Too much mexican, not enough meatloaf

I apologize in advance to everyone up in the Northeast dealing with the remains of the horrible snow & wind. From someone whose been through her share of power outages and totally random snow/wind/ice events, I can empathize with the absolute awful that is winter weather.

Now that I've got that out of the way, it has been absolutely BEAUTIFUL here in the bluegrass this week. Right now it's 64 degrees outside and calm. I don't know what is prompting this, but it makes it almost impossible not to get outside and go for a run. That run, however, doesn't always turn out as pretty.

I was looking forward to heading home after my morning class and getting a jump start on the mountain of work I've been avoiding. Some friends goaded me into making a pit-stop at Qdoba - part in celebration of an IM football victory and part in commiseration of a project we'd just gotten back. I don't know how it happened but I managed to wolf down nearly every inch of my delectable Craft 2 meal. To put it in perspective: based on my current height/weight I'm allotted 29 weight watchers points per day. My gigantic meal took up 21 points. Oh yeah, just wait - it gets better.

About 20 minutes later I knew what I'd done. Unfortunately my digestive system is still a horrible mess after the whole gallbladder fiasco and an ounce of something irritating gives me horrible indigestion and a feeling of "full" that I can't describe. Ugh. I will admit, this whole "overeating" bit was helpful in one aspect because I wanted to bake something for my evening class. Since the thought of food made me want to die, I figured I could enjoy the baking part and not be tempted by the eating part. On that point, I was victorious!

I made these delectable Fudge Mint Brownies using Black Beans! Using some savvy googling and looking at a lot of instant brownie boxes I threw a recipe together and got to work.

How can this go badly?

After about 40 minutes I was pretty eager to see how they came out. I love experimenting with food - there's so much you can do using store bought materials and a little craftiness! After what felt like hours in the oven, they were finally ready to come out. It was nothing short of a choco-gasm.

Behold the fudgy-ness!

The black bean substitution really made them fudgy and dense, which is exactly how I like them. I'm sticking the recipe up here if you want to try it yourself. Next time I think i'm going to try with peanut butter...mmm.

Once I got the brownies all cooled and cut up I only had about 30 minutes before class to get a run in. In keeping with the spirit of "go with the flow" I laced up my shoes, set my Garmin to 25 minutes and just...went. When I came to a stop sign or a street crossing I went wherever it was quicker to go; traveled on sidewalks that had the fewest leaves, going and going until I heard the watch beep "half way" and then dutifully turned around.

About 3 minutes into it, my giant Mexican meal reared it's ugly head. I got a side cramp like you wouldn't believe. At that moment I probably could've given you an exact anatomical location of my 1/2 Chicken Quesadilla (but I wouldn't have, because that would've been impolite). I tried slowing my place,  using rhythmic breathing, rubbing the cramp - the cramp only fought back. Despite the intense grossness and pain I made it very clear to my legs - Don't.Stop.Moving.

And then Meatloaf happened. As I stopped for a walk break my little Quicksliver switched on the Meatloaf - Bat out of Hell. I figure it was my Shuffle's kind way of saying "suck it up - move it!". So I did. It wasn't the prettiest 2 miles ever, and hell, it was only 2 miles - but I made it!

So far, operation "no plan" is working like a charm. And to top it off, my seminar class ate all but 3 of the brownies! Sounds like I'll be making Black Bean Brownies again sometime soon. As for the Qdoba... well, maybe not.

Got any good recipes for me? Have you ever had to outrun a side-stitch? 


Happy Running!