On This Day (July 4)

I'm going to take a break from writing today so I can enjoy the nice day, but I thought it would be fun to post photos from July 4th in the previous years! I looked up "July 4" in my photos, and here are the ones I found. I'll include the year in the captions.

This was 2005 at my cousin's house for a barbecue

Super short hair and close to my highest weight (my little cousin had on a wig!)

My dad and Noah were super close when Noah was little. My dad always said Noah was his best friend.

Jump to 2012 (no idea why I didn't have pics from July 4, 2006-2011.

2014 in our neighbor's pool

2014 at our house--we had a bonfire and a few people over

2016--wearing red, white, and blue for a run as part of my then-annual Summer Running Checklist

2016 in my bedroom. Joey was clearly asking for treats.

This was 2016. I came across this crop circle when looking for a running route--it was on Google Maps. I thought it was so funny that it was just randomly there! 

2017 up north at Jeanie and Shawn's place

Family photo up north. Fun fact: I had to photoshop Shawn into the picture because he was sleeping when we took it! (He's in the back on the far left; my photoshopping skills aren't great, but it was the best I could do at the time!

2018; again, I was showing my red, white, and blue for my Summer Running Checklist.

Eli's farmer's tan in 2019

Red, white, and blue for my run again. This was 2019.

And the most boring photo for last... in 2021 I apparently spent the day turning a flat sheet into a fitted sheet. (I still use it and love it, though!)

I hope everyone had a nice Fourth! xo

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VEGAN RECIPE REVIEW: Roasted Red Pepper Pasta

Bell peppers are one of my very favorite vegetables. It's interesting, because I never liked them until I was pregnant with Eli in 2005--and then I just couldn't get enough of them! It's funny how pregnancy can do that to a woman.

This recipe had me at "roasted red pepper". I printed it out after finding it, but it had a LOT of ingredients and when trying to figure out what to cook for dinner, I tend to skip over recipes with tons of ingredients. However, I happened to have all of the ingredients for this one day, so I was excited to make it.

I got this recipe from Oh My Veggies (I'll link to it again at the end of the post). I have to point out something I just now realized--the printable recipe is not quite the same as the one on the recipe page. So, I'm writing this based on the printable one.

Like I said, there are a lot of ingredients: bell peppers, olive oil, dried oregano, dried thyme, pasta, plant-based milk, tamari, apple cider vinegar, turmeric, cumin, nutritional yeast, cashews, onion, garlic, tomato paste, and green peas.

Not pictured is the tamari, but I didn't forget to use it ;)

I could have gone and bought red bell peppers to use instead of the yellow and orange, but I wanted to use those before they went bad. On the recipe site, it says not to substitute a different color of bell pepper; on the printable recipe, that note is not included. Otherwise, you know I like to review recipes when I make them exactly as-written.

I also didn't realize that I didn't have to chop up the bell peppers. The recipe site shows them in large slices (maybe quarters) but the printable recipe says "chopped".  So that's what I did. (I just wish I'd known so I didn't spend so much time chopping.) 

First, you chop up the peppers and put them in a baking dish with olive oil, oregano, and thyme; then roast until soft.

I guess I did have a red bell pepper! I don't remember what the deal was with this; I made it last week. But anyways...

When the peppers are roasting, you just cook pasta according to package directions; I used rotini.

Then you transfer the peppers to the blender and add the plant based milk, tamari, apple cider vinegar, turmeric, cumin, nutritional yeast, and cashews. Let it rip until it's a smooth sauce. I have to say, the sauce didn't look very appealing. It was fun trying out the new blender, though! It worked really well to make the sauce smooth, even though it was thick.

Then (yes, another step!) you heat a pot and cook the onions, garlic, and tomato paste. This seemed a little odd to me because of the texture being so thick, but I just kept a close eye on it, stirring to make sure it didn't burn.

Once the onion is soft, you add the pasta, sauce, and peas and stir it all together. 

