This week has been long and especially hard. Mentally draining. Physically draining, and even sometimes emotionally draining. It’s what my life is right now.

I had a successful trip to the grocery store to stock up on vegetarian meal options. I broke down and bought a food processor (thanks for the birthday money Dad!! <3) as it seems like most recipes call for combining a several ingrediants together, then using the food processor, mash them up together. I’m going to need one if I want to try to make my own hummus anyway! I chopped up an onion last night. It works pretty dandy, and saved me a lot of time! The other highlight of my shopping was finding quinoa in rice/grains aisle at Target. I was surprise it was even there. It’s pretty expensive, but it should also last me a while because I’m not going to be making it at every meal.

Although, my big bonehead move of the night was realizing when I went to make supper last night, I actually didn’t have a can opener or a strainer! At least the MacGuyver (or McGruber if you will) is strong in me and I was able to get a can of black beans opened, rinsed and strained. How you ask? Well just so happens I’m going to share my secrets with you. I randomly found in my kitchen drawer (yes, I actually a single drawer in my tiny kitchen), and I found a “pop top” can puncture thing. The kind where you punch two holes in the top of a big can of juice (tomato or old style Hi-C), and I was able to puncture enough holes in it to make a nice starburst shape that came out. From there I just took a plastic container you get deli meat in, and put a bunch of holes in it with a knife. That created a make shift strainer, albeit very slow. Needless to say it got the job done.

Mission with the kiddo this weekend, venture to the dollar store to pick up can opener and strainer (among any other cheapie kitchen stuff I might find ususal for cheapie plastic prices).

I made a mixture of Quinoa (typically pronounced KEEN-wah), corn, black beans, and onions seasoned with cilantro and ground cumin. It turned out pretty awesome if I’m being honest. The quinoa was awesome filler in my dish, and it’s actually a superfood full of all kinds of good stuff including a boat load of protein. That is something very important that I need to make sure I keep getting by cutting all the meat out of my diet. Warm up a torilla, toss on some cheese and sour cream, and you’re all set! Photo of goodness below:

I was quite impressed by the taste and how full I was after the one burrito I had. I’m looking forward to trying other quinoa recipes in the future.

I’ve taken it pretty easy on the exercise front. I ran twice this week for only two miles per run; however, I’ve kicked up my pace on my two mile run. Wednesday night I finished in 16 mins 37 seconds, then the following night I pushed myself a bit more and came in at 16 mins 9 seconds. If I could keep an 8 min pace for two miles, I would be extremely happy. My shoulders and biceps have been pretty sore too, I haven’t done much in the planking, push-up and arm curl department either.

With that being said, I’m still holding steady at a 195 pound average. Looks like 190 should be easy to get to with a little more work. Obviously, I want to be gaining muscle too, so we’ll see where I’m going to end up at the end of my journey.

Looking forward to the weekend with my little guy, so I might just be writing up a summary of the weekend some reflections on my first week of my challenge.