Weekly Eats: Mon June 25 to Sun July 1

A weekly roundup: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  Single girl edition and weight loss update

This week hubs and the stepsons headed off to Boy Scout camp, so I got to revert back to my single girl ways.  The house stayed magically clean all week, the dishwasher only needed to be run once, and much TV was watched.  And you know what?  Totally overrated.  I was so happy to see my men back on Saturday morning.

Weekday Breakfasts

• Cereal bar with string cheese x3
• Breakfast Burritos x2

Weekend Breakfasts
S: Avocado toast with chicken sausage

Su: Sheet pan hash browns with roasted veggies and scrambled eggs.

Weekday Lunches
I dialed back my summer fling with salads just a bit.  I showed up to work on Monday with a few servings of Well Plated's Vegetarian Enchiladas with sauce and an avocado.  On Monday night I pan fried a salmon fillet and brought that to work on Tuesday to put in a salad.

Thoughts on the enchiladas: remember a few weeks ago how I gripped that so many recipes claim that their from scratch enchilada sauce is so magical but I've always been underwhelmed?  Well, forget that because Erin's sauce is the real deal.

M,H,F: Enchiladas

Tuesday: an epic salmon salad with avocado.

Wednesday: Out to lunch with a coworker for sushi.

Weekend Lunches
S: Left over pizza
Su: snacks

Weekday Dinners

Monday (single girl night): chicken sausage, rice, and peas.

Tuesday (date night): My husband escaped from scout camp to spend the evening in civilization.   I pulled out one of my favorite dating recipes of all time, the Pioneer Woman's Chicken Florentine Pasta.

My standard variation: for dinner for two of us, I make half the recipe with one fourth of the pasta (IMO, chicken florentine pasta is awesome fresh but not so exciting as leftovers).  Except oops it's been so long since I made this that I forgot to half the half of the pasta, so I ended up with a lot of pasta for the toppings.  No big, it just meant that I had leftover pasta to eat up for the next two nights.

Wednesday and Thursday (single girl nights): Pimped up leftovers.  The penne from Tuesday with spinach, mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, and kalmata olives.

And some garden produce on the side.

Friday (single girl night):Pizza!  I used to make pizza practically every Friday night back in my single days. 

I made the dough on Thursday and quickly rolled it out and cooked it up when I got home Friday.  Toppings: sausage, mushrooms, and olives.

Weekend Dinners

Saturday and Sunday (family meals): Tacos!  Or what we always have to celebrate the boys returning from scout camp alive.  Stepson #1 was assigned the duties of making the taco meat and chopping green onions.  Stepson #2 made guac.

The spread: ground beef with onions and adhoc taco seasoning of salt, chili powder, cumin, onion and garlic powder.  Cilantro lime rice, green onions, lettuce, tomatoes, guac, cheese, and sour cream.  Plus salsa for me.  Taco boats for kids, tortillas for adults.  Beverages: milk for kids, margaritas for adults.

Meal Prep
I froze the leftover hashbrowns and veg for future breakfasts, there are two more slices of pizza, and we're set with tacos for a few more nights.

Trader Joe's Haul deets

Staples: Bay blend coffee, Ezekiel bread, chicken sausage, kefir, jasmine rice, garlic, canola oil spray

Normal groceries: veggies, fruit, avocados

Impulse buy: canned wine (red blend Simpler Wines Too Uncanny) - I'll report back when we try this
 
Treats: Smashin' smores (for all of us), mini mint ice cream sandwiches (stepson #1 and me are the most likely to go for these), and Gone Bananas frozen banana bites dipped in dark chocolate (for the stepsons)

Workouts
M: Off to recover from Sunday's 10k
T: 5 mile outside run.  My legs were tired from the 10k but I thoroughly enjoyed every step.
W: Off
H: 4 mile treadmill interval run
F: Weights and 1.5 mile treadmill run.
S: 6 mile treadmill run.  The first time I've run more than 5 miles on the treddy.  I was dying to run outside, but we're having a killer heatwave and I had nothing to prove by getting heatstroke.
Su: Off

Weight Loss Thoughts
The backstory on how I feel about my weight and my goal is here and last month's update is here.  I was getting a little number crazy, so I took the month off from the scale. Historically I gain weight during the summers because of all the parties and lose fitting summer closes.

Good stuff: I haven't gained any weight and lost another half pound.  I also tamed my weekday afternoon snack monster.

Bad stuff: Um, I transferred my afternoon snack calories over to the weekends so that's why I only lost half a pound.  I could see the numbers in my food log but without having the reality check of the scale I didn't take things too seriously. 

Takeaways: I think I've got my head in the right place now and am ready to put the pieces together.  Calorie wise, I was averaging 1800 a day back in Jan-Feb, then zoomed up to 2200 average for Mar-Apr-May (weight loss results for those 3 months: 1 pound total).  For June I came out at 2100 average.  If I can get back to the 1800 average, I should be able to get things moving again.  I only have six more pounds to lose so it would be nice to get it done in 2-3 months instead of dragging it out for another 12 months, ya know.

Watching
(From the treadmill): A Place to Call Home (only two more episodes to go), How to Get Away with Murder.  

(From the couch on my own): Killing Eve.  I'm one episode from the end and dying to get back to it but it's on hold while there are little people in the house. 

(From the couch with hubs): Youtube Monty Python binge on date night.  On Saturday the kids went over to the neighbors to hang out so we concluded the D.O.A. spree that we started last weekend.  I showed him the Mad Movies version and he showed me the 80's version.  Conclusion: hubs is a fan of all versions, for me both movie versions fall short.  Mad Movies rocks it all the way.

Reading
The Tuscan Child by Rhys Bowen.  Her books read really fast so I'm going slow.