it's good to do both, and I always mean to do some free weights when I get home... But it doesn't happen. I may have to re-evaluate that aspect of my training plan if I embark on another road race.
The running, though, has been pretty decent. I can definitely notice a difference in my comfort level while running. And maybe that's partially because I've become more comfortable running on a treadmill, but whatever it is, I'll take it. I even ran an 8:40 mile yesterday and then continued to run for another mile (at something resembling 9:30 pace). So those are numbers that have been really encouraging to see, even if I can't yet maintain them for as long as I'd like. I keep telling myself that it'll be easier to keep a quicker pace at the actual race because I'll be outside and running with other people, but who knows. And I've talked to some people who did the race last year and they said the course was still partially covered in slush and mud, so that'll definitely help me run faster. The weather for race day sounds fairly decent, although we're supposed to get another bout of "wintery mix" between now and then, so it looks like I'll be on a treadmill up until race day, which isn't ideal but will work.
My unofficial "goal"? Finish in under 30 minutes. I know that sounds fairly doable, but when Darrell and I ran a 5K on our honeymoon, it took me over 33 minutes to complete. I blamed it on the hills and higher elevation (we were in the foothills of the Appalachians in NC), but really, I didn't hardly train for it. So I'm hoping that by training I can knock at least three minutes off. And who knows, maybe if it goes well I'll be ready to try my hand at a 10K!!
