Day 3—Quarantine Birthday

Date: May 4, 2020

Author: astottler

It’s my birthday! I feel like a lot of people have been sad about being quarantined for their birthdays, but I really didn’t mind. The weather was beautiful, and I just wanted to make the most of it.

Breakfast:

Berry cheerios and my protein hot chocolate creation: 1c soy milk, 1 tablespoon dark cocoa powder, 3/4 scoop of chocolate protein powder.

After breakfast, I visited my favorite produce stand and came home with a big box of fruits and veggies. That place just makes me so happy.

For my workout, I did 6×3 heavy squats at 175-185, followed by a modified Filthy Fifty. I remembered doing this on my birthday a few years ago and wanted to revisit it! I’m definitely fitter than when I did this maybe 6 years ago.

Lunch:

One of my current favorite salads: Pear Gorgonzola dressing, blueberry goat cheese, and chicken. With a side of Cheddar Veggie straws and some homemade chocolate my sister sent me for my birthday.

Birthday cake:

Check it out! This was made 100% from scratch and I was very impressed. It is gf chocolate cake, with mint chip gelato and chocolate on top! SO good!

For my birthday, all I really wanted to do was sit outside, watch baseball, and drink beer. I picked up some beer from a local brewery, and streamed a 2019 baseball game. I miss that! Jackson also came outside to hang out.

Dinner was kind of random. It started with homemade cheddar biscuits, a recipe that is sort of my own.

For the biscuits, sift together the dry ingredients, then cut in the butter. Once the texture is crumbly, add the milk. The mixture may need to be worked with your hands a bit. For these, we added some cheddar too!

Dinner was broken up my a Zoom birthday party with my vet school friends. The second part of dinner was thrown together, but got the job done! Some grilled chicken pulled from my freezer with ketchup, and green beans with balsamic glaze.

I had a great birthday, and felt the love from everyone in my life! The whole day just made me so happy.

Amazing Zucchini Soup + Sac Giant Race and Picnic Day

Date: April 22, 2018

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I hope everyone is enjoying spring weather! The rain has stopped here, and it was mid-80s all weekend! Perfect for spending outside! I have some fun to share today, but I want to start with an amazing soup recipe I threw together tonight. And in true Fitness is Sweet fashion, this was done in less than 30 minutes. It would have been even faster if my blender wasn’t small! (Although the small blender still worked like a charm!)

Rosemary Zucchini Soup

Note that the quantities are approximate; I just threw everything together!

Ingredients:

3 large zucchinis

1 cup riced cauliflower

1 T minced garlic

2 T fresh rosemary

3 handfuls of spinach

salt and pepper to taste

broth to desired consistency

Sautee the zucchini, cauliflower, and rosemary with salt, pepper, and a little water. I covered it as well to soften. Cook until both are soft. Then, wilt the spinach on top of that mixture. Add garlic, and blend to desired consistency with broth. That’s it! It’s SO perfect for spring. You can also use any herb you want! I’ve made this before with sage because it was the only herb at the store that day, and it was good (rosemary is better). This would also be awesome with fresh dill, and then a touch of fresh lemon!

As for the rest of my weekend, I spent it mostly outdoors! Friday night I skyped some college friends before going to an outdoor brewery. Saturday was really the main day. I had the Sacramento Giant Race bright and early, and the weather could not have been more perfect!

I decided to try and maintain about an 8:20 pace. It seemed about right since I’m finally running regularly (as in once a week) again post-ankle bone bruise thing. I definitely lost some speed after not running for so long, and the couple of races I did (without running for months prior) during the course of the injury felt pretty awful and definitely were slower. I felt pretty good out there! More importantly, my ankle felt good too! The weather was beautiful, and the course was really nice. It went along the river, through some neighborhoods, and finished on the field!

It was a fun one, and so nice for my speed to be coming back! Again, the weather was amazing. It feels like summer! After some debate, I did go for the post-race beer because they had a non-IPA option, although I didn’t drink that much of it!

Next up was Picnic Day! It’s a huge deal here in Davis, and I can’t very well describe it. People come in from all over, and it’s basically a day of celebrating UC Davis. There’s a parade with floats (the vet school always wins), and basically every club and group on campus has some sort of booth. There’s lots of food and lots of people!

Here’s the one parade photo I got:

As I was getting ready to meet up with friends, I sipped on a green juice cocktail. Seriously, don’t knock it ’til you try it!

I spent the day walking around enjoying the weather and festivities with my friends.

Including the kittens from a vet school club…

Sunday involved Crossfit in the morning, which was mostly outside because it involved 3000m of running, some studying with an iced latte in a coffee shop, and a softball game. And ice cream. I’m currently loving the new Yasso frozen yogurt chocolate-vanilla swirl. I put GF mini soft chocolate chip cookies in it.

