Weekly Eats: Cookie Decorating Edition

A weekly roundup: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  Cookie Decorating Edition.

In this week's adventures,  I ate good food, went to Trader Joe's, did a ton of running, watched a ton of movies, and went to a cookie decorating class.  After all of that excitement, it's time for Spring Break and on Saturday we loaded up the family truckster and headed for Chicago.

I've always wanted to learn how to decorate cookies properly instead of just throwing icing on top.  The class was so much fun and I'm hoping to set aside some spare time at Easter to try my hand at this on my own.  I hear it's a bit harder when you actually have to make the cookies and royal icing on your own instead of just decorating them.

Breakfasts
Monday & Tuesday: the potato and pepper mix that I made last week topped with eggs and a 'lil avocado.

Wednesday: fruit, string cheese, cereal bar

Thursday: an ad hoc breakfast burrito with eggs, cheese, the potato mix, and Trader Joe's pepita salsa.  Loving this combo and I can't wait to make up a batch to freeze.

Friday and Saturday: avocado toast.

Sunday: a spontaneous Egg McMuffin cobbled together from our hotel's continental breakfast and fruit.

Lunches
Monday: the last Skinny Taste Loaded Baked Sweet Potato.  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this recipe was everything and it will be back soon.

Tuesday & Thursday: Sweet Potato, Corn, and Black Bean Enchiladas

Wednesday: Mongolian Soy Curls

Friday: veggie burrito.

Saturday: road trip lunch with the finest that the turnpike had to offer.  Whopper Jr.

Sunday: OMG.  I am not saying that you should go to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago just to have the Galactic Eggplant sandwich, but if you should happen to be there anyway, please have this sandwich.  I would be perfectly happy to have this sandwich for every meal of everyday for the rest of my life and I need to figure out a homemade version.  That is all.

Dinners
Monday & Tuesday (family meals): leftover tacos.

Wednesday: snacks at the cookie decorating class.

Thursday (fend for yourself night): chicken sausage, peas, and Trader Joe's cauliflower gnocchi with pesto.

Friday: one my favorite dinners prepared by my favorite chef.  Grilled cheese and tomato soup.

After dinner I baked up a batch of chocolate chip banana bread muffins for our road trip.

Saturday: dinner at SIL#2's house.  Ham, scalloped potatoes, green beans, salad, bread, and texas sheet cake for dessert.

Sunday: TBD, sounds like we're headed out on the town.

Trader Joe's haul deets

• Bay Blend Coffee (the past few times I've been there they only had 1 or 2 cans, this time they had a full shelf.  Whew!  I've been drinking this coffee so long that I don't know what I would do without it).
• Pepita salsa
• Chicken sausage
• Jasmine rice
• Strawberry bites gone berry
• Thai lime and chili cashews

Workouts
28 miles of running
Monday: weights and 4 treadmill miles
Tuesday: 6 treadmill miles
Wednesday: off
Thursday: 6 miles of speed intervals
Friday: 4 miles with some hills
Saturday: 8 treadmill miles.  I wanted to go further but ya know my family kinda wanted to get on the road so that was all the time I had.
Race Envy: the Chicago Shamrock 8k was today and if I'd planned ahead, I could have run in it.  Count me in if we come back here next year for spring break (although running a race and then being on my feet all day in a museum probably isn't going to be the easiest of deals).

Watches

• From the treadmill: more silent movies.  City Lights, The Kid, and West of Zanzibar.  Then back to TV shows with the first episode of Line of Duty (same folks who did Bodyguard) and oh man is it good.

• From the couch: old movie palooza.  Sunset Blvd and Sabrina.

Reading
A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams