peas | Running the Windy City

Hey guys, I hope you are all doing great . The week is more than half over, that’s something to celebrate about right?

I have to admit that as much as I love doing WIAW posts and joining up with other bloggers, I always feel so detached from you all on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that in the future but in the meantime here’s an update of the past day or so.

Tuesday evenings are usually calzone night in the apartment but after coming across this recipe earlier this month I strongly suggested that we give it a shot this week and I am so glad that we did!

I halved the recipe and made it in three smaller dishes- one for me to eat that night, one for leftovers, and then another (the larger one on the left) for Ian with sausage.

I debating making salad or a vegetable to have on the side but honestly the bubble up pizza was enough. It was also incredibly delicious, who wouldn’t love biscuit pizza?

It was nice outside and I’m always down for a walk so we headed to Kingoberry & Potbelly so I could indulge my froyo craving and Ian could enjoy a shake.

I had chocolate with coconut, blueberries, strawberries, and one of Ian’s shake adornments. I swear kingo’s chocolate flavor tastes like a Wendy’s Frosty!

I was so far removed from productivity at that point that I gave up even trying to do homework and we finished watching The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and called it a night. I ended up liking the movie more than I thought I would but I definitely recommend reading the books first!

On Wednesday I headed out for a run first thing. While I enjoyed the run it was HARD. My legs were sore and achey and my mind, body, and legs were not in agreement about the pace. Luckily I eventually loosened up (around mile 6) and felt more normal after. It’s hard to say whether my legs are sore from re-introducing running, not taking a rest day for almost 2 weeks, or a mixture of both but my legs are sure getting a wake-up call. I also want to note that if I wasn’t running a marathon in three weeks I’d be easing into running more slowly but unfortunately Boston is coming up fast!

I took advantage of being home all day to prepare some food for meals this week/weekend. I roasted brussels sprouts, made quinoa, and cooked some peas. I was obviously getting quite a lot of school work done

Lunch was a mix of all of the above with nutritional yeast and barbeque sauce. Yum!

I managed to squeak out a bit of productivity mid-afternoon and then took a break to make some pumpkin walnut muffins.

They’re made with almond flour so they’re gluten free and they smelled amazing baking in the oven.

By dinner, I had burned out on being in the kitchen so I kept it super simple and made tuna salad by mixing two cans of tuna, tzatiki sauce, relish, and peas. Ian had his as a tuna melt and I had mine over spinach.

Dessert was one of the new Ben & Jerry’s Greek Froyo Flavors, Strawberry Shortcake, with a mini brownie. I definitely wanted more!

When I woke up this morning and my legs were still stiff and sore, I knew that today needed to be an easy day. I completed 45 minutes on the elliptical at a slow pace to shake out my legs and it seems to have helped so far. Unfortunately, I won’t be going to the evening cycle class that I had planned but my legs need a break!

For breakfast I had a cottage cheese parfait with fig jam, banana, crumbled cream cheese muffin, sunflower seed butter, and gluten free granola.

It definitely hit the spot

I’m off to start my busy Thursday, have a good one!

Happy Monday- has everyone else’s been as crazy as mine?

I started the morning with a swim workout. I did my interval workout but instead of doing breast stroke for the stroke parts I did backstroke. It was a good change. The pool was really warm this morning though- waayyyy too warm. It was kind of suffocating .

I left hungry- swimming always makes me feel famished. I only had an hour to shower, eat, and get ready for school and work, so I threw together the quickest breakfast I could think of-

Trader Joe’s Multigrain O’s with an unripe banana (love them greenish), and a spoonful of sunflower seed butter. It hit the spot.

I went to my infectious disease class which is always super interesting. The professor is so great at connecting with students- I love when that happens. His lectures are so enthralling he even made me consider studying infectious rather than chronic disease. That’s a topic for a different post- eeek the future!

I ate lunch at my desk at work- a white chocolate wonderful peanut butter and fig jam sandwich with a persimmon.

And later a tiny heath bar to wake myself up before my presentation… mmm sugar.

My presentation went alright, I don’t really like public speaking, but I managed to calm myself down beforehand by reminding myself that I was prepared and knew what I was talking about. I also kept telling myself to talk slow. I talk really fast when I’m nervous!

I snacked on a mini granola bar post presentation because I knew I wouldn’t get home until after 6 and wanted to shred right after getting home.

Dinner was more complicated tonight than most nights. Even though my presentation went okay, after being so stressed all weekend, I just wanted to relax tonight. What better way to relax than in the kitchen?

Ian has been craving scalloped potatoes for a while and last week I found an easy and somewhat healthier recipe on my wholefoods iPhone app. I figured we couldn’t just have potatoes for dinner so I made an asparagus, peas, beans, and fennel salad using this recipe. I decided not to make the salad dressing, the salad was already a lot of work! But we had some cilantro dressing that I mixed with lime juice. It tasted great.