Besides the weather and fun things happening, I also really love what we’re doing in class right now. The gastrointestinal system is by far my favorite body system. I have lots of fun things coming up as well—I’m going home next weekend to go to some Giant’s games!

I’ll leave you with Jackson:

Am I Switching Sides??

Date: August 2, 2017

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello friends!

Wow. I can’t believe I leave in less than a week. How crazy is that? I have one more adventure to share with you all, as well as an awesome new recipe from Cooking Light that we tried out last night!

So….what do I meant by the title??

Monday night, my friends and I went to the Giants-A’s game up in Oakland. I don’t think I’ve ever been to the Coliseum.

For those that aren’t familiar with the sports culture here in the Bay Area, I would call the Bay rivalry more of a fun one. There’s no hatred between sides, and I always root for the A’s as my second team. I think the rivalry is best summed up by the twitter burns being exchanged between both sides’ news teams. Fun-hearted.

Our seats were far better than I realized, so that was a nice treat!

We walked the entire way around the ballpark in search of the food trucks that come out, but couldn’t find them and gave up, so I settled on an easy salad for dinner.

I appreciated the ballpark’s beer selection. I got a Kona Longboard Lager.

The A’s had what I thought was a hilarious promotion where they would exchange any old Giants hat for a brand new A’s hat. I actually felt pretty conflicted this game, and decided to bring my worst Giants hat (I had 3 at the time, and one was brand new!) and just go for it.

I bought this one in St. Louis to wear to the playoff games in Wrigley. It’s not the nicest hat, but it was the only one I could find in STL. It also didn’t have any wins in it; we didn’t do so hot when I wore it in Chicago! I think it was bad luck anyways.

So i sent off a tweet, and sure enough….

I felt like a little bit of a traitor, but I have become more of an A’s fan this year. They don’t lose quite as frequently as we have been.

Just temporary dark side. The Giants were ahead until our notorious bullpen came in. I decided to switch loyalties and put the hat on, and literally the second I did, the A’s hit a grand slam (ouch).

Later in the game, I got my sodium and carbs in in the form of cheddar and caramel corn, which was delicious.

The Giants lost, but it was a really fun game. And, I can’t say I minded the weather! I only left wearing one jacket, which would be unheard of for the icy games in San Francisco.

In other life happenings, after staying up until midnight on Monday, I decided I really hated myself and went to 6am Crossfit for a really stupid workout. It was this:

100 pull ups

80 sit ups

60 pistols

40 calorie row

20 push press

I did Murph for the first time with unbounded pull-ups this year. This was far, far worse. I spent 15 straight minutes doing nothing but pull ups. I started with sets of 5, and lasted decently far, nearly halfway with that. Then I lost my sets of 5, then my sets of 4, and quickly I lost my sets of 3 and was doing doubles for probably the last 20 reps. This was miserable, and I was the last by far to get off the bar. To make matters worse, around rep 92, I could feel my hands start to rip. I was going to be SUPER mad if I ripped on the LAST couple reps, but thankfully I just finished with hands on fire and a few minor blisters.

We had a time limit for this one, so I figured I wouldn’t have to do the last parts. Well, the coach oh so kindly extended it. Honestly, everything post-pull ups was fine though. I did the sit-ups straight through, and assisted pistols. I was very happy, however, when I made it to the push presses and blasted through them because I chose a pretty wimpy weight. No regrets. Let’s not even talk about how my arms feel today.

In the evening, I had my LAST softball game before I move! It was a tough loss, and I did get totally slammed into while I was playing first, but I did hit a home run my last at-bat after being hitless earlier in the game. It felt so, so good off the bat. It’s hard to explain the sweet feeling of a ball hitting the meat of the bat like that.

For dinner, I searched through August Cooking Light and found a delicious looking recipe that I had bookmarked. Zucchini-Ribbon Pizza with chicken! We actually found the Mama Mary’s brand crust it called for in gluten free! I actually loved the crust; it was soft and chewy, and reminded me of the crust in the flatbread at the ballpark. I honestly think I prefer the gluten free for the texture.

The pizza came out awesome; the tomato-less pizza had strong coriander notes, and had lots of rotisserie chicken, topped with zucchini ribbons and feta.

One modification I made that I would highly recommend is that I added salt and lemon juice to the zucchini ribbons before putting them on the pizza.

We served it with garlic and lemon roasted green beans.

And that’s all I’ve got for you guys today!

Puppy Hour

Date: April 3, 2017

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Aaaand we’re back with a “weekend” recap. I use quotes here because I was working 8-5 on Saturday. I knew I would want to celebrate my first week of work, so I suggested “puppy hour.” A lot of downtown in the town I work in is super dog friendly, so at 5 my parents brought Chloe and we met at a casual bar for happy hour. We’re trying to get Chloe better at going places, and this was a successful outing!

