Ginger Basil Salmon with Garlic Roasted Broccoli & Peppers

This past week was kind of a rough one on me. I'm activated in the substitute teacher call list for a school district about 25-30 minutes away. After a few weeks, no one had been asking for subs and I felt like that was all just a colossal waste of time and money on my part to get certified (after six months here, my only income has been infrequent tutoring and working a couple of college games here and there).

Anyways, I got a call Wednesday night to sub for a first grade class and accepted on the spot. School started at 9:05 a.m., and subs have to check in 30 minutes prior to obtain keys, lesson plans, etc. So basically I had to leave my house at 8 in order to arrive at 8:30 a.m. It was alright, the kids were fun but stretching out lesson plans to fill the entire day was overwhelming and exhausting! Luckily she had a student teacher who helped me get my bearings and taught the math hour of the day. All the coloring, singing and clapping really had my head spinning ;)

Then after school I had another call, I could choose between a sixth grade (elementary school) class, or 7th-8th grade (junior high) science. Without hesitation I opted for the junior high class. However, school starts at 7:20 a.m. at both the middle and high schools in that district. Ugh, that meant I had to check in at 6:50 a.m., leaving my house at 6:20 a.m., and thus waking up around 5:45 a.m. after showering the night before.

Needless to say I was exhausted. And now I think I'm getting a little sick from all the sick student teachers, co-workers and kids. Just two days and my body can't take it, ha! But the real reason I wanted to sub is coming soon! I'm on the primary call list for the ONLY French teacher in the district and I will be filling in for her in February. I can't wait! High school makes me nervous, but the middle schoolers all kept telling me how pretty and nice I was, and kept trying to guess my age... I remember my substitute teacher experiences in middle school to be horrendous. At least I didn't suffer the same fate as many of the fill-in teachers we had back then.

So all this talk about kids and education and learning... I just want something adult to eat and talk about :) Which is why I bring you my recipe for Ginger Basil Salmon with Garlic Roasted Broccoli & Peppers!

Ginger Basil Salmon

Ingredients:

• 1 medium salmon fillet
• 1 t minced garlic
• 1 t fresh minced ginger
• 2 T olive oil
• 1/2 t red wine vinegar
• 4 T chopped basil
• salt and pepper for seasoning

Directions:

Make hash marks on both sides of the salmon, season with salt and pepper and set aside. Mix all marinade ingredients in a large bowl. Add the salmon and coat both sides, stuffing the marinade into the cuts on the fillet. Cover and let sit for one hour in refrigerator before grilling.

Garlic Roasted Broccoli & Peppers:

Ingredients:

• 5 c chopped broccoli
• 1 c sliced red and yellow peppers
• 2 1/2 T olive oil, divided
• 2 T minced garlic
• Pinch of red pepper flakes

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450°F. Toss broccoli, peppers and 2 T olive oil in large bowl to coat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Transfer to baking dish. Roast 15 minutes. Top broccoli and pepper with remaining 1/2 tablespoon oil, garlic and red pepper flakes. Stir vegetables well until coated. Roast until broccoli is beginning to brown, about 5 minutes longer. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

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I served my salmon over a bed of quinoa and enjoyed the meal with a glass of Pinot Grigio :) It was heavenly. And on the bright side, I start my job with the Diamondbacks NEXT MONDAY -- in EIGHT days!!! I cannot wait. Until then, I'll be doing a lot more tutoring, subbing and working college athletic events. I'm a busy girl :)

Sometimes it just takes a restless dog

I'm happy to report that I actually RAN this morning. But it wasn't a one-person effort.

Not only did J.D. remind me that I had to get up and run, but Woodstock wouldn't sleep all night. He woke up around 5:30 this morning and kept waking me up periodically until 6:45 a.m. At that point, I'd had enough and decided just to go out and run already!

So thank you, Woodstock. This is only like my third morning run in the last two years. Impressive, right?

After the run, I poured myself a filled-to-the-brim glass of water, pounded it down, and then refilled it again. It went with my bowl of Blueberry Smart Start that I jazzed up with one of my favorite things of all time: white peaches and craisins.

Yeah, I stole that Oakland A's glass from a bar. I have a matching set. It's a bad habit. I'm not trying to quit.

