CSA Tuesday - Featuring Bok Choy

First thanks for all of your kind words about my half marathon and Steve's marathon!! I love being part of such a supportive community.

We picked up our weekly CSA box today. It included three bags of greens (including spring mix, arugula, and spinach), green onions, thyme, potatoes, radishes, cheese, and bok choy.

We stir fried the bok choy and some of the green onions with some other vegetables we already had in our fridge. I added baked tofu to the vegetables. We had it over some brown rice. I also used organic carrots and cauliflower and some frozen peas and asparagus. I love stir fry, especially with fresh vegetables.

I have been enjoying our weekly CSA box and look forward to sharing with you the items we receive weekly and how we use them.

I couldn't get over Sophie hugging her turtle while she was napping. Sorry that this isn't the best picture (I see a new camera sometime in the future), but you can get the idea. She is so much like a human!

Enjoy your Wednesday!

Pittsburgh Marathon Recap

Yesterday's run was fantastic!! There was some light rain for the last few miles, but it actually felt great.

We woke up at 5am and I had 3 pieces of this bread. We just bought this a few days ago for the first time. I think it may be one of the best Cinnamon Raisin breads I have ever had. This also may be the first Rudi's Organic Bakery product I have ever tried. 3 pieces of this may have been a little too much for my stomach, but I new starting time wasn't until 7:30!


Here is what it looks like toasted.

Inside the convention center was a wall with a list of every runner (half marathon, marathon, relay).

Here are people looking for names on the wall.

Here is a close up of the names, so you believe me that it was a wall of name!

This is me smiling after running my 1/2 marathon in 2 hours 12 minutes. This is 5 minutes faster than my PR. I didn't wear that jacked to run it, I was cold after the race and pulled it from my bag.

As soon as I finished and picked up my bag I went to the finish line to wait for my husband to finish the Marathon.

I am so proud of my husband. He finished his first marathon in 3 hours 18 minutes, which unfortunately is 8 minutes too slow for Boston, but was a pace of 7 minutes 37 seconds!!!! He was a little disappointed, but I couldn't be prouder. He is speedy and doesn't even ache after that run. He is going to look for a fall marathon to try and qualify for Boston. Can anyone suggest a good fall marathon that Steve can try? They even had him seeded up at front because of how fast he has run half marathons in the past! Overall he was 228 out of 3439.

Oh and am I so glad that I had Clif Bloks in my pocket, because there was no fuel for the 1/2 marathon runners besides a few stations with powerade. They did have water stations every mile.

I'm already planning my next race (I may sign up for the Virginia Beach 1/2 Marathon during Labor Day weekend).

Food and drink permitted in this Library

Friday night Steve and I went to pick up our race packets at the Pittsburgh Marathon Expo and then went to a restaurant called The Library in Pittsburgh's South Side.

To start we were handed menus that are made out of real books.

When you open the books the menu is within the pages of the book. There are also book shelves and books all around.

We ate on the outside patio. I enjoyed a glass of Riesling. It was a small glass of wine for $10.

I ordered the hummus plate which had cajun black bean & chic pea hummus with grilled pitas points. This was called "Arabian Nights," because each item on the menu is named after a story book. It was very good and the best part was appetizers were 1/2 off during Happy Hour (and there were $3 drafts). Steve and I split this plate. I may have been really hungry, but this was some of the best hummus I have had.

My entree was the Jack and the Beanstalk salad with an added portobello mushroom.

Steve ordered "the Fisherman and His Wife" which was Pretzel crusted grilled salmon served with potatoes and vegetables then finished with a mustard cream sauce, and I thought his plate looked blog worthy.

Time to sleep and get ready for an early morning for the Pittsburgh Marathon. I will be running the half marathon and my husband will be running the full Marathon.

(The "Steel" refers to Pittsburgh which is known as the Steel City).

Good Night!

"I've been a lazy baby"

So this blog post title was from my husband. I was sitting here and said to him I need a title, and I guess he thinks I have no excuse for waiting this long to post something, because he said "I know, 'I've been a lazy baby' !!"

