Weekly Round Up: A Big Deal

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  In this week's edition I'm going to tell you why this week was a VERY BIG DEAL for our family, share some food stuff, and an epic movie.

So what was the big deal this week?  Let's hear it for Stepson #1!!!!!  Since we last talked he went and got himself a high school diploma and had his Eagle Scout Court of Honor (in laymans terms, Eagle Scout is the highest Boy Scout rank, and it's something that you have to work very hard to get.  Seriously, any fool can graduate from high school, but not just any fool can get an Eagle Scout).  #1's future plans are to attend a local university while continuing to live at home, so we get to bask in the glow of his achievements without having any drastic changes to our family just yet.

One of my life observations about being a stepmom is that I have 0% of the worry that goes along with being a "real" parent and 100% of the pride in the boys' achievements.  It's a good life.

Let's talk about food!

Food

A few weeks ago I prepared an entire bag of soy curls, which is a lotta soy curls, so once I was ready to move on I packed up the leftovers in the freezer.  This week I've been bringing them back in wraps for lunches.

My second food adventure to report is that I saw this Cheap Lazy Vegan video which left me craving cold spicy noodles.  In the video she used a spicy ramen pack, but I wanted the closest thing that I could get without going to the grocery store.

I have no idea how close this recipe is to what she had, but I believe that I've found my new food obsession.  I made half of the sauce, used a single serving of the plain ramen that I got a while ago at the Asian Market, and mixed in some grated tofu and a shredded carrot.  I'm dying to get my hands on some cucumber and bok choy like she had in the video, but this will do for now until I get off my butt and go to the grocery store.  I think that I can also cut back on the oil a bit the next time that I make this, which will be soon.

Workouts

This week I did the one week long Caroline Girvan Unilateral series, or rather I did the 3 workouts that I was interested in out of the 5.  I don't really have anything bad to say about it, but I'd rate it lower on the scale.  I skipped the calisthenics workout and the no equipment HIIT since I consistently hate those types of workouts.  On calisthenics day I did this lower body workout instead, and on HIIT day I subbed in the final [with equipment] HIIT workout from Beastmode. 

Watching

A rewatch of what is IMO one of the all time Great Movies.  I don't have a formal Top 10 list but if I did this movie would be on it.  The hero is a writer with an unspecified trauma/implied alcohol problem who goes to post war Vienna to see a friend, but too bad so sad that when he arrives it turns out that his friend died in a pedestrian road accident the day before.  Conveniently two of his friends were with him at the time and they give the hero an account of the tragedy that's so well rehearsed that both the hero and the audience are left saying "come on now".  Shortly afterwards the hero crosses paths with another witness who didn't get the memo and tells him that a Third Man was on the scene of the accident so which confirms that something's up and there is a mystery that needs to be solved.  What's the movie?  So glad you asked, it's The Third Man.

(P.S. for some reason I have it in my head that The Third Man is an Orson Welles production and I keep asking why everyone loses their nut about Citizen Kane when the The Third Man is a much better movie...oops The Third Man is not an Orson Welles movie it's a Carol Reed movie WITH Orson Welles.  But my point still stands.)

Reading

A double DNF! And then a hit!

• Before We Were Innocent is the book that I'd had a longtime Libby hold for but once I got it I couldn't remember for the life of me where I'd heard about it or why I wanted to read it.  The "we're lifelong friends but Something Bad Happened a long time ago and it's a Big Secret that we Never Speak Of" genre is a tricky one for me.  I liked the first 50 books that I read on this topic and then it just got old.
• I'd heard mixed reviews on Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.  There were so many extremes of "I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVED THIS BOOK!!!!" and "EWWWWW THIS BOOK SUCKED!!!" that I felt that I had to check it out.  In the end I didn't fall into either camp: I read a few chapters and it wasn't registering with me either way so I set it aside.
• Two strikes and now let's talk about the home run!  Circling the Sun by Paula McClain is historical fiction about Beryl Markham, an early aviator.  It had me instantly hooked from page one and I'm gobbling it down like a mad woman.
  

See y'all next week!