Bitchin' Bakin'

I think Bitchin' was an understatement for these Blueberry Lemon Cheesecake Bars from A Bitchin' Kitchen. Even Cam, who doesn't usually have much interest in sweets, loved this dessert. While making this recipe, I felt that it made too much crust and crumble topping and not enough of the cheesecake filling, but upon tasting I found the proportions to be just right. My only criticism was that the shortbread crust was a bit hard, making it difficult to cut through and then tough to eat with a fork, but delicious and buttery enough to make up for that. To improve this recipe next time (and, trust me, there will be a next time I make this, and it will probably be pretty soon), I might see if the crust texture comes out softer if I don't pack down the dough so much.

Modern BLT

Dinner on Wednesday night was supposed to be the boneless pork loin roast with baked acorn squash, but I just didn't have the patience to deal with the long cooking time for both of those, so I referred to a recipe I had found on Annie's Eats earlier that day that looked incredible, the BLT Pizza, a recipe with quick prep and short cooking time.

Annie's recipe instructs on how to make your own pizza crust, but for a quicker alternative with the same homemade taste, I recommend using Harris Teeter's refrigerated pizza dough which you can find near the deli department. One ball of dough is usually more than enough for two people. 

Grocery List:

1. 1 ball of pizza dough
2. Olive oil to brush on dough before baking
3. Shaved Asiago, Parmesan, Romano (Caesar cheeses) cheese blend
4. 4 slices bacon (Reserve drippings)
5. 2 Tbs. Cider vinegar
6. 2 1/2 tsp. Maple syrup
7. 1 1/2 tsp.Dijon mustard
8. 1/4 tsp. Salt
9. 1/2 tsp. Black pepper
10. 4 c. Green leaf lettuce
11. 1 Tomato, seeded and diced
12. 1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
13. 1/2 c. Feta cheese, crumbled

Shaved asiago, parmesiana, romana topped pizza crust

This ended up being amazing. I already want to make it again.

My Angel on Horseback

Cameron is no cooking rookie. Getting home from my trip to Birmingham for the Miss Alabama Pageant, I was greeted by my man with a dinner plan. While I was away, he discovered a Simply Recipes version of angels on horseback: Chipotle Lime Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp and decided to treat me to a home-cooked meal to welcome me home.

Grocery List:

1. Large shrimp, peeled and deveined (We doubled the Simply Recipes recipe and used ~30 shrimp)
2. 4 Tbs. olive oil
3. Zest from 2 limes
4. Juice from 2 limes
5. 1/2 tsp. chipotle powder
6. 15 strips thin bacon, cut in half (30 pieces)
7. Skewers for grilling

Angelic bacon. P.S. Adding bacon to any recipe is cheating!

Peeled and deveined shrimp soaked in olive oil chipotle lime marinade

After wrapping the shrimps in bacon and skewering them, grill 'em up

Brush more of the olive oil chipotle lime dressing

I relaxed with a drink while the shrimp cooked

Perfectly grilled

The real angel :-) Cam's grilling talent definitely rivals the baton twirling and hand bell playing I witnessed at the pageant.

MANNA! In Motion 5K/10K and Fun Run

After weeks and for some of us months of training, Cam and I along with our friend Will met our favorite Charleston couple Lindsay and Andy in Southern Pines for the Manna 10K. For the trip, we rented a condo, so that we could have a comfortable place to stay after the race where we would be able to make our own meals. As with our last 10K with Lindsay and Andy, the night before we could not believe we had committed ourselves to another one of these. But in the morning, armed with everything from Vibrams, a new running top for Lindsay just for this occasion, and GPS and heart rate monitor watches, our pack greeted the challenges of the Sandhills Community College trails...

The arrow is pointing at me there in the pack. My hair is swinging out of control! Andy and Will are the leftmost runners. Then you can see Cam a bit to the right of them. He stands out because he's the tallest. Then Lindsay is to the right of him. You can see her pink shirt.

