Relaxed After a Day of Rest

When I was training for the Delaware Marathon, Monday's were always an off day for me because we did our long run on Sunday.  I'm sticking with that plan and had a very relaxing day of rest yesterday.  Today I'm back at it though.  Body Pump at 4:30 - my kids will be at a basketball camp until 5:30 so it works out perfectly....not sure how the rest of the summer is going to go though - and I'll get a run in before.  I really need to get outside and run but by the time I drop the boys off at camp (1:30) it will be way too hot so back on the treadmill I'll go.  Today's run calls for 10 'easy' which will be brutal on the treadmill.  Hopefully I'll find something good on t.v.  Tomorrow is a speed workout hence the 'easy' for today.

So I wanted to post a few foodie items from yesterday.  I had a massive green smoothie for snack yesterday.

As you can see from the 'before' shot, I filled the Vitamix up! This one has almond milk, baby spinach, a banana, an apple, a big handful of baby carrots, chia seeds and some ground flax.  This was probably not the best smoothie to show you first since the color is totally unappealing but try not to let that distract you (and please excuse the bottle of wine in the background....that was for my evening snack).  The verdict?  It would have been great had it not been for the ground flax.  This is probably the fourth smoothie I've made with the flax and it completely changes the consistency of the smoothie.  It makes it really thick and not in a good way.  I actually poured this one back in the Vitamix, added more ice and blended it again.  That helped but I still think I'm ditching the idea of putting ground flax in my smoothies.  Anyone have this issue and if so, have a solution for me?  I've been kicking around the idea of putting protein powder in my smoothies but I'm worried it will have the same effect as the flax.

That sucker filled me up though.  I had it around 3:00 and was good to go until 6:00 when I had a craving for something crunchy so I had a Doctor Kracker smeared with some of this stuff:

Guacamole Hummus!  Weird, huh?  I spotted it at Trader Joe's yesterday and had to try it, I figured I couldn't go wrong with two of my favorite things in one dip!  The ingredients were pretty straight forward: Hass avocado, chickpeas, garlic, lime juice, onion powder, serrano pepper, salt, cilantro essential oil.  Two tbsp delivers 50 calories which isn't bad.  It was....interesting.  Not bad but not 'holy crap I have to have this every day' either.

You are probably wondering why I'm snacking at 6:00 instead of having dinner.  My husband is on a trip and usually when he is gone, I feed the kids then I eat way later after they are in bed.  I'll probably get bashed for this but I love the me time of having dinner alone in front of the tv.

When dinner time finally rolled around, I decided to try a recipe from The Flexitarian Diet book - Bay Avocado Sandwich - only I switched it up a bit. 

Here is the original recipe:

1 tsp Old Bay seasoning
1 lime, juiced
1 tsp olive oil
1/4 avocado, diced
1/2 cup canned garbanzo beans
1/4 cup finely chopped red bell pepper
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 green onion, chopped
1 small whole-grain roll
Wisk Old Bay with lime juice and oil.  Toss together with remaining ingredients and spoon into roll.

I made a few tweeks to this.  I didn't have onion so I omitted it and I used black beans instead of garbanzo beans.  I also added crushed red pepper flakes because I'm obsessed with them and put them on everything I make.  Then instead of putting it on a roll, I made some brown rice and spooned it on top of that.  First off, this made a ton, I know it doesn't sound like much but it really was a lot and with the brown rice,  it made quite a nice dinner (I only ate half of what the recipe made).  I loved, loved, LOVED this!  It was so fantastic!  On the side, I had some leftover bread salad from Father's Day (another awesome recipe that I got from Wegmans and will happily post if anyone is interested).  I was a happy camper!