More Grilling

and a confession.

First the grilling. One of my favorite summertime meals - spiedies.

While PhillyGuy manned the grill, I chopped up a bunch of brussels sprouts and half a sweet onion, tossed with olive oil, kosher salt and pepper.

While those roasted up, I made myself a fairly simple salad.



Romaine, red pepper, cucumber, and some olives mixed with chunks of feta and an olive oil/vinegar mixture that I picked up at the grocery store. Since I didn't bring my favorite vinegar to make a salad dressing, I relied on the oil from the olive mix to flavor the salad - which it did just fine.

I topped my salad with a bunch of spiedies.



For those unfamiliar, these are an upstate New York (well, Binghamton area - which is really not at all "upstate") tradition. It's just marinated chunks of chicken breast, but I can't quite replicate the marinade at home, so we stock up like crazy whenever we visit PhillyGuy's parents.

And now the confession.

This entire vacation, I've been scared to run.

This is kind of embarrassing. I brought plenty of workout clothes. Duck has a great path running along the main drag which is perfectly shady in the mornings. I have my shoes. I have my industrial-strength sports bras. My knee hasn't been bothering me at all, and I've been routinely running a couple times a week - not much, maybe 3-4 miles of intervals or repeats at a pop, but still.

Every day on vacation, I've told myself that I am going to start the day with a run. A short one or a long one, it didn't matter - I intentionally left my Garmin at home, figuring it would be a nice break to just put on my shoes and GO without worrying about time or distance.

And every day, I get nervous and make an excuse as to why it's not a good day for a run. Why am I nervous? I honestly don't know. I usually don't feel like going right away when I wake up, and then later in the day, when I DO feel like going, I talk myself out of it, rationalizing that it's gotten sunny and hot(ter), or that my husband wants to hang out. As if I couldn't even do 30 minutes or so, or as if 75 degrees is unbearably hot for a run.

I don't get this at all. I'm trying not to put too much pressure on myself, and hoping that I just snap out of it in a couple of hours or days or whatever. But I don't like this feeling, at ALL.

Whew. Got that out. Now to enjoy our last day of vacation.

Weekend Update

It feels so good to finally have a second to catch up.

Thursday I tried Zumba with my friend. Um, WOW. I ran the 1.2ish miles from my house to Versa Fit at 16th and Walnut, which felt AMAZING - running outside really is so much better than the treadmill, both mentally and on my knees. It was the perfect warmup for the class, also - I am not, how shall we say...coordinated. At all. Being warmed up made it a lot easier for me to follow along with the instructor.

I'm still on the fence about whether Zumba is right for me. It was definitely a blast - I sweated like crazy and the class flew by - but all of the jumping and pivoting was not good for my knee. I will probably try once more, wearing my knee sleeve this time, to see if that alleviates the pain at all.

PhillyGuy and I ended this week by taking advantage of Friday's gorgeous weather by grilling a big fat steak. I put together my standby brussels sprouts/mushrooms/onions mix, with olive oil, kosher salt and pepper.

We had a super-thick ribeye in the freezer that must have been at least 24 ounces, so we split it.

Let me tell you, PhillyGuy makes a mean steak. He seasons it very simply - just salt and pepper and garlic powder - but MAN it's good.

(What can I say...I basically like my steak still walking.) And there is nothing in the world as delicious as these vegan oatmeal raisin sandwich cookies that we've discovered at Whole Foods on South Street.

Can of diet coke provided for size purposes. That cookie is the size of my face. The two of us share one and can't even finish the entire thing...but good grief, it's amazing.

I spent yesterday at Kleinfeld's with one of my best friends, who is getting married next February. I don't watch Say Yes to the Dress, but everyone else I was with does, so they were downright giddy picking out all of the people they saw on the show. Much to everyone's surprise, my friend picked out and bought a dress yesterday - it's absolutely gorgeous, and as soon as she held it up, her entire face just lit up.

Too bad we couldn't carry that feeling all the way home - it kind of got eaten up when we spent an hour getting through the Lincoln Tunnel. (Don't look at me - I wanted to take the train.) It was a long, LONG day - fun, but exhausting. I crashed hard when I finally got into bed, which is probably why it was so easy for me to be out the door at 8:30 this morning to go grocery shopping.

Now I'm hanging out in bed after polishing off a big fat bowl of Fage 0, Whole Foods bulk bin ginger granola, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and strawberries.

It's in the 40s, sunny and not as windy as yesterday - I'm thinking it's a perfect day to try to get in my first "long run" for Broad Street prep. I haven't run more than 5 miles since the half in November, so this might be a little creaky, but I'm hoping that my fairly consistent shorter runs will maybe bring my pace down a tiny bit...we'll see.

Happy Sunday!