2012 ConocoPhillips Rodeo Run 10k race recap

Course:





Outfit:

Duhhh most important part!

Blue lulu skirt, pink lulu top, and my fave shoes in my rotation, the Saucony Kinvara 2:





Haaaaay pretty babies.

Race:

Goal was to average an 8:45 pace. Considering I ran the Austin 3M half at 8:59, I figured this was doable

I ended up with an 8:51 average and 54:49 unofficial time, partly because the first mile was congested as hell.

I just didn't feel 100% this whole race, and couldn't wait for it to be over. I firmly believe that longer distances are easier, because you prepare for them in a much more diligent fashion - nutrition, stretching, hydration, sleep - and that impacts everything. So yeah, maybe its an excuse, maybe it's true, but needless to say, this was not my finest race. I am hoping the NYC Half on March 18 goes much better.

Also hoping this mystery hip flexor and achilles pain on my right side mysteriously goes away.

Oh well... At least this gives me license to stuff my face with crawfish and beer today :)

reasons to love houston: local foods

PREFACE: Houston is full of AMAZE-BALLS restaurants. Like, holy hell, you'd think you died and went to heaven amaze-balls.

Sandwiches are tricky animals though, when it comes to great ones. I've had very few sandwiches that make me want to become an obsessive, repeat customer. Most are bland and sloppy and meh and make me feel horrible for ingesting crappy bread. Then there's this baby:





Courtesy of Local Foods in Rice Village.

Gulf shrimp and crab salad, tossed with green goddess dressing (no pedestrian mayo shiz here). Maters. Pickled red onions. Awesome crusty bread. Like, WOAH.

It's, like, sweet and tart and crunchy and awesome and I will go out on a limb and say that this would be one of my desert island foods. The pickled onions just put it over the top.

Yay Local Foods!

dinner tonight: coconut shrimp!

I love coconut. Which you should KNOWWWW if you read the granola post. So when I was forced to take a mad dash to Whole Foods because I thought I had sweet potatoes and I didn't and in the process saw gorgeous Gulf shrimp in the seafood case, I thought, A-HA! Coconut shrimp. Win.

This is easy. Like, so easy that I can do it. And I'm a mongoloid in the kitchen sometimes.

Ok, so peel and devein your shrimp. Or if you're like me, make Whole Foods do it. Then whip up 2 egg whites until they peak. Create an assembly line with these items: a plate of cornstarch, the egg whites, a plate of unsweetened coconut flakes, foil or silpat lined pan.

(Side note - I really freaking hate it when recipes that involve breading or coating tell you to use 1/2 cup breadcrumbs and that's it. Why can't we all be honest and tell people to just dump a pile on a plate and replenish from there? I always feel like I failed if I use more than the prescribed 1/2 cup).

Alright back to recipe. Oven - crank it to 400. Your coated shrimp should look like so:





Yummmm raw shrimp!

Bake for 8-10 mins. Flip. Bake another 8-10. Shrimp should be slightly golden after first 8-10 mins.

That's all. This is seriously the best recipe for baked coconut shrimp I've tried. And I've failed at quite a few. Here's my dinner plate:





Ps easy side - slice sweet taters into thin rounds. Bake or pan fry some bacon (400 degrees at 17-20 mins on a wire rack is my fave method). Bake taters at 400 for 10-12 each side. Pull them out, top with cheese, melt cheese. Top with bacon, chopped green onions and a dollop of plain Greek yogurt. NOM. DONE.

Oh and another PS - for $0.55, it is so worth it to buy a bunch of green onions every week. They make great toppings for pasta, salad, steak etc etc etc.

pinterest - bloomin' onion bread

For the afore mentioned birthday shindig, I honestly felt that showing up with just one measly tray of delicious, amaze-balls s'mores bars was not gonna cut it. So back to pinterest I went. Except, everything of the appy persuasion that piqued my interest seemed to be sweet. Until I found this gem...





Say it with me: BLOOMIN. ONION. BREAD.

I will say without a doubt that this is, like, 10x better than the shit from Outback - a). bc it's baked, not fried, b). it has cheese! c). it will not make you take a mad dash to the bathroom within 27 minutes of consuming it.

So, start off with a nice, innocent loaf of sourdough. Don't sub out for wheat or some other "healthy" incarnation of bread - the sourdough flavor is key here.





