Super Busy Weekend

I think I pretty much filled every second that the weekend had to offer with either cleaning, running, a project or baking and I got a crap load of stuff done, which both exhausted me and made me happy.

Saturday morning we had a 6 mile pace run, which is often times harder than the long runs because you have to run faster even if it is for a shorter distance. I haven't done a lot of dedicted pace training in the past but this will teach our bodies to run at the pace we need to run at during the actual race. After that we had yard work to get to. I really wish trees didn't lose their leaves, but they do and thus need to be raked. The lawn also needed to be mowed which my object of interest did while I planted new succulents. And a side note on the phrase, "object of interest", this is how my dad introduced Mike to some of the guys at work. I wasn't there when he said that otherwise I would have probably said, wtf??

Anyway I had a couple of new succulents to plant, like 22 of them. When I hosted my sisters baby shower in October we bought a cup cake holder and I thought it was a shame to use that thing once and then never use it again so I thought it might look cool to use it as a succulent holder for a table centerpiece. I bought 20 little succulents and replanted them in little terra cotta pots and this is how it came out:




I also found an old can when I was hiking around my cabin last time I was in Shaver and I made a succulent planter out of that as well:

Yup, it is a Prince Albert:)I also transplanted 2 large succulents of Mike's that needed new homes because they had grown too big for their pots.

After all of that I had to go to the grocery store to get all the baking stuff that I needed for the following day, as well as the pork for that slow cooker carnitas I was making for dinner on Sunday. And of course Nika get's a long walk every night as part of her new diet and exercise program:)

Sunday we had a 12 miler to run so we headed to the Lowe's parking lot in Clovis to run the Sugar Pine Trail. Mike started out with one problem after another but finally everything smoothed out and he finished the longest run of his entire life at a good pace and no major knee problems. I was very proud of him and very happy that after his initial injury, he has bounced right back. I felt good during the run and I am findiing that starting out at a slower pace is quite helpful for feeling good at the end. Go figure.

When we got back, I checked the carnitas and the pork was just a bit too big for the slow cooker and it was wanting to spill over so I had to ladel some juice out, which I set aside to pour over Nika's food for a little flavor later. This however came back to haunt me when, in the middle of a baking frenzy I went to grab a bowl to put the nuts in and grabbed the bowl of broth accidently and threw it all over the floor. Luckily Nika was there to help me clean it up:

For Christmas gifts for my co workers this year I made mint oreo brownies, pistachio and cranberry chocolate dipped sugar cookies, spiced nuts and cinnamon pecans. The brownies are my holiday specialty and they are super easy to make. Just mix in crumbled mint oreo cookies in the batter, bake and when cooled top with frosting and crumble more mint oreos on top. viola!

The spiced nuts where spiced with a combination of cayene, cumin, cinnamon, brown sugar and sea salt. You make a glaze with the spices and butter (fake stuff, not real) and toast some nuts in a pan and then combine. I like the heat with the sweet:


The pecans are toasted in a pan with "butter" and then toss them in a bag with splenda and cinnamon and I threw them in the oven to tast for 10 minutes and they are goo-ood.

The sugar cookies are my personal favorite and of course quite easy. I buy pre made sugar cookie dough and mix in unsalted pistachio kernals and dried cranberries. They come out looking like this, pretty boring looking:

So I wait until they have cooled off and melt chocolate and dip half of them in chocolate and dust with powdered sugar so they look like this:

Much fancier! I tried to dip some in white chocolate too but the chocolate just did not melt right. I have since learned to melt them with a bit if vegetable oil to make it more smooth. I will definitely have to try that because pistachios, white chocolate and cranberrie sounds super delicious.

And then there was the carnitas, which fell off the bone after cooking for 8 hours. We made some fancy carnitas tacos that were de-fucking-licious:


I finished up last night at 10, making Christmas cards and then passed out. It was a long day, a busy weekend and I want to take a nap now just re-visiting all of it.