4th of July in Nashville

Date: July 14, 2018

Author: astottler

I know the 4th of July was a while ago at this point, but we’re just going to roll with it. My parents were here for the 4th, and we had a really fun couple of days!

Of course, as soon as they arrived and when I got off work, we headed to Tailgate!

This time, we tried their cauliflower crust pizza! It was good, but honestly a little too cheesy for me; I prefer their regular GF crust!

We lucked out with the weather for Tuesday. It was on the cooler side (low 90s), so we did all the outdoor Nashville things.

We went downtown and walked the pedestrian bridge, visited Goo Goo candy, then drove by the parthenon.

Before too much sweating, we broke for lunch at Edley’s BBQ, my favorite of the BBQ I’ve tried thus far. I got a salad with smoked turkey on top. It also had smoked gouda, and it was delicious! A great way to get my BBQ fix while getting some greens in.

While in 12 South, we took the iconic picture and visited Jeni’s ice cream. I’m obsessed with the gooey butter cake flavor.

Next, we headed to the Belle Meade Plantation for a historical tour of the mansion and wine tasting.

I really enjoyed learning the history of the family that lived their. They had a huge horse business (it wasn’t actually a plantation) and basically owned the entire area. I love seeing a taste of what life was life in a different time and place.

We all enjoyed the wine tasting as well. I was able to try all whites. Tennessee wine is a lot different than CA wine. Very similar to Missouri wine. Fruitier, but refreshing.

After the tour, we spent a little time at home with the kitties before driving down south. This happened.

Yes, my mom and I both went home with our first pair of cowboy boots! Apparently this is what a month in Nashville does to me.

We went down to Franklin (30 minutes south of Nashville) for dinner. This was the meal I was most excited for. We visited the Honey Tupelo Cafe in Knoxville when I lived there, and I remember it being SUPER good (Southern Food). I also remember the amazing looking table biscuits. I was super strictly GF at that point and couldn’t try them, so now that I’m healthier, I was especially looking forward to those. They did not disappoint.

We also got some smokey veggies to share (including okra).

For my meal, I got a salad with goat cheese, blueberries, grilled chicken, and sweet potato puree.

After dinner, we planned on going to see some fireworks at Tailgate, but we severely underestimated how big of a deal it was, and when we saw the line of cars attempting to park blocks away, we gave up!

On 4th of July, I slept in and then took a spin class at KrankFit. It was America themed, and a fun way to start the holiday! My parents and I met up for an early lunch at Frothy Monkey. I got a salad with grilled salmon and goat cheese.

Then, we walked across the street to Five Daughters Bakery so my mom could try the 100 layer donut. We split a maple donut.

As temperatures were climbing into the mid-90s, we decided to cool off and see a movie that afternoon, which was definitely a good choice!

Before heading out for the night, I had to put Jackson’s festive bandana on and take some pictures. He’s the cutest.

For my mom’s birthday, I promised her a brewery tour in Nashville. I didn’t account for how many breweries would be closed, or would close early, for 4th of July! We had to change our plans a little bit, but Nashville (especially the Gulch) has no shortage of breweries to choose from. I think our favorite of the day was one that wasn’t even on our radar before!

First up: Southern Grist. These beers were super interesting. They had a lot of interesting fruity beers.

We then stopped for dinner at ML Rose, a burger joint. My mom and I split a chicken burger with cheese that tasted remarkably like an actual cheeseburger (in a good way!). Then, it was back onto the tour! We raced over to Yazoo (one of the main Nashville breweries) to split a beer before they closed for the night. We got the Dos Perros, and it was one of my favorites of the evening!

After Yazoo, we drove half a mile away to New Heights, a brewery we found just based on proximity (although it turns out I had tried one of their beers before). My mom and I got a flight with all kinds of interesting things, including an Aztec chocolate, a non-dark coffee beer, and a raspberry s’wheat tea.

We ended up getting a glass of the Swheat Tea to share.

