Fall Fun and Fall Food

Date: November 12, 2017

Author: astottler

WHEW. Last week was a week…several tests and lots of class and assignments…On top of that, the mystery pain in my ankle bone was still bothering me to the point that I went to urgent care Thursday night for x-rays. Thankfully, it seems like there is no break, and I have an appointment with a specialist when I get home at Thanksgiving. For now, I’m trying to walk in a way that doesn’t hurt and I’m avoiding anything involving running (minus soccer…whoops).

I was a day ahead of myself all week so it was a great time for a 3 day weekend!

I was missing my college friends, so a trip outside of Davis on my day off was just what the doctor ordered…Friday morning after a couple of hours of study time, I drove an easy 1.5 hours south to see my college roommate. It was so, so nice to see her and chat about life. Her persimmon trees were absolutely GORGEOUS!

We chatted for a while before whipping up a delicious lunch. We made fall-themed salads with hard boiled egg, butternut squash (cooked in the microwave, then sautéed with turmeric and garlic salt), chicken, and sunflower seeds.

After lunch, it was time to pick some persimmons! (Also…admire her adorable kitty).

There are two varieties of permission; one that has to be eaten soft (the pointy ones) and one that is perfect crunchy. It’s a little early in the season for the soft ones, but I managed to find one and of course ate it right off the tree (which was horribly messy.) We spent about an hour picking while chatting on the phone with another one of our best friends. It was so much fun to talk to them both, and to pick persimmons! I may have gotten a little carried away…

I, um, went home with over 40 pounds of persimmons. However, they keep a really long time, and I’m currently averaging 3 persimmons a day (and I’m sharing), so I’m pretty confident I can finish them!

That day was the perfect fall day, and the perfect break from vet school.

Since we’re talking about fall, I recently realized that Thanksgiving is almost here, and I’m running out of time to eat all the fall foods! So I decided to make that a priority! Here’s what I’ve been eating:

Breakfasts

“Chocolate” yogurt (cocoa powder and maple syrup) with blueberries and sunbutter.

Such a perfect fall breakfast: pumpkin Noosa yogurt and a persimmon.

So fun fact: I like to eat my persimmons sliced up. On the side, yogurt with pumpkin pie filling (don’t judge; it’s less sugar than pumpkin butter!) and sunbutter.

Lunches

A variation on my typical weird but quick and easy go to salad: chopped salad with american cheese, guacamole, and ketchup, topped with an egg. On the side, I made some amazing cinnamon apple tea, that I stirred fresh ginger into. Apparently I actually have a lot of tea in my cabinet that I’ve never tried.

Ok, this really is pure fall. Salad with persimmon, cranberry goat cheese (I love this in salads), and chicken.

Subway salad with turkey, provolone, veggies, oil and vinegar, salt and pepper. Nothing new here. Plus avocado.

My typical salad.

Pear and cranberry goat cheese salad with chicken and a side of leftover roasted butternut squash.

Another persimmon salad.

Chipotle with classmates after volunteering at a clinic that Davis puts on. I feel like my Chipotle order isn’t super conventional. I get a salad with fajita veggies, chicken, corn salsa, fresh salsa, and of course guac.

Dinners

Roasted carrots, roasted zucchini, and my baked tofu (breaded in nutritional yeast/onion powder/garlic powder).

Zucchinni pad thai.

Trader Joe’s pumpkin soup (the fresh one). Super good. I’ve put quality cheese in it. It’s good with aged gouda, but I think it’s even better with aged cheddar! Toast on the side.

Ok, this was a good one. Roasted butternut squash, parmesan, dried cranberries, over a bed of kale massaged with balsamic, olive oil, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Side of the same tofu.

More pumpkin soup with a GF ciabatta.

Same salad, except with chicken. For this ciabatta, I spread the center with butter and a little fresh garlic, and then wrapped it in foil and put it in the toaster oven.

One of my favorite forms of zucchini: noodles seasoned and tossed with parmesan, and then topped with Harvest fall pasta sauce.

Super simple: zucchini scramble with soft garlic and herb cheese, and avocado toast.

And finally for dinners, this may not look like much but it was delicious! Roasted butternut squash with parmesan and an egg. I wish I had more squash left for this meal!

Sweets

Blueberry zucchini bread from the freezer.

Ok. So I bought a big can of pumpkin pie filling. I mix it with egg white, then microwave it for a little makeshift crustless pumpkin pie. With whipped cream of course.

No egg this time; cold pumpkin filling with a GF cinnamon cookie and whipped cream.

I had a fair amount of Halloween candy leftover (we got all of 1 group of tricker treaters, and I was grateful just to get any!), so I brought some to school, and then made banana bread with some. I chopped up milky ways and 3 musketeers.

Thursday evening…I impulse bought a cake at Trader Joe’s. It was 100% one of those weeks, and this was delicious. I stuck some in the freezer for later also!

We routinely have bake sales at school to raise money for clubs, so this weekend I made GF brownies. I had to try them first (this is actually a time when I had to try them…I’ve never used a GF brownie mix before. This was Betty Crocker).

Etc.

This is my new favorite thing. A tea latte with soy milk. I found a coffeeshop where you can get any type of tea in your tea latte. This was peach apricot!

Honey lavender beer.