It definitely did not LOOK appetizing, but I was excited to eat anyway because I was starving. Jerry and I each scooped some out into a bowl and took a bite.

We looked at each other. Then I said, "Well, what else is there that we can have for dinner?" Hahaha. We weren't fans of it at all. It had an odd undertone of flavor that I couldn't really pinpoint, but it just didn't taste very good.

There was a lot of sauce for the amount of pasta, which would be okay if the sauce was spectacular. You would think there would be tons of flavor considering all the ingredients, but it tasted kind of bland and like there was something just "not right" about it. (Maybe it'd be different if I'd actually used just red peppers.)

I asked the kids to taste it, too, and it's no surprise that they weren't into it either. So, unfortunately, this recipe was not a winner in my house. It's not something that I would be interested in trying again with some adjustments, either. I like the idea of it--it sounded delicious!--but it was disappointing. I always feel bad saying that I don't like something, but it's just how I felt about it. And food is all about personal preference anyway ;) 

This full recipe for this Roasted Red Pepper Pasta can be found at Oh My Veggies.

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Roots

I'm going to keep this super short--Jerry and I are going on our first "date" in probably three years! We're just going to play Keno at our favorite dive bar--nothing fancy. But we're not fancy people, so that's what we enjoy ;) 

I've been on a roll lately working on stuff outside--it's so nice to get it done! Our deck is going to be the biggest outdoor project but I want to get it done this summer. It desperately needs to be power washed, stained, and sealed again. (Ideally, we would remove the deck and install a patio, but the thought of that is so overwhelming!)

Today, I replaced a couple of the pieces of deck railing, which should have been easy enough except that several screws were stripped or bent or buried in the wood too far to try and get them out. However, after lots of creativity and pretty much every tool I own, I was able to get them out and replaced. Then I searched row by row of screws on the deck to tighten any that have popped up a little over the years.

We used to have lattice covering the underside of our deck, but for some reason, we got rid of it years ago. I have no idea why we did that, because it looked better with the lattice. We'd like to put some more on before we stain the deck, so today I was pulling out some weeds from around the sides. I pulled at what I thought was just a baby tree (you know, the seedlings that have a few leaves?) and it ended up being attached to a HUGE root.

I was kind of excited, so I went and got Jerry (who was putting some stepping stones between the house and the garage) to show him. It was way too big to pull out by hand, so I pulled as far as I could and then I used a Sawzall to cut through the root. I found a few more like that so I crawled under the deck to cut them as far as I could.

I have no idea how far the roots go or what they are connected to, but it was fun to cut them. The dirt under the deck was so dry and hard that I could feel my knees just getting torn up. (I told you that I can't do anything without getting hurt in some way!) My knee *joints* were just fine--it was the skin that was killing me:

Needless to say, I was SO happy to take a shower after that. I actually turned on just the cold water, and it took my breath away because it was so cold--but it felt amazing. Now that I'm cleaned up, Jerry and I are going to head out and hopefully win a little money playing Keno :)

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Friday Night Photos

Yay for Friday! It's been a heck of a week. My emotions have been all over the place, so I never know how I'm going to be feeling that day. Today has been a great day (so far)! When I painted our shutters a couple of days ago, I only had enough spray paint for the shutters in the front of the house. Jerry stopped and got some more on his way home from work today, so I got to work on the back of the house this morning.

The more time I spend out there, though, the more I see that needs to be done--staining the stoops and the back deck, new exterior doors, planting stuff to keep our new mulch from looking so bare, . It's overwhelming! But it will be kind of fun to get one project done at a time this summer and see how it looks come fall. The key is just staying on top of it ;)

As far as Friday Night Photos, I'll start out with a comparison of the shutters. They were a deep red color (at one point) but once I pulled them down, I realized just how much brighter they were than I thought. I remember painting them one time, but the color was very similar to the original.

See how GROSS? There were a lot of hives and spider egg sacks. I obviously cleaned off the house as well as the shutters.