Our last brewery was Tennessee Brew Works, which I had actually been to with my sister.

Finally, it was time to head downtown!

It was definitely crowded for 4th of July, and all of Broadway was closed off for a giant (free) concert. All of the rooftops were packed! I took my parents to some of my favorite spots. We were at a bar and suddenly everyone left, so naturally we followed them out to see why. The fireworks started! The fireworks show was awesome. It was set to music, it was so close, and it went on forever! At least 45 minutes! We were all very impressed!

We spent the rest of the night enjoying all that Nashville has to offer!

They left the following evening, so we spent the day not doing anything too crazy. We went to a coffeeshop for lavender vanilla lattes and a GF pineapple carrot muffin for me.

And then spent some time with kitties.

Finally, we went to an early dinner at Hattie B’s, Since it was still early and we weren’t super hungry, I ended up with lots of delicious leftovers!

It was so nice having them here to see my new city!

Blast from the Past+My Kitty’s BFF

Date: July 13, 2018

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? The last few weeks have been CRAZY. Lots of work+every single day off I had, I had visitors! It’s been a lot of fun, but very exhausting! So today is my first day off without visitors in a while…and it’s not exactly going to be a restful day because I’m going to a music festival! More on that later. For now, it’s 8am and a maid service is already at our house, so I vacated to a coffeeshop to blog. I already got my Crossfit in for the day as well!

Like I said…it’s been a minute. Let’s back up.

A few weeks ago I went to my first BBQ joint in Nashville, Martin’s. I went to the downtown location. I got a turkey platter.

It was good! Not my favorite style of sauce though. It was thin and vinegary. Good, but not what I consider to be the classic. There are a lot of different BBQ places with different styles of sauces around here, and I feel like it all comes down to personal preference. I also tried a 100 layer donut from Five Daughters Bakery, which is basically a hopped up cronut.

I got the salted chocolate. It was good, but it was SUPER rich and a little too salty in my opinion. I promptly went home to nap with my cat after eating this.

On my last day off without visitors, like 2 weeks ago, I went to a random event I saw in a magazine while waiting for our tour at the whiskey distillery. It was called “Breakfest,” basically a breakfast themed music festival.

It had performances from bands/lead singers of groups I loved in my youth, so this was quite a blast from the past!

A lot of the food lines were really long, so I actually ended up just getting a really delicious beet juice, and later a GF chocolate cookie.

I didn’t stay for the whole event my any means; I was there from 9am until just after noon. It was definitely a fun event to randomly find!

The next day, one of my best friends from back home came to visit me! She had been in town visiting family, and since I was working a long day, she arrived at my place hours before I did and bonded with Jackson. This is a really big deal because he’s SUPER shy with people that aren’t me, so the fact that they were snuggling and playing melted my heart! She sent me this picture; he looks so happy!

When I got home, we went to Tailgate for GF pizza and sunset beer.

We did a ton on our first full day! I went to 6am Crossfit (it’s hard to fit my workouts in on the days I work long hours so I have to try and do a lot on my off days), and then we went to Franklin Juice Co. for açaí bowls for breakfast!

Mine had the açaí base with granola, bananas, blueberries, strawberries, hemp seeds, and honey.

We explored 12 South and had to take the picture.

Then we went downtown to walk the pedestrian bridge.

After that, we stopped by the Parthenon.

For lunch, we went to the Nashville-must, Hattie B’s, for hot chicken! This was my second time there, and this time I tried the grilled hot chicken (mild because I’m a baby). It was delicious, and also made great leftovers to go in my lunch salads!

This location happened to be right next to Bobby’s Dairy Dip, a soft serve place I had seen on several lists of things to do in Nashville. Naturally, we had to try it out!

We both got dipped swirl cones! They were delicious but definitely high risk…so much dripping and mess!

After a little bit of downtime and a trip for the bookstore, we went to dinner at EIO, another place on my list. It’s healthy-style. I got a salad with beets and delicious rotisserie chicken.

