Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Feta? You Bet-a!

There is a small list of food items that can turn my head on a menu. First on that list would probably be bacon!  But sitting at a solid second is feta cheese.  (and then mushrooms and onions would follow).  But I haven't always loved feta.  In fact, growing up, I thought the only types of cheese one could have where the little square American cheese slices or something like shredded mozzarella (for pizza).  In high school, I did discover provolone at Subway, lol. (Even now, if I want to cut calories, cheese is one of the first things to go, but not my feta!)

It wasn't until I was 22 years old and living on my own in that other Midwestern city that I first had feta.  My "team" from work was having a potluck.  I had a recent soup obsession, so I made chicken soup with pasta stars (still love it!).  The girl who was hosting made a salad.  And that fateful night, feta entered my life and we have nary a day been separate (in spirit).  A couple of us stayed later than the buses ran, so we stayed the night and in the morning, for breakfast, I had leftover salad.  My friend who hosted us had some more soup!  LOL   We must have been desperate for someone's cooking other than our own.  For the next 6 months at least, I had feta at least once a day.  I'm going to dig on fb, for a picture of a typical meal for me (don't LOL at my lack of portion control!)

Eh, didn't find it.  It would have been about 1/4 of a large plate filled with spinach/lettuce, feta, almonds, cranberries, with poppyseed dressing, 1/4 instant mashed potatoes, and 1/2 cheese ravioli in spaghetti sauce.  And then I would wash it down with sweet, sugary iced tea.  And then have a massive bowl of ice cream with nuts and chocolate on top.  Yeah, I entertained myself with food, ugh!

Anywho, this past week I found myself with SwimTot near Whole Foods with time to kill and a gift card to spend.  And low and behold, I came across this:


Does anyone else hear the angelic "Ahhhhhhh"?  haha!

Oh my word I had forgotten how I love feta so!  And the brine keeps it nice & fresh.  After having salad at a Greek place a couple of weeks ago, feta has been on my mind.  I got feta, lettuce, red onion, cucumber and balsamic vinaigrette.  Delectable!

I also picked up these bad boys:
Mmmm!  I grilled up one of these and had it with a little bit of feta, cucumber and some bbq sauce.  Had to eat light after a binge that included margaritas, almonds, dark chocolate, and bbq chips, oops!

I also bought a blender a few weeks ago from Kroger that was on clearance.  It was $15.00 down from $50!

I made sure I got red!
I saw these on clearance at my new Kroger for $35...suckers!  At Whole Foods I picked up some frozen fruit, so hopefully I will be making some smoothies soon.  I got a Green Bean Delivery last week and wanted to make sure my broccoli didn't go to waste as it sometimes does.  I remember Gordon Ramsey making broccoli soup once with just broccoli, the water you boil it in, and sea salt (blended).  It is fantasticly delicious and tastes creamy.  Although it just looks like a monster green smoothie:
Not much to look at!
I love it as a starter or side, as it is not super filling.  I made this Saturday at lunch and by Sunday at lunch I had eaten it all (started with 1 bunch of broccoli).





I knew my exercise had been lacking this month and I actually had a decently open schedule this weekend, so I wanted to make sure I ran once and swam once.  On Saturday I took SwimTot to "our forest" as she calls it, and I asked her if she would want to run with me.  She said yes!  She ran a lot farther and a lot longer than I thought she would.  We never ran over 2 minutes at a time, but after several weeks of little exercise, I was feeling it before 2 minutes was up!  I think we ran trails for somewhere between 10-12 minutes, 30 minutes total.  I love bonding with her!

Sunday I wanted to swim, but my new (part time) job doing childcare at a church left me exhausted.  3.5 hours, spanning 2 services, not sitting down was my exercise!  At least those kiddos make the time go fast!  Then I decided to look up what time the YMCA had lap swim on Monday morning.  The one that is my regular YMCA has their indoor pool closed for repairs and the outdoor pool doesn't open till 8.  I looked at the other YMCA.  Their indoor pool didn't open till 8 either!  I was getting VERY frustrated!  I decided to check out their outdoor pool schedule on a whim.

HOLY SMOKES!  Outdoor lap swim starting at 5:15am!  Woah, woah, woah EmDub, aren't you the girl who gets out of her bed at the last second?  Well I packed and prepared Sunday night so I would put my swimsuit(s) on and leave for the pool.  I actually kept waking up throughout the night and checking the clock to make sure I didn't oversleep!  haha My alarm went off and I had built in time to snooze, but seriously weird dreams had already startled me awake.  I got to the YMCA and I thought I could hear/see a swimmer or two but I wasn't sure.  I made my way outside and was in the pool at 6:10am!  I should have looked at the weather so I don't know what temp it was but someone told me it was in the high 50s.  I like to be hardcore like that!  There were few swimmers, so I got a lane to myself.  It was a 50 meter pool, so that was different too.

My workout was based on this workout. This was what I actually did:

Warm up: 200m reverse IM drills (50 freestyle drills, 50 breastroke, backstroke, butterfly)

200 Freestyle
6x50 on 1:10
200 Kick
6x50 on 1:07
200 Pull
6x50 on 1:00

100 kick w/board

100 IM

100 cool down

That adds up to 2000m, which was good considering my time constraints and me being weenie on the 50s!  I was barely making the 1:07s, but when I had nothing left to lose and turned it out on the 1:00s, I was touching the wall with several seconds to spare.  I was working VERY hard on the last set of 6x50s and near the end it was "workout painful", but I got through with a smile on my face.

Hands down highlight(s) of the morning was swimming outside!  I got in the water at 6:10, so it was still dark out and as I was doing backstroke, I was staring up at the stars.  I loved loved LOVED it!  So amazing.  Then, later, as the sun was coming up, steam started to rise off of the pool and the sunrise plus the steam made it beautiful too.  Surely not something I will do everyday, but perhaps once a week?  Well, idk, the outdoor pool might close soon anyway, I should check on that!

As Monday wore on, it became aparent:  I was getting a cold!  Awe snap, was it from swimming outside when it was cold?  Oh em gee body, chill out!  This confirms my story that exercise is not good for you I should not share drinks with other people and maybe, just maybe, my mom was right when she would scold me to not go outside with wet hair.  But swimmers usually ignore that rule!

And let me tell you, my Monday night Pilates felt A LOT harder after swimming in the AM.  Sore girl!

Now I"m off to eat some more feta work!  Have a lovely day everyone!



1 comment:

  1. I think that is a solid swim plan!

    I love feta. Totally good calories too (70 or so an ounce!).

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