Last night I went for a very simple approach when it came to cooking my first meal as part of my "Eat more fresh and whole foods" challenge.

My plan was to marinate some of my Trader Joe's chicken in herb and garlic and then saute it up while I roasted some red potatoes with olive oil and spices.

Imagine my surprise when I opened my chicken and realized it was the pre-cooked kind that had already been grilled and seasoned for me. All I had to do was heat it up. Not what I was going for, but oh well.

So instead, I turned my attention to the potatoes.




Popped them in the oven and warmed up my already grilled chicken in a frying pan on the stove.




Week one = success!

Workout wise last night, I did a 30-minute living room bootcamp since it was way too cold for me to schelp to the gym and I wanted to watch some TLC. (sidenote: Comcast had taken away TLC and several other channels for like a month, so we had to upgrade our cable to get them back. I just got TLC back over the weekend. Talk about major withdrawal.) I did a very Jillian-esque style workout. Lots of strength circuits with two minutes of cardio blasts in between. It was fun, but I kind of miss running, even if it's on the dreadmill. If it's not tooo frigid tonight, I might try to brave the cold and head to the gym.

I'm such a wimp in the cold weather. I just want to batten down the hatches, cuddle up under some blankets and not leave my warm house until spring.

How do you all deal with the cold?

I'm currently reading "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan and even though I'm not quite done with it yet, it's already a book I would definitely recommend.

The book was a big part of the reason I made cooking one fresh meal each week a goal of mine for the new year.

After reading about how processed food, even the stuff that claims to be "fortified," is completely lacking in nutrients compared to whole foods like fruit, vegetables and and other things that don't come in strange packaging, I really want to try to work on getting more whole foods into my diet.

I do an OK job with fruits and veggies, but I know I eat a lot of processed stuff because it's quick and easy.

One of my favorite things Pollan says in the book is to avoid eating foods our great-grandmothers wouldn't recognize. He cites Go-gurt as an example. Next time you're at the grocery store, pick up a thing of Go-gurt and check out the ingredients list. I bet you will be shocked by how many of the ingredients are weird chemicals you probably can't pronounce.

Pollan also traces the Western Diet back to its roots and explains how we ended up with today's dietary guidelines. Long story short: Blame it on the meat and diary lobbyists.

If you're at all interested in food, where it comes from and what exactly we're eating, it's definitely a book I'd recommend checking out.

Happy New Year to you all! I hope everyone had a great time celebrating with friends and family!

Now that 2010 is here, it's time for me to lay out my plans and resolutions for the year.

Goal 1: Continue to improve at tracking my mileage. This was something I only did so-so on in 2009 and I want to have an accurate look at my running in 2010.

Goal 2: Cook at least one meal a week using fresh and organic (when affordable) ingredients. This meals like real cooking, not making some mac n cheese or oatmeal. I plan to keep a record of each meal each week on the blog. I'm hoping that when the blog redesign comes I'll be able to have this challenge have it's own page, so all the recipes I try will live together in one place.

Goal 3: Run lots of races of all different lengths. I'm registered for the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler in April. I'm considering a St. Paddy's Day 8K and otherwise, my calendar is completely open. I'd like to have at lest one half marathon in the mix and maybe, maybe one full marathon.

Goal 4: Access overall, knee health and how injury prone I've been this year before making a final decision about the marathon. If I run any marathon, it will most likely be the Baltimore Marathon or the Marine Corp Marathon. Both are local and pretty feasible logistics wise. I will only be running a marathon if I'm in a good place health wise to do it. I don't want to risk an injury or more knee problems by pushing it to get to this distance.

Goal 5: Spend the off season focusing on cross training, with a specific focus on strength training. It's something that I normally neglect pretty badly, but I want to be stronger this year so I've got to increase the strength training. If nothing else, I want this to the focus of the next few months when I won't actually be in training for anything.

I'm looking forward to working on each of these goals this year and I hope that the end result will be a fun, injury free year of running.