Hawaii-Final Adventures

Date: September 17, 2015

Author: astottler

Thanks for sticking around for all my vacation posts! I promise this is the last one!

Sunday morning began with my 10 mile half marathon training run. With record high temperatures in Maui, I knew this one was going to be a struggle. I scouted out a nice hilly route ahead of time-3 miles out from my hotel until the sidewalk ends, then back, and then I would play it by ear. I was prepared to jump on the treadmill for the last part if it got too hot.

It rained early that morning, so the air was SO thick. I got out the door by 6:30am, and it was nasty out. 1 mile in, I was drenched and felt kind of terrible. It must have been about 90% humidity. I wasn’t even sure I’d make it through half the run out there without dying. Luckily, the weather improved a bit. I ended up turning around at 3.5 miles, then running a mile in the other direction before realizing there was no shade and I was dying. At that point, when I reached the hotel I was at 9 miles so I did the last one in the comfort of the hotel gym.

I was really vigilant about hydration. I officially swear by SmartWater-I filled my bottle with it for the run and didn’t have the problems I’ve had in the past in the heat. I also drank some vitamin water before my final water. I did a really good job with fluids the rest of the day, and it really paid off!

Nothing like wear compression socks while on vacation…

For lunch that day, we stopped by a “healthy fast food” restaurant that we had passed previously. It’s called D’Lish, and it had all kinds of healthy sandwiches and bowls. We shared a beet salad with goat cheese.

And a mix of purple sweet potato and taro chips.

For my main meal, I got a veggie bowl, which was quinoa topped with broccoli, mushroom bisque, tomato, and feta. Yum! Love the idea of making a bowl using soup.

Our next stop was to the movies-we saw the Perfect Guy, which was pretty intense. Then, we stopped by Maui Tropical plantation, which is a nice little place with a gift shop, pineapples growing, and now a zipline that we tried 2 years ago when we went. It’s in a beautiful location.

That night, I made reservations for the Molokai Bistro at the Grand Wailea hotel. We put on our fancy clothes (although the restaurant was fairly casual) and headed out!

We ordered a bottle of rose for the table, and my parents still insist on taking pictures of me any time we drink wine in public. #21

To start, we shared Maui Onion rings (Maui onions are sweeter than regular onions) and sweet potato fries, with lilikoi BBQ sauce.

I got the catch of the day-mahi mahi served over purple mashed sweet potatoes and garlic broccolini.

It was delicious, and it was nice that the portions weren’t giant!

Dessert was also amazing. Butterscotch creme brûlée topped with banana mousse and shaved chocolate. YUM. What a nice dinner!

We saw 2 stray kitties and some frogs on the walk back!

I’ll spare you of Monday’s food pictures because I posted all that for WIAW, but here’s the day!

I was hoping to got to Lahaina Crossfit, but my shoulder wasn’t anywhere near ready. Instead, I took it to the hotel gym for a shoulder friendly strength workout. I started with 100 lunges, 100 squats, and some RDLs with lighter weights than I would normally use to accommodate my shoulder. I then did a 15 minute ab circuit that I am still sore from because I never do abs, and finished with some light shoulder exercises on my bad shoulder and dumbbell snatches/push presses on my good shoulder. It felt good to get some strength work in despite my injury!

I went straight from there to the beach with my family. I lost the gamble of whether or not I would burn without sunscreen in an hour or so. Oops. Later that day a former fireman came up to me and recommended I put aloe on my burn!

It was a beautiful day, but hot. We went to the gluten free bakery again in Lahaina, but decided to keep it indoors with another movie.

This time it was the Transporter-Reloaded. It was pretty good-I don’t watch too many action movies but it was a pleasant experience. We came out to find a rainbow!

We stopped by Barnes and Noble for some reading material, and then Whole Foods for dinner since my stomach was flaring. The rest of the night involved Netflix-does anyone else watch The Good Wife?

Tuesday was our last partial day in Maui. I started off with a treadmill 4 mile interval/speed run and then went out with my family for one last beach trip. I enjoyed yogurt, passionfruit, and papaya beachside and got my fill of tropical fruit!

It was nice out but definitely starting to heat up! We weren’t at the beach for long because packing still needed to happen.

We said goodbye to our hotel and stopped for lunch at a health store near the airport. I had delicious avocado salad and some really interesting soup that had gluten free oats, zucchini, and cauliflower all blended up.