I have been a naughty blogger and for that I apologize. As I mentioned in one of my last posts, I am babysitting while I search for a job as an attorney and therefore have no use of a computer for a large chunk of my day. So I am going to highlight a few meals I have had over the last week.

First, I finally tried Tofu Shirataki, and I'm still not sure what I think about these. I just seem fake to me. But overall I did like the soup I made. I used a package of the Tofu Shirataki, a box of Imagine vegetable stock, a bag of frozen vegetables, and some fresh kale. This made about 4 good portions.

I am always having smoothies, but I had one over the weekend that was so think that it was like an ice cream dessert! For 2 servings (Steve and I both had a glass this size) I used 1 cup skim milk, one Chobani, 1 scoop of vanilla protein powder and two cups of mixed frozen fruit. Such a great treat to enjoy on our deck in the hot sun.

I had showed you a salad from Chipotle already, so I thought I would show you a similar salad from Qdoba. I think I liked the one I had at Chipolte better. I had wanted mango salsa on this, but Qdoba said it wasn't in season.

We have really been enjoying the spring weather, and I hope you have too!!

Good night!

Shopping Locally

Happy Thursday. For the first time in a long time there is a gorgeous 5 day forecast in Pittsburgh. I just hope this good streak doesn't mess up the Pittsburgh Marathon (for me the half-marathon) on May 3.

Heather asked for the pancake recipe for the pancakes I had in my last post. I use the Bob's Red Mill Buckwheat Pancake Mix. I like to know that I'm only having one serving, so I used 1/3 cup of mix, 1 tsp of canola oil, 1 egg white, and 1/4 cup of water.

I wanted to post about this yesterday for Earth Day, but the day just got away from me!! My husband and I signed up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). While there are a few in the Pittsburgh area, we went with Penn's Corner CSA. We signed up for the 30-week CSA, and we are only on week 2. I am so excited to have local food well into the Fall. With each packet we receive a newsletter telling us which local farm supplied each of the items. The cost is about $21 per week.

This week we our box included homemade spinach rotini, crimini mushrooms, chevre cheese, chives, arugula, salad greens and spinach, and potted parsley.

Here is a close up of the cheese and pasta.

I'm so excited to share with you our weekly package. If you are interested, you can find out if there is a CSA near you.

Have a great day!!

Let her eat (angel food) cake (for dinner)!

No news on my job search. I haven't heard from one job that I applied to, even the legal temp agency hasn't had any work for me. I wish I could have more optimism.

On to today's eats.

For breakfast I had buckwheat pancakes with berries and cool whip.

I also had a latte from our espresso maker to help me start the day. This cup was from M&M World in Las Vegas.

Steve and I spent the morning running around doing some errands. Around 12:30 we stopped for lunch at Chipotle. I have never been there, but I got a vegetarian salad that was amazing. It had romaine lettuce, grilled veggies, black beans, rice, corn salsa, and tomato salsa. I asked for no dressing, because I think all of the salsa and toppings make any dressing unnecessary.

This salad filled me up so much and all of the onions in the salsa and in the grilled vegetables made me want a sweet dinner. So I had angel food cake with strawberries and some Edy's slow churned. Sorry no pictures of my strawberry shortcake dinner, but know that it was very good.

I just finished a game of Scrabble with my husband, and we were able to use every letter. A new episode of Desperate Housewives is on tonight, so I'm closing my laptop. Goodnight!

Beans

I bought a ton of pinto beans from Whole Foods' bulk bin. I prepared some last week and used some of them for bean burgers that I saw on Kath's blog. Last week I used Kath's mashing technique, but this time when I made these, I used a food processor. I used Annie's Vegan Worcestershire sauce, dried parsley and dried onions (which I rehydrated in some water before adding to the beans).


I had my burger on a Arnold's Wheat Thin with some Country Bob's All Purpose Sauce.

Instead of dressing, I topped my salad with this wonderful Pinto Bean Dip. On the side I had some Food Should Taste Good chips.

Meghann is hosting a giveaway of Honest Food Products!