Spaghetti and Zucchini Pancakes

Yeah...Spaghetti and Zucchini Pancakes. Does that not sound like the most bizarre thing ever?

I cut this recipe out of a Real Simple magazine sometime last year. It was part of a spaghetti featurette they had with all these different ways of doing spaghetti. I've flipped by the recipe umpteen times, and last week I got a wild hair to finally try it out. Zach was gone, so Drew and I were the guinea pigs.

You guys, I know I always say it: these are soooo good! They look completely creepy, but Drew and I mopped these up, and he loved the leftovers next day!

You cook the noodles in a pot, and in another pan you saute grated zucchini and onion. Then you put them both in a mixing bowl with some egg, salt, and some cheese (I used Parmesan although the recipe calls for pecorino...I don't know what pecorino is). Then you scoop out about a half cup's worth of the mixture and fry it like a pancake.

The result is like a spaghetti omelette, of sorts. For the marinara I just sauteed some onion and garlic and threw in a can of diced tomatoes and a handful of basil.

Such a neat twist on spaghetti...and pancakes!

Here's the recipe:

Spaghetti and Zucchini Pancakes

• 8  ounces  spaghetti (1/2 box)

• 1/4  cup  plus 1 tablespoon olive oil

• 1  onion, chopped

• 1  zucchini, grated

• 2  eggs, beaten

• 3/4  cup  grated pecorino (3 ounces)

• kosher salt

• 1  cup  marinara sauce

Directions

1. Cook the spaghetti according to the package directions.

1. Meanwhile, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and zucchini and cook until soft, 6 to 8 minutes.

1. Add the vegetables with the spaghetti, eggs, and pecorino. Season with ½ teaspoon salt.

1. Heat the remaining ¼ cup of oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Working in batches, cook ½ cup portions of the spaghetti mixture until golden and crisp, 3 to 4 minutes per side. Serve with the marinara sauce.

Workout of the Day
P90X Plus: Total Body Plus
Having Tony withdrawals, so we mixed it up today with some P90X Plus. It was great to get back to some push ups and pull ups! Two weeks till the half.

Lentil Lime Salad

It's been more than three months since Zach and I finished the Beachbody Ultimate Reset, and I have not stopped fixing recipes from the plan yet!

Lentil lime salad is a dish that I was not crazy about the first time around, but something about it made me want to fix it again. I knew that with a few tweaks it could be great, and now it's a staple for lunches around here!

The key with lentils is to cook them to the texture that you like. It's a fine line between al dente (to borrow a pasta term) and mush, and the first time I cooked lentils I crossed over into mush. It wasn't pretty. But now I know that the correct amount of water is 1.5 cups to one cup of dried lentils, and the time is about 20 minutes. I sample the lentils before I take them off the stove just to be sure they're the right texture, and then when they're done I don't let them sit on the stove for long.

I'm such a fan of the flavors of lime and cumin mixed together, and this dish makes use of both. Throw in cilantro and Bragg's Liquid Aminos and I could eat the whole bowl in one serving.

Lentil Lime Salad

Ingredients

• 1 cup cooked green lentils
• ½ cup grated raw carrot
• ¼ cup finely chopped fresh cilantro leaves
• 1½ tsp. sesame oil (or more, to taste)
• 2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice (or more, to taste)
• Bragg® Liquid Aminos or Himalayan salt (to taste)
• ¼ tsp. ground cumin (or more, to taste)
• Herbal seasoning (to taste; optional)

Directions

Cook lentils until tender, but don't overcook. (Or use low-sodium canned lentils.) Add carrots and stir. Stir oil, lime juice, salt, and spices together in a small bowl, then gently stir into the lentil mixture. Let sit, covered, in refrigerator for 2 hours. Adjust seasonings if needed. Even better the next day! Serves 1.

Nutrition

• 320 calories
• 8 g fat
• 1 g saturated fat
• 0 mg cholesterol
• 50 mg sodium
• 48 g carbohydrate
• 17 g fiber
• 19 g protein
• 944 mg potassium

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Workout of the Day

Les Mills Pump: Pump and Shred

Y'all, I ran 13.1 miles this weekend! I was not planning on running a half-marathon distance before my actual half marathon on Oct. 7, but this weekend down at the land when I was faced with turning around at mile 6 for a "down and back" run vs. just running a full loop, I chose the full loop. And I was pooped afterward! I was pretty much done the whole day after that. But we had run on an empty stomach with nothing but water to drink, so I'm confident that on race day I will have energy to spare. We'll wake up early and eat breakfast, and then drink some E&E, which makes a world of difference for me. Just 3 weeks to go!

Fear and Loathing...

Let's face it: women are naturally judgmental. We size up our neighbors, our co-workers, our family members, and virtually anyone else who comes in our path. It takes about 0.2 seconds and we hardly even notice that we're doing it. It's ingrained.

"Bless her heart," a southern lady might think to herself. "She has really gained some weight in the last few months."

"Oh no. That hair is NOT working."

"Does she think she's 16? Why is she wearing pants that tight? / a skirt that short? / a top that does not cover up those giant (fake) boobs?"

We are hard on people! Unforgiving. Ruthless. Catty.

But I've noticed something else lately. As hard as we are on other people, women are even harder on themselves. Brutal, even. When it comes to looks, weight, and bodies, I know some women who would be hard-pressed to find anything good to say about themselves.

Maybe we feel okay about ourselves in our 20s. Then we get married, have a baby, and put ourselves on the back burner while we care for a newborn, a toddler, a pre-schooler. Then it's back to work and the schedule gets even crazier. Drive thrus become a food group. And all the while the negative voices are getting louder and louder.

"I cannot believe I gained 10 pounds this year."

"Look at that belly. It's disgusting."

"Why did I eat that cake? It's only going to make me fatter than I already am."

Then it gets personal.

"Why would anyone even want to be with me?"

"I will never be able to change the way I look."

"I am just gross."

We belittle ourselves so much and so often that it becomes our own personal truth. It's a merry-go-round of self-loathing, fear, and lies that keeps us from taking charge and making change.

It has to STOP.

We are more than our body. We are more than the way we look.

Our body is a miracle. It brought forth children and it's the place where we live for as long as we're on earth. We have to stop punishing ourselves for the past and start acknowledging that we are in control of our own future.

We can change our habits. We can start thinking about food as fuel, and giving our bodies the type of fuel needed to operate at peak performance. We can make movement and exercise an enjoyable part of our daily routine. We CAN.

Our brain, like any other muscle, can be trained out of a negative thought cycle. Just like any other exercise,  though, it's hard work and takes time. You have to start by recognizing the fact that you're having negative thoughts, checking yourself, and then reframing that negative thought into a positive one.

If it takes wearing a rubber band on your wrist and snapping yourself every time you have a negative thought, then do it.

Don't make perfect the enemy of good. Celebrate and acknowledge the small steps. Don't be attached to the outcome. Enjoy the journey. Be nice to yourself. Get your swagger back.

Can you do that?

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Workout of the Day

P90X Yoga

Quick, Easy Lunch

I am completely obsessed with roasted red peppers in a jar lately.

Have you had these before? They are one of those things that I must have walked by 678 times in the grocery store and never gave them a thought. I happened to pick some up to make the recipe below, and all of a sudden I'm finding any and all opportunity to use them: on salad, on pizza, in wraps...wherever I need a shot of flavor and some pretty red color.

This recipe (if you can even call it that) is courtesy of Chalene Johnson's book PUSH, which is a great read. You should pick it up for some valuable advice on fitness and setting goals for yourself!

Roasted Red Pepper and Hummus Wrap

Ingredients:
- Whole wheat tortilla
- Hummus
- Roasted red peppers
- Feta cheese

Take your tortilla, smear it with some hummus, sprinkle it with feta, and slap one of those gorgeous roasted red peppers on there. Roll it up, add a few baby carrots and celery, and there's your delicious, healthy lunch!

If you want to get fancy with it, add 1/2 an avocado and some spinach. Super fancy? Buy some of that garlic herb feta. That stuff is the bomb!

