When running is out of the question

and I have loads of time to spare, I know what to do…… Bake!

Last night I made kidney bean burgers.

I used a recipe from Veganomicon for black bean burgers, and changed it a little bit.

I cooked one chopped red onion until browned, then added in 1tbs tomato puree, a tsp lazy chilli and a drained tin of kidney beans, then I half mashed this all up (so some beans were crushed and some were left). Then I added in about 30g vital wheat gluten and 1/2 cup of water, and mixed it all up. Then I shaped it into 4 (massive) patties and baked in the oven for 25 minutes.

I had two of them for dinner in a wholemeal wrap with a load of spinach, beetroot and a gherkin! Nothing goes better with a burger than a gherkin! The burgers were tasty, but not very spicy- next time I think I will have to be braver with the lazy chilli. I have frozen the other two for another time.

Today I impressed myself by being so efficient! Andy was off for a 13 mile run, so while he was gone I got on with a total cleaning blitz- I cleaned the kitchen, bathrooms, cleaned the floors, did a load of washing and washing up, did the dusting, took out the recycling- phew! Then I walked up to the shops and was actually so excited when I saw these babies on sale in Tescos;

Mule bars! I tried some of these a while back and really liked them, but I did not try this flavour (summer pudding which is different berries- here is to hoping that they might start stocking other flavours too), and also PB&Co peanut butter!! It is only the normal stuff and not dark chocolate dreams, but I am hoping one thing will lead to another! Plus I might use this to try and make my own choc pb- more authentic don’t you think?

Woo!

I needed a mid-afternoon snack and I decided to make this chocolate pudding that I keep seeing on various blogs. One partly frozen banana whizzed up with 3 dates, a blob of pb and 2 tsp cocoa powder. Leave in the fridge for a bit, and then enjoy.

Yummy Yummy Yummy! 🙂 So chocolatey and delicious, scrumptious, I loved the dates in there, and although it looks like a tiny amount it was quite a bit (it was a whole banana).

Then I got on and made some peanut butter bars which I saw here;

I changed the recipe a bit (had to use what I had in)- 120g oats, 55g chickpea flour (thought I would try it in a sweet recipe), 100g sweet freedom, 100g PB, 50g chopped dark chocolate, 10g ground flax seeds and a few tbs water (I had no eggs)- mixed up, baked at 180C for 17 minutes, turns into this;

Andy had one with some tea this afternoon so they have passed the taste test 🙂 Plus each one has 6.6g protein so not too bad for a little snack.

On a random side note I am pleased to note that I do not have a caffeine addiction! I only tend to have one or two cups with caffeine per day, but the last cup of any kind of tea I have had was last monday, and I have been fine. Silver cloud and all! I am still off tea for the moment- might try a cup tomorrow. Rock ‘n’ roll.

I have decided that I am going to ignore my marathon training plan for this week, and make sure I get back to feeling 100% before I attempt a really long run. Lots of your comments really talked sense, and Andy (he was moaning about how he was not looking forward to the 13 miles, and I said to him that at least he could go out) also talked some sense into me- 2 weeks off now is not going to make much difference in the long run- we still have nearly 4 months to go and I know I can run half the distance already. The 4 miler was much harder than I thought, and I don’t want to make myself worse. So basically I am going to see how I feel on each run, make sure I do routes that I can cut short if I need to, or repeat if I feel like it.

So my recap of the week is pretty much non existant- a 3.7 mile run on Saturday is all the exercise I have managed. But I am going to move on and not dwell on it. On marathon news, I got an email this week saying that they have moved the start time from 2pm to 11.30am, which I am pleased about. 2pm did seem a weird time, and although I did have one practise of running after lunch (and was planning to do more) it did concern me that by the time I finish it would be time for dinner and then bed (or maybe just bed!), and I would get really stiff. At least this way around, we can take our time having breakfast, do the race and then have some time to wander before dinner, and hopefully not get so stiff. And I can run better on porridge than anything else! Good news, right?

And I am looking forward to doing much more baking! Pumpkin tofu pasta is again on the cards (yippee) as will be copious amounts of sweet stuff- I have some friends over in the week and I love to ply them with baked goods! Yipee! So on the subject of baking and cooking, if you could have one item of baked goods, what would it be? And what is your favourite meal?