I set up a little system in the yard: First, I washed the shutters and the house. Then I put a large piece of brown paper on the ground with a couple of bricks on it. There, I would lay the shutter across the bricks (to hold it off the ground) and I spray painted with black. I didn't paint the backsides, since they wouldn't be seen.

The dark burgundy color is from the backside of the shutters--I think that's the color the front was when we moved in. The bright color is from the front before painting. And then obviously, the black is the paint I'm using.

This is my "uniform"--I have a few pairs of clothes that are covered with paint, wood glue, and even blood, haha. I've cut myself while working in the garage more times than I can count.

I had no idea it would take so much spray paint! (And I hadn't even started the back of the house yet.)

The paint dried super quickly (within a couple of minutes) so it moved along really fast. As each shutter was done, I set it in the sun to dry. Then, I started hanging them back up. And I can't believe what a difference it made! Here is a comparison:

I absolutely love how they turned out. My next project (and this will be a fast/easy one) is to make an address plaque. I blurred out my address on the house, but it's to the right of the door and it's just black numbers--not at all nice looking! I was looking through some pictures yesterday to get an idea of what I want, and here are some that I like. Any preferences? I hadn't thought about doing it vertically, but I kind of like that idea.

The numbers that I have look very similar to the font of the ones in the top right of the photo, except they are black. I was trying to decide if I want to do a black plaque and spray paint the numbers white, or if I want to do a lighter-colored plaque with black numbers. Considering the house is brownish-tan, I feel like I should do the black background.

Anyway, enough of the house stuff! Here are some other random pictures from this week...

This morning was my FINAL final weigh in for the six-month DietBet. I can't even express how glad I am that it's over! Jerry and I both reached our goal weights (10% over a six-month period) and we'll find out in a couple of days how much money we won. Definitely not enough to make it worth the stress of the weigh-ins, though! ;)

If you are my age then you know that the best movies came out around the year 2000. Final Destination (and the sequels) remain favorites of mine. But this post explained my thoughts exactly! If you've seen that scene, then you totally understand.

I needed to make a pillowcase the other day and where there is string, there is Duck. He was driving me CRAZY. Each time I had to snip a piece of thread, I'd have to go throw it in the garbage so he wouldn't get ahold of it. It was killing him not to play with the thread, though. I didn't even get to finish my project; I might have to take this stuff out to the garage to work on things I want to sew.

This contraption is our new blender! Remember how I almost sliced my face off Final Destination-style  with the bullet blender? I researched blenders (by that I mean I read a billion reviews) and finally decided on this Ninja Foodi Power Blender System (Amazon affiliate link). 

It wasn't cheap (I paid $199, but it's $239 right now) but I wasn't ready to splurge for a Vitamix or Blendtec. HOWEVER, this is the coolest thing in my kitchen right now! It works as a food processor, a bullet blender, and even mixes bread and cookie dough. I was able to get rid of my food processor and our other two blenders (the bullet-style one and the regular one).

We've used it so far for slicing, shredding, protein shakes, cashew cream, and a couple of other things. It looks overwhelming, but there is a book that tells you exactly what pieces to use for whatever it is you're making. I never thought I'd be excited by a blender, but this one is awesome!

I found this little lady making a spot to lay eggs in my front yard. She was not happy with me for moving her. The eggs would definitely not be safe here, so I moved her across the street (which is clearly where she came from, considering the green stuff on her back). 

Yesterday, Eli asked if he could cook some ground turkey for taco meat, and I told him he could use my apron to keep grease off of his clothes. He looks good in the kitchen, doesn't he? ;)

And speaking of Eli, I was going through clothes yesterday to donate the ones that no longer fit. Since my kids do a half-ass job of that, I was asking him about things I wasn't sure of. This shirt was a size small, which I knew was going to be way too small for Eli--I told him to put it on and flex. Haha!