My official 10K results

Time: 0:57:21

Pace: 9:14

Rank: 39 (out of 78)

After the race which we all finished (Woohoo!), we worked up an appetite, so the rest of the trip was devoted to eating and relaxing and drinking for some of us. 

What was on the menu? 

For lunch, turkey reubens! We created an assembly line for the sandwiches. While Cam was heating up the griddle and melting butter on it, I spread Thousand Island dressing on the rye slices, which I then topped with swiss cheese. Meanwhile Lindsay added the sauerkraut and turkey. Once assembled, Cam was in charge of grilling them until the bread was slightly browned and toasted. Note: For our picky eaters, we left off the Thousand Island and/or sauerkraut. We ate our turkey reubens and grilled turkey sandwiches with Kettle brand's Spicy Thai chips. Delicious!

For beverages, the boys drank Bud Lite and whiskey with coke. We ladies created our own drink out of vodka, sweet and sour mix, and club soda over ice. 

For dinner, Lindsay and Andy had some of their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) veggies for us to experiment with for sides. Andy began the experiment by taking charge of making some Fried Green Tomatoes and baking a pork tenderloin. Lindsay and I had our work cut out for us with figuring out what to do with the beets and turnips. We chose our recipes based on the ingredients we already had on hand to try to reduce the number of things we needed to buy from the grocery store. We ended up selecting two Simply Recipes options: Roasted Beets with Balsamic Glaze and Scalloped Turnips. 

Andy's Fried Green Tomatoes (I love how he has embraced the South!)

Balsamic Glaze for the Roasted Beets

Roasted beets that have been peeled and cut into bite sized pieces

Juicy Pork Tenderloins

Early stage of the scalloped turnips, just peeled and sliced turnips at this point

Scalloped Turnips fresh out of the oven

Office Mug Shots

Morning Ride Stats: 

• Avg. Speed: 7.92 mph
• Distance: 3.78 miles
• Duration: 24:09:84 minutes

Second Breakfast: Normally, I don't find it very difficult to refrain from office snacking. The food is never as good as I want it to be, and if I am going to indulge in something lacking in any real nutritional value, I would much rather indulge in something homemade. But today, I did give into office temptation. Which of the following was the ultimate diet saboteur? Choose from these food mug shots...

1) Sneaky Raspberry Danish Twist and 2) Cinnamon Rolls

3) Wayne's (our IT guy) Candy Jar. There is a Heath Bar in there!

4) Jennifer's Stash: Those Peanut Butter Snickers are really good.  I could justify having one for the protein, right.

The Raspberry Danish Twist was the culprit, and it was delicious. Entenmann's knows what they're doing, but this weekend I will be baking something even better...

 Afternoon Run/Walk Stats:

• Duration: ~45 mins
• Distance: ~4.5 miles
• Equipment: AMT Cardio Machine for 35 mins

Maggiano's Improved

Maggiano's has this awesome deal where when you order one of their classic pastas, you get to pick another one complimentary to take home. When Ray was visiting, Cam and I met him for dinner there. Cam and I split the Four Cheese Raviolis and chose Spaghetti and Meat Sauce with a Meatball to take home. Ray also ordered the ravioli, but he did not want to take home his second pasta, so we took the Fettuccine Alfredo for ourselves. This worked out great because Cam and I had the spaghetti for lunch the following day, and then had the fettuccine in the fridge until later in the week. When we've done this in the past, I supplemented the pasta with other things to make it a more well rounded meal. Cam loved it, so that's what I did again when it was time to prepare the pasta.

Before

After

Grocery List:

• 1 order Maggiano's Fettuccine Alfredo
• 2 chicken breasts
• 8 oz package sliced mushrooms
• 1 Tbs butter
• 1-2 Tbs olive oil
• 1 cucumber
• Grape tomatoes
• Rice vinegar
• Salt
• Pepper

My Methods:

First, I browned the chicken in some butter and olive oil. I think I added some salt to the chicken as it was cooking.

