To be honest….I think one reason I’m struggling to feel like Christmas is just 2 days away is that I haven’t had a ton of holiday food, and I haven’t done any sort of Blogmas/12 Days of Christmas/Blogiversary!

I have one more Christmas-y adventure to catch you guys up on, as well as fitness and food things!

Yesterday, my family went into San Francisco to check out the Union Square Christmas tree and see the holiday kittens at Macy’s. I had originally thought that when I saw the kittens (up for adoption), it would be feasible for me to get one! However, Jackson is more than enough <3

Also, I don’t know if I posted a picture of our tree yet, but it’s especially pretty this year! My parents went through our plethora of ornaments and picked out all the best (breakable) ones. Pretty bold move on their part with a new kitten!

On Friday, after a 35 degree-unheated Crossfit workout, we headed into San Francisco, starting at the big mall. We ate lunch at the food court, and I got a big kale salad with butternut squash, apple, pumpkin seeds, chicken, and a maple curry vinaigrette.

For dessert, I had a piece of GF cinnamon coffee cake that tasted like the inside of a cinnamon roll, and a few bites of my dad’s mousses.

We shopped around a tiny bit before walking over to Union Square, first to see the Macy’s kittens!

So cute!

Then, we walked over to the big tree in Union Square.

We hung around there for a bit before deciding we wanted to grab a beer. I looked up nearby breweries, and we ended up at Thirsty Bear, which was also a tapas place with a delicious looking menu. We shared a flight of all their beers, as well as some samples of their holiday brews (including a lager with nutmeg).

After our flight, my dad and I split the Panda Bear, a lager made with cacao nibs and vanilla. It was served with TCHO chocolate, which paired perfectly! It was really interesting because it was definitely a chocolatey beer, but it wasn’t a dark beer!

We finally headed home and ate dinner and relaxed until I went to a Christmas party with my friends! My friend’s house was decorated beautifully. They also had a white elephant exchange, but for snacks, which I thought was a great idea! It was also another great excuse to bust out my Christmas sweater! I’ve gotten lots of use out of it this year!

In terms of fitness this week, it’s been a mixture of Crossfit and spin. It’s nice being back at my home Crossfit, but Monday and Tuesday’s workout had my entire body hurting. Monday was 100 pull ups+100 wall balls. 2 days later, I could not straighten my arms! But I did 100 pull ups without ripping my hands, which was sort of a miracle. I was really happy with my workout; I was able to hold onto sets of 4 or 5 most of the way through the 100, only dropping to sets of 2-3 by the very end.

Then, Tuesday morning was 5 rounds of 20 power snatches and 50 double unders. Plus, we did 100 hollow rocks as part of the strength for the day (that crushed my abs). Thankfully, my double unders, which had been elusive over the preceding months, decided to return.

I’ve also been walking Chloe. We walked a couple of times with my friend and her dog (he’s gotten so big now!), and a couple of times solo with a podcast.

In terms of food over break, here are a couple of fun things:

Sort of open faced sloppy joes with ground turkey. Bread on the bottom, lettuce leaf on top. Plus some amazing roasted brussels sprouts. We drizzled them with truffle aged balsamic and it was absurd. I planned this meatier dinner for the night after 100 pull ups!

Cooking Light’s Miso Ginger Noodle Bowls. I found these while flipping through the magazine!

Crustless vegetable quiche (filled with broccoli, peppers, mozzarella, and feta), roasted asparagus with truffle salt, and GF baguette with olive oil and that amazing balsamic.

GF molasses ginger cookies from the GF bakery in the city. So delicious! Also pieces of this See’s toffee bar. These remind me of my childhood; we used to sell them as a band fundraiser in middle school (I played the violin), and I haven’t had one in years! Most toffee has nuts, but these don’t!

And finally, open faced turkey and havarti sandwiches with persimmon on top, broiled. Green beans with a lemon dill seasoning blend on the side.

And finally:

Starbucks peppermint hot chocolate. Of course with whipped cream. I got it with nonfat milk, so I guess it’s a compromise!

