Monthly Archives: December 2013

Ringing in the New Year with a PR

Happy New Year’s Eve! I hope everyone has a fun and safe night to bring in the new year!

A lot of people are doing reflections on the new year posts, but to be honest, I just don’t see the need, since I basically did the same thing for my Blogiversary. I’m also not really doing New Year’s Resolutions this year. I have some general goals and ideas of things I want to do or change in the future, but it’s more of a concept and the fact that I have no idea where my future lies in terms of exercise.

Image

(Not relevant but I had to share this picture.)

I could set running goals, but I really don’t know what my running future holds. I want to PR a 5k this winter. I’m signed up for a half in April and am planning on one in the summer. But here’s the thing. I’m REALLY loving 5k training and speedwork and running fast. It’s fun. And right now it’s a little hard to look past the constant pain in my feet. I have tendonitis in my achilles, which is straining my feel and part of my arch, which is really painful. And that doesn’t include my mystery pain and numbness that comes with longer distances. I have a doctor’s appointment in a couple of weeks to hopefully begin treatment, but once again, it’s hard to look past this issue which for some reason popped up in the last couple of months. My 10 mile run a couple of weeks ago was painful and pretty much demolished my feet. In addition, I’m starting to get serious about teaching spin, and I have no clue where I want my weight lifting to go. 

But let’s back it up a little, shall we?

Yesterday morning I went to an abs class, which was really hard and I’m currently suffering from the aftermath. Then, I took some of my high school friends over to my college campus for a hike.

ImageImageImage

We tried to eat lunch at a couple of places on campus, but everything was closed. We ended up going off campus and making an amazing discovery-a little place that was pretty much an Indian food version of Chipotle! You could choose a bowl or a burrito type of thing, and choose rice, meat, sauces, and veggies.

Image

My masterpiece was a bowl with brown rice, chicken, tikka sauce, yogurt sauce, date sauce, and veggies. So delicious! 

Then, we finally tried a fancy gourmet ice cream place called the Tin Pot. I sampled sweet cream with balsamic swirl, but ended up deciding on the San Francisco chocolate Tcho ice cream. Such a good decision.

Image

All the ingredients were local, and the texture was insanely smooth. And in the cone was a little surprise-they fill the bottom of the cone with chocolate to keep the ice cream from dripping, and the chocolate at the bottom of our cones was still warm and gooey. 

That evening, I was off to Crossfit for Crossfit totals, with dreams of PRing. Crossfit totals is basically taking one rep maxes of the back squat, press, and deadlift. 

I haven’t done a ton of max lifting in the last year and a half, and I’m definitely lacking mentally here. It’s silly, but I get nervous for the lifts. However, after failing to PR my backsquat, probably due to lack of focus and losing some of my form, the nervousness turned to fire. I PRed my press my 10 pounds, and my deadlift by 30 pounds! For anyone interested, my total was 495 lbs, which is all the maxes of the three lifts added together. I’m really happy about this-I also feel that I would get a lot stronger at my home Crossfit. I may try the weightlifting class at my school Crossfit though. I love power lifting and I don’t think I get to do it quite as much at my school Crossfit. Anyways, this was a great end to 2013. It was funny-I only did a few reps of each exercise in the hour, and felt simultaneously like I was totally normal yet I was about to fall over. Lifting heavy is a strange thing! Dinner afterwards was a good one-turkey burgers with brussels sprouts and parmesan, and sweet potato rounds. 

Image

This morning, I went back to Crossfit to tackle “Murph.” Murph is a hero workout, meaning it was named after a fallen soldier. Hero workouts are usually long and brutal. This one?

1 mile run

100 pull ups

200 push ups

300 squats

1 mile run

This might be one of my favorite Crossfit workouts ever. And I’m glad I was able to do it at home! There’s a lot of strategy involved with pacing. I did the first mile in 8:36, which I was super happy about because it felt good, and means my speed work is probably paying off! I broke the middle part into 20 rounds of 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, and 15 squats. The pull ups were with a fairly light band, and the push ups were form my knees since we have to touch our chests all the way to the ground! The squats made my legs very heavy by the end! I had to push hard to make the 45 minute cut off, and finished my last mile under 9:00, so that my overall time was 44:29. Another great workout conquered!

