Blogmas Day 14: What I Ate VLOG

Date: December 14, 2016

Author: astottler

Happy Wednesday! Can you believe we’re 11 days from Christmas??

Today, I’m linking up with WIAW (thanks Jenn) for Blogmas, but today, we’re doing it a little bit differently. We’re doing it VLOG style.

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So, enjoy the video! Check it out through the link here.

Details/pictures of what I ate are below!

Breakfast:

Fage 2% yogurt with cinnamon KIND granola, sunbutter, and persimmon sauce. For the persimmon sauce, we put persimmons in the slow cooker with a little vanilla, brown sugar, and a couple of cinnamon sticks. It’s basically like applesauce but persimmons don’t really break down in the same way.

Lunch:

Crackers, cinnamon spice tea, and Creamy roasted carrot, garlic, and rosemary soup. I really like this one. The rosemary is key! (PS: That water bottle is Sip by S’Well and it’s awesome. My tea was hot after 12 hours!)

The soup was leftovers from the previous night’s dinner, so I’ll show a prettier picture.

Swirled with a little creme fraiche. (And avocado toasts.)

Just a note: our carrots were abnormally large, so we had to had to add a little broth. Also, for the “salt and pepper to taste”, we used Trader Joe’s truffle salt.

Snack:

Luna bar+persimmon.

Workout: Crossfit

Strength: Our disgustingly long sets. 20 rep set of squats @ 130#, 20 rep set of strict press at ~47#.

WOD: 7 minute AMRAP of burpees. Ew. I got 77.

Dinner:

We made my grilled peach and chicken salad with goat cheese, but instead of grilled peaches, we used grilled persimmons. Plus a little toast with butter on the side.

Dessert: Leftover bread pudding (this is a family recipe) (the sauce solidified a little bit, but I adjusted the recipe to fix that). With whipped cream, and cinnamon of course!

What is your favorite family recipe?

WIAW+St. Louis VLOG

Date: September 13, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! Happy WIAW. As always, a big thanks to Jenn for starting this.

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I’m going to go ahead and say that there are too ways to view this post.

I’m not going to lie, it could be viewed as a sort of lame blog post. But the reason it’s so minimal?

I’ve been working on a VLOG, my second one! It is a full day of eating, plus Fitness is Sweet takes on St. Louis. Featuring lots of animals.

Check it out here!

But if vlogs aren’t your thing, everything else is below. But there’s no cool music or cute animals. Your choice.

Breakfast:

Double chocolate flapjacked muffin+mango. I realize this is a kind of lame breakfast for a full day of eating, but it’s what I was in the mood for, and this is real life.

Coffee:

My coffeeshop of the day was Living Room in Maplewood.

Guys, this was a good one. You can see that the milk foam is high quality, but the espresso had the deep, rich taste of top notch coffee. I would still put this slightly below Blueprint, but it’s certainly close, and I will be back! We have a new contender!

Lunch:

I went to Whole Foods to the salad bar for some veggies.

Going clockwise from the upper left: dill and mustard brussels sprout salad, basmati rice, currant, and chickpea salad with curry and a few sweet potatoes, corn elite, and chilaquiles.

I realize I should have had something more photogenic for my vlog day! Oh well.

Snack:

A mint chocolate Vega protein bar+cotton candy grapes. Still obsessed with these grapes.

Workout:

Nothing too crazy at Crossfit. We did close grip bench press, and then some hollow rocks and ring push ups. I mostly did the ring push ups scaled on my knees with the rings, but did one set from my toes. The WOD was a quick one: 10 minute AMRAP of 10 burpee box jumps (yuck) and 10 power snatches, which I kept reasonably light at 50#.

Pre-Dinner Snack:

You guys know I have to snack while cooking. This was an impulse buy from Target, and it was just okay. The actual bars are better, surprisingly.

Dinner:

I made a BBQ chicken salad with pre-cooked pulled BBQ chicken. I tossed lettuce, tomato, red pepper, and corn with lime juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper. I then topped it with Holy Guacamole. On the side, I had some steam in the bag sweet potatoes with nutritional yeast and ketchup.

Dessert:

I had a square of milk chocolate, plus a Yasso Sea Salt Caramel froyo bar.

That’s all for today—enjoy the vlog!

What’s the prettiest food you ate this week?