I don’t expect to post again before Christmas, so I hope everyone has a fabulous holiday!

First, we’re going to step it back to just before finals week. I actually drove home the weekend before finals to go to my dad’s company Christmas party.

I’ve never missed one, and I decided it would be a good break from school and studying, plus it would allow me to spend a day studying with my kitty at home! (And I re-listened to a lecture on the drive back.)

Of course, there was good food!
Salad:

Snapper:

And cheesecake:

The next day, I baked peppermint bark muffins with a gluten free muffin mix I had lying around, plus Ghiradelli peppermint bark chips and chocolate chips.

The next Christmas festivities occurred right after finals. I knew I was going to want to celebrate the semester, so I scheduled my annual Christmas cooking making with my best friends from high school.

Another bonus? One of my friends has a new kitten!

Here’s our handiwork!

Saturday night, my family and I went to a Dickens Christmas Fair. It was really cool! It was exactly what it sounds like. Lots of people were dressed up. There was food, things to buy, and performances going on.

We were there kind of late so a lot of the food was gone. I had a baked potato and steamed vegetables.

And a GF cookie.

Sunday, it was time for the Santa Run! It’s an afternoon race so it’s always awkward working out meals. I made my shortcut ginger butternut squash soup.

We got super lucky! The weather was absolutely beautiful! Some years it’s been cold and/or rainy!

I was not super confident going into this race. My ankle is still bad (and likely will be for the foreseeable future). But I couldn’t miss this race!

I went out at a decently fast pace the first two miles, but sort of jogged the last mile. Unfortunately, eating gluten in Christmas cookies a few nights before had be feeling sick in the following days. Oh well, lesson learned!

Not too bad of a time, all things considered!

Embarrassingly, I actually re-rolled my bad ankle within the last .1 mile, but since my ankle issues are weirder than just a role, I don’t think it made any lasting difference thankfully!

At the finish line, we grabbed snacks (chicken tamale for me) and explored Christmas at the Park. Apparently the 600 Christmas trees there this year was a Guinness World Record!

I actually ended up pulling off a third place in my age group!

After exploring the festivities, we grabbed beers at a place we’ve stood outside in past years because they had heat lamps and it was freezing!

On the way home, we stopped in Palo Alto to see lights on a famous street that apparently has been decorating since the 1940s! It was pretty cool! The decorations seemed like they were from another era—a lot of wooden figures.

While in Palo Alto, we stopped at Sweetgreen. I got a salad with burssels sprouts and a delicious cranberry vinaigrette.

Later in the week, my mom and I went to the Ferry Building in San Francisco.

We stopped at Mariposa for lunch, a gluten free bakery. I had a turkey sandwich, and we split some muffins (the pumpkin chocolate chip is my favorite!)

We also tried a couple of gourmet chocolates: Rose chocolate and burnt caramel.

This post is getting super long, so I’ll save the remaining festivities, but I’ll leave you with some of my favorite kitten pictures of the week!

Before we get into the meat of this post, I’m trying my best to get festive up around here! I finally broke out my Bath and Body Works peppermint twist spray (I think I’ve actually had this since freshman year of high school…), and I got my first red cup!

I’ve been using festive plates for my avocado toast.

And bundled up in giant scarves.

We had to take her to the vet due to some eye stuff (minor infection), and this is how she rides in the car…

Check out this picture from the St. Louis Zoo that my coworker sent me. It’s crazy, and really hard for me to imagine it like that!

I wish I could say my workouts have been particularly festive, but going to spin classes and Crossfit here does make me feel like it is the holidays, since when I was in college I would only go to these places when I was home for the holidays.

In Crossfit, we’re still going strong with our 20 rep sets. Tuesday, we did Fran, and it was my first time Rxing it. (21-15-9 thrusters at 65# and pull ups). Then, that evening, I went to a spin class because it was one of my favorite teachers. I woke up Wednesday morning with my legs feeling rough. I still went to Crossfit (lots of back squats), but spent the rest of the day taking it easy on my legs, and refueling with lots of festive food.

