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.

Birthday Full Day of Eating

Date: May 4, 2018

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Yesterday was my birthday! It was definitely a good one! I celebrated with my family a little last weekend:

But yesterday was the actual day. I also had a super nice class schedule and only had a few hours of class! I figured, what better way to celebrate than a full day of eating?

Breakfast:

Birthday pear from my parents (amazing) and a flapjacked muffin.

Lunch:

Salad with chicken, pear, goat cheese, and crackers.

Bonus selfie with Jackson:

Snack:

One of my friends made me GF cupcakes, which was so nice because I rarely get to eat cake! Not a bad way to spice up lecture either!

Snack 2 was a bar.

Dinner:

My friends took me out to dinner, and it was such a nice night. I of course had to have a beer.

And then I got a salad with bleu cheese, currants, and grilled chicken.

And of course I finished the evening with more cupcakes.

WIAW-Birthday Edition

Date: May 3, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

How is it Wednesday already?? I swear I was just typing up last week’s WIAW. Thanks as always to Jenn for starting this weekly fun!

WIAWbutton

A few things before we get started. 1. No word on my MRI which is super frustrating.

2. This week’s soup was a winner! I wasn’t sure how split pea would be, but the verdict was LOVE. It has mushroom and parmesan, and is full of flavor!

I also appreciated time with my crazies.

Now let’s get on with it!

Tuesday was my birthday! Nothing too crazy around here, just food and spending all day studying for a midterm!

Pre-Workout:

Lemon blueberry bread. Yum.

Workout: Crossfit. I was super excited that this workout was a collection of most of the things I can actually do! We started with bench press, and then the WOD was 4 rounds (90s rest between) of the following for me (with some subs):

250m row

10 push ups

1:00 airdyne bike

10 push ups

1:00 airdyne bike

It felt so good to be moving and pretending to be a normal person!

Breakfast:

Eaten on the go between Crossfit and squirrel watching. Fage 2%, blueberries, and sunbutter.

I wish I had a more clear picture, but this guy was really funny! He was walking around with a huge amount of grass in his mouth.

Lunch:

I went out to a cafe on campus with my family! I had a arepa with black beans and cheese, plus a side salad.

As you can see in the background I brought my own dressing since there’s something in the dressing that comes with the salad that my body doesn’t love.

But the highlight? My parents brought cupcakes from my favorite bakery! Gluten free chocolate and dulce de leche. But look at these decorations!

I had a chocolate.

Snack:

Avocado toast on GF bread, plus the inside of another piece of bread (don’t ask, it’s good bread!).

My dinner was sort of snack-y since I had a test through dinner.

Dinnerish:

Cheddar popcorn+dried mango (more than in the picture).

The other half of my arepa from lunch+beet and apple salad with goat cheese.

Dulce de leche cupcake.

After my midterm, I had a few bites of stir fry veggies, half a piece of GF pumpkin bread, a couple of carrots and hummus, and a strawberry the size of my head thanks to a fruit of the month delivery.

Also—check out these beautiful flowers from my mom! Sometimes you have to improvise a bit in a dorm…

For my birthday, my friends got together and got me some of my favorite ice cream—Tin Pot! We had orange creamsicle, Tcho chocolate (of course) and maple.

I had another mini dulce de leche cupcake to go with it because birthday 🙂

We were all feeling the sugar a bit, so we went for the protein. I had a beautiful meatsicle (chicken with ketchup. #classy).

My friends are seriously fantastic.

Thanks guys for a great birthday!

What is your birthday cake of choice?

My typical with my family is probably mint chocolate chip ice cream cake, which we enjoyed a few days early this year!

So I Guess I Should Blog…

Date: November 18, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Ugh, I am so ready for Thanksgiving. We get a whole week off, which is basically the best thing ever. I’m still teaching my Monday spin class that week, and you better believe it’s going to be Thanksgiving themed! I spent my entire run this morning brainstorming and I think I have a solid idea! I’ll be sure to share it next week!

Speaking of sharing…I haven’t blogged much lately. I’ll almost certainly blog more over the holidays, but I honestly feel like not that much has happened, or at least not much Internet worthy. Just typical college stuff.

My high school friend visited, which was super fun! We both wanted to go shopping, so that was enough of a reason! Over the course of 2 days, I basically bought every long sleeved shirt in existence. I <3 long sleeves. The goal of shopping was actually to find lion colored clothes-more on that soon.

We also went to my friend’s Wind Ensemble Concert:

My friend is also crazy enough to want to track down a spotlight with me. There had been a HUGE spotlight in the air all week, and it was driving me crazy not knowing where it was coming from! We took to the streets and tracked it down. Success.

