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Turning a Corner

Guess what? Still sick :/ But I think I’m finally getting better (knock on wood). What have I been doing the last 2 days? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Thursday night was interesting. My fever climbed above 103 so I went in to Urgent Care, who sent me to the ER because they were closing. After waiting for 3 hours, they told me it was probably the flu because I had no other symptoms. I felt dumb sitting in the waiting room. After taking Advil and Tylenol, my fever was gone and I felt perfectly normal. I felt like I was the healthiest person there! I felt rally bad for some of the parents in the waiting room dealing with their really sick little kids. That would be so difficult! After the lack-luster diagnosis, I told my mom that I wanted something delicious. We could only find one place open, and it just happens to be the one place with the best cinnamon rolls in the world, Peninsula Creamery in Palo Alto. Unfortunately, a picture didn’t occur to me. But trust me when I say it was amazing! They have the most amazing looking desserts, especially the pies! I Kind of wish I had gotten something chocolatey but I’m not complaining! I live fairly close to school, so I just spent the night at home. I’m actually going to spend all weekend home. I figure if I’m lying around doing nothing, I might as well be lying around doing nothing with furry animals. Friday was back to a more strict Paleo routine. After my late-night cinnamon roll, I wasn’t that hungry so I made a green smoothie for breakfast. ImageCherries and spinach again! Plus some blueberries. After breakfast I went to my 2 Friday classes because I really couldn’t afford to get behind. Plus, when I’m on Advil/Tylenol I feel perfectly fine and normal. 

It was parents’ weekend at school, so campus was swarming with parents. My parents went to a few events before being introduced to the wonders of dining hall food (yes, it looks all new and exciting the first time, but every meal??).Image

Italian salad, tilapia, and butternut squash (ok, they do step it up a little for parents’ weekend). 

After lunch I was back to resting. Dinner was simple: breakfast!Image

A smoothie with frozen banana, mango, strawberries, cherries, and almond milk. A little potato, and a Greek salad my mom whipped up for me with leftover ingredients. Bonus: I had extra smoothie leftover!ImagePlus chicken apple sausage!

So last night, a couple of spots near by eyes swelled up a little, but it went away with Tylenol. It was weird, one spot next to my eye, and one spot on my lower eyelid. It freaked me out a little at first! I also realized that my lymph nodes were swollen. I thought that my chin looked bigger, and I figure I had just gained a lot of weight since I haven’t been exercising, but then I figured out what it really was!

I’ve definitely been enjoying dark chocolate lately. It has so little sugar that I figure it is ok. Plus, it really is hard to eat a lot of it (especially considering I’m eating, 85, 90, 99% chocolate) and I never really want something THAT sweet. Which brings me perfectly to the next topic. What would Hunter Pence do?

As you may know, I’m a huge baseball fan. A huge Giants fan specifically. My mom recently sent me this video about one of the Giant’s players, Hunter Pence. He fairly recently adopted the Paleo diet, and feels great! One concern I always have is whether the eating style is ok for an athlete, but if he can do it, then I can! And he includes some dark chocolate. So when I’m trying to decide if something is ok, I’m going to ask myself, what would Hunter Pence do?

Also, I have a quick question for all of you. Thursday night when I was picking up Tylenol at the grocery, I bought some coconut butter. I didn’t think anything of it until my mom asked what the difference was between coconut butter and coconut oil. I was confused at first, because I guess I always just assumed they were the same, though I suppose this makes a little bit more sense in terms of some of the blog posts I’ve read…So what is the difference? Help me out here!

This morning’s breakfast was leftover smoothie, plus an egg scramble. It is based on Tina‘s Sweet Breakfast Scramble, but I added pumpkin pie spice, and pumpkin instead of squash (leftover from the pumpkin bread I made last week). It was so, so good! And I didn’t even need nut butter (yes, my skin is seriously hating me right now).ImageI also tried a new type of coconut water that a lady recommended to my mom at the store. It was actual chunks of coconut in it! It was really good! Way fresher and more coconutty!Image

Ok, one more meal to catch up on! Lunch was a simple salad (my patented salad). Lettuce, apple, craisins, candied pecans, rotisserie chicken, avocado, and Italian dressing. SO GOOD.Image

Plus some baked barbecue chips and dark chocolate! 

Ok, one more topic before I go do work (yayy). My hitting coach for softball always told me: “You’re a perfectionist. Never drink alcohol or you will be an alcoholic.” I never exactly got the connection…but he was totally right (NOT that I’m saying I’m an alcoholic!). I’m definitely a sugar addict. Plain and simple. My dad finally recognized this for the first time. And see, the tough thing about this is that there is sugar around me everywhere. There are sweet/dessert options available and displayed EVERY MEAL. My dad compared me to an alcoholic who constantly is in bars. Thanks dad, that gives me tons of hope for recovery! I’ll end with that today!

Any tips for sugar addicts? What is teh difference between coconut butter and oil?

