Red, White, and Blue Everything (4th of July)

Date: July 8, 2017

Author: astottler

I know we’re a few days out from 4th of July now, but I swear I haven’t had a minute to recap my 4th of July! It was a pretty relaxing day, with emphasis on red, white, an blue!

Of course, my morning started with a Crossfit workout.

We did a simple but longer workout, with the option of having a partner and splitting it up:

50 squats

400m run

50 push ups

400m run

50 pull ups

400m run

50 wall balls

I chose to do it alone…and started regretting that decision during the pull-ups! Honestly though, my pull ups need so work, so builds character?

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After a sweaty workout, I relaxed on the coach with sparkling water and a mid-morning baseball game. Perfect way to spend a holiday!

On the way home from my workout, I picked up some food for the day, including apparently bad goat cheese. I was going to have some for lunch, but it was rotten. What the heck?? It wasn’t past the expiration date!

For an early, light lunch, I had a single serve bag of rice cakes (current obsession) and a salad with peach and burrata.

After the game, i spent a few hours relaxing with a book and a kitty, which was fantastic.

Then, mid-afternoon, I went to a BBQ with some of my high school friends.

I got to play with my friend’s puppy, drink beer and eat delicious food, and lose a water balloon toss.

I came in time for the dinner I envisioned earlier in the day: red, white, and blue salad!

I’m already obsessed with Blueberry Burrata Salad, so I figured why not throw some raspberries in and make it patriotic? This salad would also have been delicious with goat cheese in place of burrata.

We also had grilled corn, because #summer.

Of course, I also had to make red, white, and blue banana bread. It’s just my basic banana bread recipe, but with white chocolate chips, raspberries, and blueberries stirred in. It’s also possibly the most delicious banana bread variation I make.

For fireworks, we weren’t feeling too ambitious, so we walked to the top of our street with Chloe to where we could see the whole Bay, and were able to see a couple of different fireworks displays from there.

Here’s the obligatory blurry fireworks picture:

It was a nice low-key holiday!

Patriotic City, Patriotic Day, Patriotic Banana Bread

Date: July 6, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

How was everyone’s fourth of July?

I had a great one-I’m pretty much in the perfect place for it!

I kicked off the festivities Thursday night. I had planned to do a run club workout that evening but with heavy rain coming, I wimped out and stayed in my bed watching Netflix until the evening when I Metro-ed over to a friends apartment for movie watching and banana bread making. I’ve been hinting at red, white, and blue banana bread, so here it is!

I don’t have a specific amount of the ingredients, but I made my banana bread recipe without any sweetener and added about a handful each of blueberries, raspberries, and white chocolate chips. The only white chocolate chips I could find were mini, and they kind of dissolved in the baking process, but it was still SO delicious!

Friday morning I had intentions of going for a run, but I slept in because my sleep schedule is really off right now-it was much needed!

I met up with my friends to watch the DC 4th of July parade!

I don’t think I’ve ever been to a parade before! It was fun, and I took a ton of pictures, but I condensed them into a little collage so I don’t bombard you guys!

After the parade, we wandered around looking for a lunch place that was actually open. We ended up at a cafeteria where I had a chicken gyro sandwich.

Then, we walked a ways to get gelato. It was perfectly refreshing on a hot day! I had vanilla chocolate chip and dark chocolate.

After some downtime and some weirdly shaped sunburns (I always miss a spot! Or two…), we met back up at the National Mall for the concerts and the fireworks show.

Except we never found the concert. We weren’t particularly close, and a random weird band was playing on a stage between us and the big main concert. It was ok though-I was mostly there for fireworks!

I swear it was like a movie watching the fireworks with the Washington Monument in the foreground. You know-the end of one of those rom-coms? Just me? Ok…They were really good, and I definitely haven’t watched fireworks with that many people before! The amount of screens you could see from people taking pictures was crazy!

I don’t understand how people for such good pictures…mine sort of just looked like the Washington Monument was exploding…

After the fireworks, I experienced the madness that is the Metro on the 4th of July. The first station I tried to go to was so full they were sending people away. The next one was also insane but after waiting in hoards of people to get through the gates, I was lucky enough to be one of the few people to get on the first train that I needed. It was PACKED. And people just kept trying to get on, even as we got further from the National Mall! Even the station I got off at was being held up due to crowds. Crazy!

