Tag Archives: venison

Ouch, I’m Sore

Posted on March 1, 2010 | 4 comments

Happy Monday all. It is a happy one for me because I woke up this morning to see sunlight streaming through our windows! To me, that means Spring is right around the corner (knock on wood).

However, my happiness was flattened a bit when I climbed out of bed with some terrible aches and pains. Oh yes, my 14 miler yesterday really left its mark. Hubby was probably right when he said that I should have scaled back my long run after such a long break. I probably should have only attempted 10-12 miles, but I really like to stick to my training plan as much as possible. I’m a little stubborn. 🙂

Anyway – thanks for the words of encouragement following my fearful 14 miler yesterday. I’m very competitive and I don’t like failing – so the thought of not qualifying in May was really scaring me. I’m going to chalk my bad run up to my sickness and hope that the next few long runs are much better.

As far as yesterday’s eats go, my pre-run breakfast was an English muffin with peanut butter and banana – unphotographed.

After my run, I refueled with a Chobani yogurt and Kashi Go Lean.

I was so tired from my run that I took a little nap after my yogurt. When I got up, Hubby and I set to work cleaning the apartment. Mid-way through I needed a snack so I had a Kind Bar.

A little while later, I also had an apple with cheddar cheese (no picture).

Dinner last night was leftover venison chili. Chelsea asked me a while back where I am able to find venison. The answer is: my hunting hubby. 🙂 I wrote a post a while ago about hubby’s hunting and why I support it. I was a little bit wary of eating deer meat initially, but I’ve really grown to like it now.

Have you ever tried venison?

A little while after dinner I had some dessert:

I’ve been doing pretty well with not eating sweets, but the cravings are still there. Hubby has been making fun of the massive amounts of gum I have been chewing. 🙂 Hey – whatever works right?

I have got a busy week ahead of me. Tonight I’m meeting up with a few local bloggers for dinner, tomorrow night we’re getting our taxes done (our Friday night meeting was canceled because of the snow), and I’m taking another camera class on Wednesday night.

Have a great week everyone!! Think Spring thoughts and hopefully March will come in like a lamb and out like a lamb!

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A Fearful 14 Miles

Posted on February 28, 2010 | 11 comments

Don’t worry – the title of this post has nothing to do with anything unsafe happening to me on my run this morning, it just expresses my state of mind during and after my run. I woke up this morning to see the sun shining and the temperature hovering around 37-37 degrees. All signs pointed to me running my 14 miles outside. Thank goodness because the thought of running 14 miles on the treadmill seemed daunting.

I headed out around 9:00 a.m. – I woke up a bit late today. My trek to Central Park wasn’t even so bad – the streets are much clearer and the intersections only have a few big puddles here and there. I made it into Central Park and was thrilled to see the drive completely cleared and filled with runners!

Hooray – I hopped on the drive and began my run. And within a few minutes I noticed that my pace was slower than normal. I thought to myself: “This is fine. I’ve had 9 days off from running. I need to ease back into it and should be taking things slow.”

I’ll let you in on a secret ritual I have: I always tell myself that my speed and pace for every run don’t matter. That way, I feel less pressure and don’t get nerves before my runs. However, although I tell myself this – I always still try to push it a bit to reach my ideal times.

So I told myself the usual and then was very upset when I wasn’t running faster. The marathon is not so far away anymore and I my speed needs to be stronger. I know, I’m a big complainer, but this run just made me very nervous that I can’t actually reach my BQ goal. Anyway – here are my stats from the run:

Mile 1 – 9:31
Mile 2 – 8:33
Mile 3 – 8:56
Mile 4 – 9:13
Mile 5 – 8:59
Mile 6 – 8:37
Mile 7 – 8:48
Mile 8 – 9:03
Mile 9 – 9:11
Mile 10 – 9:09
Mile 11 – 9:05
Mile 12 – 9:06
Mile 13 – 9:10
Mile 14 – 9:55

Total mileage – 14.11 in 2:08:22.

