You must be lost

So, we had these 4 pounds of peaches and about 8 oz. of blueberries to use fairly quickly. The peaches weren't so great out of hand. They were a bit tart and clung to their pits, despite being a good dark rose color and soft on the outside. So, a cobbler it would be. But I didn't feel like making a cobbler dough. So, a crisp it would be. But I didn't want to do an oat crisp like I would for apples. I looked up the cobbler recipes from Alton Brown's "Cobbled Together" episode and combined his peach rhubarb cobbler recipe with his berry crisp recipe. Here's what I came up with:

Blueberry Peach Crisp Filling
4 lbs. peaches, sliced (peeling optional)
8 oz. of blueberries (I would imagine it would work just as well with frozen berries)
1.5 cups of sugar
1/4 cup of cornstarch

Blueberry Peach Crisp Topping
1.5 cups pecans, coarsely chopped (or stick them in a ziploc bag and crush them with a rolling pin)
ginger snaps coarsely chopped to match nuts (I wish I had quantified this when I did it, but I'd have to say it was about 15-20 1.5 inch round cookies, probably wound up about 2 cups or more crushed)
10 oz. of all-purpose flour (approx. 2 cups)
1 1/3 cup of sugar
8 oz. of unsalted butter, chilled and cut into cubes

Mix the filling together in a 9x13 baking dish.
Break up the cookies and nuts and toss them in a bowl with the flour and sugar and mix thoroughly. Then add the butter cubes and mix in with your fingers until mixture looks crumbly. Top fruit with an even layer of nut/cookie mixture. Bake in 350 degree oven for 30-45 minutes or until fruit is bubbly and topping is slightly browned.

Would also be awesome if you mixed some crystallized ginger in with the fruit. The topping almost tasted like granola. Chris had made some ginger peach ice cream on Sunday (the only peaches in it were some peach preserves, but it had lots of crystallized ginger and more ginger snap cookies broken up into it). We topped the warm cobbler with a scoop of the ginger ice cream. Winning combination!

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( Catching up from the weekend )

I made one of my top three favorite breakfasts this morning, French toast. (What are my other two? Eggs Benedict, or some variation there of and biscuits and sausage gravy). Of course, I use Alton Brown's recipe. I really think his method of pan frying then baking is the way to go and resting it after soaking it in the custard and before it goes in the pan makes a big difference as well. The only thing I do differently is add a pinch of ground cinnamon and nutmeg to the custard. I didn't really care for French toast much until I adopted this method.

To top it off, I dumped a bag of frozen mixed berries (blackberries, raspberries and blueberries) and a bag of frozen pitted dark sweet cherries into a sauce pan with enough sugar to just sort of "frost" the berries. Turned that on medium high or so and let it simmer with the lid on until the berries softened a bit and started to get saucy. Then pulled the lid off to let it thicken a bit, stirring occasionally to break up some of the berries.

( Mmmmmm, I wish I was eating it right now! )

After breakfast, I got to relax a little more than I was expecting. I thought Katherine's baby shower was at noon, but no, I read the invitation wrong, it was at 2pm. Jonah grabbed a nap before we went, which was a very good thing. We had fun, though I'm not used to being around that much estrogen (there were at least three pregnant women there, probably about five moms with kids all under the age of 2, myself included and then of course other women as well). Jonah loved the cantaloupe (err, musk melon) and wasn't really interested in eating much more than that, except maybe some cherry tomatoes. The hostesses home was freakin' massive and quite lovely. She lives up in Hendersonville, actually nearly White House. They had a couple of large rooms where we were without any furniture in them, and looking around, I kind of thought to myself, "I wouldn't know what to do with these rooms either!" But it was beautiful and nicely decorated. They had a life sized plastic statue of Jack Daniels. It really did look like concrete.

I did manage to fit in another hour of yoga yesterday. Jonah slept really late, so I fit it in before he woke up yesterday morning. It was much easier this time, relatively speaking (I still shook through poses and sweat a lot, but I didn't feel like my ass was kicked). I felt a lot better afterwards and I'm not very sore today at all. I did get a tire repair kit for the stroller as well, so next week I should be able to pick up the running. Tomorrow we plan to go on a day hike, though we haven't settled on where. I was thinking try out a 4.6 mile loop in Percy Warner Park, right down the street (I think it's called Mossy Ridge Trail). Chris was thinking drive to Savage Gulf. We'll have to figure it out this evening, I guess. So far, the exercise is the only focal point I've managed to stick to and even then not in its entirety. But I'm just starting this new plan and it will take a few weeks, I think, to integrate everything together.

Well, yesterday as I was preparing to go out for my run, I discovered that the stroller tire wasn't merely flat, but has a hole in it. So until I get that patched or the tire replaced (whichever is necessary), I'm not going to be able to do any running, at least during the day. I might be able to squeeze in a run in the evenings after Chris gets home. Since we have sidewalks, I'm not concerned about running at night. But, since it's sleeting today, I thought maybe an hour of yoga during Jonah's nap might be a better way to get my exercise in for the day and I just finished that up.

This got me thinking, I've been too specific on my physical fitness focal point. I'm still trying to make myself fit into a routine instead of saying, "I'll workout x hours per week and in those workouts I'll do y and z." So I may need to reevaluate and go back and say, "I need to run for a total of 2 hours per week and do one hour of yoga." That leaves it nice and flexible so that on days like today, I can make a choice of workouts. Even better, I could say, "I need to workout out 3 hours per week and that needs to contain some combination of yoga and running." Of course, then I run the risk (no pun intended) of not running enough and not being adequately prepared for the race in October. I'll figure it out.

Random statistic I heard during one of the commercial breaks (which are somewhat distracting while trying to hold yoga poses): soda drinkers who choose regular sodas are 30% likely to become overweight or obese, while soda drinkers who choose diet sodas are 54% likely to become overweight or obese. Kind of defeats the purpose of choosing diet doesn't it? The point of the commercial was choose water instead. I'm not a soda drinker, so it doesn't really pertain to me, but I found it interesting.

When I was reading Food and Mood, I remember reading about artificial sweeteners and how they actually make you crave sweets even more because it's not the sweetness you were craving, it was the carbs and calories associated with the sweet food or drink. So, you down a snack or beverage full of artificial sweeteners and are still craving the carbs and calories so you're more likely to eat more at your next sitting to make up for it. There's no tricking the neurotransmitters in your brain into thinking they got what they were craving. It just doesn't work.