I also enjoyed a couple of bites of chocolate avocado mousse! So delicious, but so chocolatey-unfortunately these days I can’t handle more than a little chocolate.

Then we were homeward bound-overall it was a great trip!

WIAW-Hawaiian Vacation!

Date: September 16, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello! Since WIAW last week was so much fun, how about we do it again?

Since I just got back from my Hawaiian vacation (recaps here and here), why not take a peek at Monday’s vacation food for WIAW?

I will say that Monday’s meals were a bit different from the rest of the week. I think at this point we were all sort of burned out on rich food and meat, so towards the end of the vacation we stuck to lighter meals.

Breakfast:

Thanks to all my food restrictions, I ended up scrapping together a meal that included a Starbucks mango orange smoothie, fruit, and crackers with goat cheese from the goat dairy we visited. We had a harder goat cheese, mango chèvre, and herbed chèvre.

Plus some guava and papaya:

Lunch: Joy’s Place, a little healthy cafe we passed a few times earlier on the trip and I wanted to check out! They had gluten free bread and rice wraps, so I had a turkey and avocado wrap on rice paper, which was fun! Plus coleslaw on the side.

I was excited to finally get some Hawaiian avocado. We had gotten one earlier in the week, but the hotel fridge froze it! Hawaiian avocado is big and a bit denser/more solid than California avocado.

(Throwback to my last trip to Hawaii 2 years ago!)

Dessert: Although we had already driven to Lahaina to visit the gluten free bakery (Maui Sugar Shop) on Friday, we decided it was necessary to make another stop. I had to go with the chocolate cupcake with lilikoi (passion fruit) icing again, but we also shared bites of a cream puff, lemon bar, and pineapple upside down cake.

Dinner:

That afternoon, my stomach flared up so I went for a simple, light dinner that my body could tolerate. We went to Whole Foods and picked up some food to eat there. I had some gluten free crackers.

Plus some vegetable soup with quinoa, topped with nutritional yeast.

And a couple of bites from the hot bar-mashed potatoes and a carrots.

Back at the hotel, I was feeling better and had a splash of wine with my lilikoi goat cheese truffle.

As well as a piece of chocolate covered pineapple. The chocolate covered pineapple was excellent-I haven’t gotten it here before, and it’s the same type of chocolate as the chocolate covered macadamia nuts that I am now allergic to, which was exciting!

I was hoping to have a bit more of an interesting and fun day of food to share, but I really wasn’t feeling well, but that’s life and sometimes that happens!

I still have one more vacation post to come!

What is your favorite vacation food?

WIAW Returns

Date: September 2, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

It’s been FOREVER since I did a WIAW post. This is mostly because I couldn’t figure out where the link up went. Here’s this week’s link!

So let’s dive in!

Preworkout/breakfast:

I woke up pretty hungry and had my typical pre workout snack of quick bread. I went with cherry vanilla bread over pumpkin because I cut the slices of the cherry thicker than the pumpkin.

At Crossfit, I worked (I say I and not we because I was the only one at the 7am class!) on double unders and reverse pull ups. My double unders are coming along-they’re still a little hit or miss for me for the WODs and I had so much trouble getting my last rep of the drill! The WOD was a long one. A 17 minute AMRAP of 10 kettle bell swings, 10 burpees, and 100m sprint. I got through 7 rounds + 16 reps. That’s 76 burpees. Yuck.

Post-workout, I had a carton of chocolate soy milk to refuel, while driving to take my car in to get the brakes fixed. Again. From there, I hit up a yoga class with one of my favorite teachers. I’ve started making it to more classes this past month and it’s already making a difference in my creakiness. My foot pain was significantly reduced afterwards too (I think because I stretched out my tight calves). This yoga class is also strangely comforting. I’ve been going to the same class (off and on) for 6 years now, and it hasn’t changed a bit, in the best way! In a time when so much is changing and has changed, it’s nice to have a constant.

After yoga, my mom and I stopped by Whole Foods to get some basic ingredients for dinners and I was starving so I grabbed a few bites of french toast casserole from the hot bar. SO GOOD. It’s made with cinnamon challah, and it’s super custardy.

