Happy Fat Friday!

Hi everyone! Welcome to Fat Friday! Sil and I are so excited to be sharing some super yummy recipes with everyone.  All week long you eat healthy, you get your runs in and avoid all of those tasty treats but Fridays are that one day you get to indulge a little bit.  Personally, I only eat one bad meal of Fridays.  Everyone needs a cheat day, it wouldn't be right if you didn't!  So this week I will be sharing with you a not so healthy meal but an oh so yummy one.  I got this recipe from mom. Having come from a long line of Italians, I don't think my mom has ever made a bad meal.  She is such an amazing cook.  Having not ate meat in 15 years and being Vegan was a huge challenge for my mom when I was growing up.  I was the only one in the family who had to have the "special meal" because my family loves creamy meaty goodness.  But, she would never let me go hungry and would always make sure i had my "special meal".  I know now just had hard it was to make so many different meals all the time. 

My husband is by NO means a Vegan.  He loves his bacon! So i am always making two different meals.  It can be a huge struggle for me to make him his meals that have meat but I do my best because a man has to eat! So when I first made this meal for him he was in creamy meaty glory! Claims it was one of his favorite meals he has ever had. 

Chicken, Ham and Rice is something my mom came up with one day.  She is so creative in the kitchen.  Never used a recipe, just  saw what she had in the fridge and went from there.  This is a great meal for those cold nights when a good hot creamy meal is just thing to warm you up. Enjoy! Happy Fat Friday :)

Chicken, Ham and Rice

Prep time: 20 Mins
Bake time: 1 hour 15 mins

1 16 oz Sour Cream
1 stick of Butter (melted)
1 16 oz can of Cream of Mushroom soup
1/2 lb of Sliced Virginia Ham
5 boneless, skinless Chicken Breasts
sliced french baguette
3 cups of white rice

Pre-Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Combine butter, sour cream and Cream of Mushroom soup together. Mix well.  Spoon half of the mixture into 9 x 13 glass baker.  Take sliced ham and arrange on top of mixture.  Spoon remaining mixture over ham.  Place chicken breasts over mixture.  Add salt, pepper and garlic salt to chicken breasts.  Cover and bake. Have rice prepared 10 minutes before. Serve hot over white rice with a french baguette. Enjoy :)

Welcome to Fat Friday!

Every Friday on the blog, sil and I are going to be sharing a recipe with all of you! To keep it balanced, we'll have one recipe for those of you wanting to indulge a bit and one recipe for those trying to maintain a healthy diet. Personally, I like to indulge a bit on Fat Friday. Usually one meal (often times dinner) I'll make something that is a complete no no during the rest of the week. It helps me to avoid a complete break down in will power that would render me helpless in the kitchen eating spoonfuls of peanut butter and nutella in complete darkness. Don't judge. If the light's not on the calories don't count...right?

So to start things off, I'm going to share a recipe that has been adapted a bit from my Grandmother's for health purposes. I come from a long line of Italians and we LOVE our pasta. It's been hard to curb that while trying to shed weight, but I've found in moderation (and with running!) carbs are ok to have in your diet!

Pasta e Fagioli (pasta and beans) is a dish that is well-known to Italians. I've found that different families (often times in relation to where in Italy they are from) have different variations of this recipes. Some add chicken, some add beef. My grandmother's recipe was basic, no meat. However, with exercising and dieting I have really discovered the importance of protein. It helps me feel fuller longer and I also feel like I've had more of a substantial meal. So I've added some turkey sausage to the recipe. If you are vegan or vegetarian you can absolutely leave out the meat-it will not change the consistency of the soup and will taste just as yummy!

I hope you all enjoy! This can't be beat when the weather starts getting colder and is really easy to whip up!


Pasta E Fagioli

■1 15-ounce can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

 ■1 pound ground turkey sausage, you can also buy links and remove sausage from casing

 ■1/2 medium onion, diced (I love the sweet Mayan onions, they give great flavor!)

 ■1/2 medium carrot, diced

 ■3 tablespoons olive oil

 ■2 garlic cloves, minced

 ■1 15-ounce can crushed tomatoes

 ■1 15-ounce can tomato sauce

 ■1 6-oz can tomato paste

 ■1  tablespoon basil

 ■ 3/4 tablespoon oregano

 ■salt and pepper

 ■1 cup ditalini pasta (can substitute for the whole grain pastas if you want! Just looking for a small pasta here)

 ■grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Romano cheese

In a large pot, brown the sausage.  Remove from pot. Add onion, carrot and olive oil and sauté for 2-3 minutes until soft.  Add garlic and sauté about a minute more.  Add the tomatoes, basil and oregano, salt and pepper to taste, the drained beans and the sausage and cover the pot. Cook for an hour over low heat, at a gentle simmer. This allows all of the flavors to come together.

Add the pasta and cook, uncovered, until the pasta is tender.  Check the seasoning and add more salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with grated cheese on top.

Mangia! Mangia! As my grandma would say! Eat! Eat!

 

~J

I hate you running.

I am not sure what is going on this week but these past few runs have been horrible. Absolutely horrible!  It's almost as if my head and body are in two different places.  My mind is telling me that I want to run but my legging are telling a different story. Maybe its the shin splints or maybe my body is just telling me it needs a tiny (a nap).  But, regardless of how much pain I am in, my mind keeps telling me go and I push through and keep running.  It may not be my fastest run but it is still a run that I finished and finishing something from beginning to end is an accomplishment in itself.  So even if your body is telling you that you should stop running your mind is always going to tell you that we need to finish what we started. Just keep running, just keep running, just keep running, what do we do we RUN! :)

Samantha

Sucky Run Days

So the past three runs I've done have been miserable. From the first pound of the pavement, to the last stride I can muster to hit that 30:00 goal have been been balls to the wall painful. Shin splints have hit hard and I just feel like I can't catch my stride. I usually catch it about 6 or 7 minutes in but these past 3 runs have felt like having bad sex. Looking at the clock every 10 seconds while being jostled around in no particular rhythm, thinking the entire time, I am never doing this again.