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Half-marathon training update:

The training schedule is going really well. It's kind of cool that each weekend I run a new personal "furthest." This weekend was 11 miles, which I ran at a 9:15 average pace. If I want to keep up with Zach on race day it will need to be more like 9:00 average, and I'm hopeful that I can do that. 

On race day we will wake up early and eat something, plus have some Energy and Endurance beforehand, which always juices me up. Combine those two things with the excitement of race day, and I should be able to knock some time off my average. Right now I'm not eating anything before the long run and only drinking water, and I have been finishing just fine. And surprisingly I haven't felt terribly sore on days after long runs, either. I think saving my running legs by doing PUMP and Insanity is going to work in my favor. 

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Les Mills Combat

My love of the Les Mills PUMP program is well documented, so I'm excited that a new version of the program is going to be available for pre-order starting Oct. 1. It's Les Mills Combat, hosted by Dan and Rachel, the trainers from the UK. Here's Rachel in all her awesomeness in Pump & Shred:

I'm guessing delivery of the program will be around Christmas, so make sure you get the pre-order in so that you don't miss out! Here's a preview:

Workout of the Day

Les Mills Pump & Shred

3-mile run with a friend in the beautiful 65-degree weather! Hello Autumn!

Owning It

Last week summer wrapped up and I sent my little whippersnappers off to school.

It was at this point in my life where I had planned to go back into the workforce. Or, the workforce as I traditionally thought of it when I was a kid. You know...8 to 5, sitting in a cube waiting for lunch, then sitting back down for a few hours more till it was time to go. Answering some calls...writing some copy. At least that was my "workforce" experience.

Instead, I made a commitment a year ago to give Team Beachbody a go and try to bring home a decent income while working from home.

Goal #5: Earn $800-$1,000/month through BB

Zach and I agreed that considering his busy schedule and my ability to keep our family on track, if I could earn just $1,000 per month with Beachbody that it would be worth it for me to stay home and not get a "day job."

I looked at the goal every day.

Last month through Team Beachbody we brought in $1,960. Plus a few hundred extra through my contract job.

But this is not a post about setting and attaining goals, and it's not a post about joining my team (although I think both are fabulous things to do).

This is a post to question my commitment to this business.

I have almost doubled my anticipated monthly income with Team Beachbody. Thanks to my own contacts and through the customer lead program I have several hundred customers on my customer list. So why is it, then, when people ask me what I'm doing now that my kids are in school, my response is inevitably:

"Oh, I do some contract work for a company I used to work for. And also Zach and I have a fitness coaching business on the side, so I do that, too."

My contract work makes up less than half of my income. I don't particularly enjoy the contract work, while I absolutely love my Team Beachbody business and talking to people about being healthy and fit.

Why am I belittling my own business by not giving it top billing?

Is it because of the stigma of network marketing? Is it because I'm "selling something"? Is it because I have a college degree that isn't in business, and now I'm off trying to run my own little business? Is it because some people wouldn't even call this a business?

I don't know, but it bothers me. Because you can't tell me that $2,000 a month isn't a business. Is it buying me a Ferrari next month? No. But I'm not shaking a stick at two grand a month. And find somebody who's NOT selling something, right?

Maybe it's because I can't believe that we are turning something that we like to do into a home business. It sounds so cliched, or something.

And the funny thing is I'm not alone in being coy when it comes to talking about home businesses. A few weeks ago we met with some friends that we haven't seen in a long time. Since we'd last met, the wife, who was a teacher, had gone back home to stay with her kids, and didn't go back when they went to school. When we asked what she was doing, she said she was just staying at home. But later I found out she's working their small network marketing business from home. Why wouldn't she just tell us about it? Why didn't I tell her what I was doing?

So in the final quarter of 2012 I am adding a bonus goal to my list:

OWN this business. Talk about it, give it top billing. Make people understand that I make money by selling them fitness products and then coaching them through incorporating those products into their life. That is my job. When my kids are at school, I talk to people about how to live fit and healthy lives. I encourage them. I offer them recipes and tips. I read. I become a better leader so that I can show other people how to lead their own fitness and financial transformations.

My guess is when I start taking this business as seriously in public as I do at my desk every day, then other people will take it seriously, too.

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Workout of the Day

Insanity: Pure Cardio