“Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week. — Joseph Addison”

How true! I woke up this morning, poured myself some coffee, and curled up on the comfy chair in the bay window to read for a while. I even opened the window to hear the sounds of spring, so it was pretty darn picture-perfect …that is, until Eleanor decided to try to wedge herself between the screen and the window and scale the screen. Sigh.

So today is unequivocally “rest day.” Not in like the religious-y sense of the word, but because I deemed it so in my new workout plan. Since spring has finally sprung, it was time that my workouts got a little facelift.

Monday = legs and shoulders

Tuesday = run 3 mi

Wednesday = chest and triceps

Thursday = run 3 mi

Friday = back and biceps

Saturday = spinning class or a longer run outside

Sunday = rest

It’s also getting to be that time to break out the bike for riding to work again! Oh, and my office soccer league is starting up soon. There’s totally something to be said for the whole Seasonal Affective Disorder thing. Unclear as to whether I have it or not, but I wouldn’t rule it out.

Aside from workouts, last week also happened to be chock full of incredible deliveries in the mail. My dad shipped my parents’ old school Cuisinart food processor, which happened to coincide with the delivery of the Excalibur 9-tray Dehydrator that I ordered last weekend. Usually, some of my purchases are spur of the moment…but I’d been eying an Excalibur since around 2009. A sale on Amazon coupled with a nice gift card from my dad for Christmas, and voila!

 When I opened it, I had a minor freak-out that it was too big and wouldn’t fit anywhere, but after a smidgen of creative rearranging, everything turned out A-OK. The food processor is actually now in between the mixer and the dehydrator:

See? Old school. Like, 1978 I think. But it works like a charm and was $free.99, so I’m a happy camper! I tested it out by whipping up a quick batch of hummus which Kristian promptly devoured as soon as he got home. Then, it was on to my big project: flax crackers.

Sweet sassy molassy, these crackers are outta this world delicious! They’re great crumbled over a salad, with some sliced avocado, topped with cheese, etc. If I see you in real life, remind me to let you try some!

I had a little moment where I worried that my love of appliances (Vitamix, juicer, mixer, food processor) might be getting a tad out of hand, but Kristian and I both agreed that since he benefits from me using them, it’s better than a shoe addiction! Also, those are great, versatile items…not any unnecessary kitchen gadgets like an ice cream maker, toaster oven, bread machine, or rice cooker.

Yesterday, after my 9AM spin class, we met up with Ashley and Kenny to investigate Terrace Bagels, a place deemed by the New York Times restaurant critic to have some of the best bagels in the city. The verdict? Pretty good all around, but a pretty lame excuse for a whole wheat everything bagel. There were hardly any toppings on it, which was a bit of a bummer…and there’s nothing worse than a disappointing bagel AMIRIGHT? I then proceeded to watch an ungodly amount of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills while Kristian programmed and watched March Madness to his heart’s content. We broke up the total veg-fest with a brisk bike ride around Prospect Park that culminated in a trip to Yogurtland for froyo.

Now I’m off to get some work done, wake up sleeping beauty, and make some breakfast. Have a nice, relaxing Sunday, friends! 

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Three posts in one week? Talk about coconuts. It must have something to do with the change in weather, but I’m back on a blogging kick in a big way. It probably also has something to do with the fact that I’m fortunate enough to pour over so many gorgeous blogs as part of my job, so it’s hard not to be inspired by everything I read.

I finally gave my recipe page a facelift and so all of the links to recipes are up to date, sorted by mealtimes. I’ve also got a bit of a laundry list for my web designer (read: Kristian) to spruce this ol’ thing up a little bit. The extent of my web design ability is tinkering with widgets and copy + pasting current HTML and just replacing images. Better than nothing, but it certainly leaves a lot to be desired.

While pouring through old posts, I stumbled across a recipe that got rave reviews from Kristian, but it hasn’t made a repeat appearance on the dinner table. And because it’s near impossible for me to follow a recipe exactly (even one of my own), I tweaked the old ingredients for Creamy Almond Butter & Sweet Potato Pasta. Honestly, don’t even bother clicking over to the old post unless you want to see that I happen to be wearing the same exact nail polish color today as I was when I made this last year. Sorta freaky.

Get as fancy as you want with this dish! Broccoli, scallions, bell peppers, you name it and you can probably add it. I used shirataki noodles for my dish tonight. If you’ve never tried them, give ‘em a shot! They’re a bit of an acquired taste, but if you’re in a pasta mood and don’t want to slip into a food coma afterwards, I highly recommend them.

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