I’ve Made Some Changes and Mexican Bake Night

First things first

You all may have noticed a few minor changes around the ol’ Chocolate Medals lately, or really since the New Year.  As 2013 was wrapping up, I started noticing (feeling?) like my blog was becoming a place I “had to go” three times a day, at least during the week.  I felt like I was a disappointment if I didn’t, and wrote even when I didn’t have much to say.

I love Chocolate Medals, it’s my little internet home and where I’ve connected with SO many amazing and inspiring people.  When I started to feel like the quality of the blog was being affected, I knew that I needed to make some changes.  Since then,  I have posted twice, and sometimes even once a day.  With intention. While I recognize that I’m not writing anything Earth shattering over here, I do feel like while I am writing less, I am writing MORE.  Better.  And that’s what matters to me.  

The community that I have connected with via the blog (family and friends at home, as well as all the new people I’ve met all over the world that have become fast friends) are the most important thing to me.  I want to give you guys something worth coming back to :).  So I hope you all don’t mind the fewer posts, and keep coming back.  And while we’re at it, PLEASE email me (chocolatemedals@gmail.com) with anything you may want me to address here!  I’d love your ideas and opinions.

This was actually sparked today when I realized that my gmail had been “spaming” my wordpress emails. . . so I was missing comments.  I was going through all the ones I missed over the past week or so and was overwhelmed with how much I love you guys 🙂

Moving on . . . 

Tonight was a SPECTACULAR dinner that USED to be a regular in the Jara household.  MEXICAN BAKES!  These are GREAT garbage meals (look at my EASY MEALS tab to find more of these meals) for whatever produce is left in the fridge . . . and a great new way to do Mexican.

Mexican Bake

Ingredients

• 1 can of refried beans
• 2 roma tomatos
• 1 small onion
• 1/2 yellow pepper
• 1/2 green pepper
• 2 pieces of bacon
• 1 sweet potato
• Chips/tortillas for garnish
• Cheese for topping (I used cheddar and colby)
• Side greens of choice

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 and boil water
• Cut your sweet potato into bite size pieces and steam for 20 minutes
• Prepare your bacon (we grilled it)
• Begin layering your bake (you could easily use a ramekin but we used french onion bowls)
• Start with refried beans as your base
• Add the veggies and bacon however you like
• Top with cheese
• Bake for 30 minutes
• ENJOY!

Building the beautyWe eat too much pizza:  I posted the pictures of prepped veggies on instagram and my twin automatically through pizza night.  Upps 🙂  #lifeisallaboutbalance

 

Finished product 🙂 Beautiful

Have a great night guys!  Almost the weekend 🙂

Question of the Night:   Your opinion.  Is less sometimes more in the blog world, or do you like constant posting?

I’ve Got A Good One For You

Good Morning and Happy ALMOST weekend everyone :).

Before I get to business — I want to start with the fun.

Date Night

I started off my evening last night with a good stretch session.

 

I busted out my new Core Power yoga mat last night for a quick full body yoga session.

 

Let’s just leave it at my body thanked me.  And as far as the mat goes, it actually worked really well.  It is a thin, sticky mat, but it worked PERFECTLY for my yoga session last night.  I have a thick LuluLemon mat, and it doesn’t work well when I’m not sweating.  I had no slipping or moving problems with this mat last night.  2 thumbs up!

We have been on a roll lately of making Wednesday night our date night (thank you last start Thursdays), and that continued last night.  We picked up sushi from Sushi Sasa and headed to our favorite spot, Denver Brew Co.

We had a little snafu with the sushi though. . . we waited 30 minutes before we headed there to make sure it was ready, then were told that they couldn’t make one of our sushi rolls.  They offered to make another, but it would take the time to prepare.  We choose another and waited, but were a little surprised when they were a little rude overall and  charged us after waiting for the NEW roll.   Are we totally off?  Would anyone have expected to wait the extra time and pay for the roll?  Be honest 🙂

Unfortunately, dinner wasn’t pretty as it was all in plastic containers and kind of smashed around . . . but here’s an old picture of very similar rolls…

 

Either way the sushi was delicious 🙂

 

We spent our evening playing Yatzee and planning out our honeymoon just a short 9 days away!!! GETTING EXCITED!

The evening ended with some of my newest obsession to perfectly end the evening.

 

At least I portioned it out and didn’t eat them straight from the bag . . . progress right?

This Morning

The pretzels and sushi must have been great running fuel because I had a GREAT run this morning.

Workout of the Day: 5.61 speed miles

 

I don’t remember who’s blog I saw a very similar workout on (if it’s you, please let me know in the comments and I’ll name you!), but this speed workout this morning smoked my legs and lungs in the best possible way.

• 10 minute warm up easy run pace
• 1 minute 4.0
• 1 minute 8.0
• 1 minute 9.0
• repeat 10  minutes
• 10 minute cool down easy run pace

WOOOOF those were some speedy intervals. . . but the 4.0 intervals gave my legs JUST enough time to reboot and get ready for the next set of sprints.

I HIGHLY recommend this run for anyone wanting to work on speed (I did my easy run yesterday, don’t forget :), and feel free to change the speeds to whatever works best for you.  It’s a challenging, but manageable run.

Have a great Thursday everyone!