Its Thursday!!!  I am SO ready for this weekend.  I feel like I haven't had a chance to slow down and hang out with my hubb in weeks...we are in need of some quality time!  I'm picturing movies, pop corn, yoga and running.  And as a bonus, some good friends are in town and I believe we have plans for brunch on Sunday.  Aaaahhh...I feel content just thinking about it.   :) But first, today's recap. Breakfast:  fig + peanut butter oats [419 cal] Reader Lindsey asked me to tell a bit more about my oats process in the morning.  So, here goes!  Toppings and mix-ins change, but this classic bowl seems to be one I come back to over and over again. Fig + PB Oats [400-ish calories, 15.8g fat, 2.2g sat. fat, 58.3g carbs, 9.5g fiber, 18.8g sugar, 13g protein] Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup rolled oats, 1 cup water, pinch of salt
• 1/2 mashed banana
• 1 tbsp soy milk
• 1 tsp ground flax seeds
• 2 dried figs, chopped
• 1-1/2 tbsp crunchy PB

Method:

1. Bring 1 cup of water to a boil.  Add pinch of salt and 1/2 cup of rolled oats. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium and simmer, stirring occasionally.
2. When the oats have absorbed most of the water, after 5-7 minutes, turn off the heat.  Add the mashed banana and splash of soy milk.  Stir.  Ad the flax seeds, stir.
3. Pour oats into bowl and top with mix-ins of choice, mine usually being figs, PB, and wheatberries if I've got them.  :)
4. After I take my photos I stir everything up so that the peanut butter swirls through the whole mix.  Yum!

My oats stuck with me for about 3 hours today, so I snacked on a piece of banana date bread mid-morning to hold me over 'till lunch an hour later. Snack:  banana date bread [143 cal] We had lots of leftover gumbo from last nights dinner, but I wasn't up for a bowl of just gumbo because it was so rich.  I decided to quickly saute' some kale to use as a base for my gumbo/rice mixture.  It was perfect! Lunch:  leftover gumbo on sauteed kale. Snacks:  1 square of dark chocolate and a Clif ZBar, apple cinnamon flavor, pre-run [200 cal] Remember my apple incident with my run last week?  Well apparently the upset stomach while running results from apple energy bars too...  It wasn't as bad today as it was when I ate a whole apple prior to my run, but it still wasn't pleasant. Exercise:  4.1 mile run with Kelly [-420 cal] We've decided to run the Martha Jefferson 8k on March 14th!!!!!  This will be my longest race distance yet!!!!!  I'm super-excited, if you can't tell by all of the exclamation points.  :)  We ran most of the race route today and it is H.I.L.L.Y!  You're probably really tired of me writing that...  It was a really nice run though and I felt completely confident that I could have run the whole route tonight.  I'm going to get a 4-1/2 - 5 mile run in this weekend, and Kelly and I are going to run the whole race route one day next week, along with our normal evening runs. For dinner my hubb and I had a last-minute meal with Kelly and her husband.  We went to a little Mexican restaurant around the corner from our house and enjoyed good food and great conversation.  I resisted the margarita and stuck with water, along with a veggie quesadilla, a few bites of refried beans and a handful of tortilla chips.  Definitely canceled out the calories burned on my run, and then some! Dinner:  veggie quesadilla (LOADED with fresh roasted veggies...so good!!!), refried beans and some tortilla chips [xxx cal????  how about A LOT. ] Alrighty, I'm off to bed.  T.G.I.F!!! G'night!