Regular Posting

Here I am, posting regularly again! Yay! My morning today began with half a piece of blueberry apple cinnamon bread, and some milk. I debated a lot with myself for when I should do my morning workout…I considered trying to make a spin class, which would require that I am done with my erg by 7. The problem with this is it means I am depending on the gym where I erg to be open early, like it was when I did this before (which was lucky!) because my ergs definitely take longer than an hour. In the end, I decided not to torture myself by getting up so early, and to just do the prescribed workout. 

After my erg pieces, I got in a good 30 minute run. I explored a part of campus I didn’t even know existed, which is always fun! The only thing: I began my first erg piece at 6:45, and finished my run at 8:45, so I was hungry!Image

I’m trying to up my veggie intake, so I went to the dining hall that I know has spinach out at breakfast. Here, we have a piece of whole wheat toast, half with cream cheese, half with turkey, plus spinach, a slice of tomato, and scrambled egg whites. I was planning on just making this with hardboiled eggs, but the concept of peeling eggs seemed so…difficult. And there were the egg whites just asking to be taken. So it worked out. Plus melon. And half a blueberry muffin.Image

It was decent. My favorite muffins the dining hall has are the chocolate chunk and the orange cranberry. Way too dangerous. This muffin had me thinking about my absolute favorite way to eat blueberry muffins. So here it is: yes, made from a mix, with fresh blueberries, topped with course sugar, hot from the oven, and preferably in bread form (less bottom crust!). Are you drooling yet? I am. Now THAT my friends, is dangerous. Speaking of quickbreads, I am in serious need of some baking. I have all of 2.5 pieces of bread left in my freezer. I’ve been eating it more for snacks lately, and it kind of disappeared. The only problem is, it is impossible to make anything at school that I plan to freeze, unless I make a ton of it because everyone can smell it and wants some. Plus I don’t have a TON of ingredients…One thing that worked for me to make here is pumpkin bread, which makes 2 loaves, so I have a loaf to distract everyone while I run my loaf up to my room. I really want to make this, but I only have 1 can of pumpkin, and the recipe calls for a little bit more than that. Hmmm but I do have a couple of sweet potatoes…maybe that could work? In theory I have ingredients for banana bread, if I didn’t eat all my bananas so darn fast! I’ll have to grab a bunch if I plan to do that. I guess I could wake up early (hah, earlier) one day and bake before anyone is awake! Not sure if it is worth it though. 

Back to my day. I enjoyed a fabulous and much needed 2 hour nap. And like clockwork, I woke up wanting food, so I ate a granola bar, and quickly made the executive decision to hold off on cutting back nuts until tomorrow. Why? I was planning on a granola bar for an afternoon snack as well, plus I needed to pack some food for after practice and before my midterm, and I could not think of a single nonperishable thing I could pack that did not involve nuts or nut butter. So starting tomorrow, life is going to get difficult. 

So these granola bars? A delivery from my mom! I didn’t take any pictures before, so right as I started this post, I ran to snap a picture. These guys are frozen, I finished the ones I kept out.Image

If you are interested, here is a bad picture of the recipe.Image

I like that brown rice syrup is the main sweetener in these. I guess these could be a decent replacement for my quickbread as preworkout fuel, but I don’t like eating fat (nuts) before a morning workout. 

Ok, on to lunch!Image

Sweet potato bisque, Greek salad, tofu, and fruit. I later got some salmon which I ate in place of the tofu, because the tofu wasn’t my favorite, and I didn’t see the salmon earlier! I also had a slice of cinnamon toast and a small piece of chocolate cake. 

For snack before practice, I finished the last of my Sweet Potato bread.Image

Plus another granola bar and half a banana with peanut butter (left over from making my dinner). Yeahhh lots of nuts.

At practice today, I wasn’t in a boat and had to cross train on land, which today meant spinning. I really don’t mind this. I love Spin, and the water was pretty rough today anyway.  I did a few ab exercises after spinning, and I was juuust a little bit sweaty….I think this is cool (ok and maybe gross), but check out my mat that I was lying down on the to abs:Image

I was wearing an old softball t-shirt with a number on the back, and it made a sweat pattern! Can you guess what number I was? Well, at least I thought it was awesome.

I ate a peanut butter and banana sandwich with celery on the drive back, but we ended up getting back pretty early today, so I stopped by my local dining hall really quickly because there was a Lunar New Year celebration with special food. Unfortunately, all of the really good and unique food had RIDICULOUS lines, and I was pretty short on time, so I just had some noodles and salad.Image

On the way out the lines were shorter so I grabbed a chicken bun. In the corner there is some green tea ice cream. It is kind of a big deal when the dining hall has real ice cream because no one here ever gets it. Except, one dining hall is required to always have 3 flavors of ice cream. It has something to do with a condition the donors put when they donated money for it. It’s sooo far away though, so I’ve only been to that dining hall like twice ever. I also had some small candies. Then it was off to my math final! I think it went pretty well. I’m really hoping to do well in this class because I took a similar class in high school. It was so cold biking back though! I don’t think I’ve ever biked that fast back before! 

Ok, I am off to do work!

Do you guys have any suggestions for fun posts? Or requests? Let me know!