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.