On Sunday I ran my second half marathon, The Other Half in Moab, UT. It was the same race I ran in 2012, but it felt a LOT different this time around.
2012: Walking. Blood blisters. Struggling to the finish.
2013: No walking. Enjoying even the hills. Finishing with a 7:40 mile. Woo hoo! I’m telling you this at the beginning so you can know how the story ends :)
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Well, we’re back from Moab! And all four of us survived the half marathon. I’ll have a race recap for you in the next few days, but for now, let’s just say it went better than last year! And that at the moment, I’d rather talk about cookies.
I don’t know about you all, but I absolutely love classic no-bake cookies. I ate them for the first time in our college dining hall, and I didn’t stop for four years straight. Those things are so good; they were seriously my downfall. They had them for dessert maybe once a week or every two weeks, and I had to get several every time. I would enter the dining hall planning to eat no dessert that night, but as soon as I saw those no-bake cookies, my sugar-free intentions fell by the wayside. That was the problem with dining hall desserts. There were some I had no interest in, and some I loved. God forbid they put out two of my favorites on the same night… because I had to have one of each. Never mind the fact that you knew it would be there again in a few weeks. At that moment it always seemed like you would be missing your last chance on earth for a no-bake cookie if you didn’t get one right that instant. That, my friends, is what we call the freshman 15.
My freshman 15 was made up almost exclusively of no-bake cookies, Twisted Smirnoffs, and discovering I loved cream in my coffee instead of milk. But let’s stick to the no-bakes for now.
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Told you I might sneak a fifth post in here this week! And for a change, it has nothing whatsoever to do with food. Instead, it’s about the half marathon I’m running this weekend!
Nate and I are driving down to Moab tomorrow morning with our friends Pete and Kate to run the Other Half. It will be my second time running this race – you can read last year’s recap here! – and I couldn’t be more excited!
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It seems like forever ago that I promised you my co-worker’s Bloody Mary recipe. I hope you’ll forgive me for taking a while to get around to sharing, but I finally am! And I’m super excited about it, since I don’t often post anything boozy here. It’s always fun to shake things up a bit, right? And yes, having a brunch cocktail totally counts as shaking things up in my book. Number one partier right here!
Not really.
If you know me, you know I’m not much of a hard alcohol lover. Though I mostly stick to beer and wine, I’ve broadened my horizons over the years, and the list of cocktails that I no longer find offensive is as follows: margaritas, mojitos, Bloody Marys. You can probably guess, given the fact that those three cocktails use three different liquors, that the alcohol is not what draws me in. Although I will say that a weak cocktail is pretty disappointing. Too bad I live in Utah, where there are laws that mixed drinks have no more than 1.5 oz of booze each. Don’t get me started on Utah liquor laws… That’s why we have to make our own Bloody Marys, people!
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Stop! You with the stringy, goopy squash gook halfway to the trash can. Don’t throw it out!
Save that stuff. Save it in a bowl in your fridge all fall so you can procrastinate making this recipe until a lazy Saturday afternoon when you finally work up the courage to submerge your hands in a cold bowl of squash gook.
On second thought, maybe just clean the seeds right up front and save a bowl of clean squash seeds in your fridge for when you want a snack on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Do as I say, not as I do.
But let’s back up for a second. Many people are familiar with roasting pumpkin seeds, especially after carving a pumpkin this time of year. But did you know you can do the same thing with the seeds of any other squash? If you’re like me, you cook with other types of squash much more often than pumpkin. And I love the seeds. Other than cleaning them, they are possibly the best part!
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