Fiber Fool

Weekending Results

Filed under: In the Kitchen, Miscellaneous, Linkity, Fitness — Kristi at 12:10 pm on Monday, January 28, 2013

Yes, my plans were quite lofty for the weekend. While I can’t check off everything I mentioned I feel like the weekend was successful — a nice combination of getting stuff done and resetting for the week to come.

For post-birthday hangover recovery (I’m kidding, I didn’t drink anything besides water on Friday night and DH didn’t even come close to over imbibing) we had a warm, chewy bowl of steel cut oats topped with virgin bananas foster. The bananas were virgin due to the lack of dark rum in our liquor cabinet, but it still tasted like an awful decadent bowl of oatmeal. I had wanted to make the maple roasted apple and cheddar cheese oatmeal from the Kitchn, but discovered we had only one apple. We did have a bunch of not quite ripe bananas so I improvised by sautéing one large one in 1-1/2 tablespoons of butter with 3 tablespoons brown sugar and a tiny pinch of sea salt and divided it amongst our bowls of oats. Some pecans would have been a nice touch.

I don’t know about you, but both DH and I seem to do much better if we have one day out of the fray. No driving, no crowds etc. So Saturday kind of turned into a PJ day. I knew I needed a rest day after two runs with less than 24 hours between them. We were extremely leisurely about breakfast, loitering around the table discussing various and sundry things while sipping locally roasted coffee from the French press. I put together a batch of new tea for kombucha and left it to cool. By late afternoon we retreated to the basement and an embarrassingly long marathon of Lost Girl on NetFlix. I don’t know what it is, but I am totally hooked on that show. DH thinks it is the outcast discovering there is a hidden world in which she fits in. He may be right.

Sunday was our “do” day, but there was plenty of rest mixed in. I took a decent soak in the tub and read a bit first thing. Then DH and I took care of the kombucha, bottling the last batch and getting the next batch going with the cooled tea from the day before. Then, we hopped on our bikes – yes, in late January. Despite this being my 14th January in Colorado it still boggles my mind to see temps near 60 degrees and weather favorable for biking in January. Sadly, it was my first January bike ride ever. We logged nearly 9 miles at the end of the day, with some decent walking in between the rides. Not too shabby of a calorie burn! My sitz bones are definitely protesting today, but the rides overall were not as bad as I feared given the time away from the saddle. There was lots of stretching upon arriving home, a little more reading and some Downton Abbey and more Lost Girl viewing to end the day.

I also baked some multi-grain bread. I used the bread machine for the dough and then did the final kneading, shaping, rise and baking myself. It was *amazing*! We had a little taster after dinner. It was so good DH and I both thought it tasted like another slice even though we weren’t really hungry. We were good and resisted seconds. It was based on the Daily Whole Grain Bread recipe from Beth Hensperger’s The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook. I used cooked quinoa, did fake buttermilk by mixing 2 parts milk to 1 part greek yogurt and upped the whole wheat by ½ cup and reduced the bread flour by the same. We did have to add almost 2 tablespoons of water, likely due in part to the yogurt thickening the milk and the higher whole grain content, plus my quinoa was slightly dry/al dente and not as moist as say the rice I’ve used in the past. I think it was a combo of the ¼ cup of rolled oats and the yogurt that gave it such great flavor plus a bit extra time on the second rise. We’ll definitely be revisiting that one whenever we have left over cooked quinoa that needs using!

How was your weekend? What did you do? Did you manage to get reset for the week to come?

Some food I’m contemplating this week: