I'm in! Somehow I lucked out and was playing the refresh game and found that they had opened registration about 6 minutes early. I opened it, filled out the information, and was done even before it was originally supposed to happen. Then, Active.com came crashing down, and people had to fight tooth and nail to get registered. At around 4 EST, they shut the whole thing down, and that's where it sits right now. There are 15,000 spots left (of the 47,000 spots), and there's no word yet about when it will open; they're saying it won't be this week. If you tried to register and got in, congrats! If you tried and didn't, I hope that you're able to get in when it opens again.
I'm excited that I decided to make this one my fall marathon, as I feel like they'll start implementing a lotto or qualifications because of how fast they'll sell out. It was 31 days until sellout int 2011, 6 days until sellout in 2012, and it'll end up being less than 6 hours until sellout this year. Wow!
Meal Prep!
Onto other news! Monday afternoon I decided to follow through with Lindsay's meal prepping tips and actually meal prep for the whole week so that we'd have meals and food already ready to go when we were ready to eat. It took around 4 hours to do the planning, shopping, and prepping, but so far it has been so worth it. I've had free time on weeknights that I haven't known what to do with!
I wanted to share with you what I prepped. I pretty much had it going all at the same time and did my best to keep an eye on the stove, oven, and chopping boards all at the same time.
8 hard boiled eggs
I made these because of my Starbucks hiatus; I wanted something we could easily grab that would fill us up. Though these cookies aren't sweet, they are really good. You have to eat half of one before you "get" the flavor, but after that I wanted to eat them at times other than breakfast.
Quinoa for a loaded bowl and also for sides
Chicken Salad for Tim for lunches and for a quick snack. I just use a recipe like what my mom made when I was growing up. I boiled a pack of chicken, diced it, cut grapes in half, diced celery, and put about 1/4 cup of reduced fat mayonnaise. It should sit overnight before you eat it so that the flavors blend. The grapes give it a little bit of a sweet flavor.
Like I said. There was a lot of prepping, dicing, cooking, stirring, putting in, taking out, and checking again going on. It was a fine dance. I can't really give you a step by step rundown of how I did it, because I don't think I could tell you right now.
What I will tell you is that it's been so nice this week to have all of these options at hand to choose from. Aside from these I also bought two stuffed chicken breasts to make on another night. It's plenty of food, and I'm almost questioning if we're going to get through it all.
In addition to the fact that this food is all ready to go (plus I was able to saran wrap and freeze five of the burgers for later on), I actually saved $50+ at the grocery store! Aside from spices, I bought most everything for these recipes at the store on Monday, and my bill was $101. Normally I spend around $150-$175 doing all of the shopping for recipes that require a lot more ingredients.
While I was making it all I didn't know if it would be worth it, because it was definitely a lot of work. But, after just two days of heading to the fridge and piecing meals together from what is already cooked (tonight we'll have the loaded bowl), it's already clear how worth it this practice is.
I won't be able to do it again this week, since I'm running the Princess Half and will be in Disney all weekend, but I'll return to it again in the following weekends when I have time for sure!
I found all of these recipes on Pinterest (on my Healthy Eating board) and pieced them together from there, so I'm linking up with Katie today!
Do you meal prep? Do you meal plan?
Are you running Chicago or another fall marathon?
13 comments:
well, I do hard boil ahead of time.
but thats it.
does that count?! :)
I cook veggies and meat just not full on meals ;) I didn't know that happened with chicago registration! Happy you're in! Crazy how racing has gotten so big that servers can't handle us crazy runners lol
Love this. I've been meal planning for three weeks, now and while I'm preparing it all, I get disgruntled because it is time consuming! But then I love how easy the week is and I'm happy :)
i food prep - not meal prep, if that makes sense. i make large portions of healthy staples: beans, chicken, veggies, quinoa, etc. then i throw them together for meals throughout the week!
congrats on getting in! I can't believe how fast races are starting to sell out.
Squee! So excited you got in!
And when my sister and I were "dying" to run in RunForYourLives.com, we accidentally managed to register before it was even open. We found the registration page through googling, even though they never officially opened it. So me, her, our hubbies and 1 friend were registered 2 months before it officially opened. LOL.
The chicken salad sounds delicious!
I don't meal prep full on because I'm the kind of person who is in the mood for different things at different times, but I will boil a bunch of eggs and roast some veggies at the beginning of the week. The quinoa burgers look delicious!
YAY for getting in! You're going to rock it out. And I am totally stalking your pinterest board now - amazing looking food. I always plan my meals but I don't prep them. Maybe I should try that...
Thanks for posting the breakfast cookie recipe! I need something that I can just grab and head out the door. I'm going to have to make those this weekend. I meal plan every Sunday before I head the the store. I have an app on my phone that helps.
Way to go with the meal planning! I also followed your pinterest boards - they're all so great!
Congrats on getting in!!!!! yay!!!! Now, I need to go hard-boil some eggs for an easy breakfast because I've been struggling to get a good breakfast in lately! Have a great day and I can't wait to read on your training and the race! :)
Way to go on getting in to CHI!
Mike and I are just beginning meal prepping each week and discovering what we do/don't need. Like this week - bought too many veggies and not enough rice/quinoa. Also, we boiled 4 too many eggs for the both of us. I would like to definitely try the burgers this next week and see how that ties us over for dinners! After work and running/workouts we both don't eat until 8p or so and watn something quick!
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