I spent the rest of the morning helping my mom take my kitties to the vet. Charlie is the biggest scaredy cat, and it was quite the task getting him into his crate. In the vet’s office, he hid in under the table the whole time. It’s so sad!

Image

When we returned, lunch was leftover butternut squash soup with cheese and crackers. 

Image

I guess I don’t want to set any fitness goals because I don’t know what my future holds. After my halfs, I may be done with distance running, at least for a while. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll run a marathon. I don’t want to torture myself through tons of long distances if my feet can’t take it! 

In terms of life goals, I guess I don’t see it as much as a new year, but more as a new quarter in school. In general, I just want to be more put together. I want my room organized, my homework always done ahead of time, productive hours in the library, healthy and balanced meals. I guess I also want to spend less time on my phone or the Internet-it makes me a little more unaware of the world, and my attention span is currently non-existent. I think I’d prefer to set aside a particular amount of time for reading blogs or social media, instead of having it leak into my life. 

As for tonight? My friend and I are going to San Francisco, which I am insanely excited about! 

Have an amazing night and be safe!

Butternut Squash Soup with Citrus Cranberry Relish

Ok. This may come as a big surprise, but I have some recipes to share with you! To be fair, they’re from my grandma. But I’ve been doing some more interesting cooking!

Image

On the fitness front, I’ve had a couple of rough Crossfit workouts, and then this morning I went to a spin class with one of my favorite instructors, which was awesome, and followed it with my new favorite treadmill run. If you’re interested, here it is!

Image

I love intervals because it is much easier for me mentally to push myself for a shorter amount of time. I just plug in my audiobook and zone out-right now I’m listening to Divergent-has anyone read it? I really like it!

Back to food-I have a couple of things to catch you guys up on!

The other night for dinner, we roasted up a spaghetti squash and made homemade marinara sauce with fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic, and olive oil, topped with fresh mozzarella.

Image

Yesterday, my family went to the farmer’s market and picked up a few things-most notably dried persimmons and Afghan food, which has served as a couple of lunches these past two days.

Image

This is spinach and pumpkin bolani-the sauces are unpictured.

For dinner last night, I made stuffed sweet potatoes, filled with an over easy egg, gruyere, and sauteed kale. With a side of broccoli, ketchup, and fig balsamic tapenade.

Image

Last night, I also prepped a big bowl of overnight oats made with frozen cherries and cherry greek yogurt. I think I’m going to do overnight oats more next quarter because it’s a pretty complete breakfast and I can just take a bite here or there pre or post workout.

Image

And now for the recipes! My grandma made both the soup and relish for Thanksgiving this year, and I gobbled up the leftovers. The citrus cranberry relish has been a staple at Thanksgiving or Christmas for as long as I can remember, and the soup was a new addition this year because my grandma knew I am in love with butternut squash soup!

Cranberry Relish with Orange 

(From Mark Bittman’s Cookbook)

Image

1 large navel orange

4 c (about a bag) fresh cranberries

1/3-1/2 c sugar or to taste

Instructions:

1.Remove orange zest and set apart. Remove and discard white part of orange and separate orange into sections discarding white part.

2. Put orange zest and flesh in food processor with cranberries and sugar-chop.

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

(From Jeanne Lemlin’s Veg. Classics)

Image

2 T olive oil

2 medium onions, finely diced

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 T minced fresh ginger root

1 T curry powder

4 c water

7-8 c peeled, seeded, and diced butternut squash (about 1 large 3 lb squash)

2 t sugar

1 1/4 t salt

1 (14 oz) can coconut milk

2 T lemon juice

Instructions:

1. Warm oil in large stockpot over med heat. Stir in the onions, garlic, and ginger root and cook 5 mins. Sprinkle on curry powder and cook 1 min, tossing constantly.

2. Pour in water and bring to boil. Mix in the squash, sugar, and salt, and lower heat to a lively simmer. Cook 30 min or until squash is very tender. Pour in coconut milk and simmer 5 mins. Stir in lemon juice.

