Weekly Eats: Double Digit Edition

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  This week's highlights: the return of our favorite chicken fajitas, a Trader Joe's Haul, a short business trip, and a single girl weekend while my men went to boy scout camp.  Running was all over the place this week, starting with burnout, then time off, and then my first double digit mileage since May.

Breakfasts
Monday: We got to ease back from our vacation with the Labor Day holiday.  My husband mixed up a batch of homemade waffles, and you better believe that I got in on that.

Tuesday: back to the grind with a breakfast burrito

Wednesday: breakfast potatoes and eggs

Thursday: ha, I changed things up on you.  Spinach feta omelette

Friday: early out of town meeting, they brought in Panera breakfast sandwiches to make up for the early rise and travel time.  I had a chipotle chicken avocado wrap.

Saturday: pre long run air fryer French Toast.

Sunday: a Clif bar.

Lunches
Monday: veggie burrito

Tuesday: the vegan buffalo mac and cheese that I made a few weeks ago.  It was still on point after freezing/reheating, so this one is an official lunch box winner.

Wednesday & Friday: big ol' salads from work catering

Thursday: sweet potato, black bean, and corn enchiladas

Saturday: Orange beef via a Blue Apron recipe (their recipe/my ingredients).  Eh, it was just alright, I mean good enough but not spectacular.  It was easy to make and I'm kind of looking forward to the leftovers, so there is that.

My changes: I used more beef, more mushrooms, and less noodles, and shredded cabbage mix b/c that's what I had on hand.  After tasting it I added a big glug of sambal oelek to get the spice up.

Sunday: A beef and bean burrito - the leftover steak from Wednesday's dinner + Trader Joe's bean dip + a Flatout flatbread wrap.

Dinners
Monday and Tuesday (family meals): it's been too long since we've had chicken fajitas.  The only fault that I have with this recipe is that no matter how much I make I always wish we had more.  I used four chicken breasts and two bell peppers.

Wednesday (date night): the first week of the month is always my busiest week at work, so I brought home a steak, portobello caps, and potatoes and gave them to my honey to grill up.  We had flat iron steak (if you're not familiar, it's a trifecta of delicious - lean - cheap).

Thursday (fend for yourself night): the last fajita

Friday (single girl night): the men in my life were off at scout camp and a coworker had a house warming party.  They grilled up hamburgers, hot dogs, and tofu and veggie kabobs for the vegetarians, and had a good spread of side dishes and desserts.

Saturday (single girl night): see lunch.  When I'm single on long run day, lunch/dinner is at 2:00.  Snacks at night.

Sunday (family meal): My men are back from the woods!  We rolled out our standard post-camp meal of tacos.

Trader Joe's Haul Deets

Staples: Bay Blend Coffee, Guac packs, Gone Berry Crazy bites, fig bars, and Clif bars (main dietary staple of stepson #2 and increasingly my go to morning snack), smashing smores, cashew apricot date nut bites (my emergency work snack when I'm hangry and need to eat something NOW), bean dip.

Everyday groceries: mushrooms and cabbage mix (==>for the orange beef that I made on Saturday)

New stuff to try: one bottle of hard kombucha and one can of Platform sweet potato ale.  I got these partly because I was curious and partly to horrify my husband.  They were alright, I'm glad I tried them but I will not be repurchasing them.  I love that TJ's lets you buy beer by the bottle.

Seasonal Rant: the local grocery stores have had Halloween candy in stock since July and everyone on the planet is raving about Starbucks Pumpkin Spiced Lattes...I feel like TJ's waits forever to bring out their fall stuff and when they do it's in stock for 5 minutes.

Workouts
22 miles of running this week.  Coming back from vacation is always a struggle, so I expected my Monday workout to be tough, but my Tuesday and Wednesday workouts were hard in a way that they shouldn't have been.  Instead of energizing me, the workouts drained me.  I denied the problem as long as I could and then got smart and took a few days off.

I read all the time about other bloggers agonizing over skipping a workout, and all I can say is that when you know in your heart of hearts that it's time to take a break, it's time to take a break and that's the end of the discussion.

Monday: 4 miles + hill sprints, this was a way harder workout than it should have been.

Tuesday: 5 miles with warm up/cool down and 3 minutes/2 minutes/1 minute @ 5k speed w/1 min recover between each x3.  Gorgeous sunrise and fog but again it was way harder than it should have been.  Body weight workout at night.

Wednesday: 3 easy miles that were ungodly hard.  At this point I knew that I needed some time off running, but I was determined to run on Thursday since I knew I had a business trip on Friday that would mean missing a workout.

Thursday: Giving myself a gold star.  As soon as my alarm went off my brain said "nope!" and I went back to sleep.  Even though the weather was gorgeous and even though I knew I wouldn't be able to workout on Friday.  Body weight workout at night.

Friday: off due to travel, though honestly I needed the extra rest anyway.

Saturday: we're back folks!  The two extra rest days did exactly what they needed to and I was off with pep in my step for my first 10 mile run since my half marathon last May.  I ran from my house to the trail in my favorite park on earth and back.The trail is very hilly and the mile after the park is unrelentingly uphill, so yes I struggled after three very hard miles and took a few walk breaks, and that's A-OK.  I spent the rest of the day very horizontal.

Sunday: off, though I went to see Brittany Runs a Marathon, not sure if that's a fitness update or a movie update.

Fun Fact: Half marathon #2 is three weeks away.  I kind of feel ready and I kind of don't.

Linking up with: The Weekly Run Down! Head over to Kim and Deborah to check it out!

Watching
-Finished the latest season of How to Get Away with Murder.

-Brittany Runs a Marathon!  I want so badly to talk about every last detail, but I can't without getting into spoilers.  All I can say is that I felt all the feels and I believe that most of the runners that I know will enjoy this movie.

Reading
Not much.  I tried a Best Seller that I couldn't get into (back to the library) and then picked up Snap Judgement by Marcia Clark.  As in O.J. Simpson Marcia Clark, girlfriend knows how to write.

I've been bad about leaving my audio books out of these recaps, so I'll go ahead and catch that up.  For the most part I listen to podcasts on my commute but every once in a while I throw an audio book in there and I finally got an Audible membership this year (yes my preferred source is Libby but sometimes the waiting lists are too long).  Here are three titles that I've enjoyed in the last six months:

-Educated by Tara Westover, I was late to this party and this is definitely a worthy read/listen.
-Life is a Marathon by Matt Fitzgerald, wow just wow.
-Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb.  Heads up that whatever happens between the last 60 minutes to 30 minutes of the end made me cry, and not just a little cry.