Monthly Archives: November 2014

On the Third Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave to Me…

3 new recipes!

2 workouts

1 family

I know recipes are few and far between around here, so for my blogiversary I took to the kitchen and got to work!

Here are last year’s. Note-the double chocolate banana bread is possibly the best recipe I’ve created.

Another note-I’m currently blogging from Starbucks because our Internet has been down since Wednesday, so I apologize for not responding to comments!

Last year’s recipes were all banana/bread based. This year, I made some roasted veggies!

Garlic Roasted Broccoli

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3 T olive oil

1 lb broccoli

1/4 c nutritional yeast

1 T garlic paste or 3 cloves of garlic, crushed

salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Toss all ingredients together.

3. Roast until broccoli is tender and starts to brown, about 30 minutes.

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Guys. This was good. Like, I wish I had more pictures but we ate it straight from the pan good. The garlic and nutritional yeast makes it almost creamy. The best part? I still have another pound of broccoli I can roast!

Cheesy Roasted Cauliflower

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1 head of cauliflower

about 2 T olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

1/4 cup ground parmesan

1/2 cup grated gruyere or cheese of your choice

1. Preheat oven to 425.

2. Toss together olive oil, salt and pepper.

3. Roast for 35-40 minutes, or until almost tender.

4. Remove from oven and toss with cheeses. Return and roast another 5-10 minutes, until the cauliflower is golden and the cheese is melted.

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This is super versatile-use any cheese of your choice, but I loved the flavor of the gruyere!

Basic Roasted Asparagus

I feel like I’m almost cheating with this one, but it’s something my family makes on a regular basis so I thought I’d share!

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1 bunch of asparagus

2 T olive oil

a few sprinkles garlic powder

salt and pepper to taste

1. On a cookie sheet, toss all ingredients together.

2. Broil in the oven for 7-8 minutes.

 

On the Second Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me…

Two new workouts!

1 family

I feel like it’s kind of cheating to use one of my spin playlists, but that’s one of the things I’m doing most right now!

Here’s last year’s post.

The first workout is a class I taught a few week ago.

indoor cycling

Some notes:

-Single leg means letting one leg go limp while focusing on the other leg. Do intervals of about 30s for each leg.

-In means sitting, out means standing

-Hand position 2 means hands at the base of the handle bars. Hand position 3 means hands at the ends of the handle bars, such that the rider will be leaning more forwards.

-+1 means one turn up. One turn is generally 1/4 of the way around the resistance knob.

 

The next workout is a quick bodyweight workout that anyone can fit in in between the holiday madness! I’m planning on pairing it with a 2 miler run today for a quick indoor workout in the rainstorm we’re going to get today!

Perform as many rounds of the following in 15 minutes!

holiday AMRAP

On the First Day of Christmas My True Love Gave To Me…

One amazing family.

Last year’s Day 1.

Well, today is the first day of the countdown to my blogiversary! How perfect that it falls right around Thanksgiving.

My family is seriously the best. Cats and dogs included.

They get up before 6am on a holiday to go to a turkey trot with me.

Last year vs this year:

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Gotta love my kitty!

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The race went well. Last year I went out super fast and was DYING for most of the race. This time I reigned my pace in so it was a more fun experience!

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Last year there was a guy who ran the whole race dressed as a pirate while carrying a pirate ship. I think the same guy this year was dressed as the death star.

Much less heavy!

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Anyways, so grateful for my family. After cleaning ourselves up, we headed to Napa for the big meal, and stopped by to see my grandparents.

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I also love my pets, despite the fact that I’m very allergic to them…

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Then, we arrived in Napa and it was time for the feast!

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We went to a buffet, and the set up was absolutely beautiful.

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They labeled everything with pumpkins! How cute is that? Plate #1 was salad+soup. The soup. Guys. It was amazing. It was pumpkin with gruyere, and the best part is that they had the recipe listed on a pumpkin so I WILL be making it.

Plate #2:

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And of course, desserts. My family takes buffets seriously, especially the desserts. We don’t mess around with the tiny dessert plates.

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^The set up, not my plate unfortunately. Here’s my plate:

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Pumpkin cheesecake, chocolate cake, chocolate mouse cake, mango cake, pudding cup, and chocolate covered strawberry. The chocolate cake may have been my favorite this year!

I have to say, I’m all for healthy living but Thanksgiving is not the time to worry about that. Although in my old age I feel like I haven’t eaten at much at Thanksgiving as in the past-I miss being a growing teenager with a bottomless stomach!

I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving and enjoyed good food with their loved ones. I know I have a lot to be thankful for!

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WIAW-Home!

Happy Wednesday! Who is excited for Thanksgiving??? I know I am! But first, let’s welcome Wednesday with our weekly party. Thanks Jenn for hosting, as usual!

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I don’t have a full day of food documented, but here are some highlights!