3. Puree soup in blender (let cool a little first).

My favorite way to eat this is topped with creme fraiche and the above cranberry relish!

Image

In other baking news, I was looking through Cooking Light and made the spur of the moment decision to make the Triple Chocolate Muffins.

Image

I think this was a good recipe, but I went wrong by using whole wheat pastry flour in place of normal-as a result the muffins were a bit dry and crumbly. I usually don’t think twice about swapping the two flours, but I guess most of my baking is banana bread, or variations on banana bread, and the banana gives it a little extra moisture.

Image

On the life front, I spent most of the day trying to figure classes, declaring major, spin jobs. I think I found a couple of places to apply once I do my CPR certification this week, but one of them I think is a pretty long shot. 

Have a great week everybody! Anybody have exciting plans for New Year’s? I currently do not-but I’m working on it!

DIY Canvas Prints

Hey guys! Today I want to share with you how I made the presents I gave everyone this year!

Image

But first, since I claim to be a food and fitness blog, let’s go over some food and fitness, shall we?

Image

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with trying actual recipes for brussels sprouts-you know, instead of just in the microwave. We made Christine‘s Garlic Balsamic Roasted Brussels Sprouts. They were delicious-the balsamic gave them a wonderfully sweet tang, which was definitely different than I’ve had before. We had these with leftover Christmas chicken. And ketchup. Duh.

 Image

This morning I woke up way too early for a spin class, and followed that with an interval treadmill run. I did the same workout last week after spin, and the good news is it felt much easier this week! I did one mile at an 8:00 pace, since this is about race pace for my 5k and I just need to get used to pacing myself at that speed. Then, I did 10 rounds of 2 minutes at 7:30 and 2 minutes walking. I covered about 5 miles in total.

Post workout breakfast-pumpkin spice Siggi’s! How cool is that?? I wish I had discovered this in my crazy pumpkin phase!

Image

Aaaand lunch-after a much needed nap-leftover chili with added spinach.

Image

And leftover blueberry coffee cake.

Image

Ok-now for the crafting!

I used this article for the instructions, but I’ll elaborate a bit more.

What you need-canvas, mod podge, sandpaper (optional), black paint, brushes, foam brush. Not too hard-one stop shopping!

First, chose a picture and crop or edit as needed, and print to fit the canvas size (I used 8×8 canvases). This step was especially hard and frustrating for me because our printer flat out stinks, and 5 different ink cartridges had to be cartridges. The fact that that thing even has 5 cartridges says enough about it!

Cut the picture, preferably with a paper cutter, to fit the canvas exactly. 

Rub the canvas with sandpaper, and then use the foam brush to brush with mod podge.

Place your picture on the canvas and let dry for about an hour. 

Once dry, use the foam brush to brush the top with mod podge.

The avocado was my tester photo:

Image

Then, paint the sides of the canvas with black acrylic paint and let dry. 

Image

There are several different types of mod podge-for the tester photo (the avocado), I used matte finish, but I used glossy finish for the actual gifts. They have various other types of finish-even sparkly finish! I think I liked the look of the matte a little better, and would probably use that in the future. Here are the finished products!

ImageImageImage

Overall, I was very happy with how they came out! My roommate and I are thinking about making some food pictures for our walls.

Image

 

 

 

Visiting Reindeer and Other Christmas Festivities

I hope that everyone had a fabulous holiday!

I feel like it’s been such a long time since I last blogged! I’m going to try to keep this mostly to pictures so I don’t bore you too much!

On Monday night I made gingerbread with this super delicious and healthy recipe! Zucchini? Count me in! It gave the bread the perfect moistness.

Image

Image

On Christmas Eve, I woke up early to go to Crossfit-it was a quick one and I was out nice and early so we could head up to San Francisco. 

Image

We went to the California Academy of Sciences to see the Christmas exhibit I’ve heard about on the radio every year. 

Reindeer!

ImageImage

There was also an indoor snow exhibit-yes in California, we go to Museums for snow. 

Inside the Museum was an amazing hidden restaurant called the Moss Room. I decided to get a salad, butternut squash soup with maple creme fraiche, as well as a side of brussels sprouts. Because you better believe anytime I see them on the menu, that’s what I’m getting!

