Tortilla Soup Update

We haven’t had Tortilla Soup in a while, and it sounded good, and it has only ingredients that I can eat…Super! I tried a little something different this time. I know I have put the recipe on this blog before, but I’ll go ahead and do it again, with the ingredient updates.

3 medium tomatoes

1 large onion

1 clove garlic

6 cups chicken broth

1 tablespoon cumin

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup olive oil (or other)

1 can black beans, undrained

Fried tortilla strips

shredded cheese

plain yogurt

For authentic flavor, you broil the heck out of the toms and onion. We’re talking black skins. Then take off the black skins. Whir the hot veggies with garlic and oil and seasoning in your blender or food processor (or mini-chopper in my case). Add to simmering chicken broth. Add the black beans. (That is the update.) Serve over tortilla strips, yogurt, cheese and if you are very very lucky…perfectly ripe avocado. What a treat!

Sunburst or Bust!

Tonight’s run was HELL! And it was FUN! For any of you who are contemplating running as a new hobby or form of exercise, I highly recommend not it. Just sayin’.

BTW, I have been doing some of the shin splint exercises that faithful readers have recommended, but not as regularly as I need to. Guess I better get on that, huh?

I’m not confident it’s shin splints, because the muscles directly over my shinbone don’t hurt. Now it is the muscle just adjacent to my shin bones. I know you all are so thrilled by my constant complaining, which is why I do it. Have to please the reader, you know. Besides the pain, which on a scale of 1 to 10 was a 5/6, the weather was so awesome. I get the biggest thrill out of seeing the little bunnies in people’s lawns, all the different birds, the wind blowing the trees, the blue sky, an Allegiant airliner going down for a landing et cetera. And of course none of this would happen without my faithful tunes. Tonight’s run was accompanied by the Halo Theme, Earth City, Spotlight of course (can’t have a run without that), I Caught Myself, End of the World and probably some others that I have forgotten. I am trying to decide what to put on my MP3 for Saturday’s Sunburst. I have my standbys, but I need to have the perfect order. Certain music has the ability to give me a nitrous boost. That’s what I want to have playing on the last stretch. Here’s some photographic evidence of my exertion.

If I were you, I’d take up underwater basket weaving.

A Whole Lotta Wheat

So if you listen to Glenn Beck at all, you hear almost every day that the world is most likely going to end, or at least, get so bad that you really should have food storage. Food storage has been a part of our married lives for almost 18 years, but really amped up when we bought this awesome huge house with so much room for storage. And then as the economy has continued to take a nose dive and gas prices have risen, we’ve gotten even more serious about it. There are so many wonderful resources out there involving food storage. Here are some links just for example: Emergency Essentials, ProvidentLiving, Shelf Reliance, and my favorite SHTF Blogger, Living Prepared.

But that is not why I am writing today. I have a lot of wheat (hard red) that at least for a while, I am not going to be able to eat. Without being too descriptive, I have had to take some ingredients out of my diet, and wheat is one of them. Imagine your food storage without grains or pastas. Yeah. But I am hopeful that after some professional consulting and good old fashioned TIME, I will be able to get back to eating wheat, and anything that was at one time wheat, (such as refined white flour.) Boy do I miss my delicious wheat pizza dough, famous dinner rolls and Hostess. But on the bright side, I’m putting the garden in, and I can eat as many fresh fruits and vegetables as I want, as well as dairy and meats. (Thank the Lord.) And of course my family can eat all the Ramen noodles and pasta and wheat products they want. It just makes me really glad that I ended up not buying the wheat grinder just yet.

That’s What You Get

When you let your legs win…Paraphrasing Paramore

My last run was AWESOME and tonight was super hard…shins hurt. I give up. I am going to start popping ibuprofen before all of my runs. I hate going slow because of pain. My heart, my legs, my arms…the rest of me wants to go FAST! But, the sky was amazing tonight. The setting sun was casting the most obnoxious orange color on distant thunderheads to the southeast. It was breathtaking. Sunburst, here I come, shin splints and advil notwithstanding.

EZ Walk Button

I may have discovered the secret to a good run with no shin splint pain. It does involve the treadmill, but not in the way you might think. I walked with only two bursts of sprinting on the treadmill for fifteen minutes. Then I went outside, (50 degrees is really a lovely running temperature) and walked one lap (.7 of a mile). Then I put on “Blow Me Away” by Breaking Benjamin. Finished another lap in 3:23, rested for a minute, and ran one more. Both of my running laps were pain-free! So I came home and walked some more on the treadmill to cool down. I plan on stretching more after this post to prevent a backslide. I can’t tell you what a great relief it is to run without pain. It gives me hope that I just might achieve my goal of the 31 minute 5K. I really like the lyrics to Blow Me Away. It’s on the soundtrack for Halo 2. It’s kind of a warrior anthem, if you will. A great theme to run to, “Only the strongest will survive…” “Fire your guns; it’s time to run” and so on. Go!