We got a couple of half pours to try, and a milk stout to share. One was a really interesting blueberry cheesecake stout, and the other was called “Free Kittens,” so we had to get it. The Free Kittens beer was a delicious rice based lager (I didn’t know that was a think), and appropriately, it was from a brewery really close to where I’m going for vet school!

After puppy hour, we walked a few blocks over to pizza! Chloe managed to eat her entire rawhide bone while we munched on a brussels sprouts salad and a gluten free pizza margarita.

After dinner, I suggested a short walk to froyo. The froyo is a block from work, and it was a frequent favorite when I worked there a couple of years ago! I had chocolate, birthday cake, and guava froyo with chocolate covered raisins, chocolate chips, and various sauces.

Sunday morning I went to a spin class with one of my original favorite instructors. Hers was the first spin class I ever went to! I haven’t been in well over a year, and the technology has upgraded the format of the class. It was called “threshold ride,” and used computers on a screen. We started at the beginning of class with taking 3 minutes to find a “threshold” power, which was a max power. Then, the screen would display what percentage of your max power you were at, so we went through intervals with goal percentages. It was a good one! I love knowing EXACTLY what I’m doing in a spin class.

The best part? My achilles is feeling better! It was totally fine for class. I found my plantar fasciitis sock that helps stretch out that area, so I wore it last night. Plus, I rolled out my calves before class and everything felt so much better.

For post-workout lunch, I made an old go-to Quick and Easy meal.

An egg scramble with sweet potato (this is Japanese), spinach, egg, and a high quality cheese. I used to make this after long runs in college. While I made it on the stovetop, the eggs can easily be cooked in the microwave. I microwaved my sweet potato. Which was a little bit of a disaster. The first attempt apparently cooked faster than usual and I pulled a smoking potato out of the microwave. My hands smelled like smoke all day, despite my best efforts.

After lunch, it was time for opening day!

We had beer flights for the occasion.

The Xingu was my favorite by far! It was a black lager, and was dark yet refreshing with subtle sweetness (described as raisin). I’m actually considering ordering more than just our couple of sample bottles.

Unfortunately, the game didn’t end as I would have hoped, but there was definitely some epic-ness, as our starting pitcher hit 2 HRs, which has never happened before on Opening Day!

For dinner post-baseball, I made my California Nicoise Salad.

My dad grilled the chicken, and everything came out deliciously!

For dessert, I tried the Flapjacked Double Chocolate cookies, again subbing egg whites and applesauce for the butter and egg. I didn’t overcook them this time, so that helped too! Seriously, these are just as tasty without butter.

As I said the other day, you can’t really go wrong with warm cookies, right?

That was my weekend! i have tomorrow and Tuesday off though, and I’m hoping that the time off my feet will really give me an opportunity to nip this tendonitis.

Did you watch Opening Day?

Chicago: #dontstopbeliEVEN

Date: October 9, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Wow guys, what a trip. I’m so, so glad I was able to make it happen, even though the games didn’t turn out like I might have hoped.

I headed out first thing Friday morning after a quick run. While leaving, I felt like this was a journey I was destined to take!

Also note that if you don’t follow baseball, this whole post may seem crazy. I dropped everything and drove 5 hours to a strange city by myself for a couple of games?

Yes. Yes I did.

I don’t know if you guys have seen How I Met Your Mother. I recently rewatched the series. (It’s interesting now that I feel like I’m more in that stage of my life…) Anyways, there’s an episode where Ted and Marshall drive to Chicago for pizza and the only song they can listen to is that “I would walk 500 miles” song on repeat, because the tape is stuck. I thought I would try that. I made a road trip playlist, and loaded the front of the playlist with 30 minutes straight of that song on repeat (8x). I thought I would see how long I lasted. I am happy to report I made it all 30 minutes. And yes, it did get better over time. In the middle there, I got a little bored with it, but by the end I came back around. It was a little jarring when a different song came on my playlist though!

I stopped for lunch about halfway, apparently in a town called Normal, IL. I found a Panera, and had the Fuji apple chicken salad.

The drive was fine until I got to Chicago. I spent about an hour less than a mile from my hotel, sitting in traffic. The Chicago Marathon was this weekend, so that just made things worse. I have never been so happy to hand my keys to a valet.

I wanted some downtime before the game so I relaxed in my room and had a flapjacked smores muffin in the room for dinner.

…which I came to regret later because I was STARVING at the game and couldn’t find anything I could eat, until I found a salad and it was the most exciting thing ever. But we’ll get to that. Let’s do some pictures.

The train was PACKED!

First view of Wrigley:

This is Wrigleyville. There are places (bars) that have stadium seats on the roof where you can watch the game without a ticket!

And the inside. I was at the top of the centerfield bleachers, right below the old scoreboard.

