Super Hot Sunday

Food
I had Kashi Go Lean with soy milk and a banana for breakfast. Lunch was in the middle of errands, so I had a Subway veggie delite with avocado spread and split a bag of baked chips with Carly. Dinner was a barley salad (recipe below) on top of romaine, garden lettuce, and spinach with cucumbers, green pepper and cut up veggie burger. Snacks were a mini Luna bar, a Clif Mojo bar, watermelon & vanilla ice cream.

Our $2 watermelon from Earth Fare...yum!

Exercise
I love going to the gym for strength training on Sunday mornings. I have a certain path I like to take from machine to machine, and it's hard to do that during that 4-5PM hour during the week. I did 15 minutes on the arc trainer to start, my legs were sore from Jillian on Saturday! I spent about 40 minutes doing different strength machines and dumbbell reps. I'm still doing the slow & steady 10 reps at a heavy weight followed by 10 more reps of quicker pace for most machines. I feel good about it and think it's starting to become noticeable in my body.

Learning
I spent most of  yesterday being busy so there wasn't much time for reading or learning (even fun reading!). I was entertained by the list of celebrities nominated for PETA's Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrity. I wasn't aware that a lot of the people on the list were vegetarian/vegan. It makes me feel less weird about going in this direction myself, especially when I see athletes on the list.

Observations
Nothing fancy for Sunday. After the gym I spent about 2 hours shopping and doing errands. When we got home we had lots of typical Sunday housework to do like laundry, straightening up, organizing and cooking. Our house is poorly insulated so it got increasingly warm throughout the day. We got up to 89 degrees inside, and that's with the AC and fans running. It isn't pleasant and makes it more difficult to enjoy the weekly prep we usually do on Sunday.

Barley salad on greens with a veggie burger

Barley Salad
makes about 6 servings

1 C dry barley
3 C water (or follow directions if your barley is from a package)
8 sundried tomatoes
6 ears fresh corn, cut off cobs
3 banana peppers, diced
1 red onion, diced
3 cups kale, chopped
Spices (we used garlic powder, seasoned salt, paprika, black pepper and aleppo chili flakes)
White balsamic vinegar to taste

1. Cook barley on stove or in rice cooker with water and sundried tomatoes. Add spices of your choice to the water so that the flavors cook into the barley.

2. Saute the corn, banana peppers, and red onion for 8-10 minutes on medium heat and season veggies to your taste. (We make this salad a lot and we always add corn and onion, but add other veggies depending on what we have on hand)

3. Remove sundried tomatoes from barley once it's cooked and dice. Place cooked barley, sundried tomatoes, and corn mixture together in a large bowl. Add a generous amount of white balsamic vinegar to coat mixture.

4. Add the kale one handful at a time, taking the time to massage the kale in your hands for 1-2 minutes per handful. It will get darker in color. Once it's darkened, add it to the barley. Stir to incorporate kale. We usually let the salad sit in the fridge for at least 3 hours before serving. We typically eat it cold or let it come to room temp, but you can warm it up if you prefer.