Week 6 & 7: Cooking my way through the Runner's World Cookbook

Well heavens. I'm predictably behind in posting about my cooking expeditions.
The past couple of weeks experiments resulted in some great meals as well as a few snacks that took less than 1% brainpower to make which is always key.

Before I continue, thanks for the good feedback on this adventure! I am having fun with it which is clearly important but I'm enjoying the positive response.

ANY REQUESTS? What should I make next? Is it time to tackle all of the shrimp recipes...?

Frozen peanut butter balls. Or, chocolate salted balls if you live here.

These are not the most lovely things to look at but they certainly are tasty if you need a quick cold snack. Pre run, post run, for breakfast, they earned the seal of Bradlowski approval. I see no reason not to have them in the freezer at all times. (I might add a few mini chocolate chips, or shredded coconut to mix things up next time. The base recipe is just fine though- and basic, it took 5 minutes tops.)

Blueberry oatmeal smoothie

I gave this to Eric, normally a smoothie fanatic and he gagged a little. Enough said.
At least it looks pretty. 

Chickpea, cherry and ginger salad

This salad was absolutely fantastic. If you plan to eat it and then head out for some vigorous speed work don't- the chickpeas and dried fruit will kill you! (but that goes without saying.)
I was supposed to add half an onion and the thought of that filled me with horror (I hate onion) but I sucked it up and added about 1/4 onion. WAY too much for me- I'll just omit it next time. The garlic and ginger pack plenty of flavor without the icky onion factor. Minus the oniony horror this was so delicious, I could not stop shoving it into my face. NOM.
Eric liked this and gave it a 6.5 which is good for him
I loved it and gave it an 8.

Egg and bean burrito with avocado and yogurt lime sauce.

Mmmmmm. The lousy grainy photo does not do this justice!
Make this for breakfast, lunch or dinner. (we had it for dinner)
One note, when one decided to scramble eggs in with beans they rarely get "fluffy" so if that is important to you cook the eggs alone, easy fix.
Eric isn't much into eggs so when he gave this a 7 I knew it was pretty great! I too gave this a 7 because it was good and simple- and great for any time of day. I will be making this again as eggs (locally raised, completely free range, organic, coming from HENS WITH NAMES kinda eggs) are a daily thing for me.

Warm butternut squash and kale salad

It is not squash season but it certainly is kale season!
I picked the kale fresh from my Dad's garden and made this salad from those tasty greens about 2 minutes after I lovingly harvested them.
The only thing that I altered about this recipe was to saute the garlic in with the kale and olive oil instead of adding it to the dressing. (which was an accident- reading a recipe is such a challenge..) Oh! I also did not have any mustard and we all think that would have been good. Oops.
I managed to get a really watery flavorless squash- the general consensus was that sweet potato would be a nice substitute.
Otherwise, we all enjoyed this tasty salad. We got rowdy and tossed in a few dried cranberries which improved the end result drastically. (so do it.) (oops ANOTHER alteration!) A solid 7.5 from Eric, Kate my sister and me. Good stuff.

Sweet and Sour tofu stir-fry

And the final entry for the week/s. Sweet and sour tofu stir-fry! An already veggie friendly recipe always makes me happy so this was a no brainer.
I pressed the tofu per the logical norm... Otherwise I followed the recipe.
This was good too! We had a nice run of scrum-diddly-umptious dinners!
The predicted time to completion for this recipe was 45 minutes and that was accurate- it was not super speedy. However it was worth it and we all enjoyed it.
If  I made this again I would ABSOLUTELY make more sauce- maybe another half recipe.
Like most stir fry recipes you could easily dress this shit up with some baby corn, water chestnuts, other veggies- whatever. You can't screw it up!
It was pretty consistently rated- 7's from Eric and me, and a 6 from Kate. Kate wanted more sauce which was a very accurate desire.

Phew! There ya go, more food more bad pics, more clearly non food critic critiques!
More to come and again- make some requests because that would make me feel like a real live food blogger ;-)