That night, I had to take her out on the town.

We ended up getting stranded at one bar downtown around midnight because it just started pouring like crazy, out of nowhere. There would definitely be worse places to be stranded!

After a late night, we rolled out of bed early for Goat Yoga! We went with Nashville Goat Yoga, which is in Brentwood. It was a blast. Goat yoga will never stop being awesome.

If you ever get a chance to do goat yoga, DO IT.

After class, we headed to brunch at FIDO, a place I went when I visited Nashville 2 years ago! I got buckwheat blueberry pancakes with cheddar grits. I think they were my favorite grits in Nashville so far!

We took a break for naps before debating what to spend the afternoon doing. After some waffling, we decided to check out the Cheekwood Botanical Gardens, and we were both glad that we did! They had a really cool exhibit going on throughout the grounds and in the top floor of the historical mansion.

The plastic animals were made out of 100% recycled material, and were partly intended to promote awareness of recycling, which we thought was really cool. We debated trying to see more of the grounds, but the rain clouds looked incredibly threatening, and about 5 minutes after we drove off, the skies fell!

Our next stop was dinner. We went to Edley’s BBQ in 12 South, and I had a turkey platter. This place came highly recommended and I liked it a lot!

After dinner, we of course had to stop at Jeni’s ice cream. I got the watermelon buttermilk frozen yogurt (so good and unique!) with milk chocolate.

Sadly, she had to leave the next morning, but it was so fun to have her!

What I Ate For a 10 Hour Workday

Date: June 29, 2018

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello, hello! It’s Friday night here, or so I’m told. I honestly have been really struggling to know which day of the week it is with my schedule! Today is technically my Tuesday? I think? I start late tomorrow though, so I thought I would take some time tonight to recap what I ate today!

Pre-workout: Handful of Berry Cheerios

Workout was 6am Crossfit. We did shoulder presses, and then a WOD with lots of dumbbell snatches and toes to bar. Big progress for me was having no issues with the snatches. Doing these last back home in California, the extra couple of inches closer to the floor with the dumbbell versus the barbell was a big problem, so that’s good!

Post-workout breakfast eaten in the car:

Chocolate milk drink plus some crackers. Can we talk for a second about that fact that Crossfit ended at 7, and I started work at 7:30? I got showered and totally ready to go in 10 minutes. One trick is to do (minimal) eye makeup that’s waterproof before Crossfit. It helps me look somewhat put together!

Lunch:

I’ve had roughly the same salad every day at work, but this was especially amazing. The nectarine was perfectly sweet and ripe, I used the last of my delicious fig balsamic goat cheese, and the chicken was amazing. It’s leftover grilled chicken from Hattie B’s; the original meal will appear in a later recap post but this was awesome.

I also had cotton candy grapes. I first tried these in St. Louis almost 2 years ago and became obsessed. I’ve never seen them in CA. I thought that they MUST have them somewhere here, and went to every grocery store until finally I found them at Publix!

I had to stop into Target to pick up a few things on my lunch break, so I had a few pieces of this:

Snack: I’ve been having a Luna bar every day. I haven’t had the Lemon flavor in a while, and after having it today, I realized that the last few of the Lemon bars I had months ago were probably stale because this was so good!

I was actually really hungry today, so around 4:30 I broke into another Target purchase, one of these new protein bars I found. I used to love ThinkThin bars in the days prior to my weird nut allergies, so I was excited to find a kids bar that didn’t have any! I actually liked this a lot. It didn’t have the weird fake sugar taste of some of the other ThinkThin bars I remember. This reminded me a lot of the Balance Cookie Dough bars I used to like when I was younger! Plus I love having a smaller bar option for when I want just a little something.

Dinner:

Since I’m impatient, I often snack while cooking. Today’s snack was some tzatziki sauce from Taziki’s leftover from some takeout I got earlier in the week, with some crackers.

Dessert:

Mint chip Halo Top.