Look What I Made! (My first VLOG)

Date: March 17, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello! If you’re wondering why it’s been a few days since I’ve posted, it’s because I’ve been working on a vlog for all of you! It’s a full day of eating, and it’s supremely awkward, but check it out with the link HERE. <-link to vlog

I actually had a good time making it, and although editing was a steep learning curve, overall I’m happy with how it came out and I had fun doing it! Also apparently my on-screen facial expressions are not the same as my in-person facial expressions. My roommate watched it and told me my facial expressions looked “unfamiliar.”

Anyways, go check it out! I’m posting the details of the food below (aka static pictures).

Breakfast:

Fage 2% yogurt, raspberries and blueberries reduced on the stove, crunchy sunflower seed butter.

Lunch:

Cooking light lemon chicken soup from this recipe, topped with feta. On the side, gluten free toast with avocado.

Snack:

A Lemon Luna bar, a few GF cheddar crackers, and some blueberries.

Dinner #1:

Tortilla pizzas: corn tortillas with tomato sauce, mozzarella, spinach, pear, gorgonzola, and a balsamic drizzle. I baked these in the oven at 400 until the cheese was melted. On the side, I had some garlic roasted broccoli (one of my favorite recipes!).

Dessert:

I had a slice of homemade key lime pie (not made by me). It had a gluten free graham cracker crust. Served with a dollop of whipped cream.

Dinner #2:

A rice cake with mixed berry whipped cream cheese, and a Nacho Cheese GF crackers.

And that was my first full day of eating video!

If You Try Really Hard

Date: March 10, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello! I just watched the 16.3 announcement. When Dave Castro (the director) of the games pretended like it was a 20 minute AMRAP? Not cool. Not cool at all. (It’s 7 minutes.)

I’m not a fan of this one, because I have to do scaled because muscle ups are definitely not a thing. I’m not a fan because I could totally have Rxed the snatch, and how does it even work to lift the bar all the way from the ground? That’s just uncomfortable.

Moving on. I’m actually getting really excited to do a VLOG, and I’m starting to plan it out. Honest question—if I film on an iPhone, do I film with it horizontal or vertical?? Me+technology guys…

I spent most of the afternoon watching youtube videos (well, like an hour). I had my last midterm today and I needed a break! My last midterm was the last day of class for the quarter…

Overall, I’m just feeling deeply tired. In addition, I think I’m a bit overtrained. Between the Crossfit games, 5k training, 10 miler training, and teaching spin, my body is reaching its limit, which I knew would happen around this time because it was an intense month! Last night for the last class of the quarter, I taught a throwback spin class. It was SUPER fun, and I found myself pushing myself especially hard!

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I spent the rest of the night studying, and didn’t sleep well at all. I’m trying to cut back on exercise where I can and not do the workouts that aren’t necessary for each training item for a little bit until I feel recovered! I was going to run this afternoon but decided I needed the rest instead!

One thing I wanted to mention was the meal I had for my sister’s birthday last weekend. I know I shared the soufflé, but the entire meal was awesome! This was my first Michelin star experience.

The table shared a bottle of wine, which we all agreed was delicious!

They started out by brining warm bread—sourdough, garlic, and rolls, and even brought me some gluten free bread!

I shared a salad with my mom—just veggies, nothing crazy—but still good.

Before the main courses arrived, we were brought a cheese puff each. They brought out some marinated olives for me!

For my main course, I got the fanciest soup ever. It had a parsnip base, and was served over roasted pears and tapioca balls. Normally, it would come with spiced granola but it wasn’t GF.

The highlight was obviously the soufflé though. Chocolate soufflé served with a warm orange Earl Grey cream sauce, which they poured into the center.

In other health/life news, I’ve been working really hard the past couple of days to eat optimally for my stomach, and it’s actually been making a huge difference. I generally do pretty well with it, but sometimes certain foods are worth it. Additionally, I tried something new. Aloe juice! I read online (because you should always do what the internet says) that it might help with gastroparesis, and it’s actually been making me feel better, so I’m a fan!

This is a watered down version because I wasn’t sure how I would like it or how my body would react, but it tasted plenty good to me!

It’s very encouraging to me that I can feel really good when I do everything perfectly—so it is possible! That being said, even when I feel good, it’s not quite the same as if I was normal. But hey, I’ll take it! I think it takes some consistency—doing the right thing day after day—to feel good. And I’m definitely figuring things out as I go. But this is definitely progress!

That being said, balance is important too, and sometimes I will weigh the benefit/cost of certain things, because sometimes you have to live a little!

Finally, one more VLOG note—I’m going to film it over spring break, which means we get to have a little puppy cameo!

How do I film a VLOG—horizontal or vertical? Help!!!