Pumpkin Party!
I’ve heard about mixing cottage cheese into oats so I thought I’d give it a go.
In the mix:
- 1/4 cup homemade Scottish oats
- 2 T rolled oats
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/2 cup almond milk
- pinch salt
- 1/4 cup pumpkin
- 1/4 cup cottage cheese
- dash cinnamon
- splash vanilla
Topped with:
- 1/2 T homemade peanut butter
- 1T pumpkin butter
- Bear Naked Granola (sample from the race)
Zoooommmm
This bowl was HUGE but unfortunately I was not impressed 😦 It was a little too liquidy and, wait for it… too salty! I never thought those words would come out of my mouth fingers. I also had to pick the walnuts out of the granola. That is one nut I just don’t like.
Pre-breakfast snack and workout occurred today. Half a banana and peanut butter then 30 minutes on the bike and a quick lifting session. My legs are feeling great and I hope to get in a run on Thursday 🙂
Leftover cream of broccoli soup and half a honeycrisp for lunch
My poor co-workers mad the bad decision to ask how my race went and then had to be subjected to me talking about it in detail for an hour.
Meanwhile this was going on in my apartment.
Can you guess which half is mine?
I came home and pretended to help by sipping the last sample of pumpkin beer.
Then it was time to eat!
Alright, so what was this bad boy of a pizza anyways?
Pumpkin Pizza with Curried Spinach and Onions (inspired by Eats Well With Others):
- pumpkin pizza dough
- 1 yellow onion
- ~7 cups of spinach (yes, really you need this much)
- 1T olive oil
- 1T curry powder
- mozzarella cheese
- Preheat oven to 500*
- Roll out dough and cook 20-30 minutes or until browned and baked through
- While pizza is baking, thinly slice onion, saute in evoo for 20 minutes or until slightly browned
- Add curry and spinach and cook until wilted
- Spoon onion/spinach mix onto pizza dough
- Top with mozzarella
- Cook 10-15 minutes at 500*
 Oh yes, this was excellent! I was worried about there being no sauce. I was worried the spinach would be bland. I was worried Joey would… actually I don’t know what I was worried he’d do but it turned out fabulous. The curry flavor was just perfect and the dough, well the dough was beyond perfect.
Now if only Glee hadn’t been a re-run the night would have been even better, but it was pretty good as it was 🙂
What’s your favorite pizza combination?
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Simple Soup
Joey says he’s going to keep eating like he just ran a half marathon until he runs his next big race. If only!
After waking up at 5 on Sunday waking up at 6 on Monday almost felt like sleeping in. Almost.Â
Pumpkin Pie VOOs are worth waking up that early for though.
These have been so creamy lately. They totally hit the spot!
Lazy lunch = pb & j pizza
I finally found organic honeycrisps at the store and it turns out they’re huge too!! And of course I forgot to take a picture. It took me forever to finish it!
I’m not gonna lie, I definitely ditched class to get a massage. I do not regret this decision. My quads needed it!
Then I came home and got cracking on Tuesday’s dinner, which involves a pumpkin pizza dough, yummmm.
Okay, enough silliness, here’s the dough.
I looked at a few different recipes and here’s what I came up with.
Pumpkin Pizza Dough:
- 1 cup warm water
- 1 packet yeast
- 2T honey
- 1/2 cup canned pumpkin
- 2T olive oil
- 1.5t salt
- 3.5 cups flour
- Whisk yeast and water together, let sit 10 minutes
- Add honey, pumpkin and olive oil to yeast mixture, whisk
- Mix flour and salt
- Add wet to dry and stir
- Knead till dough is elastic
- Let rise in a greased bowl for 2 hours
This makes two pizzas.
It was ready to explode out of the bowl by the time the two hours was up.
I popped this baby into a greased container and put it in the fridge for tonight.
Meanwhile Joey was cooking up my Mom’s Cream of Broccoli Soup. I’ve always loved this soup!
Cream of Broccoli Soup:
- 3 heads of broccoli
- 1/4 cup green onion, chopped
- 1/2t salt
- 2 cups veggie or chicken broth
- 3T butter
- 3T flour
- 2 cups milk
- Cook broccoli, broth and green onions in a pot until broccoli is soft
- In a separate pot melt butter
- Whisk in flour. The mixture should be bubbly.
- Slowly add milk
- Now mix the two pots together and either blend or mash with a potato masher.
Couldn’t be easier AND we easily made this vegan by using veggie broth, unsweetened almond milk and Earth Balance.
I was sipping pumpkin beer instead of being helpful.
Verdict: Gross. And I should probably give up on pumpkin beer already.
Dinner was much more pleasing, however. We needed some crusty french bread, though!
