Almond Butter | The Runner's Kitchen

My legs feel best as soon as I wake up (i.e. sitting at my desk all day exacerbates the inflammation in my hamtring/piriformis). With that in mind, I woke up at 6am on Tuesday and hit the pavement. After my morning coffee and some stretching, I set out on sunny morning run. The first 15 minutes were pretty rough – I was tired and my muscles felt stiff. However, after the initial few miles, I started to loosen up. I ran to Van Cortland Park (in the Bronx) and back for a total of about 7.25 miles in 1 hour, 10 minutes. I arrived home sweaty and glowing. After cleaning up and re-hydrating with water, I sampled a luna cookie that I received in the mail. I tried the Pomegranate Berry flavor and was not very impressed. The flavor wasn’t bad, but it was ridiculously small. I can’t believe this very tiny “health” cookie contained 140 calories. I ate half and gave the rest to Nate. I like regular luna bars much better!

I ate an apple on the subway and then dug into my breakfast when I got to my desk. I think this was the first time I’ve ever made overnight oats and I was very skeptical. Would it be too mushy? Too crunchy? Tasteless? I’m happy to say – my overnight oats were AMAZING! They don’t look very pretty, but they were very yummy. I think the addition of PB2 really pushed them over the top

The night before I mixed the following ingredients into a tupperware. I mixed in another 1/4 cup of skim milk right before eating.

1/2 cup old-fashioned, rolled oats
1/4 dried cranberries
1 Tbs PB2 (powdered peanut butter)
6 oz. plain Oikos organic yogurt
1/4 cup skim milk

I felt pretty good after my run, but unfortunately I had a lot of inflammation in my hamstring/piriformis muscle throughout the workday. I know it’s from sitting so much! Every 45 minutes or so I try to get up and stretch. I also take walks on my lunch break to loosen up the muscles and I roll my hamstring on a golf ball to release tension. I think I need something a little bigger though – perhaps a tennis ball?? I think a professional massage would help too. Oh, and an unlimited bank account to pay for professional sports massage

Lunch was a cafeteria salad:

romaine, shredded carrot, mushrooms, red onion
1/3 cup chickpeas
feta cheese
scoop of roasted veggies
spoonful of sun-dried tomato pasta salad
whole grain croutons
Tbs balsamic vinaigrette

Afternoon snack was the rest of my Newman’s Own Organics BBQ soy crisps. I probably had this pile of crisps x 2. I like how crunchy these are – perfect for helping me avoid the 4pm blahs.

I walked a mile or so up the West side before getting on the subway – it’s amazing how much some walking and stretching can help my leg! When I got home I wasn’t feeling very hungry (strange…), so I decided to bake some banana bread. I had a bunch of frozen bananas that needed to be used up so this loaf ended up being very moist and banana-y.

Ingredients:

1 cup whole wheat flour, 1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup dark chocolate chips
2 eggs
6 Tbs butter, melted
1/4 cup greek yogurt
5 small bananas mashed (if frozen, allow to thaw)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

In large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips
In medium bowl, whisk together melted butter, eggs, yogurt, vanilla extract, and mashed banana
Add wet ingredients to the dry and stir just until combined – do not overmix!
Pour batter into a greased 9 “ x 5 ” pan and bake at 35o degrees for about an hour
Bread is done when toothpick inserted into center and comes out clean – cover loaf pan with foil if the top begins to brown too quickly.
Allow bread to cool in pan for 5-10 minutes and then gently tip out onto baking rack. Allow to cool completely.