Monday, Monday! with a side of banana apple crisp.

Hey all! had a pretty good weekend, except for my knee bugging me: so no running! I feel like I over stretched it or something. My one-time running partner cancelled on me at the gym today and only one person showed up for step at lunch, so more rest for my over worked body again today. yeah! Hopefully, this week it feels better- especially, if I'm going to get some mileage down this coming month in preparation for our races to come.

I did try a new recipe tonight- using up more of my organic fruit backlog in the fridge: Banana-Coconut Apple Crisp from the Cooking Light site. (4pts per serving) I really liked it and had it with some leftover banana gelato- mmmmm..banana-y! I had to force myself to stop eating it. eep! It was an interesting, tangy and sweet mixture. I liked the chewy little bits of coconut in it and the surprising warm bites of banana flavour. Different from your usual apple crisp.

I incredibly had all the ingredients on hand without a separate trip to the grocery store and though I didn't have any OJ left, I did have a couple of huge organic oranges that I could juice. Woo hoo! love not sending stuff to the green bin untried.

Final side note: love my bday gift- the lovely red casserole dish pictured above- from one of my girlfriends. Love kitchen gifts that make me want to empty my crisper and make stuff. :)

white carrots in the HOWssssse!

dd9 made me laugh tonight when I served the family some raw white carrots from our most recent organic delivery box. She leaned over to dd12 and said, "I can't wait to tell my friends about this one. They always love to hear about the weird stuff mom serves." lol. High praise indeed.

Anyway, a pretty rushed meal tonight, though I did zip up some pesto with some fresh organic basil, lemon, pecans, tomato, garlic and parmesan (in my new summer blender from the Shopping Network). I love pesto so. *sigh

So I missed reporting in for HYC yesterday. In brief, I'm trying to get my eating back on track. I've gained back a lot of my 20 pounds that I had lost. *sigh again* The summer was a tad rough on the waistline. Why do I let myself get so far off good portion sizes and healthy choices? I know I feel better when I'm eating in a healthier way. Anyway, all I can do now is get back on track!

My exercising has been going better than my eating. I've been doing boot camp twice a week through the summer and now the fall. I've started back to running with big plans for upcoming races, maybe even surpassing my longest race of 30K? We'll see how my body holds up. I've also been doing a bit of yoga- enjoying the lower key nature of it again. I think in the desire to lose weight and burn calories fast, sometimes we forget to work on things like stretching and thoughtful breathing.

Hope everyone else has been having a healthy fall. Try a white carrot! They're delicious!

Monday with the Muffin Top

Ok. So I'm going to work on posting more regularly. I'm going to try to catch up on my favourite blogs. I'm going to step back from cyber-farming (curses to you Farmville)! I'm going to get back to HYC.

I have tried a number of recipes over the last few weeks. A few recent ones were motivated by my organic delivery. To use some of my backlog of apples, tonight I made Amaretto Apple Crisp from the Cooking Light site. (4pts) It was very good. dd9 and I were the only ones who had it though. (dd12 is a little under the weather today with a touch of the flu.) I happened to have an old bottle of Amaretto in my cupboard (xmas gift to dh from his sister- classic regift, perhaps?!? ;) and so I picked this crisp to do.

I also made Roasted Butternut Soup with Goat Cheese Toasts (well, without the toasts so far, though I DO enjoy goat cheese- subject of many prior posts.) The soup was pretty good and really used up a lot of items from my organic delivery (especially since I went to the trouble of making the vegetable stock), but I didn't love it to death and it was a lot of work. (Lots of dicing and peeling involved, let me tell you!) I found the flavour kind of sharp and really could taste the carrot over the butternut. I might not have put enough squash in it, perhaps. Anyway, still feeling proud and gloat-y from using up such a variety of organic delivery goods. Yeah non-wasteful-like-usual me!

Will check in tomorrow with a fitness update. Lots of running plans for the new year, if my bones and joints hold together. ;)