But I do. And while I can honestly say this was a sucky, sucky running week I am so proud that I finished it. I didn't throw in the towel and I didn't cut myself any slack and shorten any of my runs. And for that my ass is thanking me. We had a slight slip up yesterday involving some no bake cookies and manicotti. I won't go into the gory details, but let's just say I viewed the scale wincing this morning preparing for impact. To my surprise, I was cut some slack. No gain. An episode like that prior to running and I'd be up 2 lbs without a doubt. I heart you, running. I really do.

So, moral of the story. No matter how shitty of a run you're having...finish it. You owe it to yourself. And your ass.

-J

My Quarter Life Crisis

I was in a bad place in the beginning of this year.  I found myself to be depressed, extremely moody, anxious at all times and irritated at anyone that said anything to me.  I had just turned twenty-five and I felt like I was stuck in a dark place that I could not get myself out of.  I hated my job, I felt like I was trapped and that this is the best it was going to get.  I felt like I should have done more traveling before I had settled down, got married and bought a house. I had no motivation or ambition.  Some days it was hard to just take a shower and get myself ready for the day.  I didn’t care about anything or anyone. Nothing mattered to me.  I realized I needed to make a change in my life when I told my husband in the middle of an argument that I hated him.  As soon as the words came out of my mouth I knew that I had found my bottom.  My husband is the most gentle, caring, loving man.  I didn’t hate him, I hated myself.  I needed to make a change and it had to happen fast.

            I reached out to my Sil (sister-in-law) Jackie to tell her that I think I reached bottom and was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  To my surprise, she felt the same way!! I couldn’t believe that all this time I was struggling; she was in a struggle of her own.  We both decided that at that moment that we were going to make a change in our lives and get out of our quarter life crises!

            Disney has always been something that makes both of us so happy! My husband proposed to me there.  We are the happiest when we are in Disney. So when we found out about the Disney Princess Half Marathon, it only took a second for us to realize that this is it, this Half Marathon was going to help us!  So.... we started running.  Running became an outlet for us to take out our aggression, get fit and be happy again. 

We started interval training three days a week.  It was probably the hardest thing we had ever tried. We could barely run for 60 seconds without being completely out of breath. Everything hurt.  But I noticed that even through all the physical pain, my mental pain started to subside.  I was feeling better and I felt like the fog that surrounded me was lifting.  Running became so enjoyable that after a long hard run I couldn’t wait until the next one! Running can certainly be a struggle at times but with hard work and dedication it can truly make a difference in your life.

Plus, getting to wear a tutu and tiara (and getting to go to Disney) is motivation enough for me.  Disney and running brought me back to happy place and made me feel normal again.  I couldn’t have asked for a better person to go on this journey with, my sil. :)

Samantha

Quarter Life Crisis

I spent the first few months of my 25th year questioning every decision I had ever made in my life and coming to the conclusion that I messed up every single one of them. No amount of reasoning could quiet the voice inside of me that was constantly telling me I was done. I felt that my life was over, and unless I made a drastic change I would eventually end up on the 5:00 news being extricated from my house that I hadn't left in years.

So I did what any rational person would do. I applied for a new job. In Florida. And South Carolina. Clearly what was missing from my life was a beach and a southern accent. I always thought of Paula Deen as my adopted grandmother and that's what I needed. Paula to wrap me in her arms with that southern drawl, tell me everything was gonna be alright and shove my face with biscuits and sweet tea. Hey y'all. I became infatuated with moving. That's what I desperately NEEDED, to get out of my hometown and start brand new! My unhappiness wasn't my fault-it was my surroundings! To my great disappointment, none of the jobs panned out. And back to self loathing and the inability to face the light of day I went. I was never going to have the ability to be happy if I couldn't move.


During one of my hour long Pinterest sessions, I stumbled upon this gem.

And it clicked with me. Time to wake up and look at all the opportunities around me that I was missing because I was too depressed to see them. It was time to stop chasing an imaginary perfect life with a white picket fence and start appreciating the great things that were in my life presently exactly where I was.

I was lucky enough to have a great friend that was going through her quarter life crisis at the same time. My adopted sister-in-law or "sil" was having all the same doubts and feelings about her life. We had been in "funks" before, but nothing like this. Even shopping wasn't making us happy. That's when we knew. Something had to be done. We began changing our eating habits through a challenge which eliminated all processed foods and gained a ton of energy and lost a large amount of weight and inches. We felt better than we had in a long time.

One night, I remember thinking I'd like to go for a run. Now, running and me were not friends. I had never "gone for a run" in my life. I called my sil, "Wanna go for a run? I'll pick you up in 5 minutes." She got ready, and we drove to a local school track to run for 30 seconds at a time with long walk intervals in between. We sweat like whores in church, cursed until we couldn't breathe and practically passed out. It was disgusting. It was invigorating. We kept with it following the Couch to 5K plan and with each run we gained strength, confidence, endurance and lost weight, inches, and that black cloud that was our quarter life crisis that we couldn't seem to shake.

Elle really knew what she was talking about...

I didn't want to kill my husband! I was getting out of bed! And not just to go to the couch! I didn't want it stop. We needed a goal. We needed something to hold us accountable and to challenge us. We wanted to really accomplish something amazing. So we combined our new love with an old love and signed up for the Princess Half Marathon in Walt Disney World. What could be better than running in a tutu and being in the happiest place on earth? Follow along with us on our road to our very first half marathon! We could use all the support we can get and promise to share what we've learned along the way :)

~J