Nothing exciting to report today. I got to sleep at a more reasonable time last night and took the day off from exercising. For that, I was a bit more awake today. I felt that I had a bit more energy, but my legs were still a bit sore and stiff in the morning. Throughout the day, my legs started feeling better. I will take another day off from running and just do the gym tomorrow so that I can be refreshed for my 18 miler on Saturday. It should be pretty flat and easy and I shouldn't need any extra recovery time this week.
I failed at my second attempt today using a slow cooker. We have West Bend Slo-Cooker. I browned the top, bottom and sides of a 1-2 lb roast before putting it in the pot. Along with the roast, I added 4 medium white potatoes (cut into quarters) along with a bag of carrots. I covered everything with water and a packet of onion soup mix nearly to the top and put it on setting #1. It cooked for about 11 hours. I measured the temperature in the center and it was around 170. The roast came out surprising dry. I thought it would be moist as it was sitting in water all day. This turned out OK as we both like our meat dry. However, both the carrots and potatoes came out extremely undercooked. I guess the temperature never got high enough. We proceeded to nuke both for a very long time only to find that they were not really cooking any more. We then took the potatoes and wrapped them in aluminum foil and baked them at 475 for about an hour. They made a little progress, but were still undercooked. WTF?!? Very disappointing. As we both work long days and often don't feel like cooking when we get home, we need to figure this thing out. We definitely need some good recipes, but may also need to invest in a real crock pot instead of this slo-cooker unit we have. At the same time, I have the thought that if we can't get this working, why spend money on something else. The one thing that does make me thing an investment may pay off is that the slo-cooker has the heating element on the bottom only. No idea. If anyone would happen to read this and have any advice, I'm open to ideas.
Other then that, we watched the American Idol results show. Even though I'm a bit disappointed in the singers this season, I love watching this show. I think that there is definitely a line that separates the good from the great this season. I think Carly, David C., David A. and Brooke are the most talented and definitely my favorites.
The one show that like even better than American Idol is The Biggest Loser. I think this is such a great show, for various reasons. It just makes me so happy to see people that struggle with weight and self confidence problems to learn and "grow" throughout the season. It's amazing how much weight these people can and have lost. All they needed was some guidance. They needed to be taught the importance of exercise and just as importantly, they needed to learn about food. After every the show is over every week, I feel good. I'm so happy for these people. Good for them.
Well, it is getting late and I need to try getting some sleep. Unfortunately, I had some coffee late in the day that is keeping me awake to late tonight. I will again pay for this tomorrow. Oh well. I'm hoping to actually catch up on some sleep this weekend. As I've now officially signed up for the San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon, I'm quickly approaching 2 months until show time. I need to get my sleeping schedule back in line soon so I can start cutting back on caffeine. I'd like to be caffeine free for at least a little while before the start of that race. I also saw that registration for the lottery into St. George Marathon is May 1st. I need to get with the group so we can get our registrations in. I hope we get in again this year. That was a fun event last year.
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