Fit in 40 days: Day 27

I have a lot to share. So grab a beverage, turn up the sound on the USA soccer game (I have it on as I type this. GO USA!!) and see what I have been up to.

Fitness

I don't really consider myself a "runner". Sure I have done a few 5k's and a 1/4 Marathon, but I have never felt like I fit into that elite group of people who run because they love it (maybe because I don't). But I recently joined a Columbus Mom's running group on FB and have been sucked in by what these women accomplish. I have doing well on my 40 day streak (148.3 miles logged, in 213th place out of 38,827 participants. Nothing to sneeze at), lost a few pounds and have cleaned up my eating. I admit, there were a couple times I almost quit the online group as I did not feel worthy of these mom's that get in 5 miles at 5am a couple times a week. They do 5 miles in like 45 minutes!

But then a strange thing happened Friday: I organized a local hill climb run with a few of the mom's for 7am this morning. SUNDAY morning. And 4 of them showed up! I never thought of myself as THAT motivated but I am so glad I did. These mom's, and the ones on the site, are so supportive. There is no bashing anyone's time, there is no shame if you have to walk some of your race, it is a genuinely caring community of women who want nothing but the best for all of us who are trying to be better runners.

I feel like I have found my groove with running and though I doubt you will ever see me running more than 7 or 8 miles at a time, never say never.

Food

Now on to the good stuff!! I have been doing really well with my eating but I admit, I have not been that strict with the kids. I am making sure they eat their fruits and veggies but I did buy them an enormous barrel of cheese balls at Sam's Club the other day. Fail.

Normally I get my meat and poultry from our local butcher but in a desperate move to get away from the kids for a bit, I went to Sam's Club for my chicken and pork. I gotta tell you, I was disappointed with the store in general. It has been a long time since I shopped there and I was surprised at how sparse the items were. There was hardly any poultry or other refrigerated white meat options. I did get my annual bag of Ahi Tuna fillets, and I did get chicken and a pork loin, but for sure going back to Mosley's Meat. They package it the way I want, and though I don't mind taking the time to clean everything up, it is nice to have someone do it for me. 

I spent $100 at Sam's and another hundred at the regular grocery store. It is my goal to eat our way thru everything we have in house, without going to the store for close to two weeks. I will get outside aisle things if needed but darn it, we have enough here to get us thru more than a week.

So I did my hill run this morning, barely made it up the stairs to lay back down, we went to a state park, put loads of laundry away, threw the baseball around a bit and then the best thing of all:

I barricaded myself in the kitchen and COOKED.

We were having breakfast for dinner, so that explains the bacon. 

Then Tom decided he wanted a BLT and pancakes for dinner.

I made a triple batch of pancakes so the kids could eat them the next couple days. I am smart like that.

Then I made my new favorite thing:

Low fat cream cheese with green onions in it. I spread it on my bread when having turkey sandwiches, it is great on egg sandwiches, too. Really, anything you put cream cheese on or in, this is soo fresh tasting. Chives would be great in it as well.

Then, in an effort to make eating a morning meal easier, I came up with this gem:

I precooked sausage patties Sat morning for breakfast and used the leftovers in this. 6 egg whites, some milk and some various colored peppers I had. Baked it in the oven while the bacon was cooking and now all I have to do is cut out a square that has sausage in it, microwave in the morning and I have breakfast. Nutrition wise, it shakes out to about 100 calories, 7 grams fat, 9 grams protein. And I get some veggies in, too. Nice!!

Finally, and I don't have a picture, I made my white bean and avocado dip, too. Though this time I made it more with a Mexican flair. I added cilantro, 3 chipolte's in adobo (this is my new favorite food), some lime and lemon juice, garlic and tahini. It has some nice heat but not too hot. I bought some bib lettuce and plan to use those as wraps for the bean dip.

I feel really good and it has been a long time coming for that feeling. I love that all my friends are finding hobbies they enjoy: golf, tennis, walking. We deserve to do things that make us feel good.

Thanks for reading, sorry so long winded. And how the heck do you tie in soccer??? At least we are still in it.

Stay with me for 13 more days of streaking. If Runner's World doesn't do a 4th of July to Labor day streak, I am doing one myself. It is 58 days between the two. I am aiming for close to 100 miles. I go back to work Aug 13, so I will get a couple miles in a day at work, but I am going to keep up the running and hill climbing. Feels too good to stop.

