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I’m gonna make this pretty short as today’s adventures include cleaning, re-organizing the DVDs, cleaning out the closet, and thrift shopping/donating.  So far, the week has been a little *meh* - I had great sprints on Monday, and then we went shopping all day to spend some Christmas moolah - but Tuesday morning… sigh.  I woke up and sat down on the couch (yes, really), and my back flipped out and I’ve been in some considerable butt pain.  Yes, my LEFT BUTT MUSCLE is pulled again.  How on earth do you look someone in the eye and complain about your butt hurting?  Seriously?

I had to skip my workout yesterday and today isn’t looking good either.  I’m probably not going to be able to make up both my runs at least at the pace they’re supposed to be at - but we’ll see.  I’m not quite as worried about the missed workouts as why this has happened TWICE in the training so far.  This time, I can definitely say that I think it was me being lazy about stretching/yoga, so that’s my smack on the wrist not to do that again.  Hopefully it’s better in the next day or 2 or I’ll go nuts!

Anyway, enough complaining, and onto the food!

Super Awesome Chili:

Note, this is not a vegetarian recipe and probably a little high in sodium for some of you, but it’s also a super quick, easy, and delicious meal that makes amazing leftovers.  And if you’re craving something hearty and warm, this is your meal.

You will need:

-1 lb ground beef.  I use 96/4, I suggest the leanest stuff you have available, it’s plenty flavorful with everything else in there.

-2 small jalepenos (or less if you fear the spicy)

-about half a large onion

-a few cloves of garlic to taste.

-chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, and cayenne pepper to taste

Saute the onions, garlic, and jalapenos in a pan (I usually just use a little spray butter).  When it smells divine, throw in the beef and brown it.  Near the end, throw in your spices to taste.  You can also add them later, so err on the side of caution here.

Then, in a big pot, add:

-a 6oz can of tomato sauce

-3 cans of beans.  I chose ranch style black beans, ranch style jalapeno pinto beans, and southwest style kidney beans.  Note: this is the part that’s a bit high sodium.  You could use beans without sauce but you might need to add another can of tomato sauce and tinker with it.  I leave that to you!

-a can of corn.  Frozen works too.

-a square and a half of chocolate.  We have this fancy schmancy jalapeno chocolate we got years ago, but no need - I would say about 2 hershey kisses or a handful of chocolate chips would work just fine.

Put these together, bring to a slow bubbly boil, and then simmer until it comes together.  Honestly, it can’t really go too long but I’d suggest at least 20 mins.

Top with cilantro, green onions, and you can also add other yummies like some ranch, shredded cheese, or sour cream.

Cornbread:

Zliten used to tell me that chili and cornbread was yummy together, and I didn’t believe him.  Then, I tried it and crazy enough, it was good!  Again, going with the super easy theme, we snagged a package of Marie Calendar’s Low Fat Southwestern Cornbread from Big Lots.   It’s a little spicy, and it’s not quite as sweet as the normal cornbread, which I like, but most importantly, all you have to do is add water and mix and cook.

The first time we made it in loaf form, as you can see above, but let me suggest mini-muffins - they’re the perfect size for a bowl.

The pictures are from a few weeks ago, but we just remade it this afternoon for lunch.  I’m about to dive into a bowl of it!  Yum!

Deep thoughts return tomorrow…

After bolting from my desk at exactly 5:30, throwing on my workout clothes, getting a 3 mile run and some ab work done, and navigating the light traffic home, I started my weekend, the first full weekend in 6 weeks, I believe. To what I’m sure is the first of many “TMI” moments, I had some wicked cramps earlier, and was prepared to just melt into the couch and take painkillers. However, the exercise actually helped this time instead of hurt me, so we poured some drinks instead.

It had just rained hard that afternoon so it was cloudy and cool, which is actually perfect, because the Texas heat normally has it close to or over 100 degrees at that time. We were able to watch the sunset from our patio, which was gorgeous because of those clouds - pinks and blues and oranges as far as the eye can see. If I was thinking I would have grabbed my camera, but I don’t think I wanted to miss any part of it. It was a lot like this. Then, just the colors had burst into life, they faded away into twilight.

Then, Zliten decided he wanted to smoke chicken breasts - which would mean super late dinner but we decided it was worth it. All of a sudden, it was an event, not just a ordinary night (breaking out the smoker automatically equals special occasion!). Then we had to kill some time, waiting the 2 hours before it was done (30 mins, flip, 30 mins, adjust, 30 mins flip again, then 30 mins wait…). I spent some time twirling around for the camera.

