Plan Jan 28- Feb 3

Spring semester is finally upon us. Here are the big lessons so far:

1. Snow sucks. sure, I like getting the occasional day off of work, and yeah, every once in a while the mandatory weekend in can be lovely, but why does it have to take so long to melt??? My running trail is out of commission for the time being, which means I am relegated to indoor cardio workouts and stealth neighborhood running.

2. Shopping and prep-cooking on Mondays isn't going to work this semester, so I've shifted my day 1 of planning (on which I grocery shop and do any prep-work or pre-cooking for the week) to Thursdays. We'll see how that works.

3.  I don't have time for lunch on Mondays and Wednesdays. I teach from 12-5. So, I'm going to have to play with how I eat lunches those days.  1130, when my office hours start, is too early for lunch, 5pm is too close to dinner. So, this week, I am going to try eating my lunch for breakfast, then having my breakfast smoothie for lunch- as I can take that to class with me.  Which will be funny, because my noon class students had a class with me earlier in the morning last semester and frequently saw me drinking my green smoothies.  Yesterday one of them commented that class this semester was later, so I will have had a chance to have my breakfast before.  Hahahaha. I guess I'll show them.

This weekend, I'm attending a cookbook club get-together that my friend, Cari, organized.  Of course, though, it's not a vegan book they've selected.  Everyone is to cook a recipe from the new Smitten Kitchen cookbook. My biggest issues with this book is that Deb Perelman is a FORMER vegetarian and that even though she said in an interview that she though that meat should really be only eaten once or twice a week, from an overview of her recipe index of the book, most seems to be meat-centered.  My friend sent me some recipes to look over, and it's going to be tough to veganize. In addition, I don't know if that's the purpose of the cookbook club.  I was under the impression that the purpose was to cook everything verbatim to the recipe to try out several at once.  I am impossible at following recipes verbatim. Sigh. But, I am going to make Spicy peanuts (a party snack, that should be pretty easy to tweak- I just will sub in Earth Balance for butter) and Wild Rice Gratin with Kale, Caramelized Onions, and baby Swiss (a vegetarian dish that I will have to veganize by subbing in EB for butter, Daiya for the Swiss, and veg broth for the chicken). Fortunately, my friend also chose to veganize one of the salad recipes, so there will be more than one thing I can eat there. In reality though, I'm probably just more anxious about socializing with strangers than I am about the food.....

Thursday
Run 4
Journey to handstand: headstand 2
Breakfast: sweet potato & baked tofu
Lunch: leftover buffalo chickpea sliders
Dinner: chickpea Buddha bowl

Friday
Run 8
Journey to handstand: handstand
Breakfast: blueberry bars 
Lunch: leftover Buddha bowl
Dinner: mushroom stroganoff

Saturday
Journey to handstand: kick ups
Breakfast: bagels & vegan cream cheese
Lunch: leftover mushroom stroganoff
Dinner: curried tofu avocado wraps

Sunday
Journey to handstand: misc prep
Breakfast: mango & pineapple
Lunch: leftover curried tofu avocado wraps
Dinner: cookbook club (wild rice gratin and spicy peanuts)

Monday
Walk
Journey to handstand: crow
Breakfast: club leftovers
Lunch: green smoothie
Dinner: hippie loaf with mash potatoes

Tuesday
Run 4
Journey to handstand: tripod
Breakfast: mango & pineapple
Lunch: leftover hippie loaf with mash potatoes
Dinner: firecracker Buddha bowl

Wednesday
Walk
Journey to handstand: headstand 1
Breakfast: leftover firecracker Buddha bowl
Lunch: green smoothie
Dinner: quick black bean burgers

Plan May 3-9

Monday
Yoga
Coffee & Fruit
Weekend leftovers
Queso-Cauliflower Taquitos

Tuesday
Run 4
Coffee & fruit
Queso-Cauliflower Taquitos
Fajita Quesidilias (Happy Cinco de Mayo- also forever in my heart Spuds' Day)

Wednesday
Yoga
Coffee & fruit
Fajita Quesidilias
Easy Couscous Salad

Thursday
Run 4
Coffee & fruit
Crazy grading time
Easy Couscous Salad 
"Fish" & chips

Friday
Bananas & PB
Run 13
Work picnic
Mediterranean Nachos

Saturday
Walk
Coffee & fruit
Dissertation grunt work
Carrot noodle stir fry
Roller Derby bout (Go Derby Dames!)

