Why did it take me so long to get the slow cooker out of the back of my car?? It is amazing. Not only does it hugely help when we have a busy evening but it is so nice to come from work and smell dinner. And so far, everything has been delicious!
All it takes is a bit of forward planning and minor prep in the morning. And I’m nothing if not lover of planning. And looking up loads of recipes on Pinterest or my favourite blogs. Always fun!
So for a bit of WIAW fun, here are my latest meals thanks to my slow cooker.
Slow Cooker Disassembled Cottage Pie:
This was very simple. The night before I chopped a white onion and fried it with garlic ready for the morning. Then in the morning I added that to the slow cooker with 400g/~1lb lean beef mince. I added a few tablespoons of tomato paste, herbs and crumbled a couple of beef stock cubes and gave it a good mix. Then I popped it on low and went on my merry way to work. It probably cooked for 8-9 hours.
My intention had been to pop it into a casserole dish with mash sweet potato on it and cook it for another 20mins but in the end I couldn’t be bothered. So Ben got his with garlic bread and I whizzed up some cheesey cauliflower mash for me. Done.
I’d suggest it could probably serve 4 with potato but for me and my monster appetite (and only having cauliflower mash) I finished off half and felt very satisfied. Ben struggled with his half!
Creamy Slow Cooker Chicken:
I used THIS recipe for this meal. It was unbelievably easy. Just chicken, a tub of cream cheese (I used medium fat), a tin of condensed chicken soup (I used Campbell’s), lots of Italian herbs and 1/2 cup of water. Mix and put on low for 6-8 hours.
Slow Cooker Roast Chicken:
Again, another simple chicken meal. I chopped up an onion and added it to the slow cooker with lots of garlic and herbs, then placed a whole chicken on top. 6 hours on low (until the juices in the chicken ran clear).
I then served the chicken with a bit of the drained roasted onion and lots of roasted squash (which I did in the normal oven) and vegetables. And half a bottle of BBQ sauce… You know it makes sense.
Squash Soup with Chickpeas:
Ingeniously I did all the prep for this the weekend before. I chopped up an onion, a delicata squash, a butternut squash and a sweet potato and popped it all into a freezer bag.
I popped the bag into the fridge ready. Then a couple of days later I in the morning I added the contents of the bag to the slow cooker, added some spices (I like cumin, paprika and a bit of curry powder), a crumbled vegetable stock cube, half a tin of coconut milk and a cup(ish) of water and stirred. Again, 6-8 hours on low.
When I got in from a run all I had to do was whizz it all up using a hand blender and then added a tin of chickpeas. I left it on high while I showered (20 minutes?) and then dinner was ready!
So I’m pretty chuffed with the slow cooker. It has really helped when we’re working late or I’m out running in the evening. It just means one less thing to worry about and a beautifully tasty meal! Also it means less washing up.
I’m looking forward to try out different soups, BBQ ribs (*swoon*), chilli…the possibilities are endless! Any suggestions are more than welcome too 🙂
What’s your favourite slow cooker meal? So far mine is the creamy chicken. Ben was a big fan of this one too (surprise, surprise…)
What are your time-saving tips for cooking in the week?
Do you do a lot of food preparation at the weekend? I try to but sometimes the weekends are so busy, just getting the normal stuff done is tight!
Hello! Well clearly I can’t start this post without saying it’s been a bit mad with the wind here of late! In the UK there’s been a good old gale blowing and weather warnings have been flying about all over the place this weekend.
Clearly not exactly ideal for the 10 mile Great South Run race Ben and me were doing on Sunday. Hey ho! The show must go on.
Sunday morning Ben and me got up, got ready, had breakfast and then Ben’s mum arrived and we drove to my parent’s house to pick them up. We were all lovely and cosy crammed in the car and then headed to Portsmouth for the race. It wasn’t far for us at all and we know Portsmouth well so we parked in nearish car park and walked 15 minutes-ish to the start area.
Gunwharf Quays: There’s the Spinnaker Tower in the distance
Portsmouth has a lot of history based around the naval docks. There are lots of museums, old ships, naval buildings…things like that. I’ve lived around the Portsmouth area most of my life so it’s all very familiar to my family and me which is nice for a change!
As we got along the sea front in Southsea (where the race begins) it quickly became apparent just how windy it was.
Nothing like being slapped in the face with your own pony tail!!
We got to the race start with plenty of time. We met up with some of the guys from our running club and then moseyed about for a bit. It was cold. Not the wintery bitterly cold, but the very windy cold. The sun was out intermittently but that wind was relentless.
I attempted a warm up run but I was so cold and my body was all cramped up from hunching over.
The long stretch of the start before everyone has begun lining up
This race was huge. There were just under 30,000 people doing it. So there were, I think, about four different waves. I was in the orange wave which meant I was the first wave to go after the elites. Ben was in the wave behind that one. So we said goodbye to the parents, then each other and I headed to the start.
