Rebuilding stamina and apple pickin'

Oh man, the 'joys' of being in the second week back from vacation and into your formal workouts.  Last week, I felt like I'd been dragged down a gravel road and we even "eased" back into them!  Two Walk Away the Pounds, two strength sessions (one free weight and one TRX/yoga) and one Turbo Fire. The first few days, we always feel the bloat will be there forever but by weeks end, we always feel more ourselves but not fast enough for my liking.  There's also that weird part of me that likes rebuilding the stamina I lost while on vacation.  It's not that we were in a car the whole time and not hiking or walking everywhere but it didn't balance with our whoopie pie ratio.  (What?  It's Maine's state treat, we felt it our duty to put various flavors to the test.)  

Sunday we decided to take an impromptu apple picking trip and make traipsing up and down super long orchard aisles with a heavy arse bag of apples our workout since it was such a perfect fall day.   I don't have any pics from the farm but here's our take from the orchard minus the two we ate for dinner that night...

We got Suncrisps, Winesaps, a few Romes and I think we got a Melrose or two.  I'm going to use the smaller ones for pie next month so I'll vacuum freeze those with pie spice and they'll be ready to roll when I am.  I'm thinking some apple butter is in order as well as maybe some applesauce to go with the stuffed pork chops I want to recreate from our trip.  Say it...you know you want to...

Pork chops and applesauuuuce.

We watched A Million Ways to Die in the West (affiliate link)  the other night.  Am I the only one that thinks Seth MacFarlane kind of looks like Christopher Knight (above)?  Never mind.  No, actually don't never mind, I did a search and a ton of comp pics came up...

(Source)

See, I knew I wasn't crazy!

Where was I?

Oh yeah, I'm gonna recreate some dishes from the trip.

Actually I already have a few times.  Our first morning back, I made blueberry pancakes and used up the rest of the Vermont maple syrup the lady gave us at the home we rented.  Then Sunday night, I did my version of a lobster roll using baby langostino since the meat tastes almost the same while saving some money.  I have to say my version was what I always thought they should taste like.  We're not down with cold meat on a lobster (or crab) roll.

For me, that's always a great thing about vacation as well.  If I find dishes I really enjoyed, I'll try to recreate them.  If we ordered something that sounded good in theory, I'll improve upon them and make the Mr shake his head in amazement and then tell me how much he'd pay for it if I sold it in a restaurant.  :-)

Vacations, especially regional ones, tend to re-spark my culinary fire!

Do vacations inspire you to recreate some of the items you enjoyed once you're home?  What are your favorite ways to use apples?

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