Next comes the tough part. To mimic the whole bloomin onion "look", you're going to need to slice the bread in thin strips lengthwise (BUT DON'T CUT ALL THE WAY THROUGH), then turn it 90 degrees and slice some more. The second half is difficult, but this does not need to be a work of art, bc it will be demolished by hungry fingers soon.





Alright, once your bread somewhat resembles mine, break out the cheese. The recipe called for monterrey jack - well, I fucking hate that shit. So, Gouda it was:





Cut up that bad boy into little pieces and then carefully insert in between the gaps in the bread.

Once that tedious part is done, chop up about a 1/2 cup of green onions,





melt 1/2 a cup of butter in the microwave, mix the butter, green onions, and however many poppy seeds you want and drizzle it all over that bad boy.

(Confession: in my baking fervor, I confused 1/2 a cup of butter with 1/2 a stick, and ended up using only 1/4 cup of butter. It still turned out delish, so if the thought of going all Paula Deen with full sticks of butter brings on a pre-diabetic panic attack, fear not, this will still be delish.)





Preheat your oven to 350, cover this beauty in foil, and bake for 15 minutes. Then remove the foil and bake for another 10 mins, to crisp it up. Promptly inhale (but don't burn yourself).

(adapted from The Girl Who Ate Everything, via pinterest)

pinterest strikes again - the s'mores bars

So, I showed up with these bad boys to a super bowl party, and all I heard until the pan was empty was "who made these??" Not gonna lie, it was a bit of an ego boost. I pretty much spent the whole party shouting out, "PINTEREST, BITCHESSSSS."

Only problem was that I overbought on the Hershey's bars and needed an excuse to get rid of the excess. When a joint birthday celebration was planned, I decided to use up the chocolate and grace my friends with these bars once more.

Alright, this is what you will need to get started:





- a square pan (I used an 11" x 9")
- 1/2 cup of butter, room temp
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 1/3 cups flour
- 3/4 cups graham cracker crumbs
- 1 tsp baking powder
- Hershey's chocolate bars (likeeee 8?)
- a tub o' Marshmallow Fluff

Next, follow these steps:

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. If you have a food processor, throw like 8 graham crackers in that bad boy to make some graham cracker crumbs. If you don't, well, I'm sorry










3. Once that is done, combine the butter and both sugars in a mixing bowl and cream them til they look like this:





(tee hee hee I said cream)

4. Add in the egg and vanilla. Mix. Add in the dry ingredients. Mix some more.

5. Grease up your pan, then take half of the graham cracker mixture and pat it firmly into the bottom.





6. Lay the Hershey's bars on top





7. Take the fluff and spread it in a thin layer over the chocolate. This part is kinda tricky because, well, fluff is sticky. Just use your fingers, ok?





8. Dump the rest of the graham cracker mixture on top and pay it down firmly.





9. Bake in the over for 30-35 minutes, or until the top is slightly golden, like so:





Wait until they are completely cool to cut them up, unless you want an ooey gooey mess. I mean, unless you're into that shiz.

They are absolutely delicious. I recommend making them for an event, so they are not just sitting around your house, staring at you and silently willing you to devour the whole tray (not that that's happened to me with baked goods or anything)

(this recipe was adapted from The Apron Gal, found via pinterest)

why you will never buy store granola again

I am kinda fickle about my granola. Reason #1 being that I don't like raisins. I also don't like it to be too sweet, it has to have enough nuts, yada yada yada.

I found some local granola that I like, but it doesn't really jive with me (unsuccessfully) trying to cut back on the grains and gluten in general. (why cut back on gluten? meh, why not)

Enter this recipe:
A Foothill Home Companion: Grain Free Granola

I don't have any step by step pictures for you right now, mostly because I am still munching my way through a batch, but trust me when I tell you that IT IS SOOOOOOO EASYYYY.

My fiancé dubbed me a hippy for making my own granola (I guess this IS kinda the epitome of "granola crunchy"), but whatever, labels can suck it.

Anyway, here are a few tips for a successful batch o' granola from this recipe:

- DO NOT JUST SET THE TIMER TO 30 MINUTES AND WANDER OFF TO PLUCK YOUR EYEBROWS OR WHATEVER. I did this... and ended up with like $10 worth of supplies burned to a crisp? Do you KNOW how many grande skinny vanilla lattes $10 buys!? (answer: 2). I can't honestly give you a specific time frame, but this shiz takes no more than 15 mins to bake, swear. My advice is to keep an eye on it, especially as it starts to get fragrant.

