Weekly Eats: Cookie Monster Edition

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  Cookie Monster Edition.

This week we survived the polar vortex, I took a break from running, and made an insane amount of cookies.

Breakfasts

Monday and Wednesday: cereal bar, string cheese, and fruit.

Tuesday and Thursday: breakfast burritos

Friday: homemade Egg McMuffin with chicken sausage

Saturday: waffles n'bacon from hubs.

Sunday: cookies

Lunches

Monday: big ol' salad from work catering.  Even though I'd brought a lunch I couldn't resist the tofu (it's under there somewhere promise).

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday: Crockpot Chicken Enchilada Bowls.  Look, let's tell it like it was: I found this to be just a little bit bland.  I think the fault is either my taste buds or the enchilada sauce that I used, not the recipe per se.  I used Trader Joe's brand sauce, which I haven't had before so I don't know if TJ's sauce is lacking or if I just needed to add more.

Given a choice between making this again or making the-similar-but-not-bland Skinny Taste's Salsa Chicken with Black Beans and Corn the answer for me personally is Skinny Taste.  But if I needed to make a family dinner for blander palates, I think the Enchilada chicken would be the winner. 

Dinners

Monday (family meal): tacos.

Tuesday (family meal): hodgepodge to clean up leftovers and get out the door.  Hubs had the last portion of chicken parm from last Friday, I had the last taco, steps had nuggets and mac n'cheese.

Wednesday (date night): It was cold folks.  School was outright canceled for two days, and the property manager of our office building told all of the businesses not to show up unless it was essential since they thought it was very likely that the electrical supply wouldn't be able to keep up with the heat.  I took advantage of a work from home day and whipped up a batch of Shepherd's Pie.

Thursday (fend for yourself night): more Shepherd's Pie.

Friday (date night): it finally warmed up to double digit temperatures, but my husband wasn't going to leave the house as long as there was Shepherd's Pie to be had.  He finished it off and I had Sweet Potato, Corn, and Black Bean Enchiladas.

Saturday: A night with the Quartet, aka my three best friends from grad school.  It's the kind of friendship where none of us hang out unless all of us hang out, and we can hardly ever get our schedules to match up.  I wanted to bake something but couldn't decide between two recipes that I had my eye on from Hungry Runner Girl.  Should I make Everything We Love Cookies or Swig Sugar Cookies?  The obvious answer was both.

It was the right decision.

 

I struggled with the portion size on the Swig cookies.  I usually go for a smaller cookie but I followed the recipe and made 24 cookies, which were the size of my hand.  If I make this again, I'd make them smaller because it's really hard to package up 24 hand size frosted cookies.  On the frosting side, I can confirm Janae's observation that the frosting came out really runny.  I had to add a lot of powered sugar to get anything near frosting consistency.  But I have no beef with the end result.  They were delicious.

Nothing much to tell about the everything cookies, except that they were easy peasy to make and hit the spot.

So what did we have for dinner?  Pizza.  And lots of cookies.

Sunday (family meal): we took the easy route with grilled chicken.  I had a sweet potato on the side, the rest of the fam had rice.

Meal Prep
Made Chicken Fajitas for lunches since I had the grill on anyway.  Let's see between breakfast burritos, tacos, enchiladas, and the enchilada rice bowls, 9 of 21 meals this week were taco based and I don't see anything wrong with that.

Workouts
Ah things were going so well until they weren't...I felt 100% fine when I went to bed on Sunday and woke up Monday with a very sore hip.  I haven't had this exact pain before, it was kinda like the place where the leg bone goes into the hip socket was swollen. 15 miles of running this week.
Monday: 3 treadmill miles, since my hip didn't hurt at all once I started running.  Weights at lunch.
Tuesday: 6 treadmill miles, and I had so much stamina.  I only took one break at 5.1 miles.  My weight workout at lunch was agonizing.
Wednesday: off and my hip wasn't happy.
Thursday: I decided that maybe sorta it probably made sense to back off running since my hip wasn't getting any better.  3 mile treadmill incline walk at 3.0 & 3%, which told me how bad my hip was, since normal tready walking speed for me is 4.0 & 5%.  Weights at lunch (upper body only).
Friday: got real and finally skipped all workouts, especially since the nature of the pain would have made lunges impossible.  Hip stopped hurting, quad muscles were very achy.
Saturday: 99.9% back to normal, made myself take the day off just to be sure.
Sunday: it was 50 degrees and sunny and it was time to get back at it.  6 miles outdoors.

It could just be coincidence, but somehow I feel that the weight routine that I started last week might have something to do with my hip acting up.  Yes, it only took 1 ½ weeks for me to get completely sick of the new routine.  I want to focus on building up some of my weaknesses - dips, one legged squats, and dare I say pull ups.  So back to the drawing board on the weight thing but I will figure this out.  Someday.

Watching

• From the treadmill: Wanted.
• From the couch: The Fyre documentaries.  Just our opinion, Hulu>Netflix but both were good.

Reading

Still happily paging though Moral Defense