Hello and happy Friday! It’s been a busy week over here getting caught up with AnnetheRD clients and emails after my big Eurotrip, but I’ve been enjoying being home and getting back into the swing of things.
On the food front, we’ve had some good eats this week! On Sunday night, Matt made us tacos – my fave! Mexican food is the one type of food I miss when I’m in Europe. 🙂
We had chicken breast cooked in Mexican seasoning, a homemade salsa made by Matt with peppers, onions, tomato, and cilantro, Whole Foods guac, black beans, some shredded Cabot cheddar, sautéed peppers and onions, and extra chopped cilantro. Yum!
We had a bunch of leftovers, too, so I turned it into a big salad for lunch the next day with some brown rice.
On Tuesday night, Matt decided to get creative and make a variation of Italian Wedding Soup! He loosely followed Giada’s recipe, but added some veggies to the mix too (carrots and celery), and used spinach instead of endive.
I didn’t know that Italian Wedding Soup called for egg – cool!
It was delicious. I was feeling pretty under the weather earlier this week (just a bad cold – all that traveling really caught up to me on Sunday/Monday) and this really hit the spot.
Another thing I’ve been snacking on this week is homemade almond butter! Have you guys ever made homemade almond butter before? This was my first time!
I made the Agave Almond Butter from the Versa Challenge (remember that?) as part of my partnership with Fitness Magazine and Oster® to help promote the challenge.
This recipe is one of the ones that Courtney shot the video for, so it was fun to try it out since I hadn’t done it before. (Here’s the recipe, and here’s her video if you want to see her making it.) It was easy and delicious – I left it a little chunkier since I like my nut butter chunky, but you can process it for longer if you want it smoother/more spreadable.
Make it yourself and upload a picture to Instagram using #VersaChallenge to enter to win some great prizes. Let us know how you like it! 🙂
On the workout front this week, I took things easy on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday since I wasn’t feeling great, but on Wednesday night Matt and I did something fun: an indoor rock climbing intro class!
We have a few friends that climb on a regular basis and have been trying to get us to join them, so when I saw a LivingSocial deal a couple months ago for a 2 hour basic climbing skills class (which would provide us with the training we needed to come back and take a test to get belay certified), I jumped on it.
My friend Sokphal was there climbing with a friend of hers so we did some climbing with them after the class, which was great. I love climbing – such a good mental and physical challenge. Matt and I just need to go back and take our test and then we’re cleared to belay others and climb on our own! Yay!
After one more day of rest yesterday, today I was ready to get fully back into it. I met my friends Sokphal and Ashley this morning for a run, ready to go. Here we are post-run in all our sweaty glory. Please note that my face is the color of a very ripe tomato. 🙂
Sokphal is marathon training and had 7 miles on the docket. I did a fair amount of running while I was traveling around Europe so I was up for the challenge!
It was a pretty morning, but super humid. My camera felt the humidity, too, apparently – hi blurry shot.
We did an out and back along the Mt. Vernon Trail, which you guys know is one of my faves.
I was struggling some with pace (speedwork, we need to be friends again ASAP… also, fall weather, we’re ready for you) but overall it was a really good run and great to catch up with my buddies. 🙂
Thanks for getting me out there and moving this morning, ladies! Wouldn’t have done that without you. 🙂
And now, lots of work to tackle. Have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend! I’m going off on another (I know, I know) trip – I leave on Sunday morning to fly out to California for a trip with the Almond Board of California. I’m heading out a day early to see friends, and then the trip starts on Monday evening. It sounds fun – I’m excited! You can see what I’m up to on Instagram while I’m away, and I’ll be back on Monday to continue recapping my Europe adventures – moving on to Switzerland!
What fun workouts and good eats have you enjoyed this week?