After a couple of rest days, I hit the gym hard yesterday. Since I missed a training run, I started with a treadmill interval workout. 1 mile at a fast pace, then 5x of two minutes at a past pace and two minutes walking. I haven’t done this in FOREVER, and traditionally I do it 10x, but I didn’t have time for that, or the endurance! It did go better than I was expecting though!

Then, I did a short circuit (like 8 minutes) of push ups, squat jumps, mountain climbers, and sit ups, before heading to a spin class.

The class was AWESOME. The instructor was good and the music was great. I really pushed myself at the end, and the only thing that kept me pushing was seeing the big guy at the froth desk totally rocking out to our music. So great.

Since this post is getting crazy long, I’ll finish up quickly. I got a Whole Foods green smoothie, which was kind of watery but that was fantastic because it was so refreshing!

That afternoon, I met a friend and went to the zoo. It was fun, and the pandas were so adorable! I was EXHAUSTED by the end though, and my feet were far from happy.

I went back, grabbed a guacamole salad at SweetGreens (with blueberry basil lemonade-not a fan though) and planted myself on the couch with a movie.

Such a fun couple of days, but I’m ready for a low key day today! The only thing I have to do is a 6 miler!

How was your 4th?

Mysterious Disappearance

Date: July 5, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I hope everyone had an awesome holiday! Do you all have Friday off too? Today’s not really an off-day for me, since I have to go into the lab, but I don’t really mind it. I suppose I should go over my day yesterday, right?

I had the early shift at the kitten nursery. Every week I am astonished at how fast they’re growing up! The tiny kittens who we had to hand-feed a few weeks ago have now moved to the main nursery and are rambunctious and mischievous.

After my shift, I drove to the trail by the bay, where my parents met me with my bike. I got in a nice 10 mile bike ride while they walked the dog. Yesterday was (more or less) a rest day for me, and a much needed one at that. My legs were pretty much done.

After my ride, my best friend came over to bake brownies for a barbecue with all of our friends from high school. We wanted to do something a little more interesting, so we made S’mores brownies, but we did it the lazy way. If you do it “right”, it looks like this (I made these last year):

For these, you make a graham cracker crust and bake it, then bake the brownies on top of it, and then top that with marshmallows and brown them in the oven for like a minute. We took the lazy way out and just crushed graham crackers at the bottom and mixed marshmallows into the brownie batter.

Do you see any marshmallows here? Yeah, me neither. They kind of evaporated (ok, dissolved). I didn’t really think that one through…They were still delicious though, and had some extra chewy parts. Plus, they were a hit at the BBQ.

The BBQ was fun. It was so nice to catch up with people I basically haven’t seen in a year.

After that, I came home and shortly after began prepping for my family’s holiday dinner. While my dad grilled, I whipped up the blueberry crisp to go in the oven. I used this recipe-so simple, yet so delicious. I used whole wheat pastry flour for the white flour.

Pre-oven.

While this was baking up, I had a delicious salad with grilled peaches, chicken, and goat cheese. I promise I’ll post the recipe tomorrow, I’m not sure what the dressing recipe was at this point in time.

Let me just say that this combo is ridiculously good.

We also roasted up yams (most of which were from the farmer’s market). I think in theory they were supposed to be made into fries, but we didn’t exactly plan it that well, so I was kind of lost when they came out of the oven. I cut them into disks, added salt and pepper, and could not stop eating the whiter ones! I was surprised by how SWEET they were, given they weren’t even orange. SO GOOD.

My sister and her boyfriend popped in to pick something up just as the crisp was coming out of the oven, so they ate leftovers from our dinner, and joined us for the crisp.

The ‘ice cream’ is actually nonfat frozen yogurt. I believe it is Dreyer’s, which is by far the best fro-yo (in a carton). I forgot how much better it is when it’s not ridiculously crystallized and freezer burned!

After dinner, we went out to our annual spot on a hill to watch the fireworks. From where we were, we could see fireworks from all over the Bay Area. We probably saw 10-15 different displays, although only 2 were front and center. Do you guys remember San Diego’s fireworks from last year? I remember hearing about it and watching the Youtube video. Check it out! Here. I believe they ended up realizing that in their calculations for the timing of the show, they accidentally used 15 seconds instead of 15 minutes. Too funny!

Aaaand today is back to the grind. Ok, not really, but here’s my breakfast:

A mango and blueberry smoothie topped with sunflower seed butter, plus scrambled eggs. I also had a grain-free waffle on the side. On tap for me today? Lab, 4 mile run (I’m going to just do it at school), possibly an afternoon movie, and Crossfit tonight.

I hope you all continue to have a great holiday weekend!