ImageImageImage

For dinner, we went to Benihana’s, as we do every Christmas Eve. For those that are not familiar, Benihana’s is a Japanese restaurant where the chefs cook in front of you on the table.

Image

AMAZING fried rice, ginger salad, and shrimp.

Image

Since my sister’s boyfriend (and I!) loves blueberries, we made blueberry crisp, while whipping up Christmas morning breakfast and watching Elf. Since everybody loves Elf, I decided we needed to watch it again. It was adorable, and a great Christmas Eve movie.

Image

Image

And then stockings were hung. Guess who has the “Naughty” stocking? That would be my little trouble maker of a cat, Lilly. Let’s just say she’s earned the title.

Image

However, not sure if the cookies ever made it to Santa, thanks to our little elf who came after dark…

Image

We actually stayed up past midnight on Christmas Eve watching baby videos, since my sister had her boyfriend over. We watched more videos on Christmas, and let me just say-I missed my calling! I was clearly a natural ballerina. At least for a 4 year old. Now I kind of really want to take a ballet class! It’s the only type of dance I could even potentially do because it’s the only one that allows or even requires rigidity! 

On Christmas morning, I wrapped up some last minute presents for my family. I made them canvas pictures-I’ll do a separate post on that DIY project.

Image

For breakfast, we made a gruyere, mushroom, and tomato breakfast casserole which was assembled the night before.

Image

We also had some expensive blueberry coffeecake that had been frozen. It was good but probably would have been better fresh! Plus melon balls and a side of Christmas tree.

Image

And chocolate orange. Because Christmas is one of those days when candy for breakfast is totally acceptable. Hey-it was in my stocking!

Image

I have to share with you guys some pictures of the cat I’m cat-sitting. He’s the sweetest, hugest, fluffiest orange kitty. He purrs the entire time I’m there, and has the most beautiful fur.

ImageImage

And then, it was off to Grandma’s house!

ImageImage

My Grandma outdid herself yet again with the food. She made 3 entrees-chicken (above), pork chops, and eggplant parmesan. 

Image

Stuffed mushrooms, chocolate cake, blueberry pie, and my Grandma’s dog Molly.

Image

ImageImage

Rumpldy Thump-mashed potatoes, broccoli, and cheese sauce. 

ImageImageImageImageImage

 

Christmas was really nice. It was pretty low key this year, so there isn’t to much of an after-Christmas lull. Plus, today we were back in San Francisco!

This morning, I went to Crossfit, then yoga. I did a mile on the treadmill in between-I ran a mile and then wanted to incline walk for a few minutes, but my achilles tendons weren’t having it. I don’t know why I’m having such bad tendonitis now-I haven’t had problems in over 10 years, plus I reduced my mileage a lot recently! Any advice for how to treat it would be welcome.

Anyways, my family went to San Francisco for lunch and to see a musical.

ImageImage

The noodles were deliciously garlic-y and I’m sure my family loved me the rest of the day.

We saw the Book of Mormon, which was really good! It sells out so quickly, and we got tickets this year as soon as they were available.

Image

We had a great couple of days-hope you all did as well!

How was your holiday? What did you do?

MIMM-Celebrating the Holidays

Happy Monday! Thanks to Katie for hosting this MARVELOUS link up every week!

Image

 

I have a lot to tell you guys about! But first-who’s enjoying the holidays?? I know I am! 

Saturday morning began with a nice long run. I did 10 miles- I can’t remember the last time I did a long run! It was nice to run back by the bay.

Image

It was surprising to see the hill I run by that was brown all summer be green!

The first half of the run was much faster than the second-at the halfway point, my achilles tendon starting hurting quite a bit. Plus, it’s been a while since I’ve done any long distance running! I also tried salted caramel gu for the first time! It was so good! I would definitely recommend it-but it was not great for me personally-I’m not sure if it’s because my allergies have been bad lately, but I absolutely could not eat it without a coughing fit. I think I have issues with thinner goos-my normal chocolate is pretty thick and maybe not so sugary? 

