I can't be sick!

I felt perfectly fine yesterday morning.  I felt great during Pilates class.  Sometime during the hour after Pilates when I was walking around the farmer's market, I started feeling a touch of a sore throat.  When I came home, I downed some Cold F/X and after a quick BBQ lunch, I had a short nap in hopes of avoiding sickness.  We put up our outdoor Christmas decorations while the weather was in our favour (we won't turn the lights on until December, but we have to take advantage of nice weather to get the lights up!). 

By the time I went to bed last night, I knew that I was sick.  I had plans to meet my running partner this morning for a short run, so I decided to take my chances and hope that the fresh air would be good for me and perhaps I could sweat out some cold germs.  I don't know if that happened, but I'm very glad I went out to run this morning, I definitely felt better afterwards (and certainly not worse).

I take my workouts very easy when I'm sick (and obviously take complete rest days if necessary).  I haven't been taking walk breaks lately during my runs, but today I definitely did (and needed them!).  For the first 20 minutes of my run, I did 5 minutes of running with 1 minute of walking.  Then my training partner joined me and since she's recovering from surgery, we started with a 5 minute walk, followed by intervals of 2 minutes running and 2 minutes walking until our cooldown walk at the end.  I think it was exactly what I needed today.

I'll tell you what else I need, I need to bake more scones like these!!

Gingerbread Scones

These scones were fabulous (if I do say so myself).  Of course, the melted butter and fresh blueberry jam probably helped increase the yumminess factor).  I made them for breakfast yesterday morning and they are all gone!

I took a plain scone recipe and made it a bit fancier:

1 3/4 cups flour
3 T sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup cold butter or margarine
1 large egg
1/2 cup dried berries (I used a mixture of dried blueberries, cherries, currents, raisins, etc)
4 to 6 T half-and-half (which I never have, so I subbed butter pecan creamer lol)
1 generous tsp gingerbread spices (I had this blend on hand, the recipe didn't call for any spices, but I think pumpkin pie spice or apple pie spice would be very nice with the dried fruit too)
sugar for sprinkling

1. preheat oven to 400
2. Mix flour, 3T sugar, baking powder, salt and spices.
3. Cut in butter until fine crumb stage (I use my mixer to do this and it works perfectly, so much easier than using a pastry blender)
4. Stir in egg, dried fruit, and just enough milk (or creamer) to form dough ball; be careful not to over mix
5. Remove dough and knead a bit if necessary (I did not do additional hand-kneading since I used my mixer)
6. Roll into 8-inch circle on parchment or silpat, cut into 8 wedges
7. Brush with milk and sprinkle sugar on top
8. Bake 14 to 16 minutes.  Remove from pan and separate wedges

I think I will need to bake another batch next Saturday morning :)

Weekly Workouts

Sunday - 62:15 Outside Run/Walk
(Part 1: 2:00 warmup, 17:00 of intervals of 5:1;
Part 2: 5:00 warmup, 32:00 of intervals of 2:2, 5:00 cooldown)