![\"christmas\"](\"http:\/\/adjustedreality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/christmas.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI am not a cold weather fan, and I’m probably just counting the days until the waterpark opens again, but I do love this particular time of year.\u00a0 The lights, the tree, the music, and it probably helps that my husband just kind of a Christmas nut, so we do it up.<\/p>\n
However, once it’s grey and January and there’s no Christmas lights up it SUCKS, but we won’t think about that yet since I have another two weeks or so to be happy and\/or merry.<\/p>\n
Another thing I love about December – everything has slowed down a bit around here (very, very thankfully) and it’s a time for relaxing and reflection.\u00a0 And some running, don’t get me wrong, I still have a race in 9 weeks and 4 days, but I’m still on the zen hippie plan over here.<\/p>\n 1. No electronics.\u00a0 I haven’t brought my garmin, my HR monitor, or my phone (music) on a run yet and I probably won’t until after the new year.\u00a0 A year ago, you could pry my electronics from my cold dead hands, but during the right periods of time, this year I learned that it’s nice just to let go and just go move.<\/p>\n 2. I’ve had rough mileage goals last week (wanted to hit 30 run miles, hit 32), and I will for the next two as well, but they’re suggestions.\u00a0 They’re also gauging my big February decision: 13.1 or 26.2 on the 28th.\u00a0 Right now I’m ok with it being up in the air, and my mileage totals and body condition will influence that decision greatly.<\/p>\n 3. Some bike, some swim, some weights, but they’re not a focus.<\/p>\n Until Jan 5th, I’m taking it as it comes and using my watch and my brain and my heart to decide what’s to do.\u00a0 I’m doing my best to shovel myself out the door when I’m supposed to go, because often during the winter I don’t have a whole lot of “get going” oomph, but the general plan is “until I feel like stopping”.\u00a0 And generally once I start, it’s some other force like I’m going to be late to work or it’s getting dark or running longer than 12 miles my first week back is probably a bad idea.\u00a0 And even if there is, I promise myself no guilt for going outside, running around the block, and coming back inside if I’m not into it.<\/p>\n In food related stuff, it’s December.\u00a0 I give myself some latitude here.\u00a0 There’s some of this:<\/p>\n Lemon pepper fish, asparagus, greek salad.\u00a0 Every bite on that plate was amazing.<\/p>\n However, there’s also some days that look more like this:<\/p>\n …and that’s ok.\u00a0 One way I’ve tried to keep myself from resembling the Goodyear blimp is batch cooking of my old favorites and trying some new recipes.<\/p>\n Of course, zuppa toscani is pretty much a mainstay around here, as is beef stew, and chicken tacos, sirloin burger soup, and shepard’s pie made their appearances.\u00a0 However, I’ve been trying some new tricks.\u00a0 Some of my new favorites have been:<\/p>\n Low carb tuna casserole.\u00a0 Recipe inspired by this<\/a>, but you know I can’t follow a recipe to save my life so mine turned out different in a wonderful way.<\/p>\n Tamale pie.\u00a0 I got the idea somewhere on instagram, but when I looked for the post, I couldn’t find it!\u00a0 I took leftover barbacoa that was a little dry and needed some help, and added olives, onions, green pepper, corn, and black beans, and made it wet with tomato sauce and taco seasoning.\u00a0 I used this recipe<\/a> for the topper.\u00a0 It was dinner last night and hit the spot in a huge way.<\/p>\n Not-at-all chicken and dumpling soup.\u00a0 Zliten asked for chicken and dumpling soup.\u00a0 I cringed and was thinking of how to make two different ones without the dough, but then remembered that he wanted THIS soup<\/a>, which actually doesn’t have the dumplings in it.\u00a0 I used a modification of this recipe<\/a> as my soup base (sub cauliflower + one potato for the asparagus, omitted the butter, used more sour cream), and just threw in chicken, one more chopped up potato, and a whole bunch of veggies and he can’t stop eating it.<\/p>\n Protein powder fro yo.\u00a0 Take 4 cups of (full fat) plain yogurt (not greek), add a few scoops of protein powder (so far, I’ve done cinnamon swirl, cookies and cream, and chocolate with mint extract), and you have a dessert.\u00a0 It still hits the sweet spot, but it has protein and not a lot of extra sugar and some nutritional value.<\/p>\n I may have also made some heavenly peppermint stick ice cream, but it’s got zero redeeming nutritional qualities and it’s for Christmas dinner.\u00a0 I also won’t put the recipe right here for you<\/a> just in case.<\/p>\n In other life-things, which I’ve had a decent amount of, because I haven’t been training my face off:<\/p>\n Got some really sweet tickets from Yelp to go see Anything Goes on opening night (yep, more orchestra seats for the price of some social media-ing and parking).\u00a0 We were just a few days off the cruise ourselves, so it was a nice transition into real life.\u00a0 There were some epic tap sequences and it was one of the rare shows where it was the full broadway cast, no substitutions.<\/p>\n It’s hard to say that it was the best, competing with Wicked and Beauty and the Beast, but it was up there.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n