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| // January Meals // |
Meals:
I made some super simple but healthy summer meals over January. It always seems that little bit easier to eat well when so many tasty vegetables are in season!
1. Tomato and Courgette bake: It's basically layers of sliced tomato and courgette covered with breadcrumbs and a sprinkling of cheese and popped in the oven.
2. Bruschetta: Any tasty bread toasted (I've been really into Freyas low carb 5 seed loaf) topped with a mix of diced tomato, garlic, basil and olive oil.
3. Vegetable Fajita with Guacamole: Capsicum, onion, portobello mushroom, courgette and carrot all sautéd with a fajita or taco spice mix. The guacamole is avocado, onion, tomato and garlic mashed with a little lemon juice. Served with heated tortilla.
4. Chickpea Curry with Rice: After soaking the chickpeas overnight, I put them in the pressure cooker with a tin of tomatoes, chopped onion, garlic and garam masala power for 20 minutes. I stirred in some baby spinach just before serving.
Miles: 6.92km
I failed at my only goal not to get injured :( I had just finished warming up and was taking my first few strides on the treadmill when my calf muscle gave out on me. So I have been using the rowing machine at the gym and dutifully stretching my legs and glutes and slowly building up some strength in my glutes and calves. I've now managed two little jogs on the treadmill and it felt so good to be running and pain free! So my plan is to keep going with the stretch, strength and cross training with some easy running over February. |
| // Trying to make friends with the "erg" // |
Books:
Reading got off to a good start this year and I read 3 books this month. Ok, one was a short poem and another a book of poems but thy still count towards my annual reading goal!1. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams. I love Douglas Adams' style of writing, it's fun! The book is fun and quirky and just what I hoped for.
2. Kubla Khan - Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This poem and its author was mentioned in the Dirk Gently book so I wanted to read it to get more insight.
3. The Transient - Josephine M Woods. This was suggested to me and I thought I'd give it a read. Some parts felt too religious for me, but overall I liked the imagery of the nature around that part of England.
Looks:
I bought a new necklace that is a round lapis lazuli. Lazuli IT is the name of my contracting business (named after my cat, who came with his name) and this necklace matched my logo perfectly!
In other slices of life, we are stripping off all the wall paper in preparation for decorating.
I'm making a big effort in decluttering ALL THE THINGS! I am a bit of a hoarder of jars and I reduced two packed full shelves down to this:
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| // I can't go cold turkey // |
My new power tool, these alligator loppers, are just awesome and make cutting small trees and branches so easy. The garden is finally getting a much needed tidy up!
If you've got any good tips or exercises for strengthening glutes and legs to stop me getting injured while running then I'd love to hear them in the comments!
Sorry to hear that you got injured! That sucks! I hope you stay injury free going forward. I had to do a lot of hip and glute exercises after my hip surgery as weakness in that area probably caused the tear in my hip and I had to re-build my strength after the surgery. I did a lot of clam shells, bridges, and donkey kicks, among other things. Hopefully you can find a good website with a variety of moves to add in! Or if you are able to see a physical therapist, they can help you assess areas of weakness and show you exercises to do to strengthen those areas!