Once the chicken was mostly cooked through, I added sliced mushrooms to the pan.

The last step for the pasta was to add the fettuccine. It comes out of the take out container in a solid block, so I added some water and a splash of white wine (nothing fancy, just something that I had sitting in the fridge) to help loosen it up. Finally I seasoned with salt and pepper.

Since we'd already had a lot of pasta this week, I wanted to have something light and colorful on the side, so I peeled and sliced one cucumber and threw in some grape tomatoes. I seasoned with pepper and topped it off with some rice vinegar.

Carrboro Conditioning

Yesterday marked the continuation of the riding to work routine. To reward myself, I rode my bike into Carrboro to Weaver Street Market for lunch. I justified the trip and the expense as a way to reinforce this new routine and condition myself to keep doing it while also conditioning my quads. I will be disappointed in myself if I let myself slip out of this. Hopefully admitting that while blogging will help motivate in addition to the following food porn. Hooray for finally having pictures for the site!

As you can see, the food was definitely worth the exposure to all of the towny hippies...

Spicy Schezuan Pasta Salad, Moroccan Cous Cous Salad, Collards with Asian Sauce, Corn, Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Artichokes, Raisins, and Baked Tofu on Spinach

Delicious except for the collards and tofu which is obvious since they were the only things left. I really want to like collards, but they are too bitter  for my taste, and the texture is not pleasant. I don't usually have a problem with tofu, but this baked version was dry and oddly hollow.

Peek-a-boo Macaroon

Riding to Carrboro, I earned this little treat

Bike rack or BRAck?

My fiancé Cameron gave me a bike for my birthday back in November last year (at a time when I was getting a bit bored with my running routine and wanted to mix it up), so I have been contemplating riding it to work since then, for both the exercise of it and also as a new strategy to avoid paying for parking at UNC. I've really just been waiting for the weather to get warmer, and then lastly I needed a bike lock, helmet, and bike rack for my trunk. I had intended on waking up at the first alarm today, so that I could install the bike rack (a process supposed to take less than 5 minutes according to the box) and finally ride my bike to work for the first time.

Of course, today started with one of those mornings where things aren't exactly going wrong, but they didn't seem to be falling into place easily either. I definitely hit the snooze button 4 or 5 times before getting out of bed setting me back at least 20 minutes of getting ready. The bike rack did not resemble the diagram on the installation instructions thus adding an element of mystery to the task. Then worse than that, the curvy shape of my bike did not exactly fit the rack though we were able to get it on somewhat secure in the end, but it definitely was not the snug fit that I was hoping for. Apparently I have a voluptuous bicycle, and I guess the bike rack is like an ill-supporting bra--the correct band size, but lopsided cups. Passing a biker on my drive to parking at Meadowmont, I suddenly got the horrible image of my bike dislodging from the rack and wiping the other bike out. Yikes. But at least not such a physically painful event for the metaphorical rack...

Minor difficulties aside, I did eventually make it to Meadowmont with my bike intact. From Meadowmont to my office was about a 20 minute ride with quite a few intense hills. The stretch of road leading up to campus after 54 turns off was intense. At one point I really wanted to walk my bike up the rest of it, but I did make it the entire way to work without having to do that. I do hope that the ride gets easier with practice and conditioning, but overall this first ride was a success. Also, what a coincidence: Today is the national Bike to Work Day, and I didn't even know it.

Cameron said this makes me officially a dork.

It looks like the bike is bigger than my car.

Please don't rain. Please don't rain.

My bike found a friend.

Ready. Set. Blog!

Apparently, I am a planner. I've been that way for a long time though I guess I used to take it for granted (or "for granite" as my younger brother Ray used to say). As a kid, a lot of planning effort would go into what outfit to wear to school, how to convince the parentals to unground me so I could go to a movie or sleepover with friends, or how to fit in completing my homework after sports practices. With my more adult priorities, and the post college perk of having no homework, most of my planning goes into what to cook for Cam and me and sometimes our friends, how to fit a run or other workout into my day, and fun weekend or after-work activities with friends or sometimes just each other.


