Weekly Round Up: I'll Have What She's Having

 

A weekly round up: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  This week I became obsessed with someone else's food and made it my mission to have what she was having.

Eats

This was a week of obsession and satisfaction.  Kim started it when she posted an absolutely drool worthy picture of a taco/burritoish looking thing.  I didn't know exactly what it was, but I saw cheese and guac and had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do.

But then she posted the reel and I realized that it was a crunch wrap.  I don't live near a Taco Bell, so this is something that I've heard of but never had.  Challenge accepted!

I made my version of the crunch wrap on Saturday after a long hike.   I liked the idea of nacho sauce, but I wanted to make my own and we were out of milk.  So rather than try to improvise I decided to skip it and just use cheese.

Steps 1-4: make up some taco meat, layer on cheese, the meat, and a little sour cream.  Top with a tostada.  Add a thicc layer of guac, and top with lettuce, tomato, and more cheese.

Steps 5-8: Use a piece of another tortilla to bridge the gap, wrap it as best you can for complete outer tortilla coverage.  Toast it in the same skillet that you cooked the taco meat in, or in a skillet with a light spray of oil for leftovers.  Flip when it gets toasty.  The outer layer will kinda sorta stick together long enough for you to slice the crunch wrap in half and eat it.

I got exactly what I was looking for out of this, and Hubs joined the obsession.  Since a pound of ground beef goes a long way with this recipe, it was an easy call to make it for dinner again on Sunday night, so Stepson #2 is also on the crunch wrap craze.

This was a very easy win for a fun family dinner.  Future crunch wrap plans include experimenting with something naughty like Doritos in place of the tostada, and in trying it with nacho sauce.

In other obsession news, last week I made cheesecake cookies which were good but also left me wanting cheesecake.  I scratched that itch as well.  This is the recipe that I use, minus the raspberries and lemon.

 

Workouts 

I feel like I need to call this section of my recap something else besides workouts.  Yes it's exercise, and yes I get some kind of sweaty cardio most mornings and some indifferent shots at strength training, but that's not really blog worthy.

What is blog worthy is all of the hiking.  ICYMI this is the second year in a row that I've done a 100 mile hiking challenge, which is made up of 20 specific routes on a local trail system.  The only reason that it caught my attention last year is because I was bored and looking for something to do in winter, and I also wanted to learn more about the trails.  It kicked off a love of hiking that I did not know that I had, and after the challenge was over I starting seeking out hiking when I travel (exhibit A here and exhibit B here).  It wasn't much of a push to sign up for the challenge again this year (signing up means that I paid a few bucks for the new guide with similar but not the same routes and have access to a Facebook group to chat with other Trail Nerds) instead of doing the same exact routes as last year for free. 

The hike that I did this weekend was very similar to last year's route, and it's the one that has a billion stairs.

 

Last year I raced through the challenge and finished in March, and this year I am taking my time and dragging it out to the end date in June.  I did not get spring flowers on the trails last year.

 

The thing about making the challenge last until June is that I have to pace myself and only do one challenge hike each week.  But I want more hiking than that!  Oh dear, I have a problem, what on earth could the solution be?

You know what the solution is!  I've been amassing a list of local hikes in places outside of the challenge trail system, and last weekend I started working on those.  Unexpectedly, Hubs was down to join in the quest.  He hasn't joined in my challenge hikes because he has other things to do on Saturdays, and I haven't taken Doggo since the trails are usually pretty muddy and some of the hikes are long.  But on Sundays for shorter hikes it works to take both him and Doggo, and we'll take our chances with mud.

For the past two Sundays we went to a park that I lived very close to in my single gal days and only visited briefly in the many years that I lived there.  We did one 2 mile hike last week and two hikes totaling 4 miles this week to finish off the park.  First of all, it was gorgeous, and second of all, the trails will be closed soon for a long term improvement project, so the timing worked out wonderfully.

Watching

We're in season 8 of Seinfeld, although it's hard to tell with you-know-who in the way.

I'm about to drop the big bucks for HBO (okay fine I know it's called Max now but whatever) to see the new seasons of White Lotus and The Last of Us, plus see what all the buzz over The Pitt is about.

Reading

Right now there is no other book on the planet besides We Were the Lucky Ones.  If you have an extra four minutes on your hands and would like to know more, here is a teaser for the TV show that tells the story about the time the author's high school teacher gave her the assignment to interview an older family member and learn more about them.  She did, and many years later this book was the result of that project.

 

Did anyone have a high school homework assignment that changed their life?  I did not.