South Western "Mac" (Quinoa/Cauliflower) and Cheese and Week 8!

The hubby and I frequent the book stores in the area on a pretty regular schedule. We both have a big issue buying books....

Purchasing our 5th shelf this week to handle the overflow...
I suppose there are worse addictions

So as I was perusing a table of (clearance!!) vegetarian cook books this past week, I knew I could not justify bringing another book into our house (especially given the half a dozen I had just bought/inherited over the last few weeks-oops!). So, I improvised and just took pictures of the recipes that I was interested in trying with my phone. I may have been eyed by a few employees, but got my pictures and went along my way before they came over and asked me to stop (my husband said if he can't go back to a bookstore because of me, it's over - humph - at least I know where I stand now).

One of the recipes I stole found in the cookbooks was a simple spinoff on mac and cheese. Though the recipe in the book used regular pasta, I figured I would just substitute my quinoa/cauliflower mix for the pasta and then follow the rest of the recipe to spice it up!

Ingredients

1/2 C of Quinoa

1 head cauliflower chopped

2 cans of diced tomatoes

1 1/2 cup salsa

3 C shredded Taco Cheese blend 

1. Chop up the cauliflower and boil. Add 1/2 cup of quinoa to the boiling water. Boil until quinoa/cauliflower has absorbed all the excess water. You may want to mash up the larger cauliflower bits using a masher to speed this along. 

2. When water is absorbed, add in the cheese and mix. Then add in the diced tomatoes and salsa.

Another recipe that looks like gruel. Looks are deceiving...this was good! 

Have I mentioned before how much I love recipes that involve dumping in all the ingredients and cooking? SO flippin' easy! And SO freakishly yummy! Nate said he would forgive me for almost getting us kicked out of the book store (not really!) because this was so tasty. 

Week 8 Recap

Holy crap, where is this training cycle going? Somehow today marks 69 days until race day. This week marked another great week of training with 51 miles ran and nearly 3 hours of ancillary work. I really enjoyed the speed workout this week - 3X1 mile at goal 10k pace (7's flat) with a 600 recovery jog in between each. This is one of only two speed workouts that repeats in Hanson's (the second being this weeks 6X800s), and I am really looking forward to doing it again in two weeks. It's repeat will also mark the end of speed work, as week 11 changes over to "strength" workouts. I am very nervous for these as they will be 11 miles long each Tuesday. Yowza. I was really pleased with how the legs/body felt doing these mile repeats, and equally as pleased with how easy the breathing seemed. The 7 minute pace seemed conservative. 

This week was also the last of the 7 mile marathon tempo runs. Next week, we crank it up another mile! This run was another mid-week confidence booster, as I ended feeling strong physically, mentally and aerobically. Bring on the extra mile at tempo next week, and bring on week 9! Here's my motivation for the week...

"Skilled sailors do not come from smooth seas. Only dead fish go with the flow."