A New Look, Snow Fun and The First Food Prep

Welcome to the new look of Run Far Girl! It has been a work in progress for the past few weeks, but I'm excited that the pieces finally came together (after a crash, self-taught course in HTML) and a fabulous new logo designed by THIS lady. Now I will promptly forget everything I just learned about creating and modifying themes...so you're stuck with this look for a while;) What do you think? This weekend the frigid temperatures thawed out and we had a chance to get out and enjoy the snow as a family. My husband built a huge snow fort/bunker and we moved our fire pit into the middle to roast marshmallows. Later in the day I had a chance to get out on my snowshoes and explore the wooded hills powerline path near our house. It was originally going to be a "walk" but quickly turned into a "run." It felt so good to exert myself, to breath hard and really sweat (it was 36 degrees, downright tropical with the temps we've been seeing lately). Running in snowshoes is plenty difficult with the added weight of the shoes and the change in stride, my heart was pumping pretty hard in just a few strides. Thankfully my hamstring felt strong the whole time and I've had no issues or tightness since.

In addition to all that outdoor play I made food prep a reality this weekend. I've wanted to do this for a while now and have on occasion prepped a few things like Energy Bites or a Crustless Quiche, but never anything beyond that. It became aparent last week, now that Jack (15 months) eats just as much if not more than his sister (4 years), that I need to make MORE FOOD. There were ZERO leftovers last week. Which meant my husband had little more than a protein shake to eat for lunch. This is NOT good for my husband. I've also radically shifted my diet due to four (!?!) cavities discovered by the dentist last week (more on this later). Needless to say we need a supply of healthy food that is prepared and ready to eat in case of a leftover shortage as we encountered last week.

I shopped Saturday morning and came home with twice the groceries (read twice the grocery bill…ugh). I mapped out our regular meal plan and a rough idea of I would prepare on Sunday:

My Sunday prep list was:

Pot Roast

Hard boiled Eggs

Soup

Mini Quiche

Cut Salad/Veggies

Bake Bacon (wasn't thawed so I did this monday)

Make Baba Ganouj (didn't have time for this)

Timing: The whole food prep, with clean up took me about two hours. Which was better than I thought. I anticipated being in the kitchen well into the afternoon, but things went smoothly and since my husband was home to play with the kids I was able to be in the kitchen undistracted (a big departure from our usual routine where I'm trying to parent two children and make dinner…crazy!).

I started the pot roast in the crock pot and the hard boiled eggs as we were sitting down to breakfast. And then after breakfast got started with the quiches. I prepped the veggies for the tomato soup and while those were sautéing and simmering I was able to chop all the lettuce and veggies for some of our dinners this week (steak and onions and stir fry).

Recipes:

Pot Roast: Place large pot roast in the crock pot. Season with salt and pepper. I added about a half cup of water and a splash of olive oil and apple cider vinegar. Cook on low for 8 hours. This will be my husband's lunch meat. He can add a bit of BBQ sauce of eat it as is.

Mini Quiches: I used 6 eggs. A splash of milk. A couple different kinds of leftover cheeses and 3-4 tbs of salsa. There's any number of things you could add into these: spinach, bacon, tomatoes. But I kept it pretty simple and they turned out well. Grease muffin tin and cook at 350 for 20-25 minutes.

Tomato Soup: This is a super simple favorite of ours. You can find the recipe HERE.

I was really pleased to start the week off with a well-stocked fridge, although there's a part of me that cringes a little as we have started to eat the prepared food. Like that sinking feeling you have right after you clean the kitchen floor and realize that in a matter or moments all your hard work will be undone. But everything is doing the trick: providing healthy food we can reach for when we need it.

Do you like to play in the snow? Have you ever run a snowshoe race? Do you food prep? What are your favorite fast recipes?

--Sarah

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