My body is rebelling.

Last night Andy and I completed Week 2, Day 2. It' seems to be getting easier. I'm not out of breath as easily and the time seems to pass pretty quickly. I think I've even noticed a change in my body. But holy hell do my legs hurt. I said before that my knees were hurting. Well, they didn't stop hurting. And the pain had translated into my shins and ankles. I think I'm tensing up from the pain in my knees and causing the rest of my legs to work harder. Different shoes might help, so I'm going to go in search of the perfect running shoes.

Andy thinks it's because my body isn't used to this and I should just work through the pain. I have conflicting feelings about that. While it's true I haven't had any trauma to my knees and I've never had knee problems in the past, I don't want to crunk up my body. My legs have always been the strongest part of me and I don't understand why this is happening now. I want to complete this program and continue running afterwards. I'm committed to it. I started it and I want to finish it. Just not at the expense of my knees. In all honesty, this morning they don't seem to be hurting as much. Just a little pain. So maybe Andy is right and they just need to build their strength back up. If anyone out there in cyber land has any knowledge or thought to pass on please leave me a comment.

In other parts of my body... my sweet tooth has been giving me quite the fit lately. Every other part of me says, "No! Resist the sugar! We are trying to get fit here!!" But that damn sweet tooth just won't shut up.

I've actually done pretty well considering that my love for all things sweet has been an all consuming part of my person ever since I can remember. And I've never gotten sick off of sweets. It seems like everyone has some story or another of when they ate to much of this or that and threw up all over the place. Not me. I've never eaten myself sick from sweets. Or from anything for that matter. I'm the thinnest fat person I know. Don't you worry though, it's been catching up with me the past couple of years. My middle is considerably larger than it used to be. Andy even suggested that once I start to loose weight my knees probably will stop hurting. For the good of our marriage I ignored that comment.

But alas, my sweet tooth and my love for baking are winning against my will power. I've been in the mood to bake lately. I'm thinking of having a baking marathon this weekend, and then promptly sending all the sweets to Alpine with Andy for all those college students to fuel themselves on. I will, of course, be keeping a couple for myself, but just a couple.

Last night I had a craving for lemon bars. I was browsing cooking blogs yesterday and I saw a picture of the most delicious looking lemon bars I have ever seen. Damn people and their fancy cameras that take pictures that make you want to lick the screen. As I didn't want to make a trip to the grocery store for all the fancy ingredients that went with that delectable picture, I looked up a good 'ole Paula Deen recipe instead. Quick, easy, and delicious, with enough butter to clog a major artery over night. So I whipped up a batch of Paula's lemon bars. I took them out of the oven right after I got dressed to go run. They were my incentive to finish the workout and not give into my throbbing lower limbs.

So without further ado, and because I started this blog with the intention of it being a cooking blog, here is the recipe:

Lemon Bars (FoodNetwork.com, Paula Deen)

Crust:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup confectioners sugar
pinch of salt
2 sticks butter, room temperature (plus more for greasing)

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9x13x2 baking dish, set aside. Mix together the first three ingredients, then cut in the butter until the dough becomes crumbly. Press the crust into the bottom of the baking dish. Bake for 20 minutes.

Filling:
4 eggs
2 cups granulated sugar
6 tablespoons all purpose flour
6 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (that's about 3 large lemons, but I used the kind out of the plastic lemon b/c I didn't have that many lemons on hand)

Blend all the ingredients together and pour over pre-baked crust. Put it back in the oven for another 25 minutes. Sprinkle with confectioners sugar before serving.

I recommend letting the bars cool at least 20 minutes before you try to serve them.

The lemon bars were very good. The only complaint that we had was that they sometimes seem more sweet than lemony. Next time I'm going to add some lemon zest into the crust mixture so that can be infused with lemon flavor too.