Be Back Soon!

I'm sure you're all wondering where the heck I've been?!?! I will be back soon, I haven't forgotten about you!

It ended up being quite the busy summer and I have not had time to cook. At all. I know, sad, right?

So I bet you're wondering what I've been doing?

• Traveling a bit for work and fun
• Running! If you knew the previous me, you'd likely fall off your chair if the word run even entered my vocabulary. Well, it's true. I have become a runner. I spent a good portion of the summer training for a 193 mile road relay race with 11 other people. And it was a BLAST. I ran a total of 15.5 miles in 24 hours (3 legs of the race). Never in a million years did I think I would ever accomplish that. So to be honest, that's where a lot of my cooking time went, but it was worth it in the end.
  
• Home renovations. Currently this is the biggest chunk of my spare time. I'm in the midst some serious home renovations. It's quite the time suck, but they are some needed projects (as in a brand new bathroom and another bathroom gut plus some other projects) and I hope to have them wrapped up soon.
  

Since we all go through many busy times in our lives, it's still important to keep control of what we eat and try to keep as healthy as possible. I did alter my eating habits a bit this summer to accommodate the amount of running I was doing, but mainly that consisted of a few more pasta nights and an excuse to eat peanut butter on mornings I ran. I wasn't able to make many dinners, but here's a bit about my strategy for keeping the pounds off and eating healthy:

• FRUIT AND VEGETABLES. It was summer. I kept around especially a TON of fruit and many vegetables as well. Basically, whatever was on sale that week I would stock up on and plan what I ate around that
• Stick with the grocery store routine as much as I could. My schedule was a bit out of whack, so I wasn't always able to shop at the same time, which has often been a big key to my success in keeping healthy food around and meals in the fridge we could heat up quickly. But I still made time at least once a week to get to the grocery store and stock up on fresh food. This significantly reduces the amount of last-minute take-out that can happen
• Stock up on low-calorie, pre-packaged snacks. I generally try to avoid these when I'm cooking a lot, but when time's tight, if I have a 100 calorie pack around, I'll eat that for a snack on the go instead of something worse for me.
• Sandwiches. I made sure to keep bread, deli meat, low-fat cheese and other sandwich items around. In a pinch it can be the best meal. Oh, and some fat free pretzels. Yum! Sandwiches can go a long way and there's lots of variety for those of us who don't like to eat the same thing every day.
• Crock pot: I did manage to use it once or twice. One of my favorite beer/chicken recipes should hopefully be coming soon
• Chips and salsa. Keep portions in check for the taco chips, but they are easy to keep around and can be a good side to many quick summer meals
• Yogurt. The perfect breakfast on the go with some fruit.
• Tacos. It's quick to cook up a couple of pounds of taco meat (I usually do half lean ground turkey, half extra lean ground beef) and have tacos over a couple of days.
• Water. As always, hydration is key. Really helps with the hunger.

Hopefully I'll have a food post on the way soon! Print this post