After dinner I may have had a bite of Ben and Jerry’s Peach Cobbler ice cream and a couple pieces of chili and cherry dark chocolate 🙂
Hope your Tuesday is off to a wonderful start!
Denver Rock’n’Roll Half Marathon!
Believe me when I tell you everything about yesterday was pure perfection.
I think it was in part due to Saturday’s preparations, which included a vegan pizza creation with hummus/curry/nutritional yeast cheese. It was divine!
Lunch was followed by shopping with my mom and sister. I was mostly excited about the running outfit I bought but we’ll get to that later 🙂
The family reunited later for dinner at Carrabba’s. Joey and I needed to load up on carbs!
I can’t believe how well I slept considering how excited I was but I fell asleep right after 10, woohoo and then I jumped right out of bed when my alarm went off at 5! Even after all that carb consumption I woke up hungry so I gobbled up a piece of toast with jelly and made myself a GM to drink in the car on the way to the race.
It was smooth sailing till we hit traffic around 6:20 and then I started to get nervous considering the race started at 6:55 and we had a mile walk from the parking lot to the start line.
We ended up being slightly late. We started with corral 9 and were supposed to start with corral 8 but I didn’t mind.
We started out nice and slow 🙂 It felt good to get moving so we could warm up — the sun hadn’t even risen yet!
Honestly, I felt good the entire time! The sun came out and the weather was perfect. Plus the course was flat, except for one hill maybe and we got to see lots of great Denver sites like the Museum of Nature and Science, Coors Field, the zoo and city park. It was wonderful.
Races are just so exciting. I love all the spectators and cheerleaders and bands 🙂 It makes running 13.1 miles so so enjoyable.
I drank cytomax and water a few times and had one starburst. Joey gladly ate the rest.
At one point I got confused and had to ask, “When we pass the mile signs does that mean we just finished that mile or that we’re about to start it?”
The miles flew by and once we got to the mile 12 sign it was all downhill. Literally and figuratively, that is.
With the finish line in sight I turned to Joey and said, “Ready to sprint?” I gave it my all and we crossed the finish 🙂 Joey gave me the biggest hug, I think he was really proud of the both of us. As was I!
We were so excited that Joey forgot to stop the Garmin, oops! We estimated that our final time was 2:08 and I’m considering that official since we stopped once between mile 7 and 8 for a bathroom break and our race time will include the time it took to stop. I don’t count this as part of my racing time.
These were our splits according to the Garmin:
- 10:00
- 9:59
- 9:57
- 10:02
- 9:50
- 9:43
- 9:41
- 9:34
- 9:31
- 9:17
- 9:38
- 9:31
- 8:50
- And who knows how long our last .10 miles was!
We didn’t even notice our families and friends at the finish but they got lots of great pictures 🙂
Apparently the marathon winner came in right before us. He’s soooo fast!!!!
Can you spot us?? I’m in my new hot pink running shirt and black capri pants, both of which are new and so comfortable. I can’t believe I didn’t have ANY chaffing and my blisters were completely fine!!! This has never happened on a long run! Not that I’m complaining 😛
Had to take a picture with our post-race freebies
Can’t wait to try the granola!
Then it was off to breakfast. I’ve heard such good things about Snooze and since we were already it Denver there seemed no better post-race re-fueling choice. Then there was an hour and a half wait…
I don’t know how I made it through the wait — I was STARVING — but somehow I did and the flight of pancakes was SO worth it!!
Snooze offers a variety of creative pancake options (as well as good old buttermilk) or you can order a flight and choose 3 kinds. Obviously I had to try this!
I got an Icabod Crane, a sweet potato and a blueberry with lemon currant. The Icabod was by far my favorite! Quinoa and corn pancake topped with pumpkin sauce, candied pumpkin seeds and maple syrup.
OH.MY.GOD.YUM.
Joey also managed to spare a bite of his burrito, which may have been the biggest breakfast burrito I’ve ever seen!
He ate the entire thing. Oh and half that order of root beer float french toast in the background too. That boy can eat!
I was so tired when we got home and all I really wanted to do was take a nap but I rallied and instead I took a shower, finished my paper and went grocery shopping. Grocery shopping was all I got crossed off my list from Saturday, and I may have even skipped that task if I wasn’t promised a Chipotle burrito on the way home from the store 🙂
Don’t worry, I ate the entire thing and walked laid around with a food baby for the rest of the night.
I got 9 wonderful, interrupted hours of sleep and woke up feeling rested and suprisingly not that sore!
I have limited homework so it should be a lovely week. I am totally floating on a cloud today 😀
HAPPY MONDAY!
Lauren Loves Good Food 
