Today is Labor Day, and I’ve been hard at work. As per usual, I am doing the opposite of what I am supposed to be. 🙂 Due to the fact that today is our “Sunday,” I’ve been prepping my meals for the week. This week is a short week, but I definitely made enough food for an army. I cooked Spaghetti Squash Chow Mein, Marinated these chicken thighs, Breakfast hash made with sausage, sweet potato, and green pepper (to which I will add three over easy eggs to each morning), Buffalo Chicken Wings for the OSU game tonight, Pad Thai (which was an epic failure), Strawberry Fields Forever Salads (recipe below) and Chopped Salad inspired by the Northstar Cafe (recipe below). I prep the salads all but the dressing in containers and they do seem to last all week long. Whew! All of this with clean up took bout 2.5 hours. I love doing batch cooking like this because I pretty much have breakfasts and lunches (and even dinners for myself) set for the entire week.

Two weeks ago the school semester started back up and that means back to exercise classes for me since I am a member of the Ohio State Faculty and Staff Fitness Program, which is basically a long way of saying a cheap gym membership with lots of personal attention. It is a great program and I love the benefits that working at Ohio State provides. Now, I do Yoga on Tuesday’s and a combined TRX and Kettlebell class on Thursday’s. The first week of kettlebell class kicked my ass literally. I think I was sore for at least 3 days straight, but I went back for a second helping last week and I was barely sore! I love lifting weights and the instructor even told me that I was “like an expert at kettlebells”. I posted this on Facebook, because in my entire life, no one has ever told me in a fitness/gym atmosphere that I was even marginally good at anything. After staying the same weight all through August this was just the boost I needed to keep at my goals!!

Strawberry Fields Salad

Spinach

Strawberries

Chopped, roasted almonds

Goat cheese

Balsamic vinaigrette (I omitted the brown sugar)

Chopped Salad

Chopped salad mix

Chopped bacon

Blue cheese (not paleo but blue cheese and goat cheese don’t seem to bother me)

Chopped almonds

Tessamae’s Green Goddess dressing