The course? HP. Typical. Gotta love Silicon Valley. We then proceeded to videochat our other high school friend for 3 hours…much needed!

I was met that weekend with quite the delivery-my roommate went home and brought persimmons! The obsession continues.

The following night consisted of dinner with my parents, an awesome prank, and a friend’s birthday party.

I brought a giant cake.

I feel pretty confident that none of the prankees will ever find my blog, so I’ll go ahead and fess up to it here. We got a walkie talkie (they’re pretty cheap off of Amazon these days) and hid it in our friends’ room. The next morning, after 2 hours of sleep I sat outside in 40 something degree weather blasting various things through it-notably the music from both Jaws and Psycho. Nailed. It. More pranks to come.

Other college things. The reason for lion colored clothing?

We had a big themed dinner/party at my dorm. The theme was “Who Run the World? Girls!” So vaguely Beyonce, vaguely vague. Since I sure as heck cannot pull off Beyonce, I was planning on dressing up as the lion from the music video. It actually didn’t end up working out due to a failed effort at coordinating another costume, so I ended up vaguely Beyonce, meaning I wore the one sparkly thing I own, paired with a pencil skirt and heels. Well, briefly heels. I think it’s actually been a year since I’ve worn heels so they definitely did not last the whole night. I think there’s a full outfit picture of me floating around on someone’s phone, but here’s a selfie.

Also noteworthy-hiking the Dish trail with my mom. It was the perfect day for it!

And a visit from the (kind of) pups.

I also went to a football game, which was a crazy and frustrating one ending in a close loss. Unfortunately, I only stayed for half the game because I had a retreat for my sorority.

So that’s college. I realize that is not remotely food/fitness related, so stay tuned for lots of talk of that. Spoiler: I did my final trial for my class project of improving on a fitness endeavor!

Who’s excited for Thanksgiving?

Hellyer Park 5k Recap

Date: March 1, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! It’s been a pretty busy one for my so far!

My weekend basically kicked off on Friday, since I only had one class. I began the morning with a nice little walk around campus. We have a “lake” that is empty 80% of the year, but actually has some water in it now! It used to be filled but due to environmental reasons it no longer is.

It was such a great way to start the morning! I should go on more walks around campus!

Breakfast was eggs+a muffin.

After class, I had lunch with my sister and mom at the dining hall. It was Parent’s Weekend, so my mom drove down fro a tour and then the sampling of dining hall food!

I had a salad with a little salmon, delicious dijon brussels sprouts, and a piece of apple and bleu cheese flatbread and a piece of BBQ chicken pizza.

The rest of my day was very low key-I didn’t want to exert myself before a race! Dinner was out of my fridge-pumpkin soup with spinach and mushrooms added, topped with manchego and nutritional yeast, with a side of avocado and banana bread (separate!).

I also made a little mug cookie-oats, Smart Balance butter, sunflower seed butter, and maple syrup. Yum!

Saturday morning, I woke up ready to run! Pre-race breakfast was a homemade granola bar-although it wasn’t exactly in bar form because I was out of properly shaped bowls. It’s complicated. It consisted of banana, chia seeds, oats, cranberries, and a little maple syrup.

The forecast for the day was rain, and given the fact that it rained for both of my 5ks last winter, I wasn’t optimistic. However, it held off and ended up being perfect running weather! Check out the dramatic sky-these 2 pictures were taken at the same time, at the same place, but of 2 sides of the pond.

We got there with plenty of time to spare.

Then, it was go time! There was a very large group of young girls running their first 5k. I think that’s awesome! However, it made for quite the hectic start!

It took me a little while to lock into my pace, but I was pretty consistent after that until about 2 miles, when my pace slowed a tiny bit. The course was out 2 miles, and back 1. Mentally, I actually really liked this! Its easier to break up that way in my mind! I ended up picking it up for the last half mile. I didn’t feel really tired until the very end, so I guess I’ll take it! I finished with a slightly faster pace than last month’s 5k-about 5 seconds per mile.

Not my fastest, but good enough to earn me a bronze medal in my age group! Gotta love these small races.

The rest of the day was pretty crazy. We stopped at Whole Foods for some post-race fuel, and then I rushed to the vet to work. I ended up working late, and had to rush to dinner with the family for my sister’s birthday!

We went to an Ethiopian place, which was delicious! For those of you not familiar with Ethiopian cuisine, it’s quite unique! Typically, all the dishes for the table are served on one platter. They serve injera, a spongy flatbread that you eat with the saucy foods. There is no silverware-it can get quite messy!

After dinner, we headed back to my sister’s apartment for pineapple upside down cake.

It’s been a good weekend so far!

Have you ever had Ethiopian food?