Morning, friends!
It’s actually a nice and cool-ish morning here, at least compared to the past few weeks — it makes me really miss morning workouts! Getting to work by 7 or 7:30 a.m. isn’t really conducive to working out in the morning… blah. I’m thinking in the fall depending on my new internship schedule I might transition back to some morning workouts — there’s nothing better than a run on a cool, crisp fall morning. Although cool, crisp fall late afternoons are also pretty awesome. 🙂 These crazy hot summer evening workouts are getting to me!
Anyway! I got home from work yesterday around 4 and headed straight to the grocery store. After a weekend away, our fridge was pretty bare bones. Amidst doing laundry, unloading the dishwasher, and cleaning up around the house a bit, I decided to whip up something for me and Matt to enjoy after Crossfit later that night for dinner.
I decided to make a simple Italian-style Quinoa Salad. I cooked 1 cup of dry quinoa, then added chopped green pepper, tomato, cucumber, string beans, and avocado to it, plus a can of (drained/rinsed) chickpeas and a can of artichoke hearts (also drained).
For the dressing, I added the juice from the large lemon you see above, a hefty drizzle of hemp oil (decided to mix it up from olive oil — hemp oil is a great source of polyunsaturated fatty acids — PUFAs!), and some balsamic vinegar.
Mixed it all up, then added some garlic salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, etc. to taste. I also added in some feta cheese, which is not pictured because I almost forgot it. The horror! 🙂
It came out great! Matt and I hit up the 7 p.m. Crossfit class at Crossfit Dupont (more on that later this week… still having a lot of shoulder mobility issues) and had dinner on the porch around 8:30 p.m. This was one of the first few times we’ve been able to eat outside at home since moving back to DC — it’s usually way too hot!
Dinner was simple and satisfying and we enjoyed a beautiful sunset while we ate. Even more stunning in person! Photos never really do sunsets justice, do they?
Off to work I go — have a wonderful day, friends! And stay tuned — I’ll be back later today with a fun giveaway post!