I already know that people are going to tell me that looks like a great run. It didn’t feel like a great run. And if I look back at my recent runs, I’ve been hovering around 8:30-8:45 for most of my mile splits and was feeling great! This run was soo hard and I felt like I was really pushing it and still only hitting about 9 minute miles. I’m just getting nervous. :-/

Now that I’m feeling better, it’s time to start really sticking to my training plan and kicking it in high gear if I want to have ANY chance of qualifying for Boston.

Sorry for the long rant – I think I’m just trying to rationalize my bad run and pump myself up.

Anyway, here are my eats from Saturday:

I made a breakfast cookie yesterday that actually wasn’t that great. I was kind of just making up the ingredient amounts as I went and I should have stuck to the original recipe more closely.

Later in the afternoon I made myself a weird little sandwich – it had beans, grape tomatoes, a slice of cheddar cheese, baby spinach and salsa on an Arnold Thin. It was a little messy, but it hit the spot.

I was very happy when Hubby offered to make venison chili for dinner. I used up some leftover pasta and added it to the chili in prep for my Sunday morning run.

And finally, for dessert I had some walnuts with raisins.

So those were my eats yesterday. Kind of boring, but I never like to try anything too crazy the day before a run.

And I was seriously in bed by 11:00 p.m. last night and didn’t get out of bed until 7:45 a.m. this morning. That was a lot of sleep, but I think I needed it.

Here’s my question to you all – do you ever get nervous that you won’t be able to meet a goal you’ve set for yourself? How do you handle that fear?

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The First Tuesday of 2010

Posted on January 5, 2010 | 11 comments

It’s the first Tuesday of 2010, which means we made it through the first Monday of 2010!! Hopefully this week will fly right by. But that means my first race of 2010 will be here before I know it. Eeeks!

I’m running the NYRR Fred Lebow Classic 5-miler in Central Park this Saturday and am a bit nervous because of the frigid temperatures predicated and my lack of recent good runs. Is anyone else out there running it as well?

I’m going to try not to think about it or worry about it too much till Saturday. So let’s recap yesterday’s eats:

Breakfast was boring old Kashi Heart to Heart cereal with almond milk and a side of light cranberry juice.

I was pretty busy at work on Monday considering the amount of vacay time we’ve had lately, so I squeezed in a mid-morning snack of a Coffee-Nut Scone around 11 a.m.

I got pretty busy and then all of a sudden at 1:35 I remembered that I had a phone interview scheduled for 2:00. That wasn’t going to leave me much time for lunch, so I decided to eat my snacks first.

I had a strawberry Chobani yogurt with granola and some carrots.

Then around 2:45 I was finally able to have lunch and I had leftover venison chili.

After work I hurried over to the gym to try to beat the after New Year’s rush of people. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too bad. However, they were giving a lot of tours, which tells me the onslaught is coming soon. I hopped on the  treadmill and ran the following:

4 miles in 35:05

Definitely not my fastest, but I was still a little stuffy in my nose and congested in my chest.

Then I did some abs: 75 crunches; 50 twist crunches; 15 leg lowers

I stopped at the store quickly on the way home to pick up a few things for dinner and was overwhelmed by how busy it was. Note to self, Monday is not a good grocery-shopping day.

For dinner I adapted this recipe for a Crustless Spinach Quiche. The red text and cross-outs show where I added or made changes:

Crustless Spinach and Mushroom Quiche

3 ounces reduced fat free cream cheese, softened
1 cup fat-free milk
1 cup egg substitute
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 ½ cups shredded reduced-fat Cheddar cheese
1 (10 ounce) package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
½ cup of frozen broccoli, thawed and well-drained
½ cup of grape tomatoes, halved
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 cup of fresh mushrooms, sliced

Directions

In a small mixing bowl, beat cream cheese. Add milk, egg substitute and pepper; beat until smooth. Stir in remaining ingredients. Transfer to a 10-in. quiche pan coated with nonstick cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45-50 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean.

The result:

My first piece – I had two pieces in total.

The recipe was very good, but I used a smaller dish than recommended, so it took longer to cook, which was annoying because I was hungry. But all in all, a good dinner.

And then dessert was another Coffee-Nut Scone, but Hubby suggested maybe adding some frosting to the remaining scones. I gave in and it wasn’t too bad actually.

