I finally remembered that I own a crock-pot and that I need to USE it!
This was the first time I tried cooking full chicken breasts with the crock-pot and love love loved how easy it was. Plus, no futzing around with raw meat – I dumped the chicken right from the plastic into the pot.
I looked up some generic recipes for cooking chicken in the crock pot and altered it to what I had in the fridge. (Whenever I make something new, Tuna has started asking me, “Are you going to make it with everything the recipe says?)
Cooking in the crock-pot gives everything so much more flavor! Since I haven’t been able to perfect baked chicken breast in the oven, I was relieved for a better tasting – and easier – solution.
The only downside is that you need to plan ahead because most crock-pot recipes call for at least 4 hours of cooking time.
Added side effect: this recipe fills up your house apartment with wonderful smells.
Serves 2-3
Ingredients:
- 1.3 lbs chicken breast
- 1/2 cup Italian salad dressing
- 1 red bell pepper, chopped
- 2 scallions, chopped
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1/2 tsp oregano
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
Directions:
Thanks as always to Jenn @ Peas and Crayons for hosting What I Ate Wednesday!
Hilly Improvisation
Last week’s abbreviated vacation at Smith Mountain Lake was the perfect nibble of relaxation.
I don’t know why I had visions of flat ground in my mind since the year before proved to have some pretty hard runs on winding country roads – but I did.
Before I left for vacay, I declared to myself that I was going to use the extra down time to get some good workouts in.
Of course my original plan was to wake up at the crack of dawn (isn’t it always?) and enjoy the misty solace of the birds chirping while getting a trillion miles in.
Fast forward to more like 9:00am, immediate mugginess, and rolling hill after rolling hill.
These photo are legit lying. I swear the STEEP STEEP hill I ran up was not a mirage. I’m blaming it on bad photography.
The second day of vacation I fared a little better – 8:50am wake up call, with the determination of running hill repeats. I had to work with what I got.
After a quickie warm up, I ran down the .3 mile hill….and back up again to my water bottle hanging out by our house’s mailbox.
Need a HIIT workout? Hill repeats’ll do it.
By the time I was sufficiently sweaty, my dad came out with his dog to greet me.
She was so cute and I loved running the last hill repeat with her! It was my first time really running with a dog and it made it so much more fun.
It also didn’t hurt that she basically pulled me on the way up. My third hill was almost a whole minute faster than the others. Thanks, Shiloh!
So it was decreed: Smith Mountain Lake had enough hills to last me awhile.
Bring on the flat swampland, D.C.!
Friday’s Five
♥ chillin’ on Easy Street from Saturday to Wednesday ♥
♥ working very hard on my tan ♥
♥ swimming with my dad’s doggy in the lake ♥
♥ terrifying bed decor ♥
♥ finally caving and buying a handheld ♥
HAPPY FRIDAY!
Star-Cut Watermelon
Don’t have enough skill time to whip up a gorgeous red, white, and blue cake to take to a 4th of July barbecue?
I don’t either.
Thank gawwwd summertime allows for fruit to be a more than acceptable potluck dish. I may not be a master baker, but I can cut up fruit.
This year I was feeling a little extra festive and came to the conclusion that plain old squares of watermelon were just not fancy enough.
Too bad I forgot to look for a legit star cookie cutter at the store. But I wasn’t going to let that deter me from forcing this melon to be snazzy.
Luckily cookie cutters are only kind of hard to cut and re-bend. Sorry, no Christmas tree shaped cookies this year.
Instead, we will have fucked up stars.
It’s the thought that counts, right?
Friday’s Five
♥ sunbathing while revisiting the Eat Clean Diet ♥
♥ starting a new summer puzzle ♥
♥ shuckin’ some corn on the 4th of July ♥
♥ playing with the crock-pot ♥
♥ doing some test cooking ♥
Hope everyone had a happy July 4th!
A Peek Inside My Kitchen
Like I’ve said before, I’m slightly obsessed with keeping healthy food in my apartment. If I have junk food around, I will most definitely eat it. All of it.
To prevent a ridiculous amount of potato chip consumption, I’m at the point where I keep a nutrient stocked pantry/fridge most of the time.
It’s pretty cool to be able to cook a variety of dishes on any given night by throwing together ingredients that I already have in the fridge. Before I started eating clean, that never would have happened.
To give you more of an idea of what my normal food sitch looks like, I thought it could be fun to take a peek inside my kitchen.
Let me just say that in no way do I think I am a pantry expert. Hell, I’m still figuring out which veggies need to be refrigerated and which ones don’t.
My dream pantry would be more along the lines of this:
from PINTEREST
But I have come up with a few tricks that make my food storage space more appealing to me!
Fridge
I like to keep everything where it’s easily visible. Otherwise, I’ll totally forget what I have and end up wasting or buying double of things I already have in stock.
Every time I buy fresh produce from the farmer’s market or the grocery store, I keep the little green bins it comes in. Not only are they cute, but they also help me keep everything organized.
