Recipe- Chickpea Salad

I'm going to move the ill-named recipe of the week to a weekly post. This way, when I want the recipe again, I can find it easily. This week, I am posting my new favorite recipe from Jamie Oliver's site. I love Jamie Oliver. And I love this salad. It's so good.

Summer Chickpea Salad

1. small red onion, peeled
2. 1-2 fresh red chillies, seeded
3. 2 handfuls of cherry or grape tomatoes
4. 2 lemons
5. extra virgin olive oil
6. sea salt
7. freshly ground black pepper
8. 1 can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained
9. a handful of fresh mint
10. a handful of fresh basil
11. 7 oz feta cheese

Finely slice the onion and chillies. Then give the tomatoes a rough chop. Scrape everything (including juices) into a bowl and then dress with the juice of 1 1/2 lemons and about 3 times as much olive oil. Season to taste. Heat chickpeas in a pan and then add 90% to the bowl. Mash the remainder into a paste and add to bowl. Add feta cheese. Toss and allow to marinate for a while. Just before serving, give the basil and mint a rough chop and add to salad. Serve at room temperature.

I don't use the chillies, but it is delightful without them. Especially with warm, crusty buttered bread.

13.1...done

I finished! It took me over 3 hours, but I finished!

Just more evidence that TLC is evil and out to get me...

I wish I had some good excuses for not posting here for the last million years or so, but I do not. I'm just lazy and easily discouraged, but still vain enough that I don't always want to report my laziness and discouragement. How have you been during this hiatus? Did you also succumb to winter-induced cabin fever?
This Saturday, I am 'running' my first half-marathon, for which I am in no way prepared. Don't get me wrong, I was training for it, but was derailed by many circumstances completely beyond my control. Like, cold air hurts my lungs and makes me gasp painfully for air and cry. So I couldn't run when it was cold, obviously. People assume the worst when they see a woman running down the street hyperventilating and sobbing. Another factor holding me back was my new found obsession- Sunday afternoon 48 Hours: Hard Evidence marathons on TLC, which have convinced me that jogging alone is just asking for trouble. Paranoid people should not be allowed to watch true crime shows. Anyway, I'm sure you can see how my lack of preparedness is completely not my fault. So, think of me, will you, as you enjoy your peaceful, fun Saturday morning. Do you think there's a graceful way to fake an injury and get out of this at this point? Any last minute advice to see me through?

Sorry I've been neglecting you guys. I'm in a bit of a winter funk. I'll try and snap out of it this week and have something positive to report next week. In the meantime, check out this fun site for recipes and cooking tips. Have a great week, everyone!

Geez

Sick kid+gloomy weather+lots of excuses= I only ran 13 miles in a week. Geez.
How did you do?

PS- not weight loss, either. Geez.

Do you want to smell sinful and be satisfied?

I just posted a blog about a sugar scrub I made today. mmmmmmm. I feel and smell like I've been baking all day. It is oddly satisfying, since most of the time I only bake so I can smell the goodness.

Anyway, if you want to check it out head on over to my blog! www.lizjenkins.blogspot.com.

mmmm, Lard

Hey guys! How was your week? Is anyone else sick of the gray and wet? Ugh, I am. How did you do last week? I did pretty well with my running. Eating is another matter. I may have, at a particularly low point, melted down some left over Halloween chocolate with cream cheese and toffee bits and used it as a dip for pretzels. Maybe. My memory is a little hazy on that point. However, I did downsize to a regular hamburger from the double-pattied CholesterolMac that I usually get at the local Hardened Arteries House of Fatty McFat-Fats. So, woo! That's a whole lotta progress.
Weigh-in: 2lbs gained (stupid toffee bits)
Miles run- almost 15
Diabetic Comas- 1

I'm back

Hi there, I'm Kathy and I'm a lapsed dieter and exerciser. I joined this blog and was gung ho for a little but life got in the way and it was easy to ignore my resolve to eat healthier and move my body some.

But it's a new year which means I get a fresh start, right? I turn 40 this year. I know, I know, I don't look a day over 25 :-) Granted my birthday isn't until November but I don't want to be 40 and fat. I've been eating healthier and have lost 3 pounds this year. Now, if I can figure out a way to get some exercise in, it would come off more quickly and I'd be getting healthier as well.

Any tips? I work outside the home and have 3 kids. I'm generally gone from 7:30-6:30 daily--after I get home it's the dinner/homework/bath routine. I stay up way too late because I can't sleep but am scared to work out late at night in case it keeps me up longer (I seriously go to bed at midnite or later most of the time) so getting up early to work out doesn't work for me right now. Blah, blah, blah. . .

Kathy

It's Monday! Woo!

Good Monday, everybody! How was your weekend? How go the resolutions and the goal-making?
I've decided that, in addition to pounds lost and food eaten stats, I'm going to share how far I run each week. Hopefully that will help me stay on track. I'm going to be training for a half marathon that takes place in May following the schedule I found on this great website. It is a six week training program, so actual training won't start for a while, but until then, my goal is to run at least 30 minutes 5 days a week. Hopefully, that will help my body get used to motility. We'll see. Right now, I run about a 10 minute mile, so I also want to see if I can get that any faster. You know, just fast enough so that sloths will stop passing me and laughing...

The best thing about me? My humility and lack of self-centered-ess, of course!

Are you a resolutions type? I am, in a huge way. I start off every year with a grand plan to completely overhaul everything about myself- to basically become an amalgam of all of the people that I admire and less like the person that I already am. And, as you can imagine, I have never succeeded with these resolutions, not even a little teeny, tiny bit. After 27 years of this self-sabotaging behavior, I am done. Over the last few months I have slowly come to realize that I like being me. So what if I'm not super-organized, skinny, domestically gifted, especially reverent and studious, or any of the other million qualities that I have always thought I should be? In so many other ways, I totally rock. So my resolution this year is to be braver about being myself. To embrace the things that I love, do the best I can with the things I don't so much care for, and to stop, once and for all, trying to force my life to fit into someone else's model. And, yes, I know that successful resolutions are specific resolutions and that mine couldn't be more nebulous, so I made a few specific ones to help with the ambiguity.

1. Take some classes. I am tired of being jealous of my husband and his classes, and new school books, and papers to write. So, I plan to take a few classes this year. Nothing major: photography, maybe a new language, possibly creative writing.
2. Complete at least one of the paintings that have been floating around in my head and my sketchbooks for the last million years.
3. Run more. I actually enjoy running, but I am so self-conscious about how I look that I just don't do it. Not this year. Everyone looks ridiculous when they run, right? So, I plan to do a 5k and a half-marathon with my sister, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law this spring and summer. Hopefully, being committed to not letting them down will help me get over myself already...
4. Organize my house in the way that works best for me, not an organizational guru. I finally realized that, as I am a visual person, my organization needs to be visually oriented. This is the "do the best I can" part. I'll take it one room or section a month and really concentrate on setting things up in a way that needs very little maintenance. Because I am really not a follow-up type of person...

I'm not going to resolve to be a better mother or wife, because I feel like I've been coming in under the bar in those areas mostly because I'm not focusing enough on things that make me happy outside of that identity and that doing more for me will bring more joy to my role in my family. Also, I'm selfish and want to do fun stuff, so there.

What about you? Resolute or not? Do you subscribe to the "new year = new you" philosophy?