Hello and happy Friday! It’s been a busy week over here getting caught up with AnnetheRD clients and emails after my big Eurotrip, but I’ve been enjoying being home and getting back into the swing of things.
On the food front, we’ve had some good eats this week! On Sunday night, Matt made us tacos – my fave! Mexican food is the one type of food I miss when I’m in Europe. :)
We had chicken breast cooked in Mexican seasoning, a homemade salsa made by Matt with peppers, onions, tomato, and cilantro, Whole Foods guac, black beans, some shredded Cabot cheddar, sautéed peppers and onions, and extra chopped cilantro. Yum!
We had a bunch of leftovers, too, so I turned it into a big salad for lunch the next day with some brown rice.
On Tuesday night, Matt decided to get creative and make a variation of Italian Wedding Soup! He loosely followed Giada’s recipe, but added some veggies to the mix too (carrots and celery), and used spinach instead of endive.
I didn’t know that Italian Wedding Soup called for egg – cool!
It was delicious. I was feeling pretty under the weather earlier this week (just a bad cold – all that traveling really caught up to me on Sunday/Monday) and this really hit the spot.
Another thing I’ve been snacking on this week is homemade almond butter! Have you guys ever made homemade almond butter before? This was my first time!
I made the Agave Almond Butter from the Versa Challenge (remember that?) as part of my partnership with Fitness Magazine and Oster® to help promote the challenge.
This recipe is one of the ones that Courtney shot the video for, so it was fun to try it out since I hadn’t done it before. (Here’s the recipe, and here’s her video if you want to see her making it.) It was easy and delicious – I left it a little chunkier since I like my nut butter chunky, but you can process it for longer if you want it smoother/more spreadable.
Make it yourself and upload a picture to Instagram using #VersaChallenge to enter to win some great prizes. Let us know how you like it! :)
On the workout front this week, I took things easy on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday since I wasn’t feeling great, but on Wednesday night Matt and I did something fun: an indoor rock climbing intro class!
We have a few friends that climb on a regular basis and have been trying to get us to join them, so when I saw a LivingSocial deal a couple months ago for a 2 hour basic climbing skills class (which would provide us with the training we needed to come back and take a test to get belay certified), I jumped on it.
My friend Sokphal was there climbing with a friend of hers so we did some climbing with them after the class, which was great. I love climbing – such a good mental and physical challenge. Matt and I just need to go back and take our test and then we’re cleared to belay others and climb on our own! Yay!
After one more day of rest yesterday, today I was ready to get fully back into it. I met my friends Sokphal and Ashley this morning for a run, ready to go. Here we are post-run in all our sweaty glory. Please note that my face is the color of a very ripe tomato. :)
Sokphal is marathon training and had 7 miles on the docket. I did a fair amount of running while I was traveling around Europe so I was up for the challenge!
It was a pretty morning, but super humid. My camera felt the humidity, too, apparently – hi blurry shot.
We did an out and back along the Mt. Vernon Trail, which you guys know is one of my faves.
I was struggling some with pace (speedwork, we need to be friends again ASAP… also, fall weather, we’re ready for you) but overall it was a really good run and great to catch up with my buddies. :)
Thanks for getting me out there and moving this morning, ladies! Wouldn’t have done that without you. :)
And now, lots of work to tackle. Have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend! I’m going off on another (I know, I know) trip – I leave on Sunday morning to fly out to California for a trip with the Almond Board of California. I’m heading out a day early to see friends, and then the trip starts on Monday evening. It sounds fun – I’m excited! You can see what I’m up to on Instagram while I’m away, and I’ll be back on Monday to continue recapping my Europe adventures – moving on to Switzerland!
What fun workouts and good eats have you enjoyed this week?
I’m sooo impressed with the hubs’ Italian Wedding Soup skills… mad #soupskills on a man are Hawt #justsayin :)
Mexican Food = back on US soil, perfection. #Irony
Can’t wait to see you next week!
Lol totally agree re: mad soup skillz! See you soon! :)
LOVE Mexican food! It’s the perfect food to eat hot or cold..always spicy! I’ve only ever done rock climbing once, would love to give it another go.
The Mt Vernon trail looks absolutely gorgeous! During my visit to the area I’ve been running around Old Town Alexandria, so not that far from you!
I love tacos on the weekends, definitely a favorite in my house! And the rock climbing looks like so much fun. I’ll have to try it out some time, it’s probably a fantastic workout!