Cat

Fit in 40 days: Blog/Day 18

So I got my crap together today, didn't spend the whole morning sleeping and when I was approached about "what kind of FUN thing are we going to do today?" (Jack thinks there needs to be a fun thing every day in the summer. A challenge for me, for sure!) I replied "we are going CREEKING". Griffin immediately said "nope, not going" as he barely looked up from his kill all things in the village game he plays on my computer (I killed his Xbox live membership for the summer and he is restricted on his Itouch due to some bad choices). But here's the thing, he's not allowed to stay home alone anymore. He didn't do anything wrong to have this privilege taken away, but I have noticed a few of his friends, who are home alone A LOT, are going astray. Not happening with my kid, at least I will try my hardest to make sure that does not happen. He moped and groaned but got in the van and here's where we ended up: 

 Jack in the creek. You will notice Jack likes his picture taken WAY more than Griff. (Note, Emily is still in training at her new job).

 The area is a park called Indian Run falls and it has a ton of little water falls and then one bigger falls. Very manageable for people of all ages, though I suggest shoes. Jack didn't have any on but was ok.

 There are the boys trudging up the creek.

 That's Griffin a million miles ahead bcz GOD FORBID he stays with his family.

Here's the big falls. Griffin managed to climb down it while Jack sat on the ledge (keep in mind my heart is lurching out of my chest at the thought of balance challenged Jack on the edge like that and then how the heck is Griff getting back up? But it was all ok. Thank goodness!)

Me with Jack and the bridge behind me.

Griffin has NEVER let me take a selfie of us, so this is a HUGE trip for us!

And for dinner, I grilled chicken thighs and made chimichurri to go with it. Chimichurri can be a lot of different things, for me it was: garlic, red pepper flakes, oregano, salt, pepper, lime juice, fresh basil and cilantro. Mix with white vinegar and olive oil and drizzle it on EVERYTHING. It is soo good.

Tomorrow is grocery day and I am hoping to get some yard work done. Griffin has baseball tourney all weekend but not sure how it will shake out with his broken thumb. And Sunday is Father's Day. Yay for all the dad's out there!!

I have done 18 straight days of exercise and have gone 91.3 miles. I have lost a little bit of weight but not as much if I was not sleeping half the day!! Gotta get my rear in gear.

Happy Friday evening, friends!!

Cat

Fit in 40 days: Day 16, yes, I may have missed a couple days...

Here's the thing about summer for me: I really don't have to do anything. Of course I have to feed the kids and dogs, do some laundry, clean stuff occasionally. But there is no rule book that tells me what I have to do every day.

This is a blessing and a curse. I can very easily fall into the doing nothing category but since I am really trying to clean up our eating and our lives, I have TRIED to be proactive.

We had a great weekend at the pool and then just hanging out Sunday since it was rainy. 

Emily got a job, so we have been shuttling her back and forth to training. I cannot tell you how EXCITED I am that she is in food service. I feel like she has followed my footsteps with running and now food service and it makes me so happy.

I am also reminded of how quickly these next two years with her will go and I miss her all ready. When she graduates High School, Griffin will be entering High School and Jack will be starting 7th grade. Ugh.

So this is what I have been up to the last 5 days: I have not missed a workout in 19 days, 15 days for the Streaking contest.

I made homemade crouton's tonight. I have a TON of hamburger buns in my freezer so I thawed and left them out and made croutons. They are all ready gone. Soo good!!

This is what menu planning looks like for me. I am so budget oriented, I write it all out. The legal pad on the left is all the breakfast/lunch/dinner ideas for the kids. At the bottom of the paper is dinner for me and Tom! The little, middle paper is our menu for the next week, and the list on the right is my actual grocery list. Top half is Meijer, bottom is Aldi. I get most of my groceries from Aldi.

Hope you all are doing well and getting thru summer ok. I am a little worried bcz this June is shaping up like last June where it rained 29 straight days and never got above 75 degrees.

Until I went to work, then it was over 90 for weeks!!

Here's hoping better weather is coming!!

Cat

Fit in 40 days: Blog 11, The Cheese edition

First and foremost: THANK YOU to the two NEW people who are now subscribing to this blog. I made it to TWENTY followers. Not too shabby for a lunch lady!!

I love cheese. This is no new revelation, I have loved cheese my entire life. And really, any kind: stinky, salty, sweet, with herbs, with nuts, whatever. If it's cheese. I will eat it. However, it does not quite fall into the Fit in 40 days category. At least not to the degree I eat it!

I stumbled upon buzzfeed.com on Pinterest and it had a section of 31 grilled cheese that are better than a boyfriend. Ohh..I love grilled cheese so I looked thru her post and did one of her's (kind of) and then did two of my own.

