Curry Turkey Soft Tacos recipe

Brianne and I went to a bootcamp workout class at Lululemon Tuesday night, and yesterday I was sore. Today, I am REALLY sore. Going down stairs is somehow the worst thing, and since I work on the 2nd floor of our office and run up and down them all time, I will be feeling that today.  I am loving these different kinds of workouts once a week, and I know if I added one or two additional strength training sessions a week I would start to see results.

Last night I had a bit of culinary experiment and the result was delicious.

Curry Turkey Soft Tacos

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound lean ground turkey
• 4 or 5 Baby Dutch Yellow Potatoes, diced
• 1/4 of a large yellow onion, chopped
• small or medium flour tortillas
• 1/2 tomato, diced
• olive oil
• curry seasoning
• cinnamon
• salt, pepper
• hot sauce
• sour cream

1.  Put 1 tbsp olive oil in a saute pan, heat to medium high.  Add onions, cook til golden and caramelized

2. At the same time, microwave potatoes in a bowl for 5 minutes

3.  Place microwaved potatoes and raw ground turkey in pan with onions. 

4.  Add curry, cinnamon, salt, and pepper to taste

5. Cook on medium til turkey is thoroughly cooked, remove from heat

6.  Prepare tacos with turkey, onion, and potato mix, add sour cream and diced tomatoes

7.  Sprinkle with hot sauce to taste

I need to remember to take photos of my cooking, but this was very much a "just add stuff as I go" recipe.  I promise it turned out delicious! I think using sweet potatoes for this instead of yellow potatoes would be great, too.  Adding cilantro would also add some nice freshness. 

Happy Thursday!

Kelly, wine, and Snooze!

What a busy week it's been! 

Some highlights:

• Pure Barre!  I tried a free Pure Barre class at Lululemon on Tuesday with two of my friends from work.  It kicked my BUTT, but I could use some butt-kicking (and weight-lifting, thigh toning, etc.) The studio teaching the class at Lulu is based in La Jolla and is SUPER expensive, but we found a studio in Point Loma (only about 3 miles from our office) that is much more affordable and has a ten-days-for-ten-dollars trial, so I think we're going to check that out.

• Kelly! My friend Kelly got here yesterday, and will be here til Tuesday morning.  Kelly and I were Orientation Counselors together at WSU and she's one of my loveliest friends.  She currently lives in Leon, in Mexico, where she teaches Englist as a foreign language. Unfortunately I have to work all day tomorrow so I won't get to spend much time with her, but we've had a great weekend so far at the dog beach in Coronado, trying some awesome new restaurants, and just chilling in our apartment. 

• Wine Steals!  A fun wine bar I've been wanting to try that we ended up going to by default when there was a 1.5 hour wait at Slater's 50/50 in Point Loma.  Kelly, Tyler, and I went last night with Brianne and Phil and had some delish wine and thin-crust pizza.  Plus Brianne and I got to discuss  important pop culture events such as Ben the Bachelor and how he is totally going to pick Courteny (gag me) and how we can't believe Chism is gone from The Biggest Loser Ranch! 

• SNOOZE!  This amazing breakfast restaurant in Hillcrest that I've also been wanting to try.  We got there at 8 am and still had to wait over a half an hour for a table, but it was VERY worth it.  The menu is phenomenal, the service was great, and the food (and Bloody Mary's) were amazing.  I had a half order of the Chilaquiles Benedict (Carne asada steak served on a cheesy, saucy, tortilla stack topped with poached Niman Ranch eggs, smoked cheddar hollandaise, fresh salsa and cotija cheese), and a half order of the Upstream Benny (Honey Smoked Salmon on our house-crafted bacon-jalapeno spoonbread, topped with two farm fresh Niman Ranch poached eggs, cream cheese hollandaise and chives).  I still have a ton of leftovers and it was phenomenal.   Tyler had some amazing gourmet pancakes (strawberry shortcake, PB chocolate, and bourbon cherry) and he was in Tyler Heaven (which, as we all know, would involve a LOT of pancakes.) 

• SUN! Kelly and I spent at least 3 hours today laying in the sun by our pool, reading, and occasionally mustering up the courage to take a dip in the (frigid, 55 degree!) water.  They haven't yet started heating it for summer swimmers and my gosh it was cold, but it felt good to cool off in since it's TOASTY out today. 

So Happy Sunday! I hope all of your weekends were as full of friends, food, and sun as mine was! Cheers! 

Yoga and wet dogs

This morning Tyler and I went to Lululemon's *free* Saturday morning yoga class at the La Jolla store.  Tyler had never done yoga before.  I have taken classes here and there, including a smattering of Bikram (or "yoga in hell", as I affectionally referred to it after my first experience,) but I am still very much a beginner due to general lack of coordination, flexibility, balance, and athletic ability.  I have to say after today's experience that what little flexibility I had before becoming a regular runner is now completely gone.

That being said, it was a lovely, relaxing, and very do-able hour-long class. And I did a bridge at the end, so that was cool.  Tyler loved it and says he wants to make it a habit to go on Saturday mornings, which I'm totally cool with.  Afterwards, we walked around downtown La Jolla for a little bit because it as a gorgeous morning.  We got smoothies at an organic juice bar, picked up some groceries
at TJ's, and then headed home to pick up Brinkley.

We met Tyler's sister Brianne and Finnick (her and her fiance Phil's incredibly handsome 5 month-old Australian Shepherd puppy) at the Coronado Dog Beach.  On a side note, Tyler puppy-sat for Finn all day yesterday while  I was at work, and when I got home from happy hour with some work ladies at around 7 pm, he was beyond frazzled.  Finn is a lot of dog, especially compared to our little Brink.  Anyway, Brianne's friend Michelle also showed up with her dog Brynn, and we had a grand ol' time running around the beach with the pups.  Brinkley is exhausted from all the excitement and is passed out next to me on the couch.

