Recipes - Maria Runs

Treats for my eats

Evening all

Boy am I glad the weekend is here!

I was so busy yesterday- Andy was having his car serviced (he drove it there in the morning and then ran the 5 miles back home- combining training with life was clever!)- so I raced home from work, we had a quick pasta dinner and I changed, then we drove to pick up the car, I had to get petrol and then straight to body pump. I was showered and shattered at 9pm!

Over the last couple of days I have had some lovely treat snacks so here we go;

This was amazing! One pot of Rachel’s Rice pudding (although I should make my own – I do have some flaked rice somewhere..) with a tsp peanut butter and some dark chocolate chips stirred in once it was warmed. MMmmm.

A white chocolate and hazelnut flapjack- I shared it with Andy and his comment was “nice” whereas mine was “look I got a whole hazelnut!”.

Cherries with chocolate alpro and some pecan and cranberry granola. This is a classic combo which will never get old for me!

There is not much of my lovely ginger cashew cereal left (sniff)- such a delicious combo.

I think the theme might be carbs- I have been tired and I think not quite eating enough when looking at my daily allowance on WLR. I also have been sleeping badly this week (I am a bad and light sleeper anyway) and have been waking up in the night really hungry, so I have been trying to have a snack later in the evening to try to stop this happening! It worked last night anyway.

While I was driving home today, all I could think of was that I wanted to do some baking. I recently bought Vegan Cookies invade your cookie jar- it was cheap on amazon and the range of recipes look amazing (plus I don’t need to worry about having eggs when I want to bake!) so I flicked through until I found a recipe for chocolate fudgy oatmeal cookies. I think the chocolate oat combo appealed! Chocolate plus some extra carbs- yes please 🙂

I also got to use my pretty red baking measuring cups 🙂

I cooked them for a bit, flattened them some more and cooked again and they smell heavenly. I am looking forward to one or two later- they will help fuel my run tomorrow.

Body pump was fab as usual. We had more new people (the classes are getting full and we all could have only one bar each whereas usually the regulars can have a light and heavy bar made up) which makes it good, but also a bit rushed as the instructor has to keep explaining everything. I kept the extra weight on for the back track (last week I added them on for the first little bit only) and this time managed to keep them on until the last break. I was struggling to get the bar over my head right before I took the extra off, and I am feeling it today! I also kept the heavier dumbells for the shoulders (as of last week where I made myself do it) so feeling good. I feel like I can up the weights for the squats, but my knees sometimes feel a bit sore in the squats and lunges. I am really careful with my posture, but I did used to have a bad knee and still now it can get stiff, so I am wary of increasing too much in case I strain something. My heart rate gets very high and I find it hard so I am pushing myself with the current weights, but what I am saying (in a rambly way) is that I want to concentrate on increasing weights for the non leg tracks more.

Right, off to read some blogs before a lovely dinner of veggie and bean bake and some home made wholemeal bread. 🙂

Energy gel territory

Evening all, hope you all had a fab Saturday.

At Christmas my Dad put together a box of running things for me and Andy- as well as a running top each it also included things like various energy gels (he said he had so much fun choosing all the things and was told by the lady in the shop that we would need to try different ones to see which ones we prefer). I have been a bit chicken about trying them, but today I decided to start. I took with me 2 clif shot bloks in a sandwich bag (did not want to be faffing with the packet)- this went in the pocket in my waist pack.

I thought they would be all joined together, but they are seperated in the packet already, which would make them easy to eat on the run. The plan today was 11 miles, and I decided that instead of looking at the time on my Nike+, I would look at the miles instead, as I can get a bit obsessed with the time at where I think each mile marker is. After about 7 miles I took one of them, and was pleasantly surprised- they were soft, like a soft fruit jelly whereas I thought they would be really chewy like wine gums or toffee or something (not keen on that). The flavour (mountain berry) was yummy too. I duly had water after (well nuun but that counts I am sure) and then at about 8.5 miles I had the second one. The pack says 3-6 every hour, but I wanted to try first. I did not feel like I got a rush of energy or anything, but interestingly my speed did pick up during those miles- the first one is fairly steep downhill so that may be why. Anyway, I had no side effects and felt good, although I did feel tired and the wind was so cold it felt like my bones were frozen and my face is still sore now. In the end my route was 11.4 miles, which took me 1 hour 57 mins (including several road crossings). Again, I was tired when I got home, but not shattered, and I did not feel like I was limping home, I managed to end feeling pretty strong. 🙂

