Green Chile Steak Salad

Posted on July 10, 2012 by thefasteryoupedal

I love to order a steak salad at a restaurant. Mainly because you still get the “meat” of your dinner, but you don’t feel too heavy afterwards. I was surprised the first time I tried one that the two of them would even exist together.

I took a small steak fillet (uncooked) and took a meat mallet to it to make it as thin as possible. I sliced the meat into thin strips and laid them out on my cutting board. I took 1 piece of roasted green chile and placed it on top and rolled them together like a sleeping bag. I was out of toothpicks to hold it together, so I put them in a baking pan and they seemed to stay still.

I then turned the oven to broil and placed them in the oven for 10-12 minutes until fully cooked. I pre-made a caesar salad and added the steak at the end. Good stuff. It always taste really good after a workout.

All you need is: steak, green chiles, and caesar salad!

Phew!

Posted on July 9, 2012 by thefasteryoupedal

What a crazy week! I am so behind on my blogging that I pretty much am going to slam a bunch of pictures on here to show all that we did. Unfortunately, I didn’t get my pictures developed for our “Rafting the Rio” day, so stay tuned for a future post on that.

We did manage to get some mountain biking on the Dona Ana’s and it was awesome! I finally conquered one of the three stops that I always have to walk on Cathedral. Mark my words, I will make it up Cathedral this week. I am planning on conquering it on Tuesday night. Believe it or not, it is one of my yearly goals on my “Vision Board” blog post.

I was able to make it over this part of the course (that looks pretty easy, but I always have to clip out here because of all the jagged rocks.

It was really fun to have a lot of family around. I am the youngest of three, so it was neat to have a huge crew of brothers and sisters around. We ate dinner at a local Las Cruces mexican restaurant called “Si Senors” that makes excellent new mexican dishes drizzled in green chile or red chile sauce.

Barney was having a blast hanging out with his cousins. Since he is the youngest, he was a little more agile and faster with getting the frisbee. As you can tell, the other dogs did not appreciate that too much.

We were able to get a family photo of the whole clan together, which is a rare sight.

That’s a lot of people in one place for a week of shenanigans!

I’ll leave you with my favorite photo of the week:

Question: How often are you able to get ALL of your family members together? Do you have any traditions when you do get together?

Fourth of July Madness

Posted on July 9, 2012 by thefasteryoupedal

Sorry for the delay on my Fourth of July post. Let’s just say it was a VERY hectic week last week. My dad and his wife came into town, all ten children of my husband’s family were in town, we had to speak in church, I had to teach Sunday School, and try to figure out how to time everything just right.

Fourth of July Madness is a good way to title this post. Let me tease you with a picture of Debbie (Mike’s oldest sister) and a burnt hole in her t-shirt.

We’ll get to that in a minute. 🙂 Like I said before, we don’t mess around when it comes to Fourth of July. There is always a steak barbeque, games played, some fireworks watching, and the best part is the lighting of our own fireworks.

After our big meal, we took off to a local middle school to watch the city’s firework display, which was not a disappointment. While we were waiting, the boys had to banter back and forth making fun of people, which led to some major laughs.

Then we headed back to the house where a “brother” (who will remain nameless due to the fact that he may or may not have picked up illegal fireworks) had brought some fireworks from out of state to have some good old fun with the family. The audience was amused by the awesomeness.

Then it happened. One of the fireworks was placed on the ground a safe distance from the crowd. Little did we know, it was placed the wrong direction.

The fireworks then turned on the audience and lasted for about three minutes hitting walls, roofs, chairs, and people. Even though I am laughing about it now, it was pretty scary. Thankfully, Debbie only got a “holey” shirt in the process.

No animals or people were harmed in the process. After the “incident”, we were very careful about the placement of the fireworks and it ended up being a pretty good show.

Question: Do you have any “incidents” with fireworks where it went a little too wrong?

I was reading in San Diego where the fireworks all went off in the first 15 seconds because of a computer glitch….how sad!

Rain Riding

Posted on July 6, 2012 by thefasteryoupedal

It’s July in Las Cruces, which means the end of the drought season. Even though we are in desperate need of water, it is really nice to not have the rain (for selfish reasons) to worry about when needing to go biking. So many times we have been caught in rain storms or even lightning storms where we’ve had to ride for our lives to get out of them.

