If I am on the couch, I can pretty much guarantee you that Lulu is curled up close by.
These two were much more interested in protecting the neighborhood than watching football Sunday night. 
Another week, another delicious smoothie! This week, we are having chocolate peanut butter smoothies. They are delicious. One scoop chocolate protein powder, one scoop of collagen, one scoop of super greens, ice, half a cup of almond milk, 1 tablespoon of peanut butter, one banana, and a handful of spinach. MMM.
Lazy work attire. Yesterday was definitely a Monday. The Mondayest Monday.
These quesadillas are crazy delicious. I heated mine up in the microwave and drenched it with hot sauce. These will definitely be making another appearance after this week. So good.
I have been battling what I think is a little bit of extensor tendinitis, so I am trying to take things easy while still running. That is definitely a self-diagnosis, but my symptomps fit everything I have read about it. It’s what I thought I had last year, too. Since I did a long run on Sunday, I decided to skip my run and just focus on lifting Monday after school. Rhea was a huge help during my workout…
If you don’t lay on the floor on your yoga mat after a workout, did you even workout? I say no. There’s nothing better than that post-workout floor time.
This dinner was incredible. SO GOOD. I have been craving sweet and sour chicken for about two weeks now, but Chinese food always hurts my stomach, so I attempted a healthy-ish version. I wanted fried chicken without the side effects of fried chicken – I get terrible acid reflux from fried food. Here’s what I did! I cut four chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces and placed all of them into our AirFryer. I had no clue how this was going to turn out, but I wanted to try. I cooked the cut up chicken at 370° for 10 minutes three different times. In between each 10-minute round, I would stir the chicken because I wanted all of the sides to get a little crispy. I was hoping by doing this, I would get a healthier version of fried chicken. It worked! So dang delicious. While the chicken was cooking, I heated up a little bit of sweet-and-sour sauce, coconut aminos, and cornstarch. I let the sauce simmer. I also sautéed some cauliflower rice in ghee and coconut aminos. After the chicken cooked, I added it to the sauce on the stove and let it simmer for about five minutes. I stirred all of it together so that the chicken was coated in the sauce.
I portioned out the cauliflower rice and topped it with the sweet-and-sour chicken. Holy. Yum. This dinner is amazing. I made enough for two nights, so I’m already excited for dinner tonight.
This graphic made me laugh pretty hard. That is totally me on the right.
I finally got by the library to get a book. Ever since I started my doctoral program in 2014, I’ve had a hard time reading for pleasure. I used to be a huge reader, but after spending basically every waking moment reading research articles or text books, I got kind of burnt out on reading. I have missed it! I read a book over Thanksgiving break and it motivated me to do a better job of reading for fun. I know nothing about this book, but it sounded good, so I grabbed it from the library yesterday. So far, I like it a lot! 
Ugh. This stupid foot. It’s not enough of a pain to keep me from running and it comes and goes, so I am trying to do my best with gauging what I should do each day. I woke up and everything felt fine, but the second I put my shoe on, there was a slight pain. I did a little bit of research before my run to see if lacing my shoes a different way would help with taking some of the pressure off the top of my foot. Lacing your shoes this way apparently alleviates some pressure, so that is what I did before I headed out the door. My foot did not hurt at all during our run, so I think this way of lacing will help a little bit. Also, full disclosure, I had to watch a video on how to lace this way…this graphic wasn’t enough.
I knocked out 6 miles with these girls this morning with zero pain. I am going to just take it day by day while I continue to rehab my foot. Fingers crossed that I don’t have to take any extended time off. It’s always hard for me to know when to take time off and when to push through. Some pains come and go, but some things are serious. I’m going to do my best to listen to my body and try to trust my instincts.
Happy Tuesday, friends!