Weekly Eats: Stepkids Anniversary Edition

A weekly roundup: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  This week started as a blur and ended on the beach.  With fireworks in between.
July 4th and Labor Day are tricky holidays in the Thug Life of a corporate accountant.  We do most of our work right at the beginning of the month so it's an awkward time to have a holiday because we can't take extra time off apart from the holiday itself.  I worked life a fiend from Monday through Wednesday, had a lazy July 4th (family party + the anniversary of meeting my stepsons, so it's an extra special day), wrapped things up on Friday, and then on Saturday we headed off on family vacation to the beach.  We didn't do anything genius with food this week, apart from eating down all of our perishables before we left.


Breakfasts
Monday and Saturday: avocado toast

Tuesday and Thursday: breakfast burritos

Wednesday: Bacon, egg, and cheese on an Everything Bagel Thin

Friday:quickie-inspired-by-Macheesmo sweet potato, avocado, cheese, and egg burrito.

Sunday: first day of vacay breakfast cooked by my honey.

Lunches
Monday and Tuesday: salads from work catering

Wednesday: hot dog, potato salad, and purple potato chips from work catering

Thursday (date lunch): Hubs and I were home alone.  PB&J + chips + season 3 Stranger Things #adulting

Friday: WFH veggie burrito

Saturday: unpictured airport Arby's.  Reuben and fries, ate about 3/4 of each.

Sunday: beach lunch!  That's an Asian salad kit topped with baked sesame ginger tofu and chips on the side (grocery store prepped food FTW).

Dinners
Monday & Tuesday (fend for yourself nights): veggie burritos

Wednesday (date night): No shame via Panera.  1/2 turkey BLT and broccoli cheese soup.

Thursday (July 4th): big family bash at SIL#3's.  I made deviled eggs (plan A was to make guac but I couldn't find any ripe avocados so this was my fall back).

Friday (family meal): No shame via Papa John's.

Saturday & Sunday (family meals): there is only one meal for the first night of vacation: beachfront chili mac.  The kids are either hot or cold on chili mac, lately very cold, but something about the travel must have made them extra hungry because they bolted it down.  The kid who especially doesn't like it had two bowls, albeit with a 50% ratio of mac to cheese.

Workouts
Oh lord it was hot this week.  28 miles of running/week 3 of this speed plan.  I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to do the speed in the heat, but I did.  The official breakdown of the 28 miles is: 4 in 50 degree temps, 8 on the treadmill, and all of the rest in blazing heat.

Stuff on the internet that helped me:

•  7 Reasons to Embrace Being Sweaty
• I forget where I read this, but someone referred to running in humidity as the "poor man's altitude" and I love the idea.

Monday: the heat wave took a break.  It was in the 50s and I made the most of it with 4 miles.  The plan called for easy, but I felt good so I pushed the pace (yeah I know I'm not supposed to do that but I don't always do what I'm supposed to).  The last mile was sub 11 minute (a big deal for me).  Weights at lunch.

Tuesday: The heat came back with a vengeance.  5 miles with 6 x 90 seconds fast/2 minute recover.

Wednesday: 3 hotter than hot easy miles.  Weights at lunch.

Thursday: 5 miles of 4 x 5 minutes fast/2 minutes recover. This was the only workout of the week where I reached my limit with the heat, but not until the last mile, which was a cool down mile anyway.

Friday: 3 miles easy.  Oops I skipped the weights so I broke my multi week streak of 3x weights per week.

Saturday: Yeah there's a limit on how much acclimatizing to the heat that I'm going to do on long run day.  Hey treadmill!  8 miles, including 8 x 1 min fast/1 min recover. 

Sunday: off...and I really didn't want to be.  I just recently started running 6 days a week and it felt so strange not to run today.

Next week's outlook: there are no treadmills at the beach.  The lows at home have been in the low 70s and here they're in the high 70's.  It's a cutback week so I'm not worried about getting through the workouts but man it's gonna be even sweatier.  Poor man's altitude folks.

Watching
From the treadmill: finally finished season 1 of Line of Duty, and randomly pulled up Baby Face to get me through the rest of Saturday's workout.

From the couch: Hubs and I watched Murder, My Sweet and the first 3 episodes of season 3 of Stranger Things.  The boys have seen the show with their mom and don't really like it (kids these days just don't appreciate the 80's) so it's unapologetic adults viewing in our house.

Family Viewing: Firefly!  The boys saw Serenity with their mom earlier in the week, so that opened the gateway to us seeing the show.  Fun fact, this was the first TV show that hubs and I watched together and it's so fun to watch it with the boys now.

Reading
The Lola Quartet by Emily St John Mandel.  Great book, yes I recommend it, but I just thought it was kinda improbable that the plot hinged on one of the characters spending an inheritance right after getting it.  I've never inherited money so I wouldn't know but isn't there usually a delay in getting cash in hand?  Probate court and such?

Next up:  The Expats.