You see, we recently started getting a CSA box. I mentioned this before, but we got talked into it when I was getting my Turkey Trot bib. It’s awesome because it comes right to your door, and you get to customize what you want in it. Since we have 100000 persimmons right now, I figured we would want mostly veggies. However, I did decide to keep the cranberries. Because Christmas. There’s really only one thing to do with them, right?

Make my favorite Cranberry Orange Bread. I made this recipe numerous times last year, all the way through February, or whenever cranberries become hard to find. It’s healthy, but the texture is still soft. I love that it only calls for 1/2 cup of sugar. Until you add chocolate chips, of course.

Sadly, they all sunk to the bottom. Which creates a very interesting pure chocolate crust. There are worse things in life.

I actually froze most of the loaf. My current favorite dessert is eating quick breads with Halo Top.

(A different cranberry orange bread from the other night.)

But of course I had to do a taste test.

On the topic of our CSA box…what else have we been making? The other night we made smashed potatoes from the purple potatoes. Roasted in the oven, then smashed and brushed with garlic and olive oil, salt and pepper, and sprinkled with parmesan, and then put back in the oven. (We had them with chicken cooked in meyer lemon artichoke simmer sauce over spinach.)

We based Wednesday night’s dinner around our new box finds as well. We made kale chips out of the kale—massaged in olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, baked for a little over 10 minutes at 400.

For the main course, we had eggs and a butternut squash dish. The recipe for this honey garlic roasted butternut squash came with our CSA box. It had some balsamic in there too, and was topped with feta. Plus a baby avocado toast on the side.

I ate a festive dessert while making a festive dessert. I nibbled on peppermint bark before trying my hand at some eggnog.

I used this recipe for low fat eggnog. I wanted to try and make a healthier eggnog, and my family generally likes light eggnog better anyway (the regular stuff is too thick.) I reduced the sugar in the recipe to only 1/4 cup, down from 1/3. I also added a dash of cinnamon.

Cooking on the stove:

This has cornstarch to give it a little thickness.

I’m not really sure what happened when cooking. The recipe said once the egg was in, cook for about 8 minutes, or until it starts to thicken. It started to thicken after less than 5 minutes, and was a little chunky. It was basically separated custard. Ugh. But it tasted good.

My mom suggested we put it in the blender, and that did wonders! Despite the rocky start, it actually came out well.

And hey, it tasted good! Delicious warm as well!

And on that note, enjoy my babes:

Are you an eggnog person?

I brought him here, oh, 4-5 hours ago, to help me read microbiology and he has not moved. During that time, I’ve done reading, eaten lunch, made this recipe, and walked the dog. He’s still snoozing. No shame.

Today’s recipe is another idea that popped into my head while walking around the zoo and dreaming of the holidays. My FAVORITE healthy pumpkin bread recipe ever doesn’t actually call for any spices, so I usually add a ton of pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon to make pumpkin bread. But I thought, huh, why not make this into gingerbread? And just add gingerbread spices? I don’t have the original source of the recipe since it’s a print out from many years ago, but I adapted it to make delicious pumpkin gingerbread.

This loaf has a warm flavor that just feels like the holidays. Even though we have yet to get a tree or put up decorations, when that sweet, molasses-ginger scent fills the house, I know it’s December!

This recipe also packs a bit of a nutritional punch: it’s filled with Vitamin A from pumpkin, lots of important minerals from molasses (iron, calcium, magnesium, and more), and it isn’t a sugar bomb.

Pumpkin Gingerbread

Ingredients:

2 1/4 c flour (I used GF but this recipe works well with half whole wheat and half white)

1/2 T baking powder

1 t baking soda

1 t salt

1 large egg

1 egg white

1 can of pumpkin (about 1.5 c)

1/4 c oil (I used avocado but you could use any type of vegetable oil)

1/2 c molasses

1/4 c packed brown sugar

1 t vanilla

2 t ginger

1/4 t nutmeg

1/8 t cloves

1 t cinnamon

powder sugar for dusting (optional)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Whisk all dry ingredients besides the sugar together in a large bowl.
3. Stir in wet ingredients until well blended.
4. Pour batter into a tinfoil-lined loaf pan.
5. Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until done.
6. Sprinkle powdered sugar on top. Enjoy!