Also if you're wondering about my co-dependence for crêpes and why I didn't have one for breakfast this morning, you've brought up a sore subject and maybe I'm shedding a few tears again. So thank you. No, but seriously, I'm an idiot and was soooo excited to eat my crêpe last night that I forgot to both clean up but also cover the leftovers and put them in the fridge. Bye bye, tower of 12 extra crêpes.

It's probably for the best anyways, since I probably would have found a way to eat them all before 4 p.m. today. Then I would have felt sick and disgusting before my party tonight. Good call, forgetful past Monique.

And now, I'm going to demolish the leftover Indian food at my desk.

Do you usually workout in the morning or evenings? And do you bring leftovers to work/class, or do you prefer to go out for meals?

Enjoy your afternoons, everyone! xx ♥

What do you do at work??

I'll get to that in a second. Mainly because my day is a frenzy of activity and I'm just trying to break it up a little bit.

It got started on the right foot this morning as I had prepared my FIRST EVER batch of overnight oats in advance to eat this morning. Now I'm going to be honest, the idea sounded extremely disturbing to me. Let oats soak up liquid all night and become a big soggy mess?! Well, it didn't. It was just like eating oatmeal, but it was refreshing like cold cereal! I was fairly impressed that all my components remained as is, or even got better as they marinated. My walnuts kept their crunch and the craisins rehydrated like magic!

Please excuse the iPhone photos, I totally forgot my camera and left it at work overnight.

Monique's first OVERNIGHT OATS:

• 1/3 c oats
• 2/3 c soy milk
• 1 t lemon curd
• 1/2 scoop Aria vanilla protein powder
• 1/2 scoop ground flax seeds
• handful chopped walnuts
• handful craisins

I put it all together last night and left it in the fridge until this morning. And here's the before/after shots:

Runny, mixed and not so overnight oats

Fluffed up just like real oatmeal! I also downed it with a mini glass of Green Goodness juice.

MY DAY

Today I packed up and headed to work around 9:20 a.m. Please don't judge me, I can be very lazy in the mornings. I like to wake up around 7:30ish, but today slept in well past my alarm. Usually, I'll feed the dog, take him out, make my breakfast, peruse blogs then shower and dry/straighten my hair. So over the summer, I'm out the door anywhere from 9 to 9:30 a.m. We have VERY shortened summer hours, so M-Th I'll leave around 4 p.m., but on Fridays I'm home at 1 p.m. for a loooong weekend.

Now, let me explain WHY I haven't been fired have such limited hours. During the academic year, we have 16 Division I sports running from August to the end of May. I have to be at every home game to help run stats and on the road I'll travel to all my teams' games and do radio broadcasts. Bear in mind games are nights and weekends, so this is all on top of the 40 hours a week I put in at the office during the school year. When the fall/winter or winter/spring sports cross over, we can have as many as six events going at a time on a typical weekend. The three-weeks of crossover we have between each three seasons is killer.

So today's probably one of the biggest days I'll have during the summer. It's the final round of the 2010 MLB First Year Player Draft.

This year, five of my players have already been taken in the draft. So I'm huddled at my desk with the minute-by-minute draft updater window open. It took several hours yesterday and will keep going on into this afternoon.

When one of players' names is called, I need to start writing in our website editor ASAP.

Then I search through all my photos to find appropriate art for our homepage

Finally, I send out my final story when it's finished to all the media, and then respond to the MILLIONS of media requests I'll get. Yesterday, each team called asking for me to send head shots of my players to put on their official sites. Then all the guys' hometown newspapers flooded my phone/inbox asking for artwork and to see if I could arrange interviews with both the player and our head coach.

And then, right before lunch, I got to see a college senior sign a contract with his area scout. Yep, I witnessed someone sign a contract as a 21-year old who's currently making more money than I am!

It's a long process, but I really like doing it! We're about to head out to an office lunch soon and then this afternoon I'll start updating all my players' biographies on our official website. This takes a lot of research from their season stats and game-highs, etc. But I have two more months to work on my three sports: soccer, basketball and baseball.

Now you have sort of an idea of what a DI sports information director does during the summer!

What do you do for a living and does your workload increase/decrease over the summer??