I got my whistle!

Remember this trail half marathon last month? I got my finisher's whistle in the mail yesterday!

I must say, I'm pretty excited.  I have already worn it around the apartment and taunted my dog with blowing into the whistle.  I'd like to think it was kind of like the Pied Piper but with dogs instead of rats.

This is probably my number 1 coolest medal.  Number 2 would be my medal that doubles as a bottle opener from this May.

In other news, after a rousing afternoon of speed work...

Goal pace for 2000m aka 1.25 mi intervals was 8:52

...I made Moroccan Lentil with Chickpea Soup.  Recipe is from Wegmans.  Not to be confused with a previously made Moroccan Lentil soup.  After Dan and I each had a large bowl for dinner, we have leftovers to last a family of 7 for the rest of the week.

Perhaps I should have halved the recipe?

What's your favorite race medal and why?

Make anything good for dinner lately? I need some new ideas.

Recipe: Curry Cauliflower and Beans Soup

Sometime over the weekend (Saturday?) I made a new recipe courtesy of my favorite grocery store in the world, Wegmans.  And that recipe is: Curry Cauliflower and Beans Soup.

As you can see, a nice simple list of ingredients. 

Basically you throw the onions in the pot with some oil, cook them a while, add the stock and cauliflower, cook until the cauliflower is soft, then add the beans and curry, then use an immersion blender. Done.

I'm all about easy recipes.

1 cup of this soup has only 90 calories, 4 grams of fiber and 5 grams of protein. The only unhealthy thing about it is the French Fried Onion pieces.

The recipe makes 8 one-cup servings.  We maybe got 7 bowls out of it, but I'm sure my husband's servings were a little larger than mine.

Sunday I postponed my long run in favor of going for a longish walk with hubby and the pup.  Hubby didn't get Monday off from work, so I spent the time with him Sunday and planned to do my long run on Monday.

Monday I was off from work.  In the morning I spent some time uploading newer music to my mp3 player (including the newer Black Eyed Peas album: The Beginning -- because I got a lot of mileage out of the E.N.D., Far East Movement's Free Wired because songs from that album were coming up on playlists everywhere, and Taio Cruz's Rokstarr).

Soon I realized that it wasn't going to warm up much beyond 24 degrees so there was no point in waiting.  I bundled up and headed out into the cold with my music for my long run.  It ended up being 6.22 miles!

I tried to focus on keeping my HR low at the beginning, but I picked up the pace over the last mile and a half, and with that came a higher heart rate.  It may have been that I was on the shoulder of a busier road and wanted to be done with that part, it may have been that I encountered two deer carcasses on that same stretch of road and wanted to get past them as fast as possible without breathing in the stench (gross!).

Anyway, that's not a bad thing, because in the advanced Hal Higdon plan, he calls for doing some long runs at a 3/1 ratio -- first 3/4 at a slow pace, and last quarter at half marathon pace.

Lap times: 11:29, 11:29, 11:39, 11:45, 10:48, 10:31, then the last .60 was at a 12:26 (ending with a little walking).  Because I had just done my long run, I did not go to spinning that night, I'm hoping to stay injury-free!

Tuesday (that's today!)  We had a 90-minute delayed opening at work due to a combo of snow, rain, freezing rain, sleet, etc. all in the wee hours of the morning.  I learned about this delay with a 5:10am phone call. It's hard to go back to sleep after being woken up (and with what seemed like all the plows and salt trucks of NJ convening in the parking lot behind our apartment), but I managed, and appreciated being able to sleep in.  Then I got to scrape an inch of ice of my car while standing in several inches of a slushy mix.

This may look snowy, but don't be fooled- it's ICE. Yes, I stopped in the middle of cleaning off my car to document this.

This is not typical NJ weather. 
This is like spring Western NY weather (I say this based on personal experience).  One time I had to scrape ice much thicker than this off my whole car in APRIL. No joke.  April of 2003. You can google it. (not my pictures that I linked to).

