pesto

Friday night I had a scheduled appointment with a personal trainer – you get 3 free sessions at the gym I go to.. so I thought, why not. Most of the time was spent doing a health evaluation, and then 15 minutes of exercises. Nothing too crazy, but my abs and arms are sore from the exercises. I think I just need someone to push me in my stength training routine, or actually I simply need to aquire a stength training routine. When I work out I spend most of the time running or walking on the treadmill and then I causally walk around deciding what machines I want to do for strength. Then I do some abs, but I don’t really push myself. Which is why I think a trainer would be awesome. From the first session I realized that my core is weak and that is the reason I can’t lower my legs for leg lifts without my back arching and lifting off the ground, so I need to do modified ab exercises until my core is stronger. I also need to mix up my cardio – I’m training for a half marathon so I will continue running but on my cross training days I want to take spinning or do the arc trainer. I have another appointment soon, I’ll keep you all posted.

I had a great Saturday – nothing was planned- I woke up around 9 but Isaac and I stayed busy pretty much all day. I started cleaning early- took out the recycling, the trash, cleaned the hard wood floors, and put away clean dishes. I had a bowl of oats for breakfast.. same ol same ol, no picture – it’d be boring anyway.

My morning snack on the other hand is nothing but boring… Pumpkin Muffins! I used Trader Joe’s pumpkin bread and muffin mix. They are so good, not too sweet and very pumpkiny. I totally thought about subbing the oil for apple sauce AFTER I had poured it in with the eggs. I didn’t want to waste the eggs, I totally would have just tossed them but they’re expensive – we buy them from a student at Isaac’s school who has his own chickens, although I’m pretty sure his fam helps him out raising the chickens, as he’s in second grade. Needless to say the muffins have oil, which is fine. I still ate one and it was delish. Isaac had 3.

I can’t quite figure out why my muffins came out as cone heads. Does any baking expert know why this happened?

I also made something else new yesterdayy… PESTO, I had never attempted to made this deliciousness before – but we had a ton of basil to use up from our multiple plants so I attempted to make some. It was so easy- I used the Cooking Light Classic pesto recipe as a base and ended up with this:

1 tablespoon chopped walnuts
1 garlic clove, peeled
1.5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups basil leaves (about 2 ounces)
1/4 cup (1 ounces) grated fresh Parmesan cheese
1/8 teaspoon salt

I put the garlic and nuts into my mini food processor and pulsed. Added the olive oil, pulsed 3 times. Then added the remaining ingredients and pulsed until mixed. I opened the food processor once to do a stir with a spoon to make sure the items on the sides were being included as well. And ta-da, from plant to pesto.

Which resulted in a delicious dinner of pesto pasta with squash, zucchini and shrimpies.

And a close up shot:

We went to Starbucks after dinner, I got a non-fat cappuccino and we rented Bee Movie. As usual I fell asleep during the movie, but not before I ate a bag of kettle corn by myself. I love kettle corn. And, the movie was really cute so I need to finish it today at some point.

This Sunday morning I woke up, ate some oats

I lounged around the house, doing laundry and baking some butternut squash. Mid morning I had 1 scoop of protein powder with 3 oz of H20.

I’m hoping to make something tonight to enter into the Blogger Secret Ingredient competition. Hopefully it’s not too late.

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I won a YAS tank from MizFit and I’m so pumped! New workout clothes make me really excited and motivated to hit the gym so this is a really good prize:

Also, just because I’ve never worn anything with skulls on it before, I’m interested to see if people look at the ground when they walk by me at the gym or run when I come in the door because they think I might beat them up. ( I kind of doubt this will happen, it is a yoga tank and not a leather jacket, but it would be funny) ALSO I have to mention that I don’t consider myself a lucky person, and I don’t know why I have been so lucky lately.. maybe it’s my lucky month, nope, that can’t be it, because I won the cookbook in July, MAYBE my life is turning around and I am now the luckiest woman ALLLIVVEE. That would be awesome, I’m just crossing my fingers that some of this luck with rub off on to my job search.

On to the food.. last night for dinner I randomly threw a bunch of things together to go with Barilla Plus pasta because my cabinet is overflowing with different types of pasta. I buy it often, but I don’t cook it very often, so the packages have just been sitting there quite lonely. See:

So my delicious concoction, also known as, ”Chicken” Pesto Pasta for one, has these main ingredients:

6 Morningstar veggie “chicken” strips
3 Sundried tomatoes (they were packed in oil but I rinsed them)
4 small Mushrooms
1/2 cup Yellow cherry tomatoes cut in half
1/4 cup Fresh Basil
1 cup Spinach
2 tsp of pesto
3 cloves of Garlic ( I love garlic and I was home alone)
1 cup of Penne pasta

While the pasta was boiling, I put a little olive oil the chicken strips and garlic in a skillet. I sauteed those items for about 2 minutes then added the mushrooms, tomatoes (both kinds), basil, and pesto. When everything was about finished I added the spinach and once it wilted, turned the stove off. I used about 3/4 of a cup of pasta and spooned the pesto mixture on top. As the title suggests, it was quite delicious. And easy!