It’s up for debate whether or not I should be eating wheat/gluten right now (because of the whole damaged stomach lining thing) and while this was delicious, I definitely felt sick afterwards. Darn.

Lunch was leftovers of the quinoa, roasted carrot, and grape bowl the other night. Plus a piece of my mom’s cornmeal crust pizza.

Plus a side of carrots and guacamole.

For dessert I had a big spoonful of vanilla fudge ripple frozen yogurt. I’m really liking Stoneyfield’s frozen yogurt. At 120 calories per serving, it’s a healthier option without all the artificial sweeteners.

Speaking of which…snack #1 was a small bowl of mint chocolate Arctic Zero.

I think this flavor has better texture than the vanilla maple. I sort of like Arctic Zero, but it’s definitely not ice cream. It’s essentially flavored water that is frozen. The first ingredient is actually water!

Plus a oat bite. I love Bobo’s oat bars. I highly recommend the peanut butter flavor (which I am allergic to…)!

I spent the afternoon looking up spin music and making a playlist for the class I taught that night.

Snack #2 was a small piece of pumpkin bread. I’m not normally one to snack all day, but it was a pretty active day and dinner wouldn’t be until 8!

I got to spin early (to somewhat beat traffic) so I took my puppy for a short walk. I can’t believe how long her tongue is!

Class went well! I actually found out that afternoon that I will be teaching at my school today (Wednesday) and tomorrow. I was recently hired to teach there, so I’m ecstatic to get started! I was told the students in the classes would be RAs at school for training, so maybe I’ll see some people I know!

Dinner post-spin was basic. There’s really something to be said for basic, simple dinners. A baked potato with Earth Balance (simply because I like the flavor more than butter), broccoli with cheddar, and a scoop of cottage cheese. Plus ketchup for the potato!

Dessert was an actual bowl of the fudge ripple froyo.

That was my day of food! It’s good to be back doing WIAW!

What is the best thing you ate this week?

Why I Like WIAW

Date: February 3, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Wednesday! I have to say, my weeks are weird this quarter, but I’m embracing it. They’re very front heavy, which makes the week feel longer. I actually like it. I’m in a good place, and I’m trying to get more out of each day that I get to be here (this is the fear of being an upperclassman and realizing I only have just over a year left here). That being said, I’m still living in the ignorant bliss that is the period of time before any grades have actually been gotten back. Speaking of embracing this school, how about embracing this weather? While it’s supposed to rain this weekend, the weather here has been pretty much perfect lately. I can’t complain about this California sunshine! (Sorry to anyone on the East Coast right now with all those storms…)

Anyways, that was quite a long winded way of saying it’s Wednesday-yay! WIAW! Thanks as always to Jenn for hosting.

You want to know why I’m loving WIAW right now? Because when I’m posting less, or posting about specific things, I don’t get to share what I’ve been eating as much, so I get this accumulation of pictures that somehow seem silly to post if not on a Wednesday. WIAW is an excuse for a foodie photo dump, right?

Pancakes+eggs+mandarin oranges at breakfast. I think I’m officially no longer a syrup on pancakes person. Butter all the way-it may have something to do with the fact that I’m a syrup snob and really don’t like the dining hall corn syrup/maple syrup. Yuck. On another note, I just bought a vat of Grade B maple syrup at Whole Foods. More on that in a minute.

Pumpkin bread. This is from last Wednesday-my Wednesdays are long days so I needed a little pick me up between studying and my last class!

This dinner was 50/50. Tilapia with mango and cucumber was on point, as were the roasted carrots. I wasn’t a fan of the lentil puff pastry though.

More breakfast. I was across campus at the track and decided to stop somewhere different. While it may look very similar to the other breakfast, the pancakes there are far superior. They’re sort of vanilla-y.

Dining hall lunch-balsamic chicken salad, veggie flat bread, and broken rice with scallions. Plus roasted butternut squash.

This was dining hall chicken masala. And I have to say, they nailed it. The chicken was SO tender and flavorful. Well done.

Whole Foods dinner-hihglights were the mushroom polenta and various colors of roasted sweet potatoes.