Yesterday we went over to the Dona Ana’s to have a “family ride”. When we showed up, there was the usual downpour. We had to sit it out for about ten to fifteen minutes. Thank goodness we are obsessed with the games Draw Something and Scramble so Mike kept himself occupied.

When I see rain like this, I admit I question whether or not I want to ride. I really hate getting wet and I REALLY hate wind. In all of our races, we have experienced snow, rain, lightning, and dust storms. It’s cool afterwards to have the war stories but it ain’t pretty.

Thankfully I have a husband who pushes me to go even if I don’t really feel like it. Yesterday was pretty crappy weather, but I had a lot of fun hanging out with these kids.

Question: How bad does the weather have to be for you to run or ride? Do you have any close calls with weather?

Nostalgic

Posted on July 3, 2012 by thefasteryoupedal

Considering the whole country is under a heat wave right now, it probably isn’t a shock that its hotter than Hades here. Therefore, I have to sacrifice my sleep and start getting up early to work out. Yesterday, I woke up at 6 to go to the gym and felt like I had a ton of bricks strapped to my body. I have a deep respect for anyone who gets up early every day for the gym. Now that I am out of “school mode”, it’s hard!!

Today Mike and I accidentally slept in til 9 and wanted to make it out on a morning ride.

We take three-mile laps through a local neighborhood. I made a goal of five laps today and felt pretty good. One note though, make sure you get “fitted” to your bike. I haven’t done it yet and I can tell I am learning some bad habits and the position on my seat is definitely not right. I could have ridden longer, but because of that problem I had to stop. Not to mention the sweltering temperatures.

O.K. so I am majorly nostalgic and you can blame it on my family. 🙂 I am always trying to bring back stories and memories from the past. Mike says our Disney World nostalgia is a little much in our family, but I am perfectly content with it. We HAVE to go to Disney at least once a year, even if we have to go to Disneyland. I love it.

Well, I swindled Mike into being nostalgic too. Warped Tour came to Las Cruces and one of our favorite bands, New Found Glory, was going to be in it. Mike used to go back in the olden days with his friends to the Tour and I used to go to NFG concerts with my friends back in Vegas when they would be at the House of Blues. The memories are so awesome.

Seeing that we are in our thirties now, we felt a little sheepish for going, since the median age for the Tour is about fifteen.

It was so fun! I was made fun of for going, but it was really cool to hear them again and the best part was being in the crowd and experiencing the chaos of concerts. I’m not gonna lie I got a little scared when the crowd surfing started, but thankfully my tall husband took care of that. Mike’s brother Jared was there too and was brave to surf the crowds.

We got to meet the band and had them sign a poster for our loft too! It seriously was a lot of fun…even if I was too old! 🙂

Question: Have you ever done something you thought you were too old to do? What do you think are things thirty somethings should NOT be doing?

Family In Town

Posted on July 3, 2012 by thefasteryoupedal

Mike is one of ten kids in his family. His mom and dad just celebrated their 50th anniversary, so all the kids have come down for a reunion. That means LOTS of family in town and not a lot of time at home.

My dad and stepmom came into town too to join in on te awesome festivities. We already partook of a 9:30pm screening of “The Amazing Spiderman” the day before it came out (thank you to friends who own the theatres in town) and now we are off for some White Sands fun tonight. I can’t wait to post pictures of Barney’s first time there.

My dad really likes Cracker Barrel so we had to go for nostalgic reasons. Remember this game? You jump the pegs to see how many you have left over. I am terrible at it!

Barney has been excited to have more attention because of all the people. Before that, Frog was his only companion.

Riley is Barney’s cousin. He likes to watch America’s Funniest Home Videos and becomes glued to the screen if it’s on.

Mike and I have been trying to continue with our biking workouts. We’ve been very lucky to get them in between the schedule and heat. Mike prepared for a time trial he did and did very well in it.

I’ve been running a lot more thanks to all the 5k’s and half marathons coming up. It’s been tempting to do a whole marathon so I am hoping to get conditioned one day for that.

I have found an awesome reduced fat meal at Trader’s Joes. Go get it!