Day 17 - Keeping Warm on a Cold Texas Day

I managed to get my workout in this morning, before family came to visit and we headed off to the Renaissance Festival. I'm glad I did the workout in the morning, because by the time I came home, I was a little tired from walking around the RenFest all day (it was really fun btw!) I don't have too much to say about today's workout. I did it. It hurt. It's hard. That's about all there is to it. The shoulder exercises in the last circuit killed me once again. I had to put my arms down to rest during the V-raises. Will day 20 be much different from today? I hope so!

Recipe for Sweet Potato-Lentil Stew

On a cold day like today, there is nothing better than a warm bowl of stew. I cooked up a batch of sweet potato-lentil stew just now, and thought I'd share because it's just so darn good. It's cheap and very delicious. This recipe is one of my favorites from Alicia Silverstone's cookbook, The Kind Diet, which has been a nice addition to my cookbook library as I try to find more ways to add healthy meals to my diet. One thing you should know before I drop the recipe for you, is that I am a notorious non-recipe follower. If I don't like a step, I skip it. Sometimes, disastrous results ensue. Other times, delightful dinners, such as this one. I'm including my modifications in brackets.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup safflower oil (I used about 4 table spoons of sunflower oil because we didn't have safflower, and a quarter cup seemed excessive)
1 medium onion, diced
2 small tomatoes, diced (no tomatoes so substituted with a couple scoops of organic salsa from Whole Foods)
1 tsp fresh ginger
1 1/2 tsp tumeric
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground coriander (um what? Is this dried seeds or leaves? I didn't have any of this)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp cayanne
sea salt to taste (I added pepper too. And I had some lovely parsley so I threw that in as well.)
2-3 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed (Used 2 large because that's what I had.)
7 cups vegetable broth (Well, I only had 4 cups, so I just added more water, and a touch more salt.)
1 cup brown lentils

Heat oil in a deep pot (I used a big spaghetti pot). Cook the onion until soft, then stir in tomatoes (ahem, salsa) and ginger and cook for 3 min. Stir in all the seasonings and cook for 2 min. Add sweet potatoes, broth and lentils. Cook over high heat until boiling, then reduce heat, cover and simmer until lentils and sweet potatoes are soft. This makes 4-6 servings. Josh and I each ate a bowl of this, then I packed the rest away in single-serving containers for lunch through the week.