My original plan for this race had been to run with a guy who’s around the same speed as me. We were aiming for the now laughable time (for me) of 1 hour 10mins. So 7 minute miles all the way. In retrospect this was stupid. I’ve lost a bit of speed in the recent weeks due to my stupid, stupid niggles. I haven’t done any speed work. There was no way I was going to hit those times.
In the end I never saw the guy. We had attempted to meet up but it just didn’t happen. I was actually very relieved. Even before starting I knew deep down it wasn’t going to happen for me. I went into this race feeling very unconfident and terrified of that wind.
Mile 1: Bit of bottlenecking to begin with and dodging around people. I tried to huddle into groups of people to avoid the wind (7.19mins/mile).
Miles 2-3: Still busy but now able to pick up speed. Nice route through the old naval docks area with the old ships, like the Victory and the Mary Rose museum. Then at the end of mile 3 we ran past Portsmouth Cathedral (7.06mins/mile for both).
I took this photo as we walked past it beforehand, not during!
Miles 4-6: I started finding the run quite tough. My pace dropped down and I got myself into a bit of a bad mood (stupid I know). Everything started annoying me. My hair slapping me and the loose tendrils were getting stuck on my face. I was stupidly hot; the sun had come out and I was in a long-sleeved top and running club vest. I also saw the water station and when I ran over no one gave me a water and I had to wait for them to get one out of the plastic. Nightmare. (7.20-25miles/min).
Mile 6: My darkest hour. I just wasn’t happy. I know this sounds quite stupid (and believe me I know it is) but I wasn’t enjoying it. I didn’t feel like I was in control. I felt like everything was against me. I realised quite a few miles back that my target was never in a million years going to happen. And nor was my second target, and the rate I was running nor was my third. This hugely got me down.
But, just as mile 7 approached, I saw a girl from my running club ahead. She’s a little bit slower than me normally but was running a good pace. I was fed up of being all down on myself so I caught up with her. I told her I was having a bad race and could I run with her and she was lovely and happily said yes. She said her target was to get under 1:20. Well, there’s a target I was happy with finally! (7.25mins/mile)
Miles 7-8: It’s amazing how a race can suddenly improve when you drop the pressure off yourself. Suddenly this wasn’t my race at all anymore. It was her race and I was merely joining her. I no longer beat myself up about the pace we were running. I stopped worrying about trying to ‘gain back’ the seconds I’d lost. I just ran alongside her trying to keep an even pace, telling her I was happy to slow down at any point if she was struggling (7.19-7.27mins/mile).
Miles 8-10: Hello hell. This was along the front and it was TOUGH.
It felt like running in slow motion. My running buddy and I were struggling through but we kept each other going which was brilliant (7.54-8.01mins/mile).
And we made it. I hit none of my targets apart from my absolute lowest one: beat the New Forest 10 (that was 1:18 something). Well, I did! Official time 1:15:13 (1148th overall, 552nd in age category, 82nd female, 43rd in age/gender category).
But the best part for me was my running buddy rushing over to me in tears and grabbing me in a huge hug and saying “I’ve taken 3 minutes off my PB. I couldn’t have done it without you”.
That made everything worth while.
And Ben finished in a brilliant time of 1:26:20 – a huge PB for him! He was grinning from ear to ear when I met up with him. He was buzzing.
Sensibly this time I’d packed some chocolate milk in my bag as I never normally eat anything after a race until I get home a few hours later and have lunch (I’m genuinely not hungry and never fancy eating in the hours after). It went down nicely! I noticed later on I felt much better in myself.
This was my bag (though the Protein Plus bar came from Ben’s – we both got one PowerBar product)
The goodie bag at the end was quite good. We got a free t-shirt as well (cotton, boo!). There was a Chobani stall handing out free yogurts and a Powerade stand handing out free drinks so that was cool as well.
And after getting home and devouring a huge lunch I was ready to chill.
Then we relaxed on the sofa with our furry friend watching the live coverage of the Great South Run on TV that we’d recorded. Reliving the magic – ha! As terrible as this sounds, it was nice to see some of the elites struggle against the wind as well. They’re only human!
I did enjoy this race but it was tough and it almost brought me down. But you can’t always have a brilliant race and hit your goals. That’s just life! I helped a friend get her goal and her happiness at the end made all my moodiness a thing of the past and seem so silly.
When was your last bad race? How did you come back from it?
How do you relax after a race or hard workout? You better believe I enjoyed a slice of cake last night!
What’s the best thing you’ve got in a race goodie bag? It’s always the medal for me!
Happy Friday! I cannot believe how quickly time is flying. I’m started to get those pre-Christmas panics (you know the ones…cards, presents, food, decorations). But it’s still October. Whew.
