I busted out the slow cooker this week for the first time in forever!
On Monday night, we had our friends Heather, Mike, and their toddler Casey over for dinner. Matt and I were both working most of the day, so I put our slow cooker to work so dinner would be ready by the time we got home and our friends arrived – perfect!
On the menu was my Slow Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala, which I prepped ahead a few weeks ago with my friend Jackie during our meal prep mini-party (aka just the two of us, while Matt and her husband and the kids hung out). We just put all the raw recipe ingredients into a ziplock bag, then froze it for later.
I popped it out of the freezer on Monday morning, defrosted it by placing the ziplock bag into a big bowl of water, and then threw it into the slow cooker when it was mostly defrosted.
All we had to do that evening was throw together a salad, which was great because then we could all focus on hanging out vs. one of us being in the kitchen missing out on the fun. š
Heather and Mike brought rice and fruit salad to contribute and we had ourselves a feast!
Another yummy dinner we had this week was a shrimp and rice bowl.
Riese was entertained by helping me slice the radishes (and by stirring the carrots + edamame aka eating them) – she loves her plastic toddler knives and they actually work decently well!
It was one of those nights where Riese was bored and as a result a bit fussy, so the cooking was helpful to get her engaged/focused on something else.
I’ve been giving Riese her toddler knife for meals sometimes, too – she loves slicing her food right before eating it! She was slicing banana and tortilla in the photo below.
I was eating another one of the make-ahead breakfast burritos I prepped and stored in the freezer – having these on hand is so awesome. This batch is made with chicken instead of scrambled egg to mix it up so I’ve been having them for lunch a lot, too!
We had a lot of scrambled eggs this week outside of burritos, though – we had a dropped egg carton situation but Matt was smart and cracked all the broken eggs into a bowl right away so we were still able to use them. Scrambled eggs it was! Plus peanut butter toast and fruit salad.
As for fitness this week, I did my usual weekly line up of early morning workouts: 1 yoga class, 1 pilates boot camp class, and 1 run.
The monuments were basically deserted during the run yesterday morning! It was cloudy so no super amazing sunrises but it was still pretty.
4 miles, check!
I’ve been running twice a week for my DC rock ‘n’ roll half marathon training and that feels right. If I wanted to set a new PR or try to really race it, I’d definitely want to do one more run, but two feels right for my race goals (finish + have fun) and also my current lifestyle/what I can realistically fit in energy and time-wise.
And now, I will leave you with two fun photos.
First, for my Zara fans: here we are cozy on the couch one night this week after Riese went to bed.
And second, this photo of Matt from Wednesday night… after Riese went to bed. Yep, we totally stayed up and played with her toys… š
We were pretty impressed with our final creation! Turns out playing with blocks is pretty good stress relief for adults!
One more thing before I go: I’m on the “Momosas” (great name, right?) Podcast this week! We had a candid conversation about diet culture, intuitive eating (for us + our kids), thin privilege, mom guilt, and more. Check it out if you’re interested in some unfiltered chatter on parenthood, postpartum body image, etc.!
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