Weekly Round Up: Back at Home

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  This week I have a killer good taco recipe to share, the Hubs and I hit a new biking milestone, we saw a funny movie, and I might have read a few books since we last talked.

Eats

The Hubs and I went for a long bike ride on Saturday (more about that in a minute), that left us hungry for dinner.  Burritos sounded good, so I figured that I'd make a batch of Chipotle Chicken in the Instant Pot for him, and I'd just nuke up one of my freezer veggie burritos that I always keep on hand for me.  If you're new here, I can't stand chicken, and the Hubs can't stand most of my go-to burrito stuffings.

But when I went to the store to pick up a few things, the craving hit for shrimp tacos.  I didn't have a particular recipe in mind, so I picked up shrimp, coleslaw mix, cilantro, lime, and avocado and figured that would pretty much cover any shrimp taco recipe out there.  When I got home the first thing that Google gave me was Pinch of Yum's spicy shrimp tacos with garlic cilantro lime slaw.  

I'm not shy about altering recipes to suit what I have on hand, and this was no exception.  I didn't have green onions, so I simply used about twice the cilantro and dropped in a dash of onion powder.  The result was a refreshing creamy green sauce, so whatever I did worked out.  I had to make two batches of sauce to cover the leftovers, so I made the first round with sour cream and the second batch with yogurt.  I mean, fine of course the sour cream version was better but I didn't hate the yogurt batch.  For whatever reason I didn't have to thin the sour cream version with water it was necessary with yogurt.  The only change that I will make next time is to cut back the amount of seasoning on the shrimp - it would have been better served by a sprinkle rather than the clumps and clumps of seasoning that the recipe called for.  But anyway, this was good stuff.

Workouts

I'm getting closer and closer to getting back on the treadmill for the 12/3/30 workout (12% incline, 3 MPH, 30 minutes).  My summer flirtation with running was all very well, but my body isn't taking to it and I'm not getting the intensity that I need from cardio.  So the treadmill needs to come back into play.

(As I'm writing this I wonder why I keep sticking to the same cardio workout all the time...could I not mix it up with treadmill some days and outside run/walk on other days?  Hmmm.....)

In happier fitness news, the weather was gorgeous this weekend so the Hubs and I hit the bike trail.  We usually go about 6-7 miles out and then turn around, but when we got to our planned end point, we were both feeling fly so we kept going.  My previous distance record was 16 miles on Pelee Island last year, and now that's been left in the dust:

We have 30 miles left to go on the 100 mile trail (which will end up being 60 miles with our out and back method...Hubs likes to joke that we get to see the trail twice).  It's possible that we could finish the trail this year if the weather holds, but more likely that we'll have to wait until next spring to reach the end (and not to worry, there are other long bike trails in our area so the end of this trail just means the beginning of another).  This was the last superb weekend in the forecast, but as long as it's not freezing and not raining we can get in some more biking sessions.

Watching 

Last weekend I saw the real thing in person and this weekend I saw it on TV.  The PBS documentary The Boyton House: The Next 100 Years is about the restoration of the Boynton house.  I liked the show because it filled in a few gaps from the tour.

 

Next up, the Hubs and I were ISO something easy on the brain for our Saturday night viewing, and found it in The Jerk.  I only thought of it because Unspooled just did an episode on it (which I have not listened to yet).  In general a little Steve Martin goes a long way for me, and I could only assume that a movie called The Jerk would be a lot of what I didn't want to see.  However, that was not the case, and I am always happy to be wrong in these situations.  This movie was a delight from start to finish.

Reading

I've read a few books since the last "weekly" roundup.

• All Linda Castillo Amish Murder Mysteries All The Time.  I read the last three books in the series (books 14 to 16).  I'm now reading the short stories and then I will have finally gotten all of the juice out of the squeeze until the next book comes out next year.  My only grumble is that book #16, The Burning, is definitely the weakest link in the series.  There was already a death-by-burning in an earlier book, and the solution to the mystery felt a little out there.  But with that said, I will be here for it next summer when book #17 comes out.
• For my road trip, I knocked back two audio books:
• The first is an old school classic of the This Book Changed My Life Variety.  Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez.  When I first read this book, I was 22, had a college degree but no career plan or job skills, and was working as a temp for $6 an hour when my parents read this book and passed it on to me.  The reason for the reread is that Rachel mentioned that she has it on her TBR.  Of course I recommend this book, but I also think that this is one that is better to read than to listen to, since it is not a passive listen - there is stuff to think about and exercises to do.  It was interesting to hear how the book was updated for the 2018 edition over the O.G. 1992 version that I read back in 1997.
• The second book was another puppy book!  Puppy Kindergarten: The New Science of Raising a Great Dog was written by two Duke professors who did an adorable research study to see if they could predict the traits in puppies that make successful service dogs.  I have mixed feelings about this book - on the one hand it was six hours of people talking about puppies so what's not to like?  But I thought the audio was a little strange in that Isabella Rossellini narrated the first and last chapters and then the narrator switched to a dude with no explanation.  Also their "advice" for raising a puppy sounded very complicated - yes having a puppy is complicated but not THAT complicated - and I would have liked some acknowledgement of the Puppy Teenage Years (ages ~4 months to two years depending on breed).  They made it sound like you just have to get through the first few months and then your dog is ready to take on the world, which is very much not the case - ask me how I know.  I think my recommendation is to skip this and read The Year of the Puppy instead.
• Currently:
  
• I will soon finish the Linda Castillo short stories and will then need to find a Real book for my bedtime reading. 
• For audio, I started Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten.  I don't know anything about her and I've never watched her show but I can tell you that from the hour that I've listened to so far that I am really, really, going to like this book.
• Also, I don't know who needs to hear this but Audible is running a special right now for 3 months at 99 cents a month.  I have a handful of books that I want to listen to that aren't on Libby, and I knew it would take forever to get Be Ready When the Luck Happens from the library, so that was the tipping point that made me google to see when Audible had to offer.

What's the last best thing you cooked?  What books are on your "this book changed my life" list?