Monthly Archives: September 2014

Back to the Stone Age

Date: September 16, 2014

Author: astottler

I apologize for the lack of posting lately. It seems I’ve been relegated back to the stone age these past few days. Which is another way of saying my Internet at home has been down. It goes in and out, but it seems to have been leaning towards out recently! So I’m currently blogging from Starbucks with a (non-PSL) latte in my hand.

So-let’s back up shall we?

Friday morning I did my first real post race run! My foot was feeling much better, so I went to spin and then ran straight afterwards so my foot would be maximally warmed up. I ran 4 miles, and it felt pretty good! It was really good after 2, so this is progress! I wish I had brought my camera-it really feels like fall now I had the same impression last year-one day it’s summer and the next it’s fall. I can’t even explain what feels like fall-it’s still been 80 degrees and warm! Maybe it’s the angle of the sun? Everyone who leaves the East Coast to come to CA complains about lack of seasons-but if you look closely enough, they are definitely there. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived here for 20 years and I’m familiar with the subtleties of the the chaining seasons, but it excites me!

Post workout I had a chocolate mint protein shake.

This was milk, a frozen banana, chocolate designer whey protein, cocoa powder, fresh mint, and a pinch of xyatham gum. It was just ok-there was a little too much xyatham gum and a little too little ice so it was a bit slimy and not quite cold enough.

For lunch, I had leftover macaroni and cheese, purple cumin roasted cauliflower, and some figs.

Later that afternoon, I headed up to Berkeley to spend the weekend with some of my best friends from high school. Almost all of my high school friends go to Cal! They’ve all been in school for 3 weeks now, which is crazy because I don’t start for another week!

I stayed with one friend the first night, and two others the second night.

Saturday, my friend took me on a hike that overlooked the bay. It was so beautiful!

We also passed this road sign:

(Reads: Godzilla rampant in SF)

Only in Berkeley.

After cleaning myself up, I met up with my other friend for a late lunch of a veggie sandwich from a cafe near her apartment.

After spending a couple of hours catching up with her and another friend, we went out for dinner and dessert. We went to Fenton’s Creamery, which actually appeared in the movie Up!

(Source)

For dinner, we all order the CA Avocado burger, although mine was in turkey form.

This was delicious and so, so messy.

The main event though was dessert. This place was famous for their sundaes, and I’m not about to pass that up! One of my friends comes here quite often, so she was able to point us in the correct direction. We got a monstrous brownie sundae with chocolate ice cream and health bar ice cream, all topped with hot fudge and whipped cream.

We split it 3 ways, and all left bursting at the seams!

We had a great time catching up. When I’m with them, it’s like nothing has changed and is so, so refreshing. Can you believe we’ve been friends for 9 years? That’s basically half my life!

(8th grade grad)

It was such a fun weekend. I loved seeing them, and I’m actually feeling about ready to go back to school!

Do you have any long-term friends?

Giant’s Game and Garden!

Date: September 14, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys-I’m pretty behind on posting! I’ve been gone all weekend but that’s a recap for another day. So let’s step back a bit.

Thursday, I began the morning with a bowl of cottage cheese topped with sunflower seed butter and homemade pumpkin butter, which just consisted of pumpkin, spices, and brown rice syrup. Don’t knock the cottage cheese+pumpkin butter until you try it-it’s one of my favorite fall food combos!

I attempted to run a bit that morning for the first time since my race because my feet were feeling better. I only did about a mile because I discovered that the impact of running downhill was too much for my feet, and I live on a hill so I wasn’t going to make it very far!

That afternoon, I went to a Giant’s game with my mom!

It was such a beautiful day-it’s usually so cold and foggy in San Francisco! I NEVER wear a tank top to Giant’s games!

Since it was 9/11 there was a moment of silence and a salute from the fireboat. (I really wanted to do an entire 9/11 post this year but unfortunately I did not have Internet access that day, but it is important to remember those who lost their lives on that terrible day.)

One really cool thing about our ballpark is that they just put in a vegetable garden. It’s really awesome, and the landscaping/design is really cool. They even had a couple of avocado trees filled with avocados!

