Weekly Eats: Monday Nov 27 - Sunday Dec 3

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads

Weekday Breakfasts:

Homemade Egg McMuffins

Trader Joe's cereal bar and string cheese

Weekend Breakfasts:

Scrambled eggs with cheese, mushrooms, green pepper, onion, and sausage

Toast

Weekday Lunches:

M&T: Leftover pizza (from our party last Friday.  Never thought I would say this, but I'm pizza'd out)

W&F: Chicken sausage, sweet potato, and peas (my go-to "oops I forgot to cook" meal)

H: Random snacks and a Trader Joe's run

Weekend Lunches:

Thai Sweet Potato bowls. I shopped this one from memory and forgot to get fresh spinach, a lime, and cashews.  The spinach was an easy fix (subbed frozen), and though I miss the lime and cashews, it's still good eatin' without them.  I branched out and spirulized the red pepper this time and didn't like it as much, diced works better for this recipe.  
 

Weekday Dinners:

Monday (family meal): Mini meatloaves from the freezer, mashed potatoes, and corn.

Tuesday (fend for yourself night): I was the last one home, I forget what everyone else ate.  I finished the leftover ravioli from Sunday

Wednesday (date night): this was a special event, since it's the closest date night to my beloved's birthday.  I pulled out all the stops and made chicken fried steak, gravy, and mashed potatoes.  Result: meh. It was fine but not a wow.  The coating on the steak wasn't very thick and the gravy was weak sauce. Recipe source: redacted.  I'll give the blogger the benefit of the doubt.

Thursday: (fend for yourself night/rush due to a kids' school event): grabbed a Whole Foods thai curry out of the freezer.  Loved the sauce, but it was skimpy on tofu and veggies. 

Friday: Single girl night with my menfolk off at various scouting activities.  Another thai curry, this time from Trader Joe's.  Same result as previous night, yummy sauce but not enough goodies underneath.
Lessons learned from two nights of other people's curry: figure out what makes their sauce so good, and then make your own.

Weekend Dinners:

Saturday: Family night at Stepson #1's Boy Scout Camp.  Ham, mashed potatoes, and cookies.

Sunday (family meal): Tacos to celebrate Stepson #1 returning alive from Scout Camp (his favorite meal).  Our tacos are ground beef seasoned with salt, onion powder, chili powder, and cumin, cilantro lime rice, green onions, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, sour cream, and guac.  Plus hot salsa for me.  The grocery store didn't have any ripe avocados, so we dipped into our stash of 100 calorie packs of Holy Guacamole.  There was a crazy good sale on limes, so the adults got homemade margaritas (recipe coming soon).

Food Prep: breakfast burritos.  Outlook for the week ahead: leftover tacos for dinner.  I have two more servings of the thai noodles bowls for lunch in addition to my freezer stash of meals and two servings of veggies to go in scrambled eggs for breakfasts.

Trader Joe's haul deets: went in for coffee, cereal bars, chicken sausage, Ezekiel bread, frozen spinach and peas.  Left with all of the above plus a selection of frozen meals and dark chocolate covered marshmallows for the kids.

Other:  

Achievement unlocked: back at pre-Thanksgiving weight

Workouts: the usual*, running and walking, kettlebell workout (four rounds).  This week's workout anomaly was an ultra rare nighttime workout on Monday.  When the alarm went off on Monday after the holiday weekend, I just couldn't bear to get up and slept in.  The pros of nighttime workouts are that I have more energy, the cons are if anything comes up the workout can get bumped, and it's time away from my family (yeah, even though I'm just downstairs), and possible conflict if hubby is working out.  Our rule is that I have dibs on the gym in the AM, he has dibs in the PM.

*Just realized that I should tell you what the usual is.  Current workout schedule: alarm goes off at 5:50, workout gets done by 7.
M: run: 4 miles treadmill or 5 miles outside (at this time of year with the cold and dark 99.9% of my workouts are on the treadmill).  On the treadmill I start with 1 min at 5.0, and then alternate 30 sec 5.5/30 sec 5.0, every once in a while I throw in 30 seconds at 6.0.  I've been a 12 minute mile runner forever but I'm trying to get faster.
T: weights, incline treadmill walk if time allows (usually 1-1.5 miles)
W: off
H: 4 miles interval treadmill run (1 mi warmup, five rounds of 90 seconds at 6.0/2 min walk at 4.0, final round of .25 miles at 6.0/2 min walk, 1 mi+ run to get to 4 miles).  Goal is to get to 6 rounds of .25 miles at 6.0 and then bump up the speed.
F: weights, incline treadmill walk if time allows (usually 1-1.5 miles)
S: yay no alarm.  After coffee and breakfast: run.  5 miles treadmill or 6 miles outside.
Su: off (sometimes I get ambitious and do weights, but mostly it's off)
In addition to workouts, I usually walk a bit at lunch, either outside or in the building's gym.  We have a cardio challenge at work that starts with 1 mile a week and builds 1 mile every two weeks up to 26 miles a week by the end of the year.  I think there were 100 people in the challenge on week one and we're down to six now.

Watching (from the treadmill): I put a pause on Call the Midwife for season 2 of Glitch.  Love, love love.  Halfway through and I can't wait for tomorrow's workout so I can pick it up again.
Watching (from the couch): Jim Norton comedy special on Netflix for date night.  Caught up on Outlander, can't wait for the season finale next week.

Reading: In Farleigh Field.  Loving this one, my only complaint is that I'm almost done.
Listening to in the car: First Women by Kate Andersen Brower

Your turn:

• What are you cooking this week?
• What are you reading and watching?
•  Outlander fans: where are you with watching the show vs reading the books?  I'm current on the show but have only read the first book.  I'm thinking of starting the 2nd book after this season ends.