*Extra points if you have a holiday-themed plate.

For those interested in health, the holidays can be a tumultuous time. There are conflicting tensions between the desire to maintain physical health while still enjoying holiday foods and festivities.

I knew in the past this has been an issue for me. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the holidays. I love the traditions, the food, the special events. But I also value my health. In the past, this tension would make me crazy, anxious, and angry around the holidays. I was always trying to avoid sugar, resist the goodies. But I would be miserable and feel like I was missing out. And I would inevitably give in and eat all the foods anyways, eat a ton of them, and feel terrible.

By the time the actual day of Christmas rolled around, I would be a mess. And every year around the holidays I would gain weight.

Last year was the first holiday season in many years that this didn’t happen. It was partly because I was still so sick then with my chronic stomach issue. I physically couldn’t go crazy eating things without my body turning on me. But that changed my perspective, because I appreciated what I could and did eat more. I think that experience, plus some maturity and changes in values, has shifted how I look at food and the holidays. That being said, I wanted to share some of my thoughts on how to stay “healthy” throughout the holidays. (Note the quotations).

1. Don’t think of it as “surviving the holidays.” Think about “enjoying the holidays.” I know it’s easier said than done, but the holidays are not about dieting and resisting delicious food, they’re about family, traditions, and joy.
2. Similarly, I really don’t recommend trying to avoid all the holidays foods. In my experience, that leaves me miserable and craving them even more. Life’s too short to not enjoy eggnog, or a Christmas morning mimosa, or your Grandma’s special homemade pie. Letting go of that restrictive mentality isn’t easy, but it’s freeing.
3. Trust your body. Don’t stress the changes. Here’s the deal. No one is going to wake up every single day weighing precisely the same amount. So many factors go into play. We see these stats everywhere: “Americans gain an average of 5 pounds every holiday season.” Here’s the deal. I guarantee that is not 5 pounds of pure fat. Carbohydrates hold 4x their weight in water. If you eat a lot of sugar or bread products over the holidays, your body will retain water. But guess what? That will disappear when you return to your normal routine. I finally started trusting my body. If I eat a big, delicious meal and lots of sugar, I realize that I might gain some weight but I don’t freak out because a) it’s not that serious and b) I trust that when things return to normal my body will too.

All those were more ways to mentally approach the holidays. While I definitely preach enjoying everything, I also want to make it a priority this holiday season to still feel good so I can fully enjoy everything. So I do want to talk about some ways to do that as well.

1. Maintain your normal routine as much as possible when not at events. Go to holiday parties on the weekends, have a good time, and enjoy good food, but eating cake and cookies at a party on the weekend doesn’t mean you have to say “screw it” and eat junk all week. Stick to your normal workouts, eat your normal meals. I guarantee you will feel better.
2. Make some healthy holiday treats. Some healthy swaps you won’t even notice. If you’re making gingerbread, why not look for a lower sugar recipe? If you’re making your own treats, why not make some healthier ones to have on hand? I personally plan on making some healthier treats that I don’t feel bad about enjoying on a regular basis. That way I never feel like I’m missing out on anything (And check back here for some recipes!)
3. Get physical. No matter what I’m eating, I always feel 100x better when I get some exercise in.
4. Start some new fit traditions. One of my favorite traditions that my family and I started doing was the Santa Run. It’s a 5k that finished at Christmas in the Park, a little Christmas village in downtown San Jose. It gets us in the holiday spirit! Last year on Christmas day, my family started our morning with a dog walk/run along the bay, followed by festive drinks, and it was an absolutely beautiful morning. Plus, Chloe got to join in! Take a night walk to look at lights (especially if you live in CA like I do and it’s not freezing!) Not every holiday tradition has to revolve around food.

Those are my thoughts for how to approach the holidays. Trust your body, and just think about trying to feel your best to enjoy the season. Again, it’s not that serious.

On that note, let’s finally dive into WIAW, Jenn‘s baby! Now that I’m home, my food is a little bit more interesting so I want to share it more!

Pre-Workout:

My new favorite pre-workout food is Cheerios. I don’t even know what time zone I’m on right now, but I had plenty of time before morning Crossfit to eat! I had a bowl of pumpkin spice Cheerios. (We ordered a few boxes online from Target because they were getting hard to find!)

Workout:

I did some technique work on snatches. I used 65# for a complex of a power snatch, overhead squat, and full snatch. Then we worked on bar muscles ups (LOL). I practiced some turnovers (assisted) and worked on negative pull ups. The WOD was a 7 min AMRAP of 5 power cleans and 10 toes to bar. I have toes to bar, but the coach and me do knees to elbow instead so I could really focus on getting into a good position that should later help me string together toes to bar. It was a lot more shoulder intensive the way he had me doing them! I used 85 for the cleans.

Breakfast:

I had the same breakfast most days in St. Louis and I’m finally sick of it. I discovered some chocolate KIND granola in the pantry, so I centered my breakfast on that. I made a yogurt with with Fage 2% a little bit of maple syrup, and cocoa powder. Topped with granola and crunchy Sunbutter. I had jumbo blueberries on the side.

Lunch:

I had more leftover lemon chicken rice soup, with added spinach. I also seasoned it with thyme lemon bay sea salt, and topped it with feta. On the side are leftover roasted shaved brussels with truffle salt.

Snack:

I had another sea salt chocolate bar from 88 Acres (more info here) as well as a Medjol date, since it had been so long since I had one strangely enough. So good!

I also nibbled on some Cranberry Orange bread while cutting up some slices for the freezer.

Dinner Part 1:

I volunteered to sub a 7:30pm spin class this evening which is a super awkward time for me, especially since I’m still sort of on St. Louis time. I decided to eat a light dinner pretty early.

Trader Joe’s GF cornbread with a little whipped butter.

And a small bowl of butternut squash and chicken soup.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure if anyone was going to come to a spin class that late, the week of Thanksgiving. Since it’s at the university, most people are gone for break. Luckily, I had a few people, and had a blast! It’s different teaching here, and it’s good to be back.

The rest of the evening didn’t go as planned. I drive an older car, and it can be pretty finicky. I had a lot of issues with the engine when I first started driving it a few years ago, but since then it has been fine. It didn’t appreciate not being driven too much while I was gone, it turns out. It took a while to start driving there, and when I got in to drive home after spin, the engine started shaking like crazy and then just died. Thereby stranding me 25 minutes from home. The worst thing was I was able to get out of my parking spot before it died, so I was directly blocking in a few cars. I called Triple A to get it towed, and my mom came and picked me up. Thankfully the process was relatively painless all things considered, and I’m grateful I didn’t even make it out of the parking lot and it didn’t die on the highway. That being said, I don’t have a good feeling about what may be wrong with it.

When my mom and I drove off around 9:30, we were both on the exact same wavelength: froyo. When I had mono freshman year of college, I ate mass quantities of froyo so I still remembered more or less what places were open until 10! We stopped at Yumi Yogurt, which is pretty big in my area. I got a butterscotch flavor burst with mini m&ms. Sadly, aesthetics were sacrificed in favor of more toppings but this was delicious, and the perfect post-workout refuel!

While it’s never fun watching your car get towed, I’m thankful the situation wasn’t worse. A

And on that note….

How do you approach the holidays?

Since I can’t eat a lot these days, for my meal I ordered a salad and fried rice. There were able to make it with gluten free soy sauce which was awesome!

Then, we returned home to make Christmas cookies and watch the Polar Express. I had only seen it once before, but I was in the mood for a different movie this year and really enjoyed it! For cookies, I made my healthy polka dot cookies.Since my sister was eating them, I threw in some honey for extra sweetness, and made about 1/3 of the cookies with normal chocolate, not mint, chips.

I started “Christmas” (Saturday morning) with a Crossfit workout. I worked on power jerks, and the then WOD was an ascending ladder of double unders and a descending ladder of kb swings. My double unders were actually really good that day for some reason!

Then, it was time to put on our fake Christmas best and head over to see my grandma.

For lunch, I had soup (shockingly)—Manhatten clam chowder—and then some of my dad’s sweet potato fries. It was nice to see my family, but unfortunately we had to run out of there after dinner to take my puppy out of her crate.

At home, we ate homemade desserts (this is cranberry apple cobbler) and made mimosas—both with fresh squeezed orange juice and with crane-raspberry juice.

Chloe enjoyed her first Christmas! She loved opening her presents from Grandma.

Rain has been in the forecast all week, but we got a reprieve from it on Saturday night so we decided to take the opportunity to visit a nearby neighborhood that goes all out for the holidays. We decided to bring Chloe to enjoy the sights and sounds!

Fake Christmas was fun, and it’s only drawing out the celebrating!

For this post, I’m going to go over weekend things and then do a little puppy photo dump at the end.

Friday night, I went to my school’s annual performance where we make fun of Cal, our rivals. Saturday was our rival game. I think pretty much every group on our campus is also made fun of, and it’s a good time. So crazy this is my last one though! I also got a free facial with my sister. She won one at a bridal fair, and I got to try all kinds of new skin care products. My skin care routine is very basic-soap-and it made me think about taking better care of my skin in the future. Friday also consisted of me sort of learning to salsa (not well).

Saturday was very low key thanks to Thanksgiving break. I finally made it out for a run around noon, and did a 6.4 mile route in preparation for the turkey trot. I looked at my post from last year…apparently I ran it 2 minutes faster than I had remembered, which means I have to run it fast again this year….although we’ll see. Overall I’m faster than a year ago but I’ll see how I’m feeling. Saturday night was the big game! It was fun and we won! I also stopped by a tailgate beforehand.

^Obnoxious snap sent to Cal friends.

Sunday morning started with a quick workout-6x200m on the track, abs, and some good mornings. Quick and efficient! Then, I headed home for break. The highlight of the day was heading up to SF to watch a tree lighting a Pier 39. It was an absolutely beautiful night-not too cold!

On the way, I stopped at the Ferry Building for some gluten free goods: focaccia and ginger molasses cookies!

The lighting itself was quite festive! Beforehand, a mariachi band played which was awesome. There were disney characters there, and they along with another group sang to light the tree.

What a fun way to start Thanksgiving break!

Monday morning started with a workout at a nearby college-stairs. I did single leg hops, jumps, and running up the stairs. It’s been a while, and my legs were absolute jello, to the point it was hard to drink because my legs were shaking!

It was a pretty low key day-I spent some time with a new book, a purring kitty, and a heated blanket.

That evening I taught my Thanksgiving spin class. For Thanksgiving, I go all out. I showed up to teach in a turkey hat.

I wore it for about a quarter of the class. It quickly became sweaty and itchy, and was about ready to fly away. For the class itself, I continued with the Thanksgiving theme. I decided to simulate a Thanksgiving day. A turkey trot, mimosas, then a trip to the grocery. At the grocery, we had to battle crowds in order to grab the last turkey in the store. Carrying a 20 lb turkey, we made the heavy trek home. At home, we played a little football (we were wide receivers), and then made mashed potatoes. Finally, dinner was served and we were able to enjoy the fruits of our labors, along with dessert (I played the song Dessert by Dawin), and then it was time to slow it down. Food coma, or the calm after the storm. A chance to reflect on this special day, to let go of stress, to just be.

After class, I stopped at jamba juice for a pumpkin smash smoothie. This is like half ice cream, but it’s one of my favorite pumpkin items of the season!

After that, I had softball playoffs in the frigid weather. Unfortunately, we lost the quarter finals and didn’t advance.

And finally-as promised, puppy overload! All photos courtesy of my fantastic roommate.

3 new recipes

2 workouts

1 family

When I saw last year’s post for this day, I was stuck. Uhh you can only mash bananas so many ways! Instead, I decided to alter the the idea to variations on a theme. Much easier to work with! But what could I make 4 ways?

Custard! Last summer, I tried my hand at healthy banana custard and it came out really well. In the fall, I tried pumpkin custard. But then I realized I never posted the original recipe! And here’s a bonus-one version is a microwave version of the original as well. Although fair warning, it is  bit hard to not get it to overflow in the microwave. That happened when I made it in DC at the house I was staying at. Let’s just say that microwave needed the cleaning. *Shudder* So let’s get to it!

First, we’ll go through general custard making, and then I’ll do adjustments for each variation. Note that I use egg whites and skim milk for it. If you want to make it richer, feel free to use full fall milk or egg yolks.

Custard Making

1. Heat milk up in medium/large pot until it simmers.

2. Meanwhile, whisk egg whites and corn starch together (and banana is recipe calls for it) in a medium/large bowl.

3. Remove milk from heat and pour onto the side of the bowl with the egg mixture, while wisking the mixed mixture.

4. Immediately pour everything back into the pot and cook on medium high until everything thickens.

5. Stir in butter and vanilla

Ok! Now for the fun part.

Banana custard

3 bananas, well mashed (can microwave to soften them but cool before adding to egg mixture)

1 T butter

1 t vanilla

2 c milk

1 c egg whites

1/4c cornstarch

Bananas Foster Custard

3 bananas, sliced

2 T butter

1 t vanilla

2 c milk

1 c egg whites

1/4c cornstarch

2 T brown sugar

1 t cinnamon

Sautee 1 T butter, the cinnamon, the brown sugar, and the bananas.

Sautee until soft and tender, and then lightly mash.

Let the bananas cool before adding them to the egg and corn starch mixtures, and follow the directions above for custard making.

Eggnog Custard

2 cups light eggnog or soynog/coconut milk nog/almond milk nog (go with regular eggnog if you want it super rich-I used Silk Soynog)

1 cup egg whites

1/4 c corn starch

1 T butter

1 t vanilla

Follow above instruction for custard with eggnog in place of milk.

When this came off the stove, I was sort of blown away and decided it needed to be inside a cake. I used it as a filling for pumpkin cake and it was fantastic!

Microwave Banana Custard

I made this for breakfast in DC when I wanted something lighter and fast with a good protein kick!

1 very ripe banana

(optional 1 T corn starch)

2/3 c milk

1/3 c egg whites

dash of vanilla

1 t butter (optional)

1. Mash up banana in microwave safe bowl and heat about 30 seconds or until soft. Mash again.

2. Add milk, egg, and corn starch to bowl and mix well.

3. Heat on high until mixture thickens, stirring every 30 seconds. Make sure it doesn’t overflow!

4. Stir in butter and vanilla.

And because I’m still home, here is your holiday cat quota of the day:

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

Twins!

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

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.

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

And of course we needed a picture by the tree.

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.

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

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!

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:

Have a great holiday everyone!

What is most important to you this time of year?

Before I get into it, thank you all so much for your kind comments on my blogiversary post! They melted my heart and brightened my day inside the dark library. 

Also-if you haven’t there’s still plenty of time to enter my giveaway!

Since I have been doing 12 Days of Christmas, I haven’t gotten a chance to post a lot of my recent eats! Hint: there have been lots of persimmons. I think my record is 6 in one day? Although to be fair, two of them were babies.

Why I was motivated to take this picture, I have no idea.

It’s been cold here in California. Ok, everyone else, feel free to laugh. I’m a wimp and take my bundling up seriously. Why be cold when you can wear 6 layers?

This morning I went to morning Crossfit-the low was 26 I believe, and I thought for sure my car wouldn’t start, since it was in the 40s the night before and it didn’t sound good. Luckily though, it did, and I only had to worry about cleaning off copious amounts of ice from my windshield, and not trying to find someone to jump my car! I really need an ice scraper though-I was lucky to have a towel with me-otherwise it would have been my fingers (I’ve done that before..ouch).

Also, our Crossfit box is literally freezing. It was colder in than out, and it was below freezing out so…

And the worst part? The bars are like ICE. Yuck. Anyways, by the time I returned and got coffee, I found myself craving a dining hall breakfast (what? who am I?) and since this was the second day in a row I wanted that, I decided to go for it. 

A whole wheat english muffin with one side butter and (some) jam, and the other cream cheese, egg, and spinach. With a side of unripe pineapple! I also had a whole wheat pancake with butter and jam. 

Ok, the real reason I tend to avoid the dining hall is because they often have the most delicious blueberry muffins (one of my major weaknesses), and I know eating 5,000 muffins before a final probably isn’t the best idea…

My lunch was a turkey sandwich made open faced:

Plus an extremely delicious piece of mystery bread that it’s been way too long since I’ve had.

I got them at a little cafe and settled in to relax after a morning of studying before my final. I didn’t bring headphones, and didn’t want to strain my brain my reading anything, so I eavesdropped for about an hour. Totally normal, right?

After my exam, I decided to actually go to the dining hall! To be fair, I complain about how boring dining hall food is, but it’s also because I almost always go to the same dining hall-I don’t seem to get back from Crossfit/other workouts before all the other ones close. Example-yesterday I finished Crossfit and tried to catch the tail end of a different dining hall’s hours. They had no food left!

But I finally got what I wanted today, since my exam ended earlier:

A burrito bowl with salmon. I’ve been craving Mexican food so much since listening to a book on tape during my workout yesterday-they went to Mexico and were eating tacos (keep in mind, I was listening to this at 7am and wanted tacos…). 

And you better believe that I’m going to get dessert if I just took a final!

Chocolate soft serve, chocolate chips, marshmallows, jam, and cereal. I was SO tempted to add peanut butter-I made a ton of chocolate/peanut buttery soft serve cups of deliciousness last year, but I refrained for the sake of my face and skin.

Ok, so what have you missed on the food front?

Persimmon and egg cup.

Snack plate-guacamole, cinnamon laughing cow, pear chips.

Broccoli and white cheddar laughing cow.

A Whole Foods Southwest salad that I added avocado to.

Teriyaki tofu, rice and quinoa mix, salad with goat cheese, hummus, and avocado. 

Christmas on a plate. They opened up a Harry and David store at my local mall, so pears were a necessity. I had to pull myself away from eating really delicious persimmons to eat a really delicious pear. I know, poor me. 

Mass amounts of broccoli for lunch because that’s clearly what all the cool people do.

Mushroom and barley soup, and a salad with goat cheese, hummus, and fig balsamic. I accidentally poured half the container of goat cheese on there.I wish I could say I was sorry…I love goat cheese!

And the grand finale…

Last night I wanted something sweet, so I went forward with a microwave pumpkin oatmeal cookie in mind. Except I kind of just turned it into straight oatmeal. I used pumpkin butter, and then since I didn’t have any normal almond milk open and I’m leaving in 3 days, I used almond nog. O.M.G. The flavor combination of eggnog and pumpkin was unreal. You all you to try your oatmeal like this. I also mixed in some egg white, pumpkin pie spice, vanilla, baking powder, and butter (it was kind of supposed to be a cookie at one point…but delicious addition!)

YUM. 

And since I was talking about cold weather and bundling up…here’s a picture of me being a weather confused California girl.

2 jackets. Scarf. Gloves. Shorts? 

Let’s say that I regretted this decision when I left the library in the dark….brrr! It’s so much colder once the sun goes down. My friend wanted me to come over the other day at like 9pm…I wore 3 jackets, 2 pairs of pants, uggs, gloves, and a scarf that covered my whole face. I couldn’t move my arms. But I wasn’t cold!

I hope you all are having fabulous weeks! 3. More. Days. 

What is your favorite seasonal flavor?