Another issue I had with my run was getting too hungry. I had a slightly smaller than usual pre-run breakfast, plus I didn’t get out of the house as quickly as I had hoped, so I totally ran out of gas by the end of the run.

My post run meal was a beautiful salad with avocado and whole wheat macaroni and cheese.

Image

Later that evening, my best friends from high school came over for our annual cookie decorating tradition.Image

I made a basic sugar cookie recipe, but this time I substituted whole wheat pastry flour for while flour. The flavor was a tiny bit different but I didn’t mind, and I definitely felt less gross after eating them.

Image

Image

I think we did an especially nice job decorating this year-maybe because I spent so long on my annual #1 turkey, and my friends are much more artistic than me.

ImageImageImageImage

 

One thing I want to touch on is balance. I know I’ve talked about it so much already, but I want to go a little more in depth. First of all, despite posting pictures of tons of delicious desserts, I promise I’m still eating my veggies! They just never seem to make it to the blog this time of year! Second-if you want to eat mass quantities of cookies and still feel great, long runs are awesome-my body just burned through those cookies and I woke up feeling great the next morning!

There are so many articles constantly in your face about “avoiding the holiday weight gain” and “stay healthy over the holidays.” As someone who normally gains a ton of weight between Christmas and New Year’s, I have my own set of tips for you, because for me, this year has been different. Want to avoid the holiday fluff? The best way is to just not worry about it! Don’t deprive yourself, and eat what you want to. That’s what I’m doing this year, and I haven’t gained an ounce. Why? Because if you constantly are worried about gaining weight, food will carry so much stress. I will freely admit I had a couple of sugar induced meltdowns last year-and I could barely enjoy the season! But now that I’m not trying to restrain myself from sweets? I’m finding myself eating fewer, getting more enjoyment out of them, and feeling awesome.

And you know what? When you stop trying so hard-you put less weight on your food choices. At least for me-I’ve been able to enjoy the holidays much more. I ate a ton of cookies with my friends. But I didn’t feel bad. I enjoyed the cookies and had a great times with amazing people-I wasn’t blindly eating them out of some built up craving. I enjoyed every single bite. 

And while you’re at it, try to focus on the most important things-family, cats, friends, traditions. I think many people would be surprised to find that food gets a lot less significant.

But let’s get back to friends. Check out what one of my friends gave me!

Image

Image

Twins!

For breakfast in the morning, my mom made blueberry scones, which I paired with scrambled eggs and tea. 

ImageImage

We took the train up to the city, and must have all been a little tired because we missed our stop by two stops-luckily it was easy to get back on!

Either way, we all were ready for some caffeine upon arriving in San Francisco.

Image

Visiting the shelter cats at Macy’s was a must. There were 3 that looked like Charlie!

ImageImage

And of course we needed a picture by the tree.

Image

The only bad thing about running 10 miles before spending a day walking around the city and a mall? My feet hated me, and were hurting SO much. It was not good.

Lunch was a giant salad with chicken, avocado, and bleu cheese.

 

Image

And a late afternoon pick me up, split between the three of us.

Image

Since the sundae was more or less at dinner time, I only had a small serving of chili when I returned home. My mom even threw some kale in the chili-so proud of her!

Image

In other news, the Crossfit WOD this morning was 12 days of Christmas-a different exercise for each day, and then the workout goes through as the song goes. It was brutal and much harder than I was expecting-a lot more cardio too! I didn’t end up finishing under the time cap of 32 minutes!

Then, I went straight down to my school gym to torture take my sister and her boyfriend through a weights workout. I may have mentioned this before, but my sister wants me to teach weight training to the school quidditch team in exchange for fresh green juice, so today I tested out the workout. I’m glad I tested it out because we had to make some modifications, but it was so much fun! It made me realize how knowledgable I’ve become about weight lifting. They are going to be sore tomorrow! And her boyfriend is crazy athletic-when they ran a marathon together, he wasn’t even sore the next day! So if 26.1 miles won’t do it but I can, that’s an accomplishment!

And they did deliver on their promise:

Image

Have a great holiday everyone!

What is most important to you this time of year?