A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads. In this week's edition it's still winter and we had a solid week of family dinners, including a win on the leftover front.
Food
Monday & Wednesday: some very seasonally appropriate chili mac
Tuesday: a winner in the Leftover Lottery. We had hamburger buns and lettuce leftover from Saturday's mandatory burger night. I had a stash of two salmon burgers and two shrimp burgers left over from a summer Trader Joe's splurge. I'd gotten them for my lunches, but found that (1) they took a bit longer to cook than I can usually manage on a weekday and (2) I'm not really into burgers for lunch. They had been sitting in the freezer for a bit and I finally saw my chance to make a move. I cooked them up and set the plates on the counter and told my crew to pick up the plate of their choice on the way to the table. The boys both went for the salmon burgers, leaving the adults with the shrimp burgers. Woo hoo leftover success!!!
Thursday: Chicken parm (you know the drill...Costco panko chicken)
Friday: date night 1 of 2! Out to the drive in hamburger place
Saturday: date night 2 of 2! Mexican takeout
Sunday: back to the family life. I made a double batch of Shepherd's Pie. This was a really awkward recipe to double but at least we have 3+ nights of dinner instead of the 1.5 nights of dinner from my usual recipe.
Workouts
Gah...it's still winter. Mega cold which means that we're stuck with the mega snow. I got four inside treadmill workouts and a token Saturday afternoon outside run for three miles. Nothing more to say about that.
Watching
I try to keep the blog a very mild PG-13 but I need to take that up a bit to tell you what my husband said to me on Saturday night right after dinner: "If we start now we can watch Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and still get to bed by 10:30". I mean, does he know me or does he know me?
For my treadmill solo viewing and AFI Top 100 rewatches it was a serious Hitchcock week. I started off with Rear Window and am currently about two workouts away from finishing North by Northwest.
Reading
Still working on The Four Winds by Kristen Hannah
Yay for Shepherd's Pie! The perfect winter dish.
ReplyDeleteWell done on the dreary treadmill running, Birchie. It's hard, but it's better than nothing.
Are you still setting the treadmill at an incline towards the end of your runs? I'm sure you do, it's a great way to do hill training!
100% the treadmill is much better than nothing. Yes I do the incline toward the end, just because it's so hard that I would have to take a break if I did it in the middle of the workout. The million dollar question is if any of this will translate to "real" hills once I get back outside.
DeleteI'm going to confess a hugely unpopular opinion and that is that I do not like Kristen Hannah's writing. I've tried! I've tried! But she is just not for me. Which is to say I read that book and I TRIED BUT I CAN'T. I don't know what it is.
ReplyDeleteWinter! It's really here!
Not an unpopular opinion! There's something about The Great Alone that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. The Four Winds could go either way for me - right now I'm in but it wouldn't take a lot for me to lose interest and DNF.
DeleteThe Great Alone was some serious nonsense, if you ask me. That ending! Argh. My take has always been that We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates was a better execution of the same type of story and Kristin Hannah always comes up as something to read for book club and I try so hard to steer away from her because her books make me angry. That being said, I haven't read The Four Winds, but I won't be surprised if someone brings it up as a suggestion for our next book club book.
DeleteTrue confession: I've completely forgotten the ending of Great Alone! But if I felt that way it would certainly not motivate me to read her other books.
DeleteI loved The Great Alone, but I have to say that most of Kristin Hannah's books don't appeal to me? Maybe I am giving them short shrift, I don't know -- I haven't even TRIED anything else, but they just don't sound like I'd enjoy them.
ReplyDeleteYour meals sound so yummy! That chili mac - yum!
That's the thing though==>there are so many other great books out there so if you did make room for more Kristen you'd probably be missing out on something that you'd like better.
DeleteChili mac is a fav for winter but strangely enough it's also one of our go-to's for family vacation in the summer. It's a four seasons meal for us!
Sounds like a typical situation for end-of-January- mega cold and mega snow. Lots of treadmill running- I don't know, but I would imagine it'll translate to real hills outside. You can let us know when the snow melts!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the leftover lottery. Sounds like you had some nice winter-ish meals... even though it's warm here I'm inspired to make chili now.
Hang in there! Spring will come... eventually.
Yes the snow will melt someday! But in the meantime we've just got more on the way. There's a reason why smart people live in FL!
DeleteYou just inspired me to try my hand at chili mac (but I may have to sub-in rotini). WE have a few days remaining of "total-yuck-it's-SOOO-cold-outside" weather, that I need some comfort food (and thier leftovers).
ReplyDeleteEnjoy the chili! We're having a brief thaw and then another big storm is on the way.
DeleteOh, I forgot about the TJ burgers... we got them for a while until we didn't... but I might have to put them on the shopping list again.
ReplyDeleteI do enjoy Kristin Hannah's book although I agree that some are better than others... I really thought "The Nightingale" was very good.
The boys liked the mahi mahi burgers. The shrimp were just OK and I was glad to get a chance to finally use them.
DeleteOooh Shepherd's Pie is perfect for this time of year. I'm all about the comfort food. Tonight was Chinese carry out--Egg Foo Young and it made me so happy.
ReplyDeleteI liked The Four Winds, but ok, real talk, it felt like a rip-off of The Grapes of Wrath. It was good, but still...
Real talk now that I've finished it I wish that I had bailed before the ending.
DeleteChinese carry out is perfect for all times of the year!
The Great Alone was very 'meh' to me, but I'm just not a good audience for modern fiction. Sigh. I try, I really do, but I prefer YA, classic fiction (had a great time with some of Charles Dicken's works last winter), and non-fiction.
ReplyDeleteI DID love A Gentleman in Moscow and really enjoyed The Dutch House, but fiction is so hit or miss for me, that I'm sure I'm missing some great ones. But life is too short, I guess, and I try to prioritize the books I know are more likely to "tick" the right boxes for me?
http://elisabeth-frost.com
100%!!!! I'm completely willing to dump a book that isn't working for me so that I can move on to something that's going to a better fit. I always say that I'm not in school anymore so I don't have to read anything that I don't want to.
Delete