A Nice Night at Home

I sort of fell off the boat this week with my running schedule. The insane heat in the apartment Monday through Wednesday made the thought of exercising and having to come back home not very appealing. Also, Jesse was gone and sometimes I need a running buddy to get out the door. Not all is lost though! I went for a 1.5 mile run yesterday and my time was significantly less than last week. Even though my schedule indicates that I should have a rest day between runs, I'm going out again today. My legs aren't tired and my energy is good. I think the rest days will probably be more important if ever manage to run more than 2 miles at a time.

After my run, I had a conference call to discuss the upcoming team interview for the survey project on Monday. It's going to be a relatively quick interview, 15 minutes for a presentation and a 30 minute question and answer section. I still think we have a really good chance, but the competition is pretty stiff.I didn't worry about the competition for too long, because I was eager to start on dinner!

On Wednesday, I picked up a couple of beautiful pieces of halibut at a local meat market and couldn't wait to get them in a pan. I also picked up a couple of sweet potatoes and some fresh watercress. For some reason, I remembered watercress tasting quite different. I was shocked when I bit into a leaf just before serving and it tasted surprisingly like a radish -- sharp and hot. I panicked because I also had radishes sliced for the salad. I threw the watercress in a pan to wilt it slightly with the hope of mellowing out the spicy bite. While they mellowed, the texture was never quite right, they were a bit chewy afterward. I'm going to have to work on my watercress skills in the future. The radishes were delicious though, with just a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and rice vinegar.

I sliced the sweet potatoes into shoestrings and tossed them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic and baked them. If we were expecting fries (which I wasn't), they would have been a little disappointing -- they aren't crunchy at all. However, the flavor was out of this world. And the halibut, oh the halibut. It was so good that I savored every bite. We pan cooked it in just a little olive oil, salt, and pepper and served it with a dollop of leftover chimicurri sauce over the watercress and radish salad. It was the perfect springtime/summer meal; fresh, light, and incredibly tasty.