They now serve fresh salads and whole wheat flatbread pizzas in that area with vegetables from the garden. I got a blueberry mint smoothie later in the game and it was nice and refreshing.

For my main course, I got a cha-cha bowl, which is rice, beans, chicken, and mango-zucchini salsa.

It was a great game to go to-we won!

That evening, I went to a killer Crossfit workout. The WOD was 7 rounds of 2 minutes of:

200m run

7 deadlifts (I used 145#)

As many jump ropes or double unders as possible in the remaining time

Each round had a one minute rest in between. This was hard, and it was one of the first times I really ran on my foot, and it felt pretty good!

For dinner, we picked up some fresh whole wheat bread at the Farmer’s Market with the other necessary veggies.

And then for dinner, we made my California Chop Salad, which has kalmata olives, chicken, avocado, asparagus, and gouda tossed in a dijon vinaigrette.

And with that, I’ll leave this here and recap the weekend in the next post-hope you all had as good of a weekend as I did!

Non-DC Cupcakes

Date: September 10, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello! I hope everyone’s week is going well. I started my morning with an early spin class, followed by a nice long post-breakfast nap.

For breakfast, I was planning on having this:

I’ve seen it around the blog and twitter world a bit-it’s a soft cheese that is eaten like yogurt but it doesn’t have the tangy taste. I had high hopes.

Well, it was terrible. I couldn’t eat more than a bite. It tasted like chemicals. It was sweetened with both sugar alcohols and stevia, so from the start I wasn’t a fan of the ingredient list. And sugar alcohols taste especially weird in dairy. On the plus side, there were real chunks of pineapple. As far as the whole soft cheese concept, I think I’ll reserve judgment until I try the plain flavor with no sugar alcohols or stevia.

Instead, I had a coconut Chobani with sunflower seed butter and a side of roasted carrots. I’ve been looking for coconut Chobani for no less than a year at every grocery store I’ve gone to and I finally found it!

For lunch, I had leftover BBQ chicken with cumin roasted purple cauliflower (that color is so much more exciting!) along with some unpictured grapes and crackers.

After lunch, I was looking something up on the internet and I found a reference to what was supposed to be an amazing cupcake place near my home that I had never heard of. Given all my DC cupcake expertise,I felt it was my duty to taste them. I feel like my entire summer was preparing me for that moment. So off I went with the company of my mom.

Here’s the thing about going with your mother. It’s much more socially acceptable to get more cupcakes. The cool thing about this place is they had three sizes-mini, normal, and large. So she suggested we get one of each mini cupcake to try. I have absolutely no problem with that, and this way we got to try all the flavors since my family split the minis. The place was called Libby’s-it’s in a sort of industrial area at the edge of downtown, and mostly does cupcake orders but they have a ton of “extras” you can just buy (which is what we did).

Appearance and flavor selection were on point. To name a few, we got red velvet, key lime, cookie dough, salted caramel, dulce de leche, buttercup, snickerdoodle, and carrot cake. I think my favorites were salted caramel and cookie dough. The frosting on the cookie dough tasted just like cookie dough, but it was light and fluffy. The verdict? Definitely going back.

For dinner, we had butternut squash macaroni and cheese from Cooking Light. This recipe is amazing and the only one we ever made-it uses butternut squash for some of the creaminess and you’d never know it!

In terms of entertainment, I have a couple of things to share. First is this book-The Price of Inheritance, by Karin Tanabe.

The author is one of my friends from run club in DC, so I was excited to find her new book at the bookstore. I’m really enjoying it so far, and highly suggest you go out and buy it! It’s really well written and I love her writing style.

Another fun thing-has anyone seen the Cropfit Subway commercial? I love it-it’s especially funny because some of those things are a lot like some of the stuff we do. Now where can I find a giant pumpkin?

Here’s the link.

What book are you reading now?

WIAW-Back to Normal

Date: September 10, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Wednesday! Today I’m linking up for our weekly food celebration with Jenn.

After my trip and race, I’m back to what I suppose is my normal routine for the next week and a half, so here’s what I ate!