Another find while going through closets. I haven't worn this Camelback at least since marathon training! I felt through the pockets and found a few things--two packets of Gu, a tiny little jar of Aquaphor (for chafing), chapstick, and a tiny little number tag. I was confused about the tag, but I bet that it's for my bike lock! I'm terrible at remembering combinations and I haven't been able to use my bike lock in ages because I don't know the combination. Well, I'm guessing this is it!

And that's all I've got for this week! I spent the week working on projects that I've already posted pictures for: Noah's bedroom reveal and the landscaping prep. Hopefully by next week, I'll have an address plaque to hang on the house.

Have a great weekend! xo

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Candidly Katie #31

Again, this post is the formerly-called "Reader Q&A". I just thought Candidly Katie had a certain ring to it that sounded nice :)  On these posts, I'll respond to readers' questions (if I have any)--either fun ones or more serious ones, or whatever you come up with. I feel like I write SO much about myself (I've been blogging on Runs for Cookies since 2011) that I tend to forget what I've written and what I haven't.

Anyway, if you have any questions for me, please email them to me! Just send an email to: katie (at) runsforcookies (dot) com. I'll keep your name anonymous :)  Here goes! A few questions for this segment...

With your running certification I think you could help answer some questions for us beginners  :)  One question I have is:  Once I am able to run a mile without stopping, how quickly would you anticipate I would be able to run 2 miles or 3 miles?

Katie: I hate to answer this with such a vague "that depends" answer, but honestly--it does! However, I'll answer from my own experience as well as working with the kids on the cross country team.

When it comes to running, you'll find that the farther you go, the easier it is to go farther next time. Before thinking about that hurts your brain, think of it this way: If you go out and struggle through 1/4 mile (let's say that's the farthest you can run now), and I asked you to run 1/2 mile the next day, that feels like a HUGE increase.

However, if you are currently able to run 24.75 miles, and then next time, I ask you to run 25 miles, it's still a difference of 1/4 mile. That quarter-mile is going to be MUCH easier than running it when you're used to running 1/4. Does that make sense?

When I first started running, I couldn't run very far at all--not even the length of my street, which is probably 0.1 mile. My brother told me to go slower--as slow as molasses--and he bet I'd be able to double or even triple my distance. Well, he was right! I ran over a mile when I tried that.

To finally answer your question: Each time you run, it gets a little easier. The hardest part is the uncharted territory of that run. A mind trick I used to play when I had a long run (let's say my long run was 10 miles) was that I had to run 8 miles with a one mile warm-up and a one-mile cool down. I'd run eight miles before, so it didn't feel new to me. And calling those extra miles a warm-up and cool down made it seem much less scary.

Here is a picture of Jessica and I after we ran our first 20-miler--we were so proud! (Well, it was actually 16 miles with a 2-mile warm-up and 2-mile cool down, haha.)

If I had to guess: let's say you just ran your first mile and now you're training for two. If you're running regularly (3-5 times a week), I would say that you'd be able to run two miles after a couple of weeks. Depending on your training plan, that probably won't be the best way to increase mileage, but if that is the overall goal, you could just run a little farther each time and hit two miles then three miles relatively quickly.

Here is a post that I wrote about starting to run and running faster. Hopefully that helps!

I'm trying to drink water, which I really don't like. I'm wondering if you drink bottled or tap water and if you ever use those little flavor packets. And also, we recently bought a big seedless watermelon. It was so sweet and full of water. Is that something you do?

Katie: Hahaha, always with the water! I never used to struggle with it, but for the last few years, it's been really hard for me to get in much water.

I always drink tap water (I don't even filter it; I just drink it straight from the tap) and I'm very fanatical about using a reusable water bottle. It drives me CRAZY to see people drinking water from disposable bottles (not trying to start a debate; it's just something I'm kind of passionate about.)

I wouldn't say that I *love* water, but it's definitely my go-to drink. I don't like to waste calories on other drinks. To get in as much water as possible, I fill up a 1 Liter bottle and chug it as quickly as I can (usually within about 3-4 minutes). I impressed Luke and Riley one day by drinking the entire bottle without stopping for air, haha!