And then a little bit later, I had some GF crackers with sunbutter.

And that’s a wrap!

Solo Life in Nashville

Date: June 22, 2018

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

It seems like it’s becoming a typical day off activity for me to blog my Nashville adventures! I’m currently at Frothy Monkey sipping on a blueberry basil espresso. Yes, it’s amazing.

I just recapped my most recent visitors, but I wanted to spend some time talking about my solo activities. Exercise has mainly been Crossfit. I ran for the first time before work on Sunday in like 3 weeks, and while I didn’t run very long (my neighborhood isn’t good for running), I was a little sore! I snuck in a spin class last night. There are 4 more spin studios I want to try while I’m here (!) and that’s actually going to be a challenge with my schedule! I went to a Cyclebar class last night and it was fun!

Now that we’ve covered fitness, let’s move to food and then things to do!

Last week I blogged from Capital Coffee, and had a delicious honey cinnamon latte.

Late lunch post-Crossfit at Food Company:

Gluten free turkey wrap with artichoke spread and a kale side salad. Yum!

Here’s a recent delicious dinner—salad with balsamic vinaigrette, grilled chicken, riced sweet potato/cauliflower, and cheese.

The other day during my lunch break, I stopped at the Wild Muffin, an amazing GF muffin shop. I got a double chocolate muffin to eat with dinner, and took home (ok, took home most of) a blueberry pop tart with lemon blueberry glaze. YUM.

Another good find at Walmart was these chocolate covered Greek yogurt bars. They’re cold but not frozen, and basically are just that: chocolate covered Greek yogurt.

I had a really delicious lunch at Crumb de la Crumb the other day. I got an avocado salad with chicken.

And then had a GF chocolate torte (and managed to save half for post-dinner!).

And finally, today actually I had my first BBQ of the summer! I went to Martin’s BBQ downtown, and got smoked turkey.

The BBQ sauce was really thin and vinegary, but it actually worked for me! It was good, but there are other more highly recommended places I still need to try!

And now the adventures.

Last week I went to a show at the Grand Ole Opry, the “radio show that put country music on the map.”

It turns out that my grandma used to listen to the radio show when she was a kid!

The premise of the show is that a whole bunch of artists play a few songs, so you get a taste of a lot of things. It’s also a place for up and coming artists to make their names. I happened to be looking at the schedule of who was playing and recognized someone on this particular night, LOCASH, so I went for it!

There was a really big range of artists in terms of popular era and style. I actually ended up recognizing a couple of other songs that I didn’t realize I knew. It was a really fun time, and it really feels like a big piece of history!

On kind of a similar note, I went to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum as well.

I spent a couple of hours there, and actually enjoyed it more than I expected! It was cool learning about the evolution of country music and how the style changed through the years. I’m very new to country music so it was interesting to learn the history. Hey, when in Nashville, right?

Ok, I think I’ve rambled on enough for today! Monday I get to welcome my next visitor, so I look forward to that!

Goat Yoga and Nashville with Foodies

Date: June 21, 2018

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I have another Nashville adventures post for you guys today, and it features the most epic of them yet: GOAT YOGA. Yes, yoga with goats. My sister and her husband visited this past weekend, and a month ago for my birthday, my sister gifted me a goat yoga class for when she visited me here!

Guys, this was everything. Everything and more. OMG. The yoga instructor described the class as “a little bit of yoga and a lot of goats.”

Little goats wandered around throughout the class, and there were plenty of goat friendly poses:

I don’t know how to properly explain how amazing it was to cuddle with goats and have them climb all over you. Although the adorable black and white one kept falling off of people’s backs, mine included. I’m pretty sure I still have some hoof print bruises. If you go to Nashville, this is a must-do. We did it through Shenanigoats.

The goat yoga travels to different venues, and this particular venue had an amazing farm to fork restaurant, so naturally we stayed for brunch. I was lucky enough to get given the whole day off work to spend with my visitors!

I tried a bite of the warm donuts.

