“Nourish Week” Recap: Snow Daze Cooking

Week #2 of the Move-Nourish-Believe Challenge from Lorna Jane Activewear is finished! This week: NOURISH. If you think this blog post contains food porn, you’re right. High quality food porn? Um, no. More like cable-scambled food porn in bad lighting. Sorry in advance.

Being that we had TWO snow days I actually had oodles of time to cook & prepare foods. I also was able to work out FIVE DAYS this week, despite gym closings and snowfall. No running (still nursing The Crappy Toe) but YAY ME.

Exercise:

• MONDAY: Endurance Swim Class (we worked on breath control and got to dive for pool toys, no kidding. Best Swim Class Ever.)
• TUESDAY: My first “real” CrossFit WOD. Yes, I’ve graduated to the real class! Lots of core work today. Did not grunt, but kind of wanted to at the end. Felt strong.
• WEDNESDAY: Swam a mile (!) total in the pool. Sore from Tuesday’s Crossfit. I smell like chlorine.
• THURSDAY: Watch the snow fall ALL DAY LONG and cook tons o’ food.
• FRIDAY: Shovel out my minivan and mailbox in the AM, then swim about 8/10 of mile in pool in the PM. I had the whole pool to myself! The lifeguard turned up the music and we rocked out. Well, I just swam and he sat. But we were rockin in our heads.
• SATURDAY: Killer spin class. Music featured Hall & Oates and Joe Jackson. How could it not be killer?

Nourish:

MONDAY: GO MEATLESS.

Easy-peasy. We’re fairly light on meat in this house anyway. I made a cheese tortellini pasta dish with fresh mozzarella and basil (reminded me of summer) and a mixed greens salad with goat cheese, pumpkin seeds, and something else I can’t remember. Both recipes came from The Scramble.

Disclaimer: I’m not a food photographer. It was better than it looked.

TUESDAY: TAKE YOUR LUNCH TO WORK DAY!

I am blessed at my school where I work to have a lunch lady to makes the staff fresh soup and sandwiches (and no, it’s not cartoonish-gross-cafeteria food of yore). I usually buy from her but today I brought leftover Indian-spiced quinoa and a Greek yogurt to supplement my Lunch Lady Lunch.

My kids were all, “Why are you taking pictures of food inside the fridge?” I had no good answer for them.

WEDNESDAY: WRITE IT DOWN! JOURNAL YOUR FOOD.

Since the beginning of January, I’ve been journaling most of my food on My Fitness Pal. I’ve never kept a food diary before EVER, but in my quest to lose the 5 lbs I gained post-marathon, I figured I needed help with some simple calories in-calories out management. What have I learned? I’ll write about it in a future post, but the gist of it is I eat too much.

This was actually a good day.

THURSDAY: SMOOTHIE DAY!

Another easy one. This was a big snowfall day here in CT, so I knew I would make my tropical smoothie: frozen mango, shredded unsweetened coconut, avocado, agave syrup, and water. Tropics, here I come.

BLENDER SELFIE

FRIDAY: Go Raw!

I found a recipe for these protein balls from The Healthy Family and Home blog on Pinterest. Looking at the ingredients, I thought they’d be “meh,” but instead they were MARVELOUS. My husband and I could barely stop ourselves from eating the whole dang batch. I substituted soy nut butter (no peanuts for me) which probably made them a tad fattier, but I was still blown away. Bonus: They were EASY!

I want to stuff all of them in my mouth RIGHT NOW.

That’s a wrap! Next week on the MNB Challenge: BELIEVE.

How have you nourished yourself lately? Have you enjoyed any food porn this winter? Was is as gooooooood as you imagined? Ok, sorry, I’ll stop now. Just leave your comments below.