Weekly Round Up: Empty Nest

A weekly roundup: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  This week the hubs and I had an empty nest, I tried two new recipes, I'm considering some changes on the workout front, and I started a new TV show that's just as good as the book.

At this point it's more newsworthy when my family is home than that they're away at Boy Scout camp.  The breaking news is that we're halfway through an empty nest stretch - I've got the hubs at home and the boys are halfway through two weeks worth of local Scout camps.  The only reason that the hubs isn't with them is because of his cursed limited PTO.  

I think Boy Scouts really will come to an end for the summer at some point???  Or maybe I'm imagining things and it never ends?

Eats

With the kids away the hubs and I were free to play for dinner.  At his request I made him a chicken pot pie BUT BUT BUT history was made.

The hubs made the request kind of late on Sunday so I did something that I've never done before.  I forked out $3 for two STORE BOUGHT PIE CRUSTS.

Strangely enough the world did not end, the crust was very good, and I might just take the store bought route in the future.

For myself, I made up a round of Well Plated's Pad Thai (pictured up top).  It came together very easily and was quite good.

For this week's Sunday dinner, I tried out another new recipe that I knew was something that both of us would want to eat.  I made A Taste of Home's Angel Hair Pasta with Sausage and Spinach.  I made a few small tweaks:

• Wow why are they having us add oil to the pan with the sausage at the start of the recipe?  Thanks all the same the sausage has all of the grease that we need to pick up the onion and garlic saute.
  
• Surely there is a typo in the recipe where it says to use two 9 ounce bags of fresh spinach?  Yes it cooks down but wowza that's a lotta spinach.  I used one 5 ounce bag that I put in right at the end instead of halfway through.
• I find that heavy cream makes things too heavy, so I used half and half instead and honestly milk would be perfectly fine as well. 

The end result was a winner.

Workouts

I started Caroline Girvan's 10 week Epic Heat series this week but sadly it didn't click.  As in I didn't like 3 out of the 5 workouts in the first week and I see a lot of workouts coming up that I know I'll be skipping (excessive pushups, other weird moves that I don't do well, etc.)

When I started doing these workouts last year, I made the joke that I had broken up with running and now I was "seeing someone else" by doing the Caroline workouts.  Now I think it's time for Caroline and me to redefine our relationship.  Obviously the workouts have been incredible or I wouldn't have kept doing them for 10 months, but the format is getting stale.  There are too many foundational things that I can't do and am not going to pick up just by following the workouts (example: hey pushups!).  I also want to try lifting heavier but with less reps to make better use of my gym time.

Next week I'm going to try creating my own workouts and possibly adding in some shorter Caroline stuff here and there.  I might get her app as well - I already know from the chatter that I've seen that the new Beastmode workout is probably not going to be a fit for me, but she has a ton of shorter workouts plus articles on the app and I'm curious enough to drop $10 for a one month subscription.  At the same time I'm not in any hurry to drop the $10 if that makes sense - let's see how this week goes and I'll refine the plan from there.

Watching

I read the book and now I'm watching the show.  Given that The Handmaid's Tale (the book) is so tightly written, I wasn't sure what the story would look like spread out over 5 seasons and counting.  But so far from where I am three episodes in I think they've got it.  The book has the brilliant words, and the TV show has Elizabeth Moss's eyerolls as she tries to blend in and keep her head down in a dystopian world until she can escape.

Reading

Nothing yet!  The Handmaid's Tale was so good that I need a breather before starting another book.

However I did get to thinking...a long time ago I did a "read the book or see the movie" post and since then I've got a lot more pairings to add to it.  So I went and created a page to keep it all in one place.

But Wait There's More

I've got a good bit up of my vacation written up.  I went to five places in total which is way too much to cram into one post.  Plus I had to explain what ties these places together and why I went there, which is a post in itself.  This is either going to be fascinating or deadly dull, so let's pace ourselves.  I'm going to start rolling out the vacation saga on Wednesdays and Fridays for the next three weeks.

That's a wrap for this round up!  See you on Wednesday to start talking vacay!