Finn and I last night, in a rare moment of peace 

My loves at the beach today.

Asiago-Parm Sweet Potato Fries

Another great thing about 3-day weekends?
Four day weeks!
Can't believe that tomorrow is Thursday already.

Tonight I made chicken burgers with Trader Joe's Chili Lime chicken patties and homemade sweet potato fries.

Asiago-Parm Sweet Potato Fries:
- 2 large sweet potatoes
- olive oil
- grated asiago cheese
- grated or canned parmesan cheese
- garlic, minced (the jarred kind is best)
- salt
- pepper

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees
2. Cut sweet potatoes into 1/2 inch wedges
3. Place fries in large bowl, toss with olive oil, grated cheeses, garlic, salt and pepper to taste
4. Spray cookie sheet with non-stick spray, place fries on sheet in a single layer
5. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until crispy

I realize there are no measurements for the cheese or garlic, I just kind of scooped.

Hiking and High Heels

Happy President's Day Monday off to you (and to me!!!)

I have had a lovely weekend thus far.  Yes, it's drawing to an end, but I am trying to enjoy every minute of it.

Saturday after our jogging/Jamba Juicing, Tyler and I cleaned our apartment (dishes, laundry, scrubbed the whole bathroom, etc.) I love starting out the week with a clean apartment!  Then we just lazed around all afternoon, played some intense games of Mario Party on the Wii, and relaaaaaxed. 

Sunday I dragged Tyler on a HIKE (yes, you hear me right, a HIKE!).  We took Brinkley and hiked Cowles Mountain, which, at 1592 ft, is the highest point in San Diego.  It's about 1.5 miles each way, and pretty steep, so it's a nice little workout up the hill to some great views.  The first time I hiked it was in July when I had just moved to San Diego and it was considerably hotter.  This time there was enough breeze to keep us cool on the way up but was FREEZING once we got up there, so we didn't stay too long. 

Brinkley was such a little trooper the whole time.  I'm only holding her in the photos, she walked all the way up and down and probably would have RUN the whole way up and down if it were up to her.  She's a hiking dog! 

Saturday afternoon we spent at Marilyn's with her & Joe and a couple of other friends, drinking champagne and berry lemonade concoctions and play Kinect.  I really like the Kinect even if I feel a little self-conscious doing it -- I hate the screen capture feature where it shows the camera shots of you in awkward bowling positions and stuff. I'm awesome at bowling and TERRIBLE at boxing. The opposite of real life. ;) 

Today we went SHOPPING and I got to spend some $$ in myself (which I haven't done in awhile, unless you count groceries) and it was so FUN! I got two news tops, a cute red blazer, and a pair of Chinese Laundry heels from Marshalls. I really need to work on expanding my professional/work clothes wardrobe and I just love these shoes. 

Ta-daaaa!  

Shoe shopping is really hard for me because I have ridiculous, square-shaped feet.  My actual foot size is 6.5 DOUBLE WIDE so I usually buy size 8 in order for them to be wide enough, and then have a 1/4 inch gap in the back to rub my heels raw, but because the back on these is adjustable, they fit all over! It's a miracle!

We then ventured into Lululemon, which could turn into a very dangerous addiction.  I wanted, oh, everything in the store, but settled on a jacket (on sale!) and some cool pants (on price-reduction). 

"It's Happening Jodhpur"pant in Demin (actually a dark heathered gray)

"Define" jacket in Heathered Flash

I'm glad that Lululemon isn't too much closer to our apartment or I might go there too often! Tyler and I might go there on Saturday morning to check out their free yoga classes, though.  He's been saying he wants to try yoga and maybe I can pretend like I've never done it before (because I'm insanely inflexible). 

La Jolla Strip Club, Jogging, and Jamba Juice

Last night, Tyler and I went out to dinner, my treat, on my first paycheck from my new job. Since I got out of work early, we thought it'd be great to take advantage of Happy Hour, so we Yelped a couple places and decided on the La Jolla Strip Club -- a strip club themed martini lounge and grill-your-own-steak restaurant, minus the strippers.

Happy Hour-wise we got some martinis, all of which had awesome dirty names (mine was the "Pearl Necklace") and -- wait for it -- Lobster Truffle Mac n' Cheese.


We shared a 20 oz Porterhouse steak for our main course, which came with garlic bread and salad. It was a really thick steak and we had to put it back on the grill three times before I was convinced that it was done enough to eat.



This morning Tyler and I got up and went for a short 3 mile jog in Mission Bay Park. For Valentine's Day, I registered both of us for the Disneyland 1/2 Marathon, which isn't til September, but Tyler wants to start running outside. Mission Bay Park is one of my favorite places to jog.

Gorgeous, right? San Diego is a really beautiful place.


Then, we went to Jamba Juice. I'm obsessed with their Fit and Fruitful smoothies. Yes, they are around 10 PP for an "Original" size, but it's not too bad if it's a meal replacement, especially if I exercised too. They are pretty filling, as well. I heart Jamba Juice.

False.

Gah I love The Office. Today is going to be a good day. We have all-office meetings on Friday mornings, where we get breakfast, and we're out at 3 pm today due to the fact that it's a 3-day-weekend for us (President's Day!) and today is OUR (company) President's birthday. I'm so looking forward to a short day today and then a 3-day weekend. I don't really have any plans, except I want to go hiking, and I want to go to La Jolla to Marshall's and to visit Sprinkles!