I am quite impressed with the ingredients too- brown rice syrup, evaporated cane juice, brown rice syrup solids, pectin, citric adic, colour, flavour, sunflower oil and glazing agent (nothing sounds too scary or chemically)- each “blok” is 33 cals, 8g carbs and 4g sugars, 23mg sodium and 7mg potassium so good to know they replace some of the lost salts too.

Andy was off to the football in the afternoon (Southampton) so we had a fairly big lunch (he had run 11 miles before his breakfast)- some spicy bean soup and some mozzerella, pesto and pepper quesadillas. Plus some nuts.

(The quesadillas are super easy- spread a small wholemeal tortilla with basil pesto or basil puree, sprinkle on chopped pepper and some mozzerella, top with another tortilla and grill on a griddle pan thing, flip, then serve. Normally I do not add the peppers as it made it all lumpy and very hard to flip, but we had a spare one in the fridge).

This afternoon I made a birthday cake for Andy’s Dad- using some delicious Green and Black’s cooking chocolate and a Rachel Allen recipe.

Apparently it has more cocoa butter in it for easier melting- mmmm.

Stirring the melted chocolate (in a little bit of milk) into the batter-mmm some more!

I made the caramel frosting from Veganomicon for something a little different I hope, although it went all stiff like fudge and was very hard to spread! It will taste better than it looks I am sure! Anyway, I go for the rustic look- then we know it is home-made!

I also tried making my own cereal bar type thing this afternoon, using rude health oat puffs, some PB, rice syrup, dried cherries, spelt flour and a few other things. I had one with some tea this afternoon, but it was not quite right. I am not sure if it just was not quite sweet enough, or if the oat puffs burnt a bit in the oven. Anyway, it was alright, and I have a few ideas of how to improve it.

I am going to lay down in front of the football now -night 🙂

Pumpkin pasta by popular demand

Evening all

So here is rhe recipe first of all, for the Tofu pumpkin pasta. I think this was recommended to me by Alison, from this blog.

So, first I cook 150g wholemeal pasta (but make more if you want a bigger portion). Then I wilt 100g spinach (or however big the packet is) in with the drained pasta.

Then blend up 300g pumpkin (most of a normal tin which are currently by the tinned fruit in my local Waitrose- not the canned veg for some reason) with a packet of silken tofu, and a few chopped sundried tomatoes- maybe 25g. This blending takes a while as I only have a mini chopper!

Stir the tofu mix in with the pasta and spinach, and then share into 3 oven trays- I get the foil trays as then they can be frozen easily. Cook in the oven for about 25 minutes and serve (or freeze, defrost when you want it and then cook). The first time I had this I put some goats cheese on the top, as I love pumpkin and goats cheese, but I actually love it without cheese, it is so creamy and delicious. Enjoy 🙂

Last night was body pump, which was fab 🙂 A lot of the newbies from last week were back again this week, which is always good to see. I also managed to maintain the shoulder weight (there is a girl there- I say girl, I think she is in her 50’s- who does the same weights as me, and when she saw that I put the lightest weights away right before the track, she said to me that I might want to swap to them half way through, but I said to her that I managed it last week so I was going to make myself do it!) and today my shoulders have not been too bad- not as bad as last week anyway.

Post body pump was a yummy bowl of chocolate yoghurt and cashew ginger crunch cereal from Nature’s Path– can you see the massive cashews I got in it?

Chocolate and ginger go so well 🙂

Today was a rest day and when I got home I was really looking forward to a cup of tea. During the week I often get home and spend 5 minutes changing before I head out for a run, or aerobics, and I really look forwards to just having a sit down on a friday.

This is another type of delicious chai tea 🙂

Love it!

Now I am relaxing and drinking lots of water ahead of my long run tomorrow- enjoy the start to the weekend peeps 🙂

Lentil loving

And some other pulses.

