As I mentioned in my Monday Things post, on Sunday a bunch of local bloggers met at Kelsey‘s for our first monthly book club. We met to discuss The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot which is about the life of a poor black women, Henrietta Lacks, who in the 40′s/50′s is diagnosed with cancer and her cells are taken on behalf of medical research. Her cells, HeLa, become the first cells every grown in culture and are incredibly important for medicine (think polio vaccine etc.). The book goes into the details of Henrietta’s life as well as the story of her cells and does a great job of presenting science without bogging down the reader.

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We all enjoyed the book quite a bit!

Of course, we only talked about the book a little bit. Instead we chatted about food, running, and life in the city. We also ate some lunch and sipped some wine. We have a classy book club.

We did lunch potluck style. With a variety of diets you think this would have been tricky but we seemed to have something for everyone. By the way I made that pasta salad with brown rice pasta. Yum!

Book club was so much fun and I can’t wait for the meet up in September!

Last night I wanted to get my cook on so I decided to make Angela’s Vegan Enchiladas with Avocado Cream Sauce. I only had small corn tortillas and knew that they wouldn’t wrap well so I decided to transform the enchiladas into a casserole.

I made the filling (I used Rick Bayless enchilada sauce and salsa) and then layered it with corn tortillas. I baked it for the same amount of time and everything worked out well!

Unfortunately, I bombed the avocado sauce. I misread 1 1/4 cups of avocado and tried to make the recipe using just one avocado. Let’s say the sauce is a lot on the salty side. I ended up adding some mole hot sauce and lots of pepper to try to take down the saltiness but it’s still pretty bad. Whoops.

I had my portion with a little avocado cream and then some black bean dip from TJs. I was really happy with this recipe!

This morning I woke up early to squeeze in a 5 mile recovery run. It was still dark out when I headed out so I decided to run along lake shore because I feel safer there in the morning. Has anyone else noticed how buggy lake shore is? Seriously, I must have eaten like 50,000 bugs this morning. No need to bring fuel on long runs, just run by the lake and you’ll be set!

Breakfast was a new oatmeal creation.

I cooked 1/3 cup oats with 1 cup of water, 1 tsp chia seeds, and 1 small chopped apple (microwave for 1 minute before coated in cinnamon). Once the oatmeal started to bubble I added more cinnamon, a little maple sugar, and then two huge spoonfuls of unsweetened apple sauce. I topped the oatmeal with pecans and almond butter. Delicious! I’ll definitely be making this again.

I’m off to get ready for work. Have a good one!

What’s your favorite route to run in the a.m.?