After work today, I went to the cardio kickboxing class at the gym (about 45 minutes), which included some push-ups, exercises with 5lb dumbbells, and crunches at the end.  Afterward I ran an easy 1.56 miles on the treadmill at a 1% incline.

Hooray, tomorrow's Wednesday already!

Recipe: Curried Butternut Squash and Pear Soup

I was looking for some recipe-inspiration on the website of my favorite grocery store, and came across this Squash and Pear Soup recipe.  It looked like there were some mixed reviews, but I was interested in the squash and pear combination so I looked online for other squash and pear soup recipes and found this one on allrecipes.com: Curried Butternut Squash and Pear Soup.  It was well-reviewed, so I decided to make it.

Here's the ingredient list:

1 (2 pound) butternut squash

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger root

1 tablespoon curry powder

1 teaspoon salt

4 cups reduced sodium chicken broth

2 firm ripe Bartlett pears, peeled, cored, and cut into 1 inch dice

1/2 cup half and half

Modifications I made--

1. It called for a 2lb butternut squash, I prefer this precut stuff instead. I am not fast at food-prep things like cutting squash, so I'll pay a little more for the convenience.  I got 2 packages, so I used more like 40 ounces of squash, minus a couple pieces that fell on the floor.

2. Even reduced sodium chicken broth has a fair amount of sodium.  I went with vegetable stock instead for lower sodium (75mg/3% of your daily sodium per serving).

3. I added a little extra curry powder, and improvised by adding a little cinnamon, and some extra ginger.  (Maybe I needed the extra spice anyway, since I used more squash than called for).

4.  I don't own half and half because it would make my morning coffee routine a lot more unhealthy!  I found that the soup was already pretty thick before adding any kind of dairy, and threw in a splash of skim milk... I don't know why. 

Here's the soup in the pot, not a very interesting picture.  But I'm including it anyway.

We've got a lot of it.  It was dinner for both of us last night; and we both packed some for lunch today.  There's still a decent amount left. 

It took a while to make since you have to roast the squash first, then put all the other things in a pot and cook them before it becomes soup.  I pre-roasted the squash the night before when I had some extra time so it wouldn't take so long to make last night, when we planned to eat it.  Another HUGE time saver was the fact that we have our fabulous immersion blender and did not need to transfer smaller batches of the soup to a blender, then back to the pot.  It turned that pot from chunks to soup in about a minute. (Should have taken a before-shot, but it was a little messy).

My verdict on the recipe is that I would make this again!  I like the pear taste in the soup.

My husband has previously made a fantastic version of butternut squash soup (Butternut Squash Soup with Sweet and Spicy Pecans) that we found on the Food Network site/from Rachael Ray.  He's not a fan of Rachael Ray, but he does love to make this recipe!

After dinner, I ran down to our favorite nearby restaurant that has amazing desserts, and brought back a Reese's Pieces tart for us to split.  Again, should have taken a before-picture, but I dug right in.  It's a little pastry shell with some fudge and peanut butter at the bottom filled with peanut butter mousse then topped with Reese's Pices and a little chocolate. YUM.

With our dessert, we had coffee, thanks to our new coffee maker.  It's a little space-age looking, but it does the job.  Our $20 Mr. Coffee one appeared to have crapped out after about 3 years.  The interrupter wasn't working well anymore (or at all... actually).  And it seemed to leave a lot of water in the basket that never made it through to the pot.

This one has the programming feature too, which our bare-bones old one did not have.  So I'll have to try pre-grinding some beans at night and see what it's like waking up to the glorious smell of coffee brewing in the morning.

Another thing I like about this coffee maker is the shape of the spout on the carafe - it's a little elongated, and so far no dripping!

You can not see it in my picture below, but the 'reservoir'? (that's what I'm calling the part where you put the water) can come out of the coffee maker for easy filling at the sink, or to be washed.  So far, so good!