By the way I had to move the blog over which is why it was not working yesterday. But normal service should be resumed now.

Today the plan was 6 miles, 2 mile warm up, 2 miles tempo, 2 miles cool down, which I duly did. I was tired though- the other night I did not sleep well and yesterday at aerobics I was having such trouble following the moves! Luckily the girl that goes behind me in my row did not mind! She knows I normally do them right. Back to today- the run was fine, and when I looked at my watch at the mile markers (they are in my head but I know where they are) I was doing pretty well, first 2 miles in 21 minutes, next 2 miles in 18 mins, and a nice cool down too.

And the best bit? Why that was the warm shower! Oh, and ticking off the runs on my piece of paper with a red pen!

Last night I made a new chilli- Lentil chilli.

YUm! It was super easy and I didn’t even put an onion in there, although you could! It made 4 big servings, and was perfect for refuelling post aerobics.

In a pan I cooked 2 chopped peppers and a courgette (but any veg would do, those are my faves!), then added 2 tins tomatoes, 1 tin kidney beans and 1 tin lentils, some garlic and chilli, and then left to simmer for a while (eg time to shower, dry hair etc). I had it with a sweet potato, which I microwaved (sorry Jess) because I forgot about it until 10 mins to go! What an easy dinner!

Yum again! Look at the steam!

I used to be such a bad vegetarian- carbs and cheese all the way (honestly I used to have pasta with tomato sauce most nights as that was all I could be bothered to do), but this week I realised that I have been good at getting my protein from beans/ pulses. This is not that recent but I have been branching out with other varieties.

Saturday I had bean bake (which is onions, peppers, tomatoes, herbs, garlic, cannelini beans) with some home made bread which exploded all over the baking tray and so I renamed foccacia bread.

The bread once it exploded!

Sunday Andy’s mum made a lovely bean chilli 🙂 (which is even more lovely as they all had roast chicken)

Monday I had my lovely chickpea stew

And then lentil chilli yesterday. Do you know I never even used to like baked beans? Although I do have a theme to most of my dinners- I like to add courgette and peppers to just about everything!

Last night I also tried some of my Nature’s Path cereal;

This was so delicious! It was so crunchy and it had a good ginger taste (but not too strong)- really different from other cereals- perfect for adding crunch to yoghurt etc too I would think.

Ok, I am first going to say well done for reading this far, as I realise this is quite a long post! I have a selection of energy gels, and I am wondering, at what stage in my training do I need to try them? When do I actually take them? They have on them things like 3 per hour, of max 40 per day (both of which seem exessive) so any ideas? Do they really give people bad stomachs? Am I better to try them before a shorter run so they don’t spoil my long run? Or near the end so I am close to home if trouble strikes? I know some people have them for 10k’s and half’s, and I never did, so not sure if I am behind the times, or behind the training?

Phew, long question, I will leave you all to ponder- night 🙂

Born to Run review (and some baking)

Afternoon

Last night I finished Born to Run , and as promised I am going to do a little review (without giving anything away I hope).

I cannot emphasise how great I think this book is. It is a pretty easy read, but at the same time it has some great information on various running studies slotted in. The author, Christopher McDougall, tells the story of how (after suffering more and more running injuries) he tried to track down the Tarahumara tribe of Mexico, famed for running great distances. The book flits between his experience, and the stories of various other ultra-runners that become involved in the story. I found the chapters about different races particularly gripping, as you could imagine yourself watching these 100 mile races, and it is hard to predict who will win. The athletic feats of the people involved are also pretty amazing.

The book is filled with inspiration, as well as tips and information (as part of the story, not removed from it) on running technique, nutrition (chia seeds which are all over blog land at the moment are featured in there), and footwear. I also feel like it is a book I will read again, so it is well worth a purchase in my opinion.

So, basically, if you love running, or are injured from running, or are feeling in need of some inspiration, then read it and see.

Onto other things- today I finally did some baking- woohoo! I made blondies from the Hummingbird book, only I swapped in some almonds for the pecans.

My legs are not too stiff from yesterday either- I did some foam rolling last night, which was very painful so I know it was doing me some good! I do feel very tired today, which I suppose is to be expected, but I am glad that my muscles have not seized up. 🙂