Happy Anniversary to Us

Today is our 1 year anniversary! Whew...we made it, LOL. The traditional present for the 1st anniversary is paper. Since we are in the digital age I count the internet as "new" paper. So in celebration of our anniversary I thought I would list 10 reasons why I love my husband.

1. He puts up with my messiness and even picks up the shoes and coats I leave thrown around on the floor.
2. He lets me have control over the remote.
3. He has semi-agreed to us getting a cat despite his cat "allergy".
4. He tells me that every meal I make is delicious (even though I don't really believe him).
5. He supports me fully in my work and training.
6. He rubs my sore muscles after a long hard workout.
7. He laughs at my jokes and some of them are pretty bad.
8. He puts up with my constant mood swings, I am truly a Gemini.
9. He entertains the fact that I say that I am going to become a more organized person at least once a week but it has yet to happen.
10. HE GETS ME!

There are a bazillion more reasons why I love my husband...these are just a few. Now I'm off to start preparing a wonderful dinner of stuffed mushrooms, crab cakes, filet migon, cole slaw and double-baked potatoes. YUM!

Recipe of the Week: Chicken Nuggets (Baked)

I don't have kids but I imagine that these would make for a nice, kid-friendly meal. I served them with oven baked french fries and salad.

Prep Time: 10 minutes plus 15 minutes marinating time Cook Time: 20 minutes

Marinade Ingredients:
1 cup buttermilk
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp sweet paprika

Chicken Nugget Ingredients:
3/4 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into 1-inch cubes
3/4 cup flour
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 egg, beaten with 1 Tbsp of water
1 cup panko (or regular) breadcrumbs (I used panko)
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Dipping sauces, such as BBQ and honey mustard

Instructions:
1. Combine all marinade ingredients in a medium bowl. Add chicken and stir to coat well. Cover and let marinate in the refrigerator at least 15 minutes and up to 2 hours. ( I only did it for 15 min and it was fine)
2. Preheat oven to 400F. Coat a baking sheet with cooking spray. Pour flour onto a dinner plate and season with salt and pepper. Have beaten egg ready in small bowl. Combine breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese on a shallow plate. Working with one piece of a time, remove chicken from marinade (shaking off excess) and dredge in flour to coat. Dip into egg mixture then coat completely with breadcrumb mixture and place on prepared baking sheet. Continue until all pieces are coated and placed on a sheet. (OK so this was a little too much work from me..call me lazy..so I just put the flour and the breadcrumb mixture into 2 separate bags and put all the chicken pieces in the bags and shook them up instead of doing 1 piece at a time and it worked well and was less messy.)
3. Bake until golden and cooked through, about 20 minutes (turn nuggets halfway through to crisp both sides). Serve with dipping sauces.

Tamara's Take: I'd give this around an 8. I don't even know why I rate these things with numbers because it really doesn't mean much to anyone else since they don't know my scale. Anyway, this was easy and delicious. The nuggets were light and crunchy with a nice taste even without the sauce. Next time I think I will add some hot pepper to the mix to add an extra kick to it. If I ever babysit someone's kids and I need to fix a meal I will definitely consider making these for them.

If you try it, I hope you enjoy!

Laughing Fit

Today I went for a run with Amy R. She wanted to do a relatively long run which I was up for since it meant I could eat more today. The run was filled with lots of laughs starting with the fact that we both decided that we had to run at least 7 miles to account for the food that we had already eaten earlier that day, LOL. Is it sad that I schedule my workouts around what I want to eat or is it just a good plan? I'm going to go with it being a good plan.

We did a little over 7 miles at an average pace of 10:33. The great part was that we pushed it the last mile and did it in under 10 minutes. We did do one mile over 11 minutes but I blame that on the huge hill we had to run up and the fact that we broke out into a laughing fit moments before the hill. It was one of those laughing fits that is sparked by a small, funny comment and just turns into uncontrollable and unstoppable laughter.

I'm starting to feel even stronger in the running department and I'm strongly considering doing the High Point half-marathon in May. It just depends on my schedule because I might be out of town that weekend.

Have I ever told y'all how much I love running?

Weekly Wrap-Up and Goal Setting #7

Dang I've been slacking on the posting....I'll do better this week I promise!

