in the mood for MEXICAN.

I've had a headache for almost two days :-/  I'm pretty sure I've figured out why: On Sunday at Yoga, I decided to try crow pose:

(source)

And I fell forward onto my head!  Oops.  I just laughed at the time, but... now it kind of hurts!  Advil doesn't seem to be helping all that much... I guess it's like any bruise, it just has to heal with time.  Oh well!

Back to food!  Apparently, cheese quesadillas I ate yesterday just brought out a craving in me for Mexican.  Luckily, Vegetarian Week had plenty of recipes to oblige.
Last night, I prepared part of my lunch: Fire-Roasted Tomato Gazpacho.  I've been looking forward to this recipe for a while.  I considered making it back in the spring, but I lacked a food processor.  Now that I have my awesome blender, I was better equipped to make gazpacho!  First, I had to peel my cucumber, with my brand new peeler!

My peeler worked so well, it was so easy!  Yayy!  Next, I chopped up everything and threw it into my blender.

Puree for about 30 seconds, and you are good to go!  I put my blender into the fridge to blend flavors before packing it up.

I was so excited, I had to have a taste as I was packing it up.  It was deeelicious.

Of course, at 50 calories per serving, there's no way I could have gazpacho on it's own for lunch.  Cue cheese enchiladas.

First thing to note about the cheese enchiladas: I think this is the first time I have ever eaten cottage cheese.  I was always grossed out by the texture and look of it - so I assumed I wouldn't like it.  Now, within one day, I think I'm addicted!  It's so good - even by the spoonful!
Now, the cottage cheese was a good discovery, but it pales in comparison to the overall deliciousness of the cheese enchilada.  When you look at the "food I've cooked" tab on my blog, you'll find my rating system for food.  I try to give honest opinions about every recipe, and so over the past 116 recipes I've only given 6 A Minuses, 9 A's, and 3 A+.  Because A is defined as "This is so delicious, I'm kind of pissed I can't just eat it for the next 6 meals straight."  Ladies and gentlemen, these cheese enchiladas were a SOLID A+.  I came home from school this evening and sulked over having to make anything BUT another cheese enchilada.  The Taco Sauce is the jam.  THREE types of cheese, including my new star ingredient cottage cheese.  Overall, just, amazing.
Easy too.  Chop up your ingredients, put everything in the tortilla:

Wrap it up, pour taco sauce on top, top with cheese...

and bake for 15 minutes.  Oh man.  It. Was. Incredible.

I feel the need to say that it was better than it looks... I realize now that this picture does not look as appetizing as I'm describing, but trust me, you wish you were eating one right now.

Alas, I have 182 recipes to cook and 194 days to do it... so it was time to keep moving.  Tonight for dinner I made Fettuccine with Spring Veggies.  Except - shockingly - I used spaghetti instead of fettuccine, because that's what was in the pantry.  This is a great cold pasta for a hot day.  It has lots of vegetables,

Woohoo, veggies!  And the combination or pepper, oregano, and grated Parmesan gave it some great flavor.

Annnd a close up:

In other news, I went for a 2 mile run with M this morning.  Although the daytime highs are still pretty hot, it's finally feeling cooler in the morning!  I love not dripping in sweat 2 minutes into my run :-)  We went fairly slow - 11:30 pace... but M is convinced that the hills on our morning running route really slow us down.  Our race plan suggested we take Thursday off to rest before the race (we may cross-train with a walk or spin class or something else instead), so this was my LAST RUN before my FIRST RACE.  I'm getting excited for the race!