Friday Five {March 19, 2021}

Happy Friday everyone! Well, the kids spent 2 weeks of this month in quarantine, because their dad got Covid a few days after their weekend at his house. So, I don’t have a WHOLE lot to report this month, except a few things… I did get the house decorated (inside) for the Spring and my newest favorite item is this little miniature Rae Dunn baby bird house that I found at HomeGoods.

My favorite nutritional shake place started carrying mini protein muffins/donuts! I picked up their oreo cookies and banana bread ones. They have 18 calories each, with 2g carbs, 2g protein and less than 1g sugar. Not bad for a little treat. 

These smoothies had minimal ingredients, fruits AND veggies in them! It was a lot of fun and a week was the perfect length for the reset.

I have been preparing my own vegetarian lunches every week and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. I’m on a vegetarian Facebook group and I get a lot of great ideas on it for recipes. One recipe I tried out and made everyday for lunch for a week was this black bean burger recipe. I found sprouted hamburger buns and roasted cubed potatoes to go with the burgers as a side dish. I added pickles and tomatoes as a garnish. Here is the recipe for these delicious black bean burgers (I made them all at once and froze some to use later):

Black Bean Burgers

Makes 8 medium-sized patties. (You can split this recipe in half.)

2 Cans of Black Beans

1 Cup Oatmeal

1 Tbsp Milled Flax Seed

2 Tbsp Water

1 Tbsp of McCormick’s Hamburger Seasoning

2 Tbsp Maple Syrup

Garlic powder, Onion powder to taste

Mix flax seed and water and let sit. **This is your ‘egg’ for binding everything together. Grind the oats into a coarse flour.

Mix dry ingredients in a medium-sized bowl.

Drain and rinse black beans.

Coarsely grind black beans and add to dry mixture along with flax ‘egg’ and maple syrup.

Place frying pan over medium heat with a little oil.

Mix everything together thoroughly and roll into 2inch balls.

Press balls into patties and cook 3-4 at a time depending on the size of your pan.

Cook for 3-4 minutes and flip.

ANOTHER fun recipe I tried recently was John Peel’s Protein Pudding Bowl. It really has the consistency of pudding and is so easy to make for a recovery meal after a long run. John Peel is a fitness trainer for iFit and he was the trainer for the March Sun & Sand challenge.

Three – Running & NordicTrack

Well, I am in the UPPER digits of long runs right now for my half marathon training. I am training for the virtual Star Wars half marathon with runDisney. Due to the weather and quarantined kids, I have been stuck doing almost all of my runs indoors (unlike my Fall half marathon, which I trained for mostly outside). Thankfully, the NordicTrack makes you feel like you’re running outside with the video and so many different places you get to run at with their wonderful iFit trainers. I recently received my medal for the live iFit New Year’s Eve race! They are going to be doing a sunrise over Mt. Everest walk (or run, but I’m wondering what the incline will be for THAT walk/run- ha!) and I’m hoping to participate in it if I can. It is live and in the evening, so I’m not sure if I can swing it or not with all of the running around I need to do with the kids activities. 🙂 I hope to do a post about the NordicTrack in the future, it is a really neat treadmill and I love the iFit community, too. I am planning to try out some of the iFit strength training workouts soon to see if I would prefer those over the FASTer Way ones I do right now.

And, as for shows…

We are currently watching Outlander and it is taking us awhile to get through it. I’ll update more once we finish it. 🙂