~Bre
Old Town has direct access to the more southern part of Mt Vernon trail – you should check it out!
Mmm, maybe Bo needs to make Mexican next week! Have fun in California and I’m making homemade almond butter this weekend! :)
I started P90X3 this past week so I have been doing those workouts all week and I really have enjoyed them!
Please tell Matt that this Italian-American is impressed with his soup skills! ;)
Lol I will ;)
I like to do an almond/peanut or cashew butter mix. I love almonds on their own, and love almond milk, but for some reason don’t really like plain almond butter! Weird, I know.
Oooh, which climbing gym did you go to? That looks suspiciously like the SportRock I used to go to in Alexandria, but I guess really all climbing gyms look pretty similar :) Reminds me that I should schedule myself a climbing date soon, I haven’t been in ages and am probably all kinds of rusty!
Yes, it was SportRock!
I am actually making a Mexican themed dinner tonight myself and experimenting with making almond flour tortillas. Have a great weekend!
Interesting – let us know how to tortillas turn out!
They turned out really well! Here is the post with the recipe. They were very simple to make too!
http://thebikiniexperiment.com/the-tor-chuy-a-tortilla-for-the-peoples-champ/
Sweet! Thanks!
Fun rock climbing date night! I’ve been wanting to do that for a while with my guy. On the running front, I am doing the SeaWheeze half in Vancouver tomorrow and your run makes me excited for my upcoming trip to DC! Miss those routes from my GW days.
How fun – that race is supposed to be awesome! Good luck out there :)
Hi Anne. Wow, the Mexican dinner looks fantastic. Are you going to share the recipe some time soon? Sorry, I’m new to your blog. :-) love the look of the soup, too!
Welcome to the blog! We didn’t follow a recipe so I don’t have one to share, I’m sorry!
That leftover chicken taco salad looks delicious!
I’ve never tried rock climbing. I’m not afraid of heights, but I’m not sure if I have enough upper body strength to do it.
It’s actually mostly legs unless you’re trying to do bouldering or anything with an inverse tilt.
I’ve been doing running, walking and strength training this week focusing on how it makes me “feel” not necessarily any kind of results. I just finished reading Intuitive Eating on your suggestion from the summer shape up and it really challenged me. PS That soup looks amazing!!
Yay, I’m so glad to hear that!
Safe travels! Is that the Gramin 910 that you are wearing?
Yep! Love it!
Love that you tried rock climbing! That’s something I’ve never done but it looks like so much fun. I’m easing back into running and strength workouts here and feeling good.. almost back to normal!
Next time I stay with you, I request the pancake from you and the soup from Matt.
Hi Anne
I have never eaten meatballs in soup, but I found that it is a winter recipe and I’ll taste it (thanks for the tip); usually meatballs are eaten breaded and fried in olive oil or cooked in a sauce made of thin slice onion fried in extra virgin olive oil, chopped fresh tomatoes (peeled), fresh basil leaves, salt to and just a pinch of sugar;
put a few slices of onion with a little oil and let heat.; add the meatballs, brown them lightly on all their sides; add white wine and let it evaporate; add the tomatoes, salt, sugar and cook with a little water for about 30 minutes.
The classic recipe for 4 persons is as follows:
500 grams of lean beef minced
the crumb of bread soaked in milk
1 egg
60 grams of grated Parmigiano Reggiano
salt to taste
chopped parsley to taste
pepper to taste
Frequently the meatballs are a dish to recycle beef, pork or chicken leftovers (boiled meats, roasts, steaks), to which is also added ham or bologna, in addition to the ingredients mentioned above; instead of parsley and garlic, you can add the nutmeg.
Ciao
Elisabetta
Thank you for sharing!
I have a few friends who are loving the rock climbing lately. I’m intrigued to try it for sure. As for me, there was a lot of CrossFit this week which was awesome! I’m hoping to get in a short run in a few but CrossFit has really stolen my heart lately and I love it! :)
All the food looks SO good but that Mexican night looks out of this world! Way to make transitioning back to the States not seem so bad Matt :)
Let me know when you’re back and ready for some track workouts….I need to work on my speed too!! Thursdays still work for me if you’re free :)
Yes please!! I’m finally back for good next week. :) I’ll email you!
I started making my own nut butters and now I have a bunch of people consistently buying them! Now if only I had more hours in the day to make them all…