3 Day Weekend

Today I finally got a decent workout at the pool. It's been weeks since I could do anything more than slowly claw my way through what felt like mud, swimming from as little as a measly 500 yards to a piddly 1000 yards. These were my supposed "recovery" swims where I basically convinced myself to get in the pool despite the incredible muscle fatigue and soreness from Crossfit with the promise of sitting in the hot tub for as long as I wanted afterward.

That's not to say that I wasn't sore today. Yesterday's "Fight Gone Bad" workout was intense and aside from the usual whole body soreness, my hammies and thighs were killing me. But I forced myself through the warm up and by the actual swim set I fell into a rhythm and felt pretty good. 1600 yards would typically be an easy workout for me, but today I was thrilled with it.

I was also thrilled that I took a few minutes this morning to throw dinner in the crockpot so I didn't have to cook when I got home from the pool. I'm Polish and grew up in Pittsburgh so when I got back into town late Wednesday evening and was rooting through my freezer looking for something that would be simple to cook until I did some meal planning, I was excited to find some fresh kielbasa from the local Polish store. I pulled it out to defrost and this morning I cut the kielbasa into sausage-sized pieces and threw them in a pan to brown.

While the sausages were browning, I chopped a sweet onion and a small peeled apple and threw those in a bowl. Then I chopped 3/4 of a large head of cabbage and mixed that with the onion and apple. That got seasoned with salt and pepper and I added some unpasteurized apple cider and a healthy dose of apple cider vinegar. The best part of prepping food in the morning? You can dump the fat left from cooking your bacon into your dish. That went into the bowl as well and everything got mixed together. I dumped the cabbage mixture into my 6 qt crockpot, put the seared kielbasa on top, and left the crockpot on low:

When I got home, I quickly sliced some zucchini and tossed the slices with evoo, s & p, and crushed aleppo pepper flakes, lined them up in rows on a baking sheet covered with heavy duty aluminum foil, and broiled them for a few minutes on each side.

In no time at all, dinner was served!

It's a 3 day weekend for me and I have a LOT on the agenda. Lots of cleaning unfortunately, some work for my actual job (even more unfortunate), but also a lot of cooking to get me through the last week of my Whole 30. On the agenda are: making lard for the first time (!), pork stock, mayo, kale chips, asian beef lettuce cups, a twist on cauliflower puree, asian chicken salad from Nom Nom, and - if my farmer comes through for me with shanks - a pork bucco! Feel free to check back and hold me accountable because typing that all out, it seems like a lot to get done!