Wrap Up:
I feel like I start off the week on track and then I just start to fall off towards the end of the week. This is especially true when it there is bad weather on the weekend. I find it soo much harder to work out when it was raining because I'd much rather be curled up on the couch. So here is how last week went:
Weight-loss/nutrition: Not so great...gained back the 2 lbs I lost last week. Oh well.
Swimming: Once - 650 meters
Running: 4 times (21 miles)
Biking: none :(
I need to figure out who to maintain my motivation throughout the entire week. Oh and I didn't do any strength training either.

Goal Setting:
I still need to figure out exactly what I'm going to do this week because I already know that I'm going to be going out of town this weekend. That means I'm pretty much going to blow my diet this weekend so I'm not going to even worry about it, LOL.
Swimming: 2 times
Running: 4 times
Biking: I'm going to try to do some biking at least once but I'm not making any promises.
Strength Training: once (for real, I'm going to do it this week!)

If I didn't have to go to work it would be a lot easier to fit in all of these workouts but I'm glad I have my job so I'll figure out a way to make it work.

Weekly Wrap-Up and Goal Setting #6

OOPPS! I forgot to do my weekly wrap-up and goal setting yesterday. I was tired and it completely slipped my mine. Anyway, better late than never.

Wrap Up:
I didn't accomplish ALL of the goals I set out for the week but I still did pretty good. I lost 2 more pounds which is great. I didn't even feel hungry the entire week like I was afraid I might. The good thing about this week was that it was sunny and not too cold. So here's what I did.
Swimming: Once (750 meters)
Biking: 16 miles - I decided not to run on Wednesday because I just didn't feel like it.
Running: 21 miles - my 6 mile run by myself was an excellent run.

Goal Setting:
This week I started my official triathlon training with Marisa. I am really going to try hard to stick to the plan that she gives us. Here's what I'm doing this week.
Swimming: 3 times
Running: 4 times
Biking: 2 times (these may have to be on the stationary or in spin class...UGH)
Strength Training: 1 time

This is a definite step up in my working out but you know what that means? It means I can eat more!!! Whoo hoo. I definitely run (and other stuff) to eat.

What are you doing this week?

Solo Bike Ride

I was too wimpy to get up and go for a early morning bike ride in the cold so I had to settle for riding alone. This was my first bike ride alone and while I am comfortable on the bike I am not THAT comfortable. I decided to do the 10 mile loop I mapped out around my house. It was okay but there were a bit too many cars for me. I am a "worst-case scenario" type of person so all I could think about was, what if I get hit, what if I pop a tire, what if my chain falls off, etc, etc. I wanted to do more than 10 miles but I didn't want to do that same loop again so I decided to turn into my neighborhood and ride around on the smaller streets for a while.

It was great. There were almost no cars on those back roads and the area was beautiful. I rode past a small lake, some animals including an adorable pony. I thought I might get lost but I didn't which made me proud of my memory and directional skills. I'll just be happy when I learn a little more about bikes and riding so that I will be more comfortable riding alone.

Recipe of the Week: Fluffy Pancakes

We did a 10 mile run today and it was a pretty good run. The urban loop is a wonderful route to run especially in the morning when there isn't a lot of traffic. This morning was colder than I expected but after getting warmed up it was nice. After burning off over 1000 calories I figured I deserved some pancakes so I decided to try a pancake recipe I found on-line.

-makes 50 to 60 silver dollar pancakes

Ingredients
4 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup flour
2 cups sour cream
3 tablespoon sugar

Instructions
1. Put the eggs in a mixing bowl and stir until well blended.
2. Add the salt, baking soda, flour, sour cream and sugar, and mix well.
3. Heat a griddle or frying pan until it is good and hot, film with grease, and drop spoonfuls of batter onto the griddle--just enough to spread to an approximately 2 1/2 inch round. When a few bubbles form on top of the pancakes, turn them over and cook briefly, no longer than 45 seconds.
4. Serve with warm butter and warm syrup. Enjoy!!

*I halved the recipe and it turned out just fine. The pancakes are VERY light and fluffy which made them somewhat difficult to flip but don't worry, they will turn out great.