As far as watermelon, I don't count that as water--although it does have a ton of water and certainly would help hydrate you. In my own mind, I only count water as water (no tea, coffee, juice, etc.). I chew a ton of ice every day (I'm not anemic, I just like to chew ice), but I don't count that toward my water intake, either. I aim for 4 Liters of pure water a day (about a gallon).

I don't use the flavor packets or anything, either. I don't necessarily think there is anything wrong with them, but when I drink water, I tend to chug it rather than sip it; so the flavor packets don't really do anything for me. But I say hey--get your water in however it's easiest for you! 

I have about 50 pounds to lose, I am chipping away at it very slowly, losing about 0.5-1 pound per week. But I still dread getting on the scale! I have a hard time feeling good when I lose so little each week, and I can hardly feel the difference myself in the 10 pounds I've already lost.

This is usually the point in the past when I've given up, go into "eff-it!" mode and stop tracking. But I really, really want to stick with it this time! Any thoughts on a pep talk around the scale? Or what you're thinking at the beginning of long weight loss journey when you're making progress but before you really see any results?

Katie: Well, this is great timing. I just lost 50 pounds! And it took me a long time--a full year. 

Here is the way I look at and hopefully it'll help: I know that I want to lose the weight--it's a fact. I know it's going to take me a while to lose the weight (in this case, it was 50 pounds). That's a fact as well. I *also* know just how hard it is to keep the weight off after losing it and that there is NEVER going to be a finish line. You'll always be working at either losing it or maintaining it.

When the scale barely budged for me (or if I had a gain) I kept in mind that I'm not in a race to the finish line--because there isn't one--but I'm just doing what I need to do forever. If the scale says I lost five pounds or only half a pound, it isn't going to change the way I eat that day. (Or it shouldn't, anyway.)

Losing a large amount of weight is SUPER overwhelming and it feels almost hopeless in the beginning. But if you stop thinking of it as a weight loss journey and more of just everyday life, the number won't matter so much. If you're doing what you know you should be doing for your body (eating right, exercising, etc.) then it shouldn't matter what the scale says. It WILL go down eventually; the "eff it" moments are the defining moments where you'll either continue to lose weight or you'll give up and you DEFINITELY won't lose the weight.

Another option would be to stop looking at the scale for a while. Maybe only once a month? I prefer to weigh every day; it helps me to see how different foods affect me. However, I don't let it trigger me to quit if the scale doesn't show what I hope. I'm very reasonable and level-headed when it comes to the scale. If it says I gained a pound but I know I didn't eat an extra 3,500 calories, then I don't even give it a second thought. It's not unusual for my weight to fluctuate up to 4-5 pounds in a single DAY. 

My very favorite way to track my weight loss when I was losing 125 pounds was this: I had a pair of jeans that was one size smaller than the current size I was wearing. Every week, I'd try on the too-small pair and see how close they were to buttoning and/or zipping, and then once I could get them buttoned and zipped, I'd buy a pair that was one size smaller and keep going. It was always so exciting to get to move down a size! (I went from a 24W to a 2 at my smallest; I'm about a 6 now.)

I realize this answer is all over the place; it's just so hard to explain the workings of my mind. Basically, if you keep doing all the right things, the scale will continue to move downward. A year from now, you could be 50 pounds lighter if you keep going! Maybe it'll take two years, but does that really matter? A year from now you'll at least be halfway to your goal. And I promise that a year from now, you'll wish that you'd started today!

This is a one-year comparison (losing just less than a pound a week):

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Okay, hopefully my answers weren't too scatterbrained today! Those were good questions :)  And now a question for all of you...

How do you drink your water? Tap, bottled, filtered, etc? Do you use your own refillable bottle or disposable? A straw or no straw? Flavor or no flavor? So many choices for such a simple thing!

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