This was probably the best meal of the weekend, we all agreed. We split a whole bunch of things, included an unpictured leek quiche. The real highlights?

Grilled peaches and goat cheese.

This was the real winner. Roasted beets with cheese (I don’t remember which kind but it was deliciously creamy), cilantro sauce, and curry brittle. The curry brittle was unique and amazing.

Next up was a trip to the farmer’s market. I took home some Georgia peaches, and introduced them to Jeni’s ice cream. The gooey butter cake is my new favorite flavor, so I had a half scoop of that which actually paired perfectly with a half scoop of lemon blueberry buttermilk frozen yogurt.

After some downtime in the afternoon (it was 97 degrees and HUMID) we went to dinner at the Sunflower Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant that had vegetarian BBQ. I had tempeh BBQ over brown rice with slaw and kale.

I also had some mashed sweet potatoes.

Everything was good but I probably won’t bother going again, to be honest.

Next, we headed down to Broadway so I could show my sister the plethora of live music!

Sunday, I worked all day and then met up with my sister and her husband for dinner at 404 kitchen. We shared some appetizers, including burrata with roasted carrot puree, grilled zucchini, and a delicious salad that was topped with nutritional yeast.

For my meal, I got roasted chicken over thick cut corn grits.

It was good but would have been amazing with a little more salt.

For dessert, we got a almond meal cake with saffron ice cream and a chocolate orange budino. Both good!

Because I’m obsessed, I brought them to Tailgate afterwards for some sunset brews. Fun fact: they do half pours so you can try more things!

Monday I also had work, but I was let off early so we met up for dinner at Tennessee Brew Works. I got a sweet potato stout and a salad with ranch and grilled chicken.

After dinner, we headed back downtown to enjoy some more live music. It’s amazing how Nashville knows no days of the week! Monday was popping!

Tuesday morning, I snuck in a workout before we all met up for brunch. In search of the good biscuits, we ended up at Holler and Dash. This place gets two thumbs up! I got a delicious brussels sprouts salad with parmesan and apple, and a side of a biscuit with jam.

This biscuit is actually a huge deal for me. This is the most gluten I’ve had in about 3 years! More importantly, I felt pretty good after! I’m trying to try a few things when they sound really good, and while I’ve had mixed results, the trend is getting better. So I’m staying gluten free except when I want to try something amazing (i.e. biscuits).

After brunch, we went to 12 South to Firepot Tea, an adorable tea shop. Their specialty seems to be chai lattes, so I got the children’s chai latte, which was caffeine free and had a spicy flavor!

Since it was a block away, on our way out we took a picture with the iconic wall.

Next on the agenda was visiting a whiskey distillery. I don’t really like whiskey, but since I live in Tennessee, I really want to! Despite this minor detail, I really enjoyed the tour and the experience. We went to Nelson’s Greenbriar, and they have a really amazing story. It’s a pretty new distillery, sort of. It was a leading distillery pre-prohibition. During prohibition, things were kept shut down and kept so quiet that it was lost to history until the great great great grandchildren of the original distiller discovered their heritage and reopened it, using original recipes. Despite its youth, this Tennessee Whiskey has won numerous awards.

I also learned that Tennessee Whiskey is an official category of whiskey, that must follow 5 rules to be considered such.

Then it was on to tasting!

To be honest, I can’t really get on board with sipping and savoring 90 proof, but it was a cool experience. They actually let me try one of their vodkas that was made on accident because the last whiskey had pecans, and it was actually really good!

With only a few hours left in Nashville, we had one last major item to knock off the list: hot chicken. This is a Nashville thing, and Hattie B’s is the place to go. To be honest, I’m not really a fried chicken person, but I tried a few bites and it was good. Both my sister and her husband enjoyed it a lot!

Our actual last stop was Nada for guac and tacos. It was really good! I got a chicken taco and a roasted cauliflower taco.

And that’s a wrap! Thank you to my second set of visitors for coming to experience Nashville with me!