It's not that I can't be spontaneous or have an aversion to figuring out dinner plans on the fly. I just like to plan things when I am able, so that I can be most efficient, so that I can save myself extra time and gas money going to the grocery store 7 nights a week, for example. Doing that gives me more time to do the other things I want to do. With planning I can also eliminate waste.  It is satisfying to figure out a weekly menu that utilizes all of the ingredients on the list (e.g. having basil pesto on Monday and then using the leftover basil for caprese salad on Tuesday), because it is like solving a puzzle. And in addition, my cooking abilities and willingness to stray from a recipe have improved a ton, since I started making a meal list and grocery list for the week because in order to use up excess ingredients without monotony, I have had to experiment with recipes that I had never tried before.


Through my food planning, I have stumbled upon many food blogs. A few of my favorites are Kath Eats Real Food, Smitten Kitchen, Simply Recipes, Annie's Eats, and Oh She Glows, and I like them all for a range of their characteristics from food, of course, to blogger personality and lifestyle suggestions. Having observed the food and exercise blogging world now for over a year, it is my intention to make my own contribution to it with my own blog. My plan (See! There I go planning again.) is to post on anything that contributes to health, happiness, and "foodiness."


For my first post, I absolutely must share what I prepared for an afternoon snack and then dinner yesterday. I did  not exactly plan to start blogging today on this, it just sort of happened, so unfortunately I do not have any pictures of what I actually made, but in my future posts, I will try to have some.


After work yesterday, I was starving and completely weary of waiting until 8pm for dinner (Cam had to help a coworker hang curtains.) So that I would have the energy to go for a run while I waited for him, I decided to concoct some sort of smoothie. Inspired by Kathy from kblog.lunchboxbunch.com, I created my own version of her Vibrant Orange Juice Frosty with a few slight modifications: 1) I was unable to find frozen pineapple at the Teeter, so I opted to double up on the frozen peaches instead, and 2) I am not a big fan of extremely icy smoothies, so I left out the ice. The smoothie turned out very good and definitely tied me over until dinnertime...Also, it gave me the extra boost I needed to go to Food Lion and back on foot to get olive oil, since I did not have quite enough for both of the recipes I planned to make for dinner. Unfortunately the battery of Cam's awesome Garmin Forerunner 110 (GPS watch) was dead, so I didn't get the stats of my run/walk, but I would estimate that I ran about 2.5-3 miles and walked about 2. We've been bad about running after work this week, because Ray is in town, but this weekend we have to get back on track. The 10K is in just a few weeks!


Dinner was delicious. I decided to try the Leek Toasts with Blue Cheese from Smitten Kitchen paired with the Dole-inspired Arugula Salad from kblog.lunchboxbunch.com. I did not stray from these recipes. My only notes are that for the toasts, I put the blue cheese on the toast before the leeks instead of on top, and I used sour dough bread for those. I would definitely make these again. It was a very easy dinner to throw together.

Simmering Leeks

Toasts

As I referred to earlier, a lot of my menu planning involves making a grocery list. I have already done that for you. This list has all of the necessary ingredients for the recipes on this post.


Grocery List:

• 4 seedless oranges, squeezed
• 1 small banana
• ~1 cup frozen peaches
• 1 1/2 lbs leeks (about 3 big leeks)
• 2 Tbs salted butter
• ~1/3 cup olive oil
• Kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 6 medium-sized 1/2-inch slices of sour dough bread
• 2 oz blue cheese, crumbled
• 1 large mango, cubed
• 1 avocado, cubed
• 3/4 cup macadamia nuts
• 5 cups fresh arugula
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 2 Tbs apple cider vinegar
• 1 Tbs Dijon mustard
• 1 tsp agave syrup
• dash garlic powder

Blogging about eatsercising is fun!