A new protein bar post Crossfit. We did lots of heavy squats, and I needed SOMETHING. Given there are about 3 protein bars out there without nuts, I didn’t have a whole lot of options. This was good though!

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For dinner on Monday night, we tried a new soup recipe, courtesy of Buzzfeed. This was tomato soup with sautéed spinach and fresh mozzarella. After adding cheese, you broil it until melted. Pre-broiling and post:

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Served with some fresh wheat bread, this was a fantastic fall meal!

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Tuesday morning I went to a spin class at a local studio I had never been to before, Revelry Fitness. It was awesome. I think the types of things we did were sort of similar to Soul Cycle, but without all the unsafeness that drives me crazy about Soul Cycle. It was much more technically sound, and a great workout! Plus, they email you your bike stats after class, which I thought was pretty cool! I’m going again this morning 🙂

ANYWAYS, afterwards i went to a coffeeshop with my mom and got a strong cappuccino. I was WAY over caffeinated, but it is what it is. Check out the height on that milk foam!

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For lunch, I met up with the rest of my family, including this guy.

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For lunch was a teriyaki chicken wrap.

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For dinner Tuesday night, I threw together leftovers (of a meal I wasn’t present for) to make a big old salad, along with some cheese and crackers (Trader Joe’s Cranberry Chèvre is insane!).

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Given I’ve had maybe 2 avocados in the past 10 weeks, I won’t complain about leftovers if they include massive amounts of guacamole. This salad had leftover taco meat of turkey and beans, salsa, cheddar, and of course guacamole.

The night also included some recipe testing for my blogiversary. Can’t wait!

What is your favorite form of avocado?

4 Things

I’m pretty sure you’ve all seen this survey floating around the blog world, but given it’s probably been over a year since I’ve done a survey, let’s go for it! Thanks to Elsie for tagging me!

Four Names That People Call Me (Other Than My Real Name):

1. Ror

2. Astott

3. Blonde-daughter-thingy (shout out to my dad who can’t keep his kids straight for that one)

4. A-rawr-a

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our Jobs I’ve Had:

1. Indoor cycling instructor

2. Worked in a lab

3. Cat sitting

4. Analyst for USDA

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Four Movies I Have Watched More Than Once:

1. Fed Up (Love this!)

2. Any Christmas movie-my favorite is The Year Without a Santa Claus

3. Twilight (yes, I am embarrassed about this)

4. I clearly don’t like to rematch movies-I can’t think of any others!

Four Books I’d Recommend: 

1. Gone Girl-I feel like everyone has been recommending this! I FINALLY saw the movie! It was good but I thought the book was better and overall more intense. Way more details! It was also weird because I listened to the audiobook while running around DC, so certain scenes brought back memories of specific trails where I was when certain things happened! This is where I was when the book ended:

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2. The Price of Inheritance by Karin Tanabe. <-shameless plug for my DC friend!

3. Murder on the Orient Express-Agatha Christie (I love mysteries!)

4. The Good Girl-Mary Kubica (This is my current audiobook, so not sure how it ends but it seems pretty good so far!)

Four Places I’ve Lived:

1. Belmont, CA

2. Washington DC

3. Stanford, CA

4. Yeahhh, I’m super lame and that’s it!

Four Places I Have Been:

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1. Hawaii

2. Belgium

3. Florida

4. Las Vegas (Only for softball though-go figure)

Four Places I’d Rather Be Right Now

1. DC! I miss it so much!

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2. Napa-going there later this week after all!

3. Somewhere with snow (Although I probably wouldn’t last long there…)

4. Somewhere with a really legit fall!

Four Things I Don’t Eat:

1. Red meat

2. Weird fish (It scares me!)

3. Nuts (Although I accidentally had an almond in a salad the other day and now I have hives….oops)

4. Sweet coffee (I’m weird, I know, but I can’t stand it!)

Four Of My Favorite Foods:

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1. Avocados

2. Ice cream (but only super high quality)

3. Quickbreads (think pumpkin and banana bread)

4. Roasted carrots

Four TV Shows That I Watch (or have watched):

1. Scandal

2. Suits

3. Friends (I watched all 10 seasons in 3 weeks when I was really sick)

4. Elementary

Four Things I Am Looking Forward To This Year:

1. Figuring my life out and starting new things

2. Teaching spin

3. Being an upperclassman/senior (CRAZY)

4. Some type of cool summer internship somewhere interesting (which has definitely not been looked into yet)

Four Things I’m Saying: 

1. That makes no sense. //in class, complaining about something in general, or sympathizing

2. Literally //I swear I always use it correctly!

3. Meh //usually when texting

4. Ugh //Wow, these all sound so positive don’t they? I’m clearly a bucket of sunshine. //”Clearly” would be #5

Four People I’m Tagging To Do This Next:

1. Skylar

2. Sean

3. Ashley

4. Cailee