I thought I’d do a post on some stuff I’m loving lately.
Treats in the office:
Although it’s always sad when someone leaves, I do fully appreciate them buying cakes for us to indulge in. Or having a wife that bakes cake and has leftovers!
Clockwise: Halloween themed cupcake, oat and raisin cookie, caramel cupcake
Delicious! Nothing like cake to brighten up a day in the office.
Ben embracing the plank challenge:
I’ve been trying to do planks every other day, usually in an evening in my PJs just before bed. Ben sits on the sofa watching TV muttering some weak words of encouragement (“come on, it’s not that hard”). So when I’d collapsed into a heap on the floor I turned and challenge him to do a plank. I scoffed that he wouldn’t manage a minute.
Challenge accepted and accomplished! He proved me very wrong. He did a very successful minute plank. He refused to go further than a minute though. Apparently proving me wrong was enough.
Doing stretches in the ladies’ toilet:
Yeah it sounds weird. Yeah it is weird. I need to get these stretches in and so I’m squeezing them in wherever I can. Nothing major, just hip flexor stretches and pendulum kickbacks.
I live stretch in fear of someone walking in and seeing me though…Not like I haven’t already got a reputation at work of being a little bit strange (mug incident).
Slow cooker meals:
I’ve been enjoying a fair few slow cooker meals recently and I’m loving it.
It does involve a little preparation either the night before or in the morning, but it saves so much time in an evening. Perfect for when I’m back late. More on my favourite recipes to come!
Running in thunder storms:
My eight mile run on Tuesday evening began with some scattered bits of lightening which was all very exciting. On mile four, however, the heavens opened up and it was a crazy downpour!
Running in the rain
Sorry that the video is a bit rubbish! You can see how hard it was raining in the puddles though. When I got home I was soaked and ready for a lovely hot shower.
Doing my best drowned rat impersonation
But other than getting drenched, it was a good run. I kept it fairly easy running 8.30-8min/miles. I wanted to ease gently back in to it after my niggle reoccurrence and also with the race on Sunday.
My best friend and worst enemy:
I recently got a new foam roller as I found my smooth one wasn’t quite ironing out all my kinks. So I upgraded to this bad boy:
A Trigger Point foam roller. It has ridges in it to mimic a person’s hand, attempting to emulate a sports massage. I love it. It really does get into your muscles and work hard. Plus it’s nice and small to tuck away easily. Now if only I could take this to work and use it in the ladies’…
Cold weather running gear:
I can run in the cold no problem. I get warm quickly and it doesn’t bother me. All except my hands. They never get warm on runs. Last winter I just used regular gloves and they were sort of OK but a nightmare when I wanted to do something on my iPod. Now I have some great running-specific gloves with a thumb area that works on the iPod/phone screen!!
Plus they just look cool and aren’t bulky. In fact I feel a bit like a magician in them
And here’s some random links for your viewing pleasure:
Hello! It’s Wednesday – half way there! Not that I’m living for the weekend or anything…
This week I’m joining the blogging link-up What I Ate Wednesday and share the delightful treats and meals I’ve been loving lately. Pop over to Jenn’s blog to see what’s going down
So here’s a recap of Saturday’s eats as they were pretty damn good. As I mentioned in my last post, I didn’t run Parkrun on Saturday. This was really hard and sad for me. Without sounding overly dramatic, it sucked. Ben went but I went to spin instead. I could have volunteered but I wanted to get the endorphins going and to be honest I was in a bad mood.
And let me tell you, spin was hard core. The usual person was sick apparently so we had a stand-by person do it. I assumed it would be a cop-out session. Ha. Usually we have little breaks between songs but not this time. It was just non-stop. And then the instructor goes “right, time for a 5 minute sprint”. Seriously?! It was 30 seconds of sprints, with about 10 seconds recovery, over 5 minutes. I was a sweaty mess.
After this I had my usual breakfast:
Same old same old. Porridge (oatmeal), almond milk and chia seeds.
Then after getting ready and usual house stuff, Ben and me headed to my parent’s where I dropped Ben off for some ‘man-time’ with my dad to watch the football and play Xbox. I picked my mum up and we headed off for a lovely spot of afternoon tea for lunch.
Besides from getting immensely stressed out trying to find a car park in the world’s smallest village square and ending up giving up and parking in a ditch, we arrived at Lilly’s Tearoom in Wickham in one piece (not always guaranteed when I drive).
We ordered soup to start because we weren’t sure afternoon tea would be an adequate lunch (rookie error right there).
Delicious pea and ham soup
I loved how beautiful all the crockery was. In fact, the whole tearoom was beautifully decorated and the service was fabulous.
