Chicken and Barley Slow Cooker Soup

This weekend was a snowy and cold one for us! We got close to 15cm of snow along with -25 with wind chill temperatures. Oh, the life in Alberta! Because of that, I tried to stay at home and much as possible, so most of my Sunday was spent catching up on chores and making some delicious soup to get us through the week. I've been craving some hearty chicken soup for the last few months plus I had a bag of barley lying around, so my recipe decision was an easy one!

Here are all the things you need:

- Carrots

- Celery

- Onion (I love LOTS of onion)

- Uncooked chicken breasts

- Left over/frozen chicken and veggie scraps to make the broth.

- Thyme

- Salt

- Pepper

- Barley

Directions:

1) First things first, I make a chicken and veggie broth in the crock pot. In order to do that, I fill the crock pot to it's max limit, and add frozen chicken bones and frozen veggie scraps. Whenever we have a pre-cooked chicken I always save the bones and scrapes and put them in the freezer to future broth making. Same with veggies, I always keep the ends and scrapes that you would normally throw away in the freezer along with the chicken.

2) Let the chicken and veggie scraps simmer in the crockpot for 3-4 hours on low. One that is done, you can strain the water to get the bones and veggies out of the broth. You then will have your delicious broth base for your soup!

3) Once the broth is strained, cut up your chicken breasts into small cubes and throw it in as well as all of your veggies and barley. 

4) Set your slow cooker on low for about 6 hours and the wait is on! I usually like to set all of this up late at night and let it cook until I get up in the morning. (Shows you how little sleep I get) haha

5) Once it is ready, let it cool and start filling up medium sized mason jars. I can usually get 5 or 6 mason jars out of one slow cooker recipe.

As you will notice, I don't have any measurements in my ingredients list. To be honest, I'm the worst cook ever when it comes to that. But the good thing about slow cooker soup is you can usually get away without measuring anything. I mean, you can always use extra veggies right?!

Enjoy my friends!

Mountain View

Don't forget to stop and embrace the beauty around you!

Went out to the mountains again this past weekend and enjoyed every minute of it. I'm so lucky to be able to visit a place like this and have it so close to home.

Triathlon training: Week 3

Well, I believe the habit of going gym almost every day has FINALLY set in! I actually look forward to going to the gym each day after work, which makes training so much easier. Maybe that 21 day habit rule is actually true!

Here is where I am at with each category so far:

- Running 3km

- Biking 10km

- Swimming 800m

Lets start with the running. 

I've haven't made much improvement at all in that category and I'm not sure if I'm just not running enough or what. I also play soccer twice a week which is great, but that is anaerobic cardio not aerobic which is what I need to train. You want to run sprints? I'm your gal. But you make me run consistent speed long distance? heck to the no. Will have to try and kick that up a notch here soon.

The biking has been a bit easier for me. Not sure if I'm just not working hard enough but I swear I could go longer than 10km. The problem is, my fiance and I are trying to do the biking and running while keep our heart rates low. That has been the most difficult part, trying to train our body not to freak out and make our heart rate sky rocket. I believe that 10km I did was in about half an hour and I kept my heart rate under 125. Could still use a ton of improvement, but I feel a lot better than when I started.

The swimming has actually been my favourite so far. But let me tell you, before we started this training, I hated swimming with every fiber in my being. I would swim 20m and feel like I'm dying. However, this has been my most improved area of training by far. I still can only swim 50m without stopping for a few seconds, but my biggest workout so far has been 800m and I am darn proud of that! Swimming is such a full body workout and I love the low resistance on my body. 

Overall,  I'm pretty impressed with how we are doing on only week 3. Tomorrow is a rest day, we are hanging with some friends and I will probably have a glass of wine. Oh how I've missed you!