And here's how it shaked out... My plan was to make the Buzzfeed jalapeno popper grilled cheese, then my own version of mozzarella, fresh tomato and basil, and a mexican grilled cheese.

Where to start? I think one of the keys, and the most wonderful thing I have ever made and eaten was a block of low fat cream cheese, at room temp, and add a bunch of finely chopped green onion and black pepper. Had I stopped there, I could have eaten the whole bowl. I used it in the jalapeno and mexican sandwich. And I will be eating it out of the bowl tomorrow!!

I went to Aldi with the intention of getting jarred jalapeno's for the popper sandwich(you are supposed to use fresh but I was trying to take a short cut). As luck had it, they were out and had no fresh ones. I bought a bag of the small, sweet ones, roasted those and used them. 

The same as a jalapeno popper sandwich? Nope, but still pretty good. I used sourdough for two of the three sandwiches and that made a nice difference. Smear the cream cheese mixture on the bottom, peppers in the middle and a slice or two of your other favorite cheese. I used my griddle for all of these.

Sandwich two was the mozzarella, fresh tomato and basil.

This was BY FAR my favorite. All I did was put a little salt on the tomatoes but the fresh basil was the star. Hands down, the best. Here's the two of them toasting together..

I was so full from these two, but had to keep on with my mexican version. I used corn tortillas, the cream cheese filling, some chipotle in adobo (this is my current obsession. Burns the heck out of my mouth and then I am back for more!), and some crumbled queso fresco.

 And a spritz of lime to cool it off. Not too bad, a lot lighter than the other sandwiches and would be good with beans or rice.

Overall, a very successful Night of Grilled Cheese.

I just got a call my son is headed to Urgent Care from baseball, so cutting this short. Thanks for reading!!

Cat

Fit in 40 days: Blog 9

Wow, I got a lot done today! Probably my most productive day YET of Summer Break.

Got the kids vision and dental/ortho appointments made, laundry put away, worked out and made lots of tasty things:

These little gems are peanut butter, choco chips, oatmeal, flax seed, honey and vanilla. So good and supposed to be good for you, though I did not calculate the nutritional information. Didn't want to ruin my morning!! One container of these is all ready gone.

For dinner I decided to roast every veggie I had in the veggie bin. That included a roma tomato, onion, carrots, broccoli, and some peppers. I have eaten almost the whole tray......the best was the tomato. Thinly sliced with veg oil and salt, about 20 mins in a 410 degree oven. Tasted like candy. Will definitely do many more of those!

I added some sunflower seeds on top and made it a meal.

Tonight I am going to go thru both of my freezers and my pantry to see how I can stretch what is in there. I have very small Kroger and Aldi lists and I would like to keep it that way.

Just thought I would add Bear's picture. He's so handsome. And really furry.

Have a good Tues evening. Keep your eyes to the skies as I hear severe weather is coming tomorrow. Take some stuff to the basement now, just in case.

Thanks for reading. Would love to get to two more subscribers to get up to TWENTY. I dream big people, real big.

Cat

Fit in 40 days: Blog 8

So sue me, I missed yesterday, Blog 7.

We had a really busy weekend of friends and family in town and blogging was the last thing from my mind. Which is good: sometimes I need to turn it off and tune in to what is going on around me.

We ate crappy all weekend and now I find I am faced with a house full of crap that I will eat and then nap. Chips being the primary evil and ice cream for the kids. I am going to make a HUGE effort to eat thru our pantry this week bcz Kroger has all kinds of yummy Mexican foods on sale: just the food I have been craving. But I won't load up a pantry that is all ready full, so it will be a week of weird foods. Which I love.

And for the record, I am 8 days straight in the 40 miles in 40 days challenge. At least a mile a day, usually more.

So this is what I was up to today:

I made blueberry muffins with apple sauce and flax seed added. Kids love them. The big pie thing was the extra batter I had!

 This was Jack's dinner: 

 I made orange juice marinated chicken thighs. They were ok, not very orange tasting and actually lacking any flavor. But the rest of us ate these for dinner with some edamame or apple slices.

 My folks were here Sunday and asked what Jack would like to do to keep busy over the summer:

We have a pool pass but this will keep him busy before we can go and on rainy days like today. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Back on track tomorrow with creative cooking and no more cookies and ice cream sandwiches for the kids (bcz they ate them all!!).

Hope you are all having a good start of summer.

Thanks for reading,

Cat