Perhaps I should have not twirled sideways, but, you know how it goes, I do what I want!

Then, finally around 10:45 dinner was served. It was totally worth the wait. The chicken was orgasmic, pure and simple. We ate it with BBQ sauce although it really didn’t need it. We had thrown some small potatoes on the grill with the chicken in foil, and the knife cut through them like butter, they were so tender, and had great flavor. A little pepper, pinch of blue cheese, and some margarine and it was sublime. It was rounded out by a caesar salad with my favorite dressing, romaine, black olives, asiago cheese, and pepper. For those who are counting - about a 450 calorie dinner. Again, I wish I had a picture, but we were so hungry, there just wasn’t time.

After eating we just couldn’t continue the reveling, dinner made our bellies smile so much we had to have some couch time, which led to Stargates, which led to sleepytime just after midnight. Since I’m usually the one that tuckers out early, I had to make it known that I was not the one who decided it was bedtime early!

This, my dear blog-peoples, is why I end up being a homebody a lot - we just have so much fun. Lesson learned though - make better use of the camera during blogworthy nights!

Even on weeks that are stressful, or that I’m working weekends, I always look forward to a little corner of heaven at lunch time we have aptly named “pho-riday”. Since the beginning of this year, without fail on the last day of the normal work week, we have made our way at lunch to a wonderful little Vietnamese restaurant called Pho Van. If you’ve never had pho (pronounced fuh, not foh), it’s very complicated beef noodle soup. Or you can be like me and be an infidel (or whatever mean name my friend A liked to call me that day) and order chicken pho, with chicken broth and broccoli. Then, you can do anything from eating it just as is, with rice noodles, broth, meat, and onions like our friend P does - or put in handfuls of bean sprouts, jalapenos, cilantro, basil, chili sauce, and hoisin, like me.

Now if your pho looks like this, you’ve got problems. Or you’re on drugs. Nothing wrong with that and all, but chopsticks are pretty tricky to navigate while mentally impared (or for some of us, on a normal day), so you might want to stick to something easier, like cheetos. Or gerber baby food. Or wearable feed bags.

As long as you can stay away from the pho-reaky pho-loating heads in your bowl, you’re guaranteed a great meal. We have not brought one new person to lunch with us who has not been infected with love of the pho. Zliten and I have very few things on our list that we eat weekly, a big salad at the salad bar being probably the only other thing, and rightfully so - Austin has more restaurants per capita than pretty much anywhere in the universe, and variety is the spice of life, as they say.

The greatest thing is that pho is pretty darn healthy! Sure, if you’re on a low sodium diet, you’re going to blow your load in pretty much one meal, but except for you un-salty dogs, it is like the super food of satiation! It’s a total of about 400-600 calories (400 being a small, lean, beef order or my chicken, 600 being a large with fatty beef), and you are FULL after it. A brothy soup appetizer is supposed to help you cut calories at a meal, so eating it AS your meal has to be super awesome, right? I like to spice mine up to ridiculous levels topped only by our pho-riend J, so I’m sucking down water like the well is about to go dry (yay, hydration). Also, it will probably become apparent as we get better acquainted (or for those of you who know me) that I enjoy a good cocktail or 5 on occasion, and those occasions are usually Friday. After my normal breakfast, pho lunch, and a snack, I’m resting comfortably at about 600 calories for the day. That means I can have a sensible dinner and some drinks and I’m not heading into danger-land, or I can splurge and go out for something splurgier than normal. Like the butter drenched red lobster meal I had last night. Oops.

So get on the bus, man (speaking of drugs…). Find a little Pho house and give it a try. The smaller, the less decorated, the more yelling in the kitchen, the better. I’d suggest starting out with a lean beef of some sort and work your way to the tripe and other weirdness, if you swing that way. If you’re not a red meat eater, most places have chicken, seafood, or vegetarian options, though I can only vouch for chicken being tasty. You may not go every Friday like we do, but maybe you’ll fall in love, or at the very least you’ll have tried something new.

You probably don’t have to get as pho-reaky and pho-natically obsessed as we do to enjoy it, but it’s fun to be over the top about things sometimes, right? Well, we’ve even gone so far as to make pictures (above, horrible photo-chop jobs by yours truly), and videos. The latest one was a spoof of the x-files trailer, and we actually wrote up a little script and blocked out the scenes and everything, which definitely was more planning ahead than we did for the last few.

Pho - good times, healthy-ish food, and an event you can look forward to! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to pho-ly and get me some noodle-y goodness in my bowl (chop sticks, soup spoon…meat-a-balls). And yes, we really do eat that sort of thing all the time…or at least, we want to…