Five for Friday.

1. You encourage me to go out and have fun.

2. You support me in my quest to complete a half marathon.

3. You'll be home to me (finally!) in just over a month at MOST. Come on, Army! :)

4. You listen to my crazy happy rants about peanut butter.

5. You love Trader Joe's as much as I do, so I'm excited to have an extravaganza when you come home!

Stuffed Peppers.

I like stuffed peppers, but recipes for them always seem like they have a million ingredients. There is a #1 pet peeve of mine. When I look at a recipe, it happens as follows: Look at photo first. Yep, looks delicious, what do I need to make that? WOAH! One million ingredients? Nope, doesn't look that good. The thought of making that particular recipe vanishes. I'm a lazy cook, what can I say.

Instead of spending numerous hours buying tons of ingredients and measuring them to make some delicious peppers, I tend to throw a bunch of random food items together and just let it happen. Tonight, it worked.

Before baking peppers!

Seriously, what would stop you from eating that? SO amazing.

Ingredients:

4 bell peppers, top removed

1 cup quinoa, cooked

1 cup mushrooms, chopped

1 carrot, chopped

1 small zucchini

1/2 cup red onion, chopped

1 container of Trader Joe's Chili Feta

dash of soy sauce

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1/2 tsp. Italian spices

pinch of paprika

salt & pepper to taste

I know it's kind of weird. Chili feta, soy sauce, italian spices...it's random.

Directions:

Saute vegetables in olive oil over medium heat until softened. Mix in spices and soy sauce. Once combined, remove from heat and add cooked quinoa and feta. Spoon into peppers. Bake for 45 minutes at 400 degrees.

My ingredient amounts are approximate since I literally just threw them all together without thinking. I can't wait to eat one for lunch tomorrow!

Overhaul.

I may or may not have completely overhauled my 10K training schedule today. By overhaul, I actually mean I threw it away. Oh, I'm still running the 10K's but I have bigger things on the horizon.

On August 14th, I'll be running the Chicago Rock 'N' Roll Half Marathon with Jamie from Jamie Loves! We started our running journey together by doing the Couch to 5K ages ago so it will be ridiculously exciting to meet up and actually run together!

I have a page on my blog that was for my 10K training, but I will be turning into a page for half marathon training so you can keep up with me there! I am so excited!

Some Things I'm Loving...

I've been missing this week. I'm not sure why. Work is busy as always and summer class just started up. Not that I've even started on any school work yet. I have a paper due Monday so maybe I should work on that. Anyway, work and school are not necessarily things I'm currently loving the most (but do love...sort of.)

Anyway, this week I've become obsessed with a few things and you need to know about it.

1. My tumbler has seriously increased my water drinking while at work. Move over Camelbak, I have a new love.

2. Dark Chocolate Almond Butter. Pretty sure it's the best thing since sliced bread. Love it on my quinoa pancakes or by the spoonful...whatever.

3. The Canucks. Definitely not a new love, by any stretch of the imagination, but the love is growing as the Stanley Cup Playoffs progress. My dad took me to the game last Sunday (row 4!!) which was amazing! I said I would buy a t-shirt if they won, which they did, so here I am in my new shirt!

Five for Friday.

1. You're coming home!!! (When the Army makes us stop waiting...)

2. You said you'd bring me cupcakes until you realized that's sort of hard to do when I'll be picking you up from the airport. Maybe I'll bring you cupcakes instead. ;)

3. We'll be taking a fun step when you get home! I'm excited.

4. You promised not to surprise me again.

5. You're cute and I love you.

Jet-lag Boredom.

I got home from Thailand around 10am Vancouver time last Tuesday after not sleeping for 48 hours. I was determined to stay up until at least 8pm so I could get into a normal sleeping pattern. What better way to keep yourself awake then by baking muffins! I adore muffins, but they are always so unhealthy (even if they are the devious bran muffin which one would think is healthy!) so I avoid them and eat them rarely.

I came across a recipe for Lemon Blueberry Yogurt Muffins and thought I'd like to try it! They are delicious and don't cost me 400+ calories like their unhealthy counterparts! I even froze some to keep them for my lunches and by the time noon rolls around they are defrosted and still just as tasty!





Ingredients


1 1/2 cups Whole Wheat flour
3/4 cup packed brown sugar (I reduced to less than 1/2 cup and it was sweet enough)
1/2 cup quick oats
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/3 cup Greek yogurt - plain
1/4 cup skim milk (I used almond milk)
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 egg
1 tsp finely grated lemon rind
1 1/2 cups blueberries (I used a mix of berries since that's all I had. I also used frozen but when the blueberry season is in full force I'll try fresh!)


Method


1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray muffin tin with cooking spray.

2. In a large bowl, stir together whole wheat flour, brown sugar, oats, and baking soda. In another bowl, whisk together yogurt, milk, oil, egg, and lemon rind. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Stir in frozen berries. Scoop into muffin tin, filling 2/3 full.

3. Bake in center of oven for 30 minutes!


I am still adjusting from my trip. I sleep at the right times, I just get tired much earlier than normal resulting in me waking up far too early too.

As I briefly mentioned in a previous post, Dan's deployment has been cancelled. This means he'll be coming home!! I don't know when he'll be home because paperwork and out-processing have to be completed but I'm crossing my fingers it's not too long! I've been busy cleaning my place because I have a feeling it will be spontaneous! He's trying to get on a course which will take him away from home again for six weeks, but after that, we'll be living like a regular old civilian couple for awhile!

Oh, and I happened to notice that this is my 100th blog post! So happy 100th to me!

Elephant Hug!

How precious is this? One of my favourite moments in Thailand to date!

I have some delicious recipes to share with you this week! Yummy posts to come!