Sunday
Rest
Coffee & fruit
Dissertation grunt work
Dinner TBA

This month, I'm focusing on 4 things:
Running: I have a half marathon in two weeks, and then start training for my full in the fall. I'm going to need to get significantly faster, so I've been doing some reading about increasing pace, and will be incorporating speed work in my training. I'm training 3-4 times a week.
Writing: I want to finish writing my dissertation this month. Chapters 1-3 are good to go, while chapters 4&5 are in drafts & revisions. Optimally, I'll finish these two chapters by mid-month so that I have time to revise again as per the whims of my mentor before the end of the month. My goal is to write an hou a day, 3-4 times per week.
Reading: Oh, man, I have such a pile of good books to read. Peace, Living the Farm Sanctuary life, Healthy Happy Vegan kitchen, The Plant Power family, All the light we cannot see, For colored girls who dream...., the new LIW autobiography, just to name a few. I would like to read 10-15 books this month.
Eating: I've been so busy, it has been easy to slack off with blogging about food. Once the semester ends, I'll be more vigilant about that. With the weather getting warmer, I need to make sure I drink lots of water. I want to try to drink 100 oz of water every day. I've been successful with this goal for 3 days now, and like everything about it, except the second nighttime pee wake.

Vegan eating out- City O City, Denver CO

 I have posted about the glories of City O' City before.
Here: http://questingadventures.blogspot.com/2013/07/vegan-eating-in-colorado-and-other.html
and Here: http://questingadventures.blogspot.com/2014/01/photographic-evidence-11414.html

Yeah, we go there whenever we are in town. What can I say? Once you've had one of their savory vegan waffles I DARE you not to dream about them. It's that good.

Anyway, we flew into Denver last Wednesday, and immediately headed over for lunch. We started off for some seitan wings- half BBQ, half buffalo. Yum. I've had my share of vegan seitan wings, and theirs are the best.

Mia got the savory waffle, because that is what she gets every time. Sometimes she talks about getting something different... but she always comes back to the savory waffle. She loves it, and I think, it loves her in return.

I went with the WOW- the vegan waffle of the week, which was a savory nacho black bean waffle. Huh. How can you not order that? It was really good. the only downfall was that I went halvsies with Rob, and when I split up the waffle, I took the vegan spicy aioli off the plate, and FORGOT about it. And it was good, too.

Rob ordered my favorite brunch item, vegan tofu biscuits and gravy. I am such a sucker for biscuits and gravy. My folks used to make (non-veg) biscuits and gravy as a quick meal when I was growing up, and I always feel so comforted by the idea of it. It was the first recipe I ever figured out how to make vegetarian, and then totally veganized all by my onsie. Nowadays my gravy is all speckled with veggies, carrots and celery and mushrooms and dill. And my biscuits are full of flax, but the idea is the same!

Jeff's meal was accidentally vegan, so I had to test his out, too. He got a peanut butter waffle with grapefruit jam that was topped with potato chips! A grown up version of a melted PB&J!

Speaking of which, while we were in Copper, at one of the cafes on the mountain, they had a grilled PB&J station, and people LOVED it. My mom and I were shocked with how much people were raving about it. My mom used to make me grilled PB&J sandwiches all the time growing up, and her mom used to do the same for her, but these folks on the ski slopes had never heard of it, and though my mom should be cashing in on some royalties! Did you ever eat that stuff as a kid? I always loved the Peanut Butter when it got warm, and kind of oozed off the bread....

Plan Dec 8-14

Sorry I didn't get this posted yesterday. As some of you know, my tablet is shot. The charger area is not taking a charge. I've had it less than a year, so it's still under warranty, but I've really been running in circles with the Samsung folks trying to get it in for repair. I filled out a repair ticket, and then they sent me some cryptic email and closed my ticket. Now I've got a second request in, and I've been promised that the repair work will only take 4 days, but they have to START first!!!

Grrrr.

Anyway. So. Late blog post. No pictures.

Sorry.

This is week 3 of the #rwrunstreak Runner's World Run Streak. I've now been running every day for 14 days in a row. It's good stuff. Week 2 was much easier than week 1. And Rob and I ran the Christmas Town 8k dash, which was much fun.

Since my tablet's broken, I used the old iPad a few times this last week. It's such a dinosaur, but it does have the Sarah Kramer Go Vegan app on it, which I've pulled a few recipes from for this week.

Monday:
Run
Sweet Potato, Kale & Mushroom Gravy

Tuesday
Run
Swim
Choir Concert in Prince Frederick

Wednesday
Run
GV Baked Chili with Corn Bread topping

Thursday
Run
Swim
GV Black Bean and Sweet Potato Burritos

Friday
Run
Dinner TBD

Saturday
Run
GV Home Style Green Pea Soup

Sunday
Run
Dinner TBD

Anyway, that's all on the running and eating front. Yoga still everyday. But no pictures. #brokentablet.