This week, while my wife is out of town, I decided to see if I could stick to Shalane Flanagan's diet for the whole week (well, technically just Monday through Friday morning when I head off to Houston for the Houston Half Marathon).
I got her book "Run Fast. Eat Slow." at a white elephant Christmas party and I've been wanting to try it out. If I'm going to try it, I figure I might as well go big. My wife was a little put off by all the photos of "skinny runner girls" in the book and didn't seem especially interested in trying any of the recipes, so I decided to try it while she wasn't here. You can't object if you can't see it, right?
The week started off yesterday with a trip to the grocery store to acquire the ingredients for the recipes I wanted to try out. Flanagan and co-author Elyse Kopecky like to use lots of specialty / "healthy" ingredients like spelt flour and coconut oil that we don't just happen to have lying around the house. Actually it turned out we did have some coconut oil, but no spelt flour, sunflower seeds, kale, or dried ginger (among other things!). After visiting both the local mega-mart and a specialty health store I managed to find everything I needed for six recipes except ground buffalo meat. Who knew that sunflower seeds were now a specialty item -- I can remember buying at the corner grocery story as a kid!
Since nearly everything in the book requires advance preparation, I started my Monday-Friday week on Sunday preparing a batch of Shalane's Ginger-Molasses Granola. It was pretty easy to make, basically just mixing everything up and then baking for 45 minutes. But of course, it's harder than buying a box of cereal at the store. This morning after my swim, I served some up for breakfast. It's definitely yummy, almost as good as what I get for $3 at the local coffee shop (which is absolutely heavenly but possibly not quite as "healthy"). I always have the problem of being undeservedly hungry after a swim and today was no exception, so I ended up having a second bowl served over some yogurt (whole milk yogurt, per Shalane's directive).
Next up will be Shalane's Carolina Tarragon Chicken Salad, which I'll make this morning to serve as my lunch for the rest of the week! I'll give a report on that once I've tried it out.
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