Obviously we had tea
And then our ‘main’…
Heaven! We had the choice of so many different cakes (carrot, chocolate, lemon drizzle, coffee and walnut, rocky road, millionaire shortbread or Victoria sponge). Well, my mum and me both adore Victoria sponge so we both went for a slice of that. It also came with crustless chicken sandwiches and crustless cucumber sandwiches (but of course!) and scones with clotted cream and jam.
Yeah so we clearly did not need that soup!! We were both quite full by the end, only leaving a couple of the sandwiches (choose your battles I say – cakes all the way). It was perfect.
And then we looked round the little square at all the lovely little shops. And lo and behold I found the most amazing chocolate shop.
Because after so much cake, surely this makes sense??
So many beautiful and tasty looking chocolates! Well, I pushed the boat out and went crazy. I bought Ben and me a box to share.
I forgot to take a photo of inside, but I will share soon as it’s pretty impressive
The shopkeeper thought it was hilarious that I was buying this for just Ben and me to eat ourselves. How terribly indulgent, I know
Well, dinner wasn’t needed for quite a long time afterwards! Luckily Ben had had a pub lunch so we were both happy to have a nice late dinner.
I kept it simple and had roasted vegetables and sausages. I threw in a chopped cooking apple as well (because I don’t eat enough apples – it’s something I’m trying to work on ). I threw some herbs on it (rosemary and thyme) and then drizzled it with some oil and balsamic vinegar. LOVED this. Definitely happening again. And so easy – everything just went in a casserole dish and then in the oven for 20ish minutes.
And that’s that!
Last night I went for an easy 8 mile run and it felt pretty good. No pain, no major discomfort. Just a bit of aching but I was more concerned with the raging thunderstorm going around me! But more on that another day.
Have you ever had afternoon tea? I think it’s pretty much the best thing in the world. OK I’m easily swayed by anything cake-related.
What treats do you like to buy? A box of chocolates is fairly extravagant for us, but I just couldn’t help myself. Usually it’s Cadbury’s chocolate or Lindt!
What’s your favourite filling in a sandwich? I am a bit turkey or chicken fan, with loads of salad. And cranberry sauce.
So marathon training hasn’t gotten off to a great start. I’d love to say last week was filled with great runs and feeling strong and fast. Not quite.
Ages ago I mention I had a bit of a groin pain. I still felt it when I ran in Mexico and I also started to feel a discomfort in my hip on the other leg to the one I had previous ITB issues. God I sound like I’m falling apart. But I kept things very easy in Mexico and as soon as I got back I booked in a couple of sessions with my physio. I love her. She’s a blessing. Definitely sending her a Christmas card.
She worked her magic, used ultra sound, gave me a great stretch and, boom, groin pain gone.
FYI, groin issues are SO awkward to be ultra sounded. Bikini line central.
But I’m fed up. The groin thing was just a tweak. The ITB thing and my hips aching after runs are not. I’ve been hip strengthening diligently every other day and cannot believe my left leg is starting to feel like my other one did a few months ago. Seriously??!
I’ve tried to improve my form. I’ve also taken up spinning and pump.
I’m practically attached to my foam roller every idle second I get. But it seems nothing is working.
I was despairing. My body was rebelling against me. Does it really not like running? It just crumbles after a few races.
But I took a breath and decided to do something about it properly. I.e. not read haphazard advice on the Running World injury forums (the depths of hell by the way – depressing stuff).
So (and this makes me so happy and excited!) I signed up to six sessions of running technique coaching. I needed someone to look at how I run and basically fix me.
My physio can massage and stretch the pain away but she can’t help me in terms of why it’s happening. My running coach (I love that I can say that) videoed me running and watched me do different exercises to analyse how I was moving. And the observations weren’t great.
I drop my hip. My glutes aren’t firing. I over stride. My knee drops inward. My arms fly around the place. My legs don’t kick back far enough.
Then he got me working on strength exercises designed and worked with me on my running form. Honestly, I cannot begin to tell you how much I’m learning and how much I love these sessions. I finally feel like I’m getting somewhere!!
What does this mean for me and running at the moment? Well, after the half marathon last week I’ve been taking it easy on the running and letting my hip calm down. Instead, I did lots of spinning and body pump. I didn’t even do Parkrun. And my coach has me doing strength moves and stretches every day.
I just hope I’m ready or the Great South Run (10 mile race) this weekend. I’m definitely considering readjusting my goals if necessary. As much as I’d love to hit a certain time, if my hip discomfort hasn’t gone by then then it’s not worth pushing it. The GSR is one stepping stone towards the bigger goal: the marathon.
Have you ever had a running coach? It might only be for six sessions, but I’m fully loving it!
Have you had a long-standing ‘niggle’ or injury that you feel has held you back?
What’s your favourite strength move? Though they are tough, I do like planks. You just switch off and hold on.