- I swapped out pecans for sunflower seeds, bc pecans are awesome and sunflower seeds look exactly like pumpkin seeds to me and this recipe already has pumpkin seeds so WTF?

- may I suggest adding extra coconut, if that's your thing? Because if it is, the coconut makes this recipe

- I personally used butter/honey, so no comments on the other options

Anyway, this stuff is seriously so good. PLUS, no wonky preservatives. PLUS you know exactly what went in it. Winner winner chicken dinner!

pinterest - delicious goat cheese basil honey walnut thing

I didn't get pinterest at first. It's like, "WTF, I don't want pictures of food, I want foooood!" Then, something in my peanut brain clicked and I realized the pictures were links and my heart went all pitter patter.

I've tried a few things so far from my pinterest boards (s'mores bars will be making a repeat showing this weekend, and I'll be sure to blog those), but so far, my obsession with this particular shnack has consumed my life.

The actual pin has a toasted english muffin, scattered with goat cheese, torn basil and walnuts, and then drizzled with honey. Since I am a ravenous beast, I would likely end up with walnuts on the floor and honey on my face trying to eat this creation, so I went all 5th grade here and created a roll up:





Behold - homemade tortilla straight from the Mexican bakery, scattered with delish-ness. Then, roll it up anddddd





POOF! Goat cheese/basil/honey/walnut magic in a handy, portable, edible container.

I have made this previously with naan bread, in an effort to achieve the wrap look, as well as mimic the bread texture/flavor from the original pin. It's good, but honestly, all that bread gets in the way of the true stars - all I give 2 shits about are the basil, goat cheese, walnuts and honey. So I've found the tortilla more to my liking.

Of course, you may be more, errr, dainty than me, and the English muffin may work out just fine. However, for the other hungry girls out there who devour their food in 0.6 seconds, the wrap is a worthy alternative.

this tastes way better than it looks

Ok so I really did not enjoy vegetables until the college years. My salads in high school consisted of iceberg lettuce, Italian dressing, croutons and chicken. So, needless to say, my tastes have improved.

Still, I don't get enough veggies day to day. And when someone at my old job suggested my general fatigue was maybe related to an iron deficiency, I decided "yeah, sure that makes sense, dr. coworker". So the obvious solution was to consume more iron rich foods (spinach) in the most white-girl way possible.

And the green smoothie (that I'm sure is already all over the internet) was born.

Ok so here are some of the ingredients from today's batch:





That right there is:

- a magic bullet filled 1/2 way with baby spinach
- acai juice
- plain almond milk
- 1/2 a banana
- blueberries
- whey protein
- icky green powder (to up veggie content)

NOMMMM, right? right?

Ok so, steps:

1. Fill the magic bullet cup about halfway with baby spinach. If you do not have a magic bullet, I can't help you.

2. Put in 1/2 a banana

3. Put in scoops of whatever gross supplement powder is your choice

4. Add a frozen cube of coconut milk (I keep trays of them in the freezer for just this purpose)

5. Add fresh fruit of your choosing (I used blueberries here, but pineapple, mango, whatever works)

6. Add frozen strawberries. I keep this kewl 5 lb bag in my freezer:





7. Pour in random amounts of almond milk and acai juice

8. Blend

If you're lucky, you will get a pretty mint green concoction. Or, like me, you may end up with something reminiscent of what I imagine baby vomit looks like. I did not photograph the end result bc of said baby vomit comparison, but here's a pretty one





The end.

Oh ps if you are taking this beverage outside of the sanctity of your home, may I suggest you put it in a solid container, and not a clear one - if only to avoid strange looks from your coworkers.

peer pressure's a bitch...

...or, more accurately, I've chosen to express my narcissistic tendencies in this small corner of the intewebz rather than as a raging psycho in real life.

Some exciting things to look forward to:

- pinterest experiments (s'mores bar, y'all!)
- rants and raves about idiots (because I encounter a lot of those)
- more food stuff
- random product reviews
- whining about how much my ass hurts after crossfit
- praising my not-so-perfect dogs

Yada yada yada, you get the point.

First on the agenda today: green smoothie woooot!