Yup, you are seeing my lunchbox in there. I pack my lunch the night before I eat it, and keep it all packed up so in the morning I can literally just grab it and go.
Freezer
My freezer isn’t as full as I’d like it to be. I plan to start making more leftovers to freeze for future meals when I get the chance to experiment with my crock-pot a little more.
Frozen fruit = necessary for smoothies. When I first started making smoothies, I mostly used fresh fruit until my mom was horrified and told me to buy FROZEN fruit. The $$ saving factor of frozen fruit is absurd.
Pantry
Glass jars. Not only are they pretty, it’s healthier to store your food in glass containers (vs. plastic). It’s fun to decorate/label them too – I got the idea from our very own Peas and Crayons!
Using baskets, etc to group individual items. I’m experimenting with different samples of protein powder right now, plus I still have some GU hanging around for when I start half marathon training again.
I finally broke down and have been buying the boxes of Clif Bars because it is cheaper than buying them individually!
Leftover produce bags are the perfect size for my juicer’s pulp canister. That way, when I’m juicing, I can just pull out the bag and plop it in the trash without having to clean the pulp out of the bin.
I showed you mine, now you show me yours!
Thanks as always to Jenn @ Peas and Crayons for hosting What I Ate Wednesday!
Doable Circuit Workout
I did a new circuit workout last week for cross-training and it was much more doable than the very intense circuit workout I posted before. I.e., It gives you a good sweat sesh but there is no fear of death by hyperventilation.
Here’s the circuit workout, based on THIS one!
The workout is perfect to do while watching trashy tvin your living room, since no equipment is necessary.
I did this with the 8 minute abs video I told you about, and checked off my workout for the day.
Done and done.
Friday’s Five
1. YAY
2. THIS 8 minute abs video
My fav Hungry Runner Girl always does this video, so I finally tried it out. It did give my abs a good workout, plus the outfits/hair/everything is the best thing ever.
3. Is the Tough Mudder too tough?
Not sure how I missed the news that someone died during a Tough Mudder recently, but it’s really sad. Though sometimes accidents can’t be helped, it shows we really need to prepare for the dangers of any endurance sport we participate in.
4. Starting a new book club book
Summer = lots of treadmill reading. I did my “long run” outside last Saturday and I continued to sweat for approximately 5 hours afterwards.
5. The mind + body section of the most recent edition of Runner’s World
My longer runs are about to start soon, and I’m pretty sure a lot of my slowness, etc comes from needing to work on my mental toughness.
Weekend, woohoooo!
This Is Funny: Cosmic Run
If you ask me to run with you, I will most like say YES, no matter what kind of race it is.
Well, except maybe The Color Run.
Not to knock anyone’s fav race, but I always thought The Color Run was kind of dumb. I didn’t quite get the fun of having people throw paint on you during a race. Why not just run? There just didn’t seem like there was a point to it.
However, I am the one that did a Tough Mudder, so I can’t really talk about rationality when it comes to races.
#throwbackthursday HA
When my friend asked me if I wanted to run her first 5K with her in October, I said YES!
This is funny.
I signed up, typed my cool post about it. All set.
Here is that post:
*****
An added bonus: it’s a Cosmic Run.
This is awesome because:
- It’s at night, so you run in the dark
- There is “fluorescent glowing light technology” and “pulsing dance music”
- It’s a fun run
I never got to do the Vampire 5K because it was cancelled, so this will be my fun run of the season!
*****
All done with my post, I looked at the website one last time, and to my dismay, found that I needed to scroll down a bit more in the ABOUT section.
“Become the canvas as you get showered with thousands of pounds of vividly-glowing and brilliantly-soft fluorescent color powders.”
Mother effer. It’s like The Color Run on crack.
But…the more I thought about it, I realized that the point of fun runs like these is that there is no point to them. The silliness takes away the nerves and the doubt surrounding races, and leaves more room for giggling and gaining confidence in your running self.
Maybe this is exactly the kind of race I need.
Thanks for asking me to sign up, Mags!
Old Fashioned Pecan Bread
This is an oldie redone into what I had left in the pantry.
Blueberries out, pecans in.
It’s crazy how the same batter can taste so different featuring just one extra ingredient.
My family of beach-goers chowed down on this for breakfast. Heated, served with cream cheese? The best.
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
- 1/2 cup wheat germ
- 1 cup old fashioned rolled oats
- 1 cup pecans
- 1/3 cup splenda or sugar substitute
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 2/3 cups low fat vanilla yogurt
- 3 eggs (use 2 eggs, 1 egg white)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 350°F and grease a bread pan with cooking spray.
Mix dry ingredients in a medium bowl: oats, flour, cinnamon, baking powder, salt, sugar, and wheat germ.
Beat together eggs, yogurt, and vanilla extract. Gently stir in the dry ingredients.
Fold pecans into the batter and pour into the bread pan. Bake for about 50 minutes.
Let the bread cool before serving.
Thanks as always to Jenn @ Peas and Crayons for hosting What I Ate Wednesday!
Chicken Nugget Girl 