Monday, March 6, 2023

Weekly Round Up: Time Delay

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  This week I took a "time delay" approach to cooking dinner.

Eats

If you're new here==>I kinda/sorta gave up on cooking weeknight dinners a while ago for the combo reasons of the rest of the house having evening activities that they need to get to in a hurry and mismatched tastes in food.   The downside of this arrangement is that I can't really cook anything on weeknights because the rest of the family is in a mad rush of cooking their no fuss staples/reheating leftovers.

For two nights this week I tried a "time delay" for dinner.  I hung out with the fam while they ate (the thing that I really want out of the dinner meal) while I prepped food.  Then once we got back from walking the dog I did the cooking while they rushed out the door to their nighttime activities.  The first night that I tried it I made our old standard salmon bowls (rice, Costco frozen stir fry veggies, air fried salmon, avocado, and the dressing from here...everyone says that they like it when we have it and yet no one ever seems to want it...I mean not saying I want salmon all the time but I like it more frequently than once every six months)  It worked well to cook rice and thaw the salmon while they were eating, and then cook it after we got back.

My second solo cooking effort falls under the category of "good food that looks way better IRL than on the internet".   Let me introduce you to From My Bowl's Chickpea Curry Casserole and please please please click the link and look at her pictures instead of mine.  Whatcha do to make this is to grab a casserole pan and dump a bunch of veggies, chickpeas, rice, and a coconut curry sauce in to it and then bake it rice is cooked.  After it's done just top it with slivered almonds and eat. 

The only thing that went wrong is that it took way longer than advertised to cook.  The recipe says 45 minutes but mine went well over an hour before the rice was done.  Some of this is because I used frozen cauliflower, but even so I feel like that shouldn't have slowed things down so much.  But no worries, I wasn't going anywhere and it was well worth the wait.  I packed up the leftovers into the freezer so the next time I have it I'm only looking at a few minutes to get it on the table.

Workouts

Caroline Girvan's Advent series is a winner.  The only thing is that after a few weeks of me complaining that 40 minute workouts felt so long, I quickly found that 20 minute workouts feel too short.  Some people are just never satisfied!

The solution was easy - by the 2nd day I'd started doubling up on the workouts.  It's probably not ideal for muscle splits but it feels great and I've got my gym mojo back.

In other fitness news, I found out why a burpee is called a burpee this week.  Who knew?

Watching

Our second win in a row in the family movie watching department!  Normally the boys would rather do anything else besides watch a movie with us, but hubs convinced them to at least try what he described as "a movie by the Zoolander guy.  It's a spoof of Apocalypse Now."

Tropic Thunder was a runaway hit!

Reading

My final review of Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone is exactly what I said last week.  Yes it picked up a bit in the second half, no I didn't hate it, and yes it's fading in my memory quickly.  On to the next book!

That's all she wrote!  See ya next week.


17 comments:

  1. That salmon looks so delicious.

    It is FASCINATING that the burpee is named after a man; I really enjoyed reading that article. Also, who has the first name Royal?!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know! They knew how to do names back in the old days!

      Delete
  2. The burpee background!!
    We're doing burpees today at Crossfit.
    We have to add in a push-up in the middle and a jump at the end - both moves are not part of the original burpee. I think I'm going to send this article to our coach, ha!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good luck telling your coach that;-) I kind of like the jump at the end, even though it's not original. I can't stand it when pushups are added since they're already something I'm not good at and adding them to other stuff doesn't help with that.

      Delete
  3. Burpee is from MR BURPEE. Huh. That is interesting and not something I imagined.
    I could really get down with that coconut curry!
    Per Elisabeth's comment above - Almanzo Wilder (married to Laura Ingalls Wilder) had a brother named Royal. ROYAL AND ALMANZO. I mean.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The coconut curry is awesome and so easy, even if it has a long baking time.

      I remember Royal Wilder now! Look it was lonely out on the prairie so people had to be creative with names.

      Delete
  4. I am SO GLAD my last name is not burpee. Imagine what his descendants must think about every time they sign their last names.

    I still have ten days left in Fuel and that will probably take me through most of March. I think I'm going to do Beast Mode after that, but I'll take your considerations about the Advent workouts in to consideration for what to do after that!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I feel like I was ready to be done with Fuel at the 10-workouts-to-go point, but it is fun to keep doing different programs. I know I said I would go back to Iron after Advent but now that I'm recharged I'm thinking...maybe I'll do Heat??? Stay tuned!

      Delete
  5. I'll have to revisit Tropic Thunder. We were recently talking about it in our house, so this must be a sign. My husband thought we watched it, I don't remember it! I'm up for a comedy any day though. I am just having issues trying to organize dinner these days. I will come up with ideas, stick them on the calendar, and then never shop for ingredients or the family will have other things going on (yep, you know about this!). I used to be so good at meal planning.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I saw it with the hubs a long time ago so I was due for a rewatch. It's even better now that I've seen Apocalypse Now.

      Yeah dinner...I'll get back to planning and cooking after the kids have grown up and moved out;-) As long as I can keep trying new things that's as much of a win as I can manage right now.

      Delete
  6. My husband and I watched Men in Black with our kid on my birthday, which was fun. Definitely some parts of the script should stay where they are in 1997, but overall I thought it held up decently. I giggled a lot.

    That salmon plate looks beautiful and delicious.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ooh I want to see MIB again. I'm not sure if the boys would be into it, so it comes down to whether I can talk the hubs into it. As far as things that should stay in 1997, Tropic Thunder would not have gotten made today so I'm glad that it snuck in "back then" (2008).

      Delete
  7. Wait, "Burpee" was someone's last name? Poor guy. That is in interesting fact to know!
    I'm laughing because I posted food pics today that look SO terrible. The meals were so good though! I did click on the link for the chickpea curry recipe and it's genius! (Plus, I trust her because that's the website for the cashew "chicken" recipe that I make all the time now.) I'm definitely making this soon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Now I'm wondering if calling them burpees was his idea or if someone who hated burpees started calling them that as an insult to him.

      I had my second serving of the chickpea curry last night and can confirm that it's just as good out of the freezer. Cook once, eat six times!

      Delete
  8. You take impressive dinner photos as well as making impressive dinners! I'll have to make that chickpea curry another time.

    Thanks for the Tropic Thunder recommendation - will add that to my list. I really only watch funny movies and I rarely watch films so I'm often looking for something to watch with my husband and I think that ticks the box!

    ReplyDelete
  9. That casserole looks delish! Tropic Thunder is a fave in our house. It's so inappropriate but it makes us laugh!

    ReplyDelete
  10. The curry looks amazing, and yet again, I have not seen the movie that you watched this week. (Is that ever NOT true?? :>)

    ReplyDelete