So…I’m kind of over the whole “eat a specific diet” thing (like Paleo, 100% real food, no sugar). One thing I’ve learned over my 2+ years of blogging about food is that 1. I don’t have time or energy for that and 2. It makes me freaking crazy. That being said, I wanted to shake things up a little and get more creative so I decided to roughly follow a new plan (note the word roughly-it’s very low key)-whole foods + unlimited chocolate. So to start my new healthy eating endeavor I went to Whole Foods and stocked up on mass amounts of quality chocolate. And Grade B maple syrup for homemade chocolate. Spoiler alert-the “plan” is going well. I like chocolate.

This is one of my favorite soups-and it’s really good cold the next day too (or maybe I’m just used to eating cold food out of tupperware at this point in my life). The best part is it has chunks of sweet potato!

On Superbowl Sunday, my eating schedule was bizarre. Lunch at 10:30, pizza at 3:30 (what meal is that even? Dinner?). I was a little hungry towards the end of the game so I went to the dining hall for a chicken fajita salad. This was quality guac.

Dining hall dinner-salad, stir fry tofu, sweet potato fries. Plus a mini corn and potato casserole. The reason for no picture? It slid off my plate and exploded on the floor. It took my a little time to gain the courage to grab another one!

And finally-one last breakfast! I brought back the berry compote! This is just cherries+blueberries boiled down. Full fat yogurt+berries+sunbutter. I missed this!

Wow guys, that was quite the roundup. I should get on here a little more often, shouldn’t I? I feel like this has been an eventful week in terms of life stuff, so I really should do more updates! Also I’m realizing as I grow up (…and that makes me sound young again) I’m gotten so much more introspective so maybe we’ll have some more reflective posts. That being said, everything is going well over here right now!

What is your favorite kind of chocolate (and where can I buy it??)?

WIAW-Rough Morning

Date: January 27, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Guys. It was a rough one over here. But let’s still celebrate food as of late with Jenn!

I figured out that whatever weird sinus-y thing I’m dealing with is allergies, not illness. Unfortunately, that still kept me up a bit last night! On top of that, I was up fairly late doing homework. I woke up for 6am Crossfit, which was definitely not enough sleep. The workout was a good one though-and getting off campus helped my allergies. For strength, we did overhead squats and toes to bar. The conditioning was a 15 minute AMRAP of:

5 dumbbell ground to overhead (I used 25#s-ground to overhead means clean to shoulders and then push press or push jerk to overhead)

7 pull ups (banded for me)

9 squats (no weight)

I finished exactly at 9 rounds! This was one of those that ends up being pretty hard because none of the moves are terrible so you can just get tons of reps in.

The roughness started afterwards when I decided I needed a big cup of coffee to get me through the day. I normally drink espresso drinks, so I don’t have as good of a gauge of how much caffeine is in regular coffee. Normally I do half a packet of instant in milk, but this time I did a full packet.

I basically chugged it on an empty stomach and was about halfway through my banana with sunflower seed butter when I realized I felt pretty weird. And it quickly dawned upon me that I had made a terrible mistake. My heart started racing and I started shaking. Besides feeling awful, being over caffeinated also really freaks me out. I felt really nauseous and shaky for the morning, but it was a lot better by my 11am class. Even now, in the evening, I’m not feeling 100% but definitely a LOT better.

Lunch was super lame and picture less because I was scared to eat anything too heavy-2 crackers and an English muffin. After lunch, I felt a lot less shaky. The good news is I have still managed to get a fair amount of studying done for my midterm tomorrow despite this!

I was starving mid-afternoon and feeling better so I heated up the last slice of my drowned cranberry bread.

I was starving again around when dinner opened-and it smelled delicious through my window! I went with pretty basic foods still.

Mac n cheese, mashed potatoes, a little roasted cauliflower, and chipotle turkey soup. I was feeling god enough for a few bites of peach crispy as well-note that this plate is actually much smaller!

So…that was my day. Rough. I’m officially on a caffeine detox. I think these past couple of weeks I was depending a bit too heavy on coffee to get me through the day instead of sleep anyway, which wasn’t sustainable. I need to make sleep more of a priority!

And since today’s food was kind of boring, here are a couple of other meals!

I have a new batch of lunches! Chicken and mashed yams are same old, same old, but this time I have roasted garlic broccoli to accompany them!

A basic dinner-some type of vinaigrette based black bean salad with strips of something unidentifiable, BBQ chicken, and sweet potato fries. How pretty is that plate? So colorful!

And now, I have to get back to studying!

Coffee-yay or nay?