Chicago Marathon Val

Long time, no long post, blogworld! The last couple days have been jam-packed since I’ve recently headed back to work after having a loooong summer off.

My days have beed filled with a lot of these………Good Health chips are FABULOUS.  My absolute favorite thus far is the sweet potato chips….Which have fabulous stats

And that Mike and I devoured in about 5 seconds flat!  There’s nothing like homemade sweet potato fries, but if you’ve ever made them from scratch you know they are an enormous pain to slice… and these chips are great to have as a back-up plan!

I’ve also been eating a ton of these….

And along the way I discovered that frozen banana/frozen blueberry softserves are pretty darn spectacular….

Which is why I bought about 40 bananas yesterday so that I never have to have a minute go by without being stocked up to make more of these cold, yummy delights!I also had some of this Navitas Naturals trail mix with coconut milk yogurtClose up for yaAnd I made an easy but very tasty vegan greenbean casserole.  This bowl of delicousness was easy to make:

- Snap the ends off green beans (about a pound or so)

- Saute 1 onion and 2 cloves garlic in a pan with EVOO

- Mix 1 T. cornstarch into 2 T. water, stir into pan and add green beans

- Then to make the yummy cheesey sauce, mix 2 parts unsweetened almond milk (or soymilk) with 1 part nutritional yeast.  Mix into the green beans along with garlic, salt, pepper, onion powder, and some pountry seasoning to taste.

- Add in 1-2 cups chopped mushrooms

- Once the sauce reduces slightly, pour into a casserole dish, top with whole wheat breadcrumbs, more seasonings, and some vegan “parmesan” (a mixture of ground walnuts and nutritional yeast).

- Bake for approximately 20 minuts, and then put pan under broiler for 2 minutes until bread crumbs brown.

Oh yeah, there have been lots of juices, too!

Yes, there were some other exciting eats in there along the way but that’s the jist.

I’m thinkin (hopin) that I will be able to get back to a more regular schedule once I get back into the swing of things at work……..

After blogging my little heart out, I’m going to head to spinning class in a bit.  Last night I met up with some runners from my CARA group for our 9 miler… which was both good and bad.

We had a gorgeous cool, crisp night, and lots of us ended up making it out so those 2 factors usually add up to = a great run.  However, I made the mistake of taking a Clif Blok at mile 6 which I think was a mistake.  Although I love Clif Shots, I decided that I’m not a big fan of the Bloks since they just don’t seem to digest as easily.  I felt like I had swallowed a brick (or two)…. not good.. and it was difficult to press on those last few miles.  But, I hate to knock them since a ton of my running friends seem to love them and swear by them!

Although we didn’t get to see the Navy Pier fireworks until after our run was over, it was still a great run.  Running 9 miles is a lot more enjoyable when you are running in a group!

Needless to say, I got home past 10pm exhausted and all I could think about was falling into my bed!  It’s crazy to think that on Saturday I will be DOUBLING those 9 miles when I complete my first 18 miler of the season… but I think I’ll be ready for it!

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Don’t forget to let me know (via comment or email) what questions you have for John “The Penguin” Bingham that I will be interviewing next week!  You can read more about him here.

Smile everyone, it’s almost Friday!

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.