The rest of my night was very quiet, I read a bit, watched part of a football game Hubby was interested in and I’m ashamed to admit I also watched part of The Bachelor. I had to turn it off at one point because it was so awkward and the girls were terrible. It was kind of funny at the same time though.

Health in the news…

Sleep loss may affect health by curbing exercise – Better get that rest to keep up your workout schedule.

Five ‘eating better’ foods to slip into your diet in ’10 –  A lot of this is common sense stuff, but it does remind me that I need to drink more green tea.
 
Study Says Women With Mate Get Heavier – Essentially the study found that women living with a man (married or not) gained weight after co-habitating, and if they had a child, their weight went up even more. I’ve heard from people that they gained weight once they got married (although I don’t think you can state this is the norm), but this sentence made me laugh out loud:

“This does not explain the still larger weight gain in women who became pregnant.”
 
Did they not get the memo that a woman’s body changes after she has a baby?
 
I don’t put much stock in these kinds of studies, but it does raise some interesting questions:
 
Has your eating changed at all since living with a significant other (either currently or in the past)? What about after marriage?
 
I can tell you that I weigh less now than I did when I met my husband. I think I’ve actually started to eat healthier foods and exercise more since we’ve been together. It helps, of course, that he is an active person who also eats well. I wonder if things would be any different if he weren’t that kind of person. Food for thought…
 
Have a great Tuesday everyone!

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What’s Better Than Breakfast for Dinner?

Posted on January 4, 2010 | 11 comments

Weekend Recaps – In Case You Missed It:

Friday: Great Start to 2010
Saturday: I Love My Garmin!!
Sunday: Slowly Recovering…

Happy Monday – I’m pretty sure it’s not too happy for anyone. Back to the grind. At least the next day off isn’t too far away. And I’m excited because I have a bunch of fun things happening in January: 5 mile race, broadway show, bachelorette party, half marathon and a wedding! This month is going to fly by.

Ok – let me recap Sunday’s eats before I get any further: I woke up feeling much better on Sunday morning – 10.5 hours of solid sleep really helped with that. I was feeling less congested and my throat wasn’t sore. I started off with a nice warm breakfast of oatmeal with apples and agave. I had a side of Emergen-C, my norm as of late.

Then the cleaning fury commenced. Hubby and I did a bit of cleaning throughout the weekend (packing up Christmas decorations and vacuuming), but Sunday was all out cleaning mayhem. We cleaned the place from top to bottom.

Around 1:00 I was feeling hungry so I had a light lunch of Chobani vanilla yogurt with a crushed granola bar and choco chips:

And I also had the rest of my breakfast apple with some cheddar cheese, and carrots and grape tomatoes with garlic organic hummus.

At 4:00 we hosted a board meeting in our newly-cleaned apartment – Hubby is the co-op president. It was a good meeting and we made plans to take care of a bunch of building “must-dos.” It was almost like our co-op resolutions. Hopefully we can stick to our plans.

After the meeting I had the urge to bake. I had some sort of bread stuck in my mind – thinking maybe banana bread or something with apple. But upon asking Hubby what he would like, he reminded me that he basically doesn’t like any fruit in his bread – not even raisins! After scouring http://www.cookinglight.com, I settled on this recipe for Coffee-Nut Scones.

Recent baking experiments have revealed that our oven is essentially a super oven and cooks everything twice as fast as a recipe states. So I ended up cooking the scones for only 10 minutes to be safe. They turned out pretty good (of course I had to try one when they were still warm)…but would have been better with some fruit!

For dinner we did the “breakfast for dinner” thing. I love doing this. I am such a breakfast lover that I could probably eat it for every meal. The Hubby whipped up the remaining venison sausage and I paired it with some organic waffles. I topped the waffles with a homemade blackberry spread. I used the remaining blackberries, added a bit of water and heated them in the microwave for 1 minute 15 seconds. Then I smushed them up and added 2 packets of truvia. It was the perfect topping. Lastly, I had one clementine with my breakfast dinner.


What about you? Are you a fan of breakfast for dinner? What’s your favorite (eggs, pancakes, french toast, waffles, etc.)?

Finally, I had a nice cup of Sugar Plum Spice tea while I read before bed.