I was surrounded my plenty of nice Cubs fans, who grew rowdier as the beer flowed. I definitely got messed with a little bit, but it was all in good fun. Anytime anyone found out I had come by myself, they said “you’re brave.” It was a good game, but a frustrating ending. That being said, I also now really understand how much home field advantage matters. The momentum is everything.

Saturday morning I went for a run along Lake Michigan. To be perfectly honest, the lake made me strangely claustrophobic. It’s so strange to be to have something that looks like an ocean, but to know there’s land on the other side. I felt very landlocked. California problems, I suppose. It was a beautiful morning for an exploratory run though!

On my run, I actually had an extremely awkward encounter with one of the Giants’ broadcasters. I said hi…and she looked confused and then I realized I didn’t actually have anything to say…awkward all around. Oh well.

Next on the agenda was brunch! I went to Wheat’s End, a totally gluten free cafe and bakery. There was a bit of a wait, so I put my name on the list and walked around a little bit.

I started with a decaf cappuccino, and then got a side salad and popover with honey butter.

I also got a pumpkin cinnamon roll for later but had half of it then because it was warm! Yum!

Next stop?

The bean!

Obligatory bean photos:

I hung out at the bean for a little while. It was an interesting place to sit back and watch the city.

The other “must do” thing for Chicago was a visit to the Field Museum. It was about 2 miles away, so I meandered my way over, stopping to finish my cinnamon roll along the way.

Look what I found! Lots of streets were blocked off for the marathon.

I really enjoyed looking at the animal exhibits, especially now that I work at a zoo. It was interesting to read about and compare the animals to what we have at the Saint Louis Zoo.

Look—Somali Wild Asses! I watch these guys 🙂

Terra Cotta soldiers.

Next on the agenda was a super quick coffee date with a Stanford friend who just moved to Chicago. It took me FOREVER to get there thanks to traffic, and unfortunately we didn’t have a ton of time together, but it was great to catch up!

I headed to the hotel to get ready. I felt so puffy every night: long sleeves+sweatshirt+giants shirt+fleece. I was cold in the bleachers thanks to wind, but my seats the next night were much more covered (and better!)

To be honest, I wasn’t feeling too great most of the day, and the soup place right by the train stop was a godsend. Exactly what I needed. It was called Soupbox, and I got carrot ginger bisque which was fantastic on a chilly day!

(It came with a free topping, so I went with artichoke hearts.)

My seats for Saturday’s game were awesome. I was on the first base side in the lower level. It was also a lot less rowdy. A lot of older couples with season tickets. I apparently got the woman next to me’s son’s ticket!

See that old scoreboard? I was right under that the previous night. Near the second to left column at the top.

Sadly, we lost again. It was rough. To be honest, it was really hard being a Giants fan in a different city. It was sort of demoralizing/soul crushing. I’m so glad I had the awesome experience of going to Wrigley to see a playoff game, but I left feeling sort of emotionally crushed. I think my boys need to go home to the home crowd. We still have a chance, and we need to get it done!

Luckily, I had a blueberry muffin from the cafe early to ease my pain.

The next morning, I walked around a little and stopped at Starbucks for some herbal tea and a banana, which I paired with a Luna for breakfast.

I loved walking around the chilly city in the morning. I really liked Chicago. It reminded me a lot of San Francisco, and it makes me want to take more advantage of SF when I get home.

Then, it was time to make the trek back. It was actually not bad at all, although I was expecting it to be rough. I blasted some music (my Knoxville playlist) and enjoyed the open country. I’m at the point in my life where there is just SO much to think about. Driving through the midwest countryside is also super easy, compared to driving through CA (like from SF to LA).

I stopped halfway through for lunch+gas. I didn’t leave with a full tank because there wasn’t much in Chicago, so I got pretty nervous when it was time to get gas and I was in the middle of NOWHERE. Seeing gas+Subway was beautiful.

I got a chopped salad with carved turkey (WAY more delicious than the normal turkey breast—it’s thicker cut), provolone, olives, tomatoes, oil and vinegar, and salt and pepper. I think Subway is the most underrated “healthy fast food.” There are a lot of great options, and you can literally find one anywhere, which is great if you’re in the middle of nowhere or in an unknown place.

The rest of the drive was uneventful, but it was nice to see the arch as I drove in. St. Louis is much more familiar! Also, coming home to cats? The best.

It’s honestly so great to be at a point in my life where I can just drive to a new city alone, and have a great weekend. It also gives me more confidence that no matter where I end up, I’ll be just find. I think the people you’re with are ultimately more important to the place, and it’s so exciting to go to different parts of the country, even driving through farmland.

It was quite the trip. I’m glad the drive went well, because I have an even longer solo drive coming up soon!

In summary: Chicago is a fantastic city, I had a great time, and GO GIANTS! Don’t stop beliEVEN!