Decaf cappuccino for study time!

And now, after that long post, it’s time to hit the books (or…the iPad…).

Holidays with Friends

Date: December 23, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

These past few days, I was able to visit with some friends for the first time this break!

First, on Sunday, I drove to my roommate’s hometown in the country to visit her!

…and her persimmons. She has tons and tons of trees in her yard, and she is my source of mass quantities of persimmons this time of year, which I always look forward to so much! I was able to try one straight off the tree, and then as we walked through the trees we found a ripe hachiya. Hachiya persimmons are the pointed kind that have to be eaten when they’re soft—anything less than soft will make your tongue curl up! What I’ve been eating are the Fuyu variety and those can be eaten hard!

Anyways, the point is that I was forced to double fist persimmons. Rough life.

I also got to meet her sweet pets! The dog and the kitties were adorable together!

We went to lunch downtown where I had delicious tomato basil soup, and we shared sweet potato fries. I think tomato soup is so underrated.

While out, I went to Sprouts for the first time and picked up some new granola bar flavors as well as individual packets of flavored sun butter. Then, we stopped by a softball field. Why? Many years before we met, I used to come to her hometown a lot to play softball, so we thought we’d stop by and say hi!

It was weird being back after so many years, but it made me reflect on how much softball shaped my life and who I am today. If I hadn’t played at the field many years ago, I wouldn’t have learned my work ethic and determination, and I wouldn’t have gotten into the college I’m at now. So I would never have met my awesome roommate, so I would never have gone to see her and then returned to that field. Crazy how life works.

We made an elaborate dinner. Well, sort of. She mostly made it and I mostly watched and offered insightful commentary. She claimed it was a lazy dinner, but it involved multiple dishes and baking chicken in the oven for an hour. That’s certainly elaborate for me! We (she) made chicken thighs, sautéed broccoli, and gluten free butternut squash ravioli that we picked up at Sprouts.

The next morning, I went to San Francisco with my high school friends to go shopping.

This is something we’ve done every year at Christmas time since before we could drive. We usually don’t end up buying much, but it’s fun to look around and see the festive decor!

We actually spent much longer there than in previous years so we had dinner at a restaurant at the mall.

It was a tap house so we each tried different beers.

For my meal, I ordered butternut squash soup which was SO good! It had sherry soaked grapes at the bottom and pumpkin seed oil drizzled on top which made this way more fun!

We got back from the city around 10 and then it was time to start our annual cookie baking! We’ve been making the same sugar cookies since our freshman year of high school!

Here are some of this year’s cookies. Sadly the picture quality is not great. Every year I like to make lots of turkeys for some reason or another!

As usual, we stayed up far too late catching up and going through old yearbooks. Totally worth it! We’ve continued this tradition through high school, and I really hope we can keep it going when we graduate and enter the real world!

What are your favorite Christmas cookies?

Bouncing Back

Date: November 13, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

After yesterday‘s overconsumption of sweets, I want to show that bouncing back from a blah day really isn’t hard. Here are a few tips:

1. Morning workout-this is pretty much guaranteed to make me feel better.

2. Probiotics. Kevita/kombucha saves me from stomachaches every time.

This is probably my favorite flavor. I’m not thrilled that Kevita has stevia though…not a fan.

3. Eat something delicious and wholesome-this means lots of veggies!

Let’s start with the first one.

I know that this workout would be a doozy given the paces for the run, and the fact that the squat portion (5 pounds lighter) immobilized me for quite a few days last week. I also knew it would be a bit of a time crunch since I had to race between the track and gym (although they are across the street), and let’s be honest-when I have to get to morning classes, I always run out of time.

The run kicked my butt. That was totally expected. I had to walk a little between sets, which was not called for on the workout but whatever. I also definitely didn’t hit the paces-the workout was probably made for someone a lot faster than me. I was pretty close/sometimes on the pace for the 3 minutes, but it’t not exactly a recovery pace for me! Overall, I loved this one though-quick and incredibly effective. This may become a workout staple as I try to pick up speed.

The squats were no where near as bad as I expected, and I doubt I’ll be super sore like last time-the difference a week makes! I didn’t get through all the push presses/good mornings, or the hollow rocks and one of the rows. I’m planning on squeezing in a full rowing workout tomorrow evening since I have nothing else on the schedule.

My arches have been bothering me a lot lately-I think it’s due to tendonitis in my achilles. Fun fact-I had bad tendonitis in my achilles in third grade. Yes, third grade. That right there should tell you something about my genes (i.e. they suck). I haven’t had much of a problem with tendonitis basically since then though. I think the long run a couple of weeks ago, maybe combined with a different style of running (fast), and maybe mainly aggravated by some intense rolling out of the achilles tendons in Crossfit-they’ve been feeling wonky since then and I think maybe that caused something to flare up. I’m hoping advil will help bring down the inflammation. The good news is it’s the type of thing that feels a lot better after rolling out with a lacrosse ball, and is pretty much fine once I’m warmed up. You don’t warm up to walk around in daily life though!

The only food pictures I have for you today are these:

I think I’m in love with persimmons. End of story.

And this delicious feast, courtesy of Carrots n Cake.

Brussels sprouts, garlic and herb laughing cow, chicken sausage. So delicious. Such perfection.

Tell me something about your week!