How I burned myself on V day

Last weekend on Valentines Day, D and I decided to go for a hike in the Tucson Mountains up the Hugh Norris trail. The weather was great, sunny with a brisk breeze, warm enough for shorts but cold enough that the bugs or snakes weren't out.  The trailhead was out past Saguaro National Park West, down a bit of a jutty dirt road.  The first part of the hike was all switchbacks, which reminded me of hiking the Havasupai Canyon trail or doing the stairstepper for an hour. The trail started to even out a bit, but it was still climbing up. You could see a good chunk of west Tucson from the trail, the views were fantastic. As I am a bit out of shape I was huffing pretty hard going up the trail and thinking that I should have worked out a bit more consistently and I wouldn't be in such bad shape on this hike as my husband leaves me in the dust.

 Halfway down the trail I made D pause to take this photo.

We reached a sign that pointed out that we had only gone 2.7 miles!! I thought for sure we had gone 5 miles by then, we had hiked for 1 1/2 hours already, ugh. I really was walking slow.   Two other groups of hikers showed up at that same junction from different directions to look at the sign, so we asked about the Wasson Peak point that were hiking towards, and we got some impressed looks after we told them which direction we came from (I guess there is an easier climb up?), but that it was another 2.2 miles. At that point we decided it was time to head back, so we went back the way we came to avoid getting lost, and headed down to Barrio Brew for lunch and a beer.  After that, we headed home and crashed. 

Isn't that view gorgeous? I'm not just talking about the boy..

Later  on I realized I was very burned on one side of my body despite my dilligent sunscreen efforts, and had lobster chest for a few days, but it was fun!!

Pumpkin is just another squash

Last night we had stirfry - chicken, brown rice, red pepper flakes, curry powder, celery, fresh green beans, canned tomatoes, an onion, one carrot and some stirfry sauce. This concoction turned out pretty good, which I guess proves that you can really make stirfry out of anything.

For tonite's dinner, I had a small sugar pumpkin that I was going to make a pie with, but instead decided to cook and puree it, mix it with some butter, red pepper flakes, nutmeg, a pinch of sugar,  parm cheese, salt/pepper, and a bit o bacon bits. I can't believe I was ever afraid to do anything to a pumpkin other than carve it for Halloween. This was my first experience cooking with pumpkin, and I will do it again. It is so pretty and orange, and tastes great, so I will definitely cook with it again.  D doesn't like the concoction so much and is having the left over stirfry for dinner instead.

 I found this pic, my pasta wasn't nearly as pretty.

The fridge is getting empty, and my lunches are getting weirder. I have been eating applesauce, hummus and celery, and lara bars for lunch all week.