I am feeling much much better today. It’s funny, a blog friend said yesterday that she feels like I’m always sick. The truth is, I rarely actually get full-on sick. Even this weekend, I felt pretty awful, but I still didn’t feel like I was totally sick. I wasn’t bed-ridden and could still kind of function. A lot of time I think I start to get the beginnings of a cold and I just medicate the heck out of myself and that makes me very tired. I may have had a full-blown cold this past weekend, but what was very clear was that I needed a lot of rest. I also tend to take it easy even if I think a cold or illness might be coming on. That’s probably what I should have done on Friday, rather than going for a run. Live and learn.

What about you – how do you cope with an impending cold? Do you let it hit you and take its course or do you fight it with all you’ve got like I do, or somewhere in between?

Have a nice Monday everyone!

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Slowly Recovering…

Posted on January 3, 2010 | 6 comments

Good morning. I woke up today at about 9 a.m. after sleeping for about 10.5 hours. I was optimistic about my state of health yesterday morning, but it slowly declined. I was coughing, my chest was congested, I had a bad headache and then later in the day I became nauseous. It was a rough one.

And because I felt so awful yesterday, my eats were kind of bad. Here they are.

For breakfast I had Kashi Heart to Heart with almond milk and a side of Emergen-C.

I started to help with some of the household chore – we desperately needed to do two loads of laundry. I managed to get most of it done, but then felt really sick by the time the last load was ready, so Hubby had to go down to get it.

Here are my snacks for the day – they were all over the place.

This Larabar (coconut cream pie) is officially my favorite bar. It was so good. Unpictured snacks include triscuits and ginger ale, and some cashews.

I basically stuck to the couch most of the day and watched a lot of t.v. I hate that feeling soo much.

For dinner, Hubby made some delicious venison chili:

It was warm and a little spicy and very good. So here’s the deal with the venison eats this weekend – I haven’t mentioned this little fact on the blog yet. My Hubby is a hunter. As in, put on the camo gear, go sit in a tree stand for hours and hunt deer. Now, I know this may be something many of you are against (and you have every right to feel that way), and at first I kind of was too, but then I thought about a few things and changed my mind.

Why I Support Hubby’s Hunting

1. The deer he hunts are not brought up on factory farms, caged or raised simply for their meat. They live a full and happy life in the wilderness.

2. Deer are overpopulated in the area he hunts and end up coming into more residential areas and being hit by cars, so hunting them actually helps keep their numbers in check.

3. Hunters are only allowed a certain number of deer per year – so they can’t go out there and hunt as many deer as they want.

4. The meat he brings home has no chemicals, antibiotics or hormones added to it – it is organic and completely natural.

5. Venison is very high in protein and very low in fat, especially saturated fat. It is also chock-full of minerals.

So these are all the reasons why I support the Hubby in his “hobby.” If he didn’t use the meat and was simply hunting for the sake of saying he killed a deer, then I would have a huge problem. But he uses the meat all the time. A lot of nights when I am making something he doesn’t particularly care for or if I’m too tired to cook he makes venison.

I’ve only eaten the meat in a few forms: chili, stew and breakfast sausage. But I did buy him a “gourmet” venison cookbook for Christmas, so if he makes any of those dishes, I may try some of those as well. I’ve mentioned venison a few times in my blog, so I felt like I needed to provide an explanation. I go back and forth with not wanting to eat any meat, but if I’m going to eat meat, I’d rather it be venison.

Have you ever tried venison? Would you? Have you ever tried any other “different” kinds of meat?

Anyway – the venison chili he made last night was great. And then afterwards I had this for dessert.

A while after dinner (and dessert), the Hubby went into the kitchen to clean up a bit and came out to find me completely asleep on the couch. He basically told me it was time to go to bed – it was 10:30 p.m. I went into bed and was sound asleep within minutes. I hate being sick!!

This morning I feel much better. We still have a little cleaning to do and a board meeting at our apartment at 4:00 p.m., so time to get moving. I’m hoping now I am almost completely recovered or quickly on my way.

Have a great Sunday everyone – who else doesn’t feel like going back to work tomorrow?

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