For breakfast, I had leftover cheesy mushroom quinoa (with excessive kale) and some cherries.

In terms of my workout, as promised, I have a lot of cross training in front of me while my plantar fasciitis stops flaring so I went to the gym and did a spin workout on my own. It was a good workout, but not my best playlist ever. After my workout, I met my mom and sister on campus for lunch at my local cafe.

I started with a cappuccino (decaf).

And then my mom and I shared a couple of dishes.The first was called Beverly Hills Chopped Salad, and was mixed greens, olives, avocado, gouda, chicken, and asparagus tossed in a balsamic vinaigrette.

The second was an arepa filled with gouda cheese.

Before dinner, I went to my favorite yoga class and stretched out my tight muscles from the race. I think going to yoga more should help my plantar fasciitis-the stretching felt good and the one legged poses really made it apparent how weak the little muscles in my ankles and achilles are.

For dinner, we made a barbecue chicken salad. My dad grilled chicken with some of the new BBQ sauce we got in Napa, and we served it over a salad with corn, red pepper, tomato, onion, and avocado in a simple lime juice and olive oil dressing.

Plus some tortilla chips on the side!

For something sweet, I had the last of a container of caramel ice cream with caramel sauce from Napa. I didn’t get a picture, but I want to take this moment to share with you the best ice cream ever (although this wasn’t the kind I had last night because it was long gone).

This stuff is AMAZING but I’m pretty sure you can only get it in CA since Straus is a local dairy. Their dairy is the most amazing, creamiest, smoothest ever-the yogurt is amazing-and my favorite ice cream place uses their dairy. So it’s no surprise that this ice cream is ridiculous. SALTED toffee pieces. This is by far my favorite store bought ice cream.

And that’s what I ate!

What’s your favorite store bought ice cream?

Eating and Limping My Way Through Napa Valley

Date: September 9, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! I hope everyone’s week is going well. Today I want to share my little road trip with you guys!

Immediately after my race, I headed home to shower and pick up my dog for a little family trip.

My family always goes to Napa over Thanksgiving, but this year we decided to do a quick trip before school started since we didn’t have a vacation this spring/summer. We’ve also never taken my dog before!

We arrived in time for a late lunch in St. Helena. Luckily, the area is very dog friendly and we were able to eat outside with my dog.

We went to a place we discovered last year, called the St. Helena Bistro. They had the most amazing brussels sprouts ever, and while those weren’t in season yet, I still ate very well!

To start, we shared bruschetta and a grilled artichoke. Both were fantastic.

For my main course, I went with a salad with avocado, heirloom tomato, fresh mozzarella, and olive oil.

It was delicious and so fresh! We also shared a dessert-crispy banana with chocolate gelato.

We walked around St. Helena a bit, and stopped in an olive oil store for olive oil and barbecue sauce tasting. Another must visit place in St. Helena is Woodhouse Chocolates. They have the most amazing candies-the fresh mint tastes just like eating a mint leaf.

After walking around in the heat, we checked into the hotel to relax and watch some football and baseball before dinner. Dinner was a place in downtown Napa I found as one of the top things to do in Napa. They were known for their pizza, so we chose to split a couple of pizzas and some appetizers, starting with a simple salad with lemon vinaigrette and parmesan.

The other app was creamy polenta with grated cheese on top.

The pizzas we chose were margherita and white cream with shaved truffle. Obviously, the truffle pizza stole the show. I’ve never actually seen a truffle before-I’ve only had truffle oil before so this was quite the treat!

On the way home from dinner, we stopped for dessert at another place in downtown Napa, Grace’s Table. We split a vanilla bean cheesecake, devil’s food cake, and chocolate mousse with brandy cherries.

The next morning, after a quick hotel breakfast, we visited the Petrified Forest, which was dog friendly. This is an area where trees have basically been turned to stone as the result of a nearby (now dormant) volcano erupting and spewing ash everywhere, followed by flooding over the area. It was amazing-the trees looked just like a normal log, but they were stone!

We went on about a mile hike through the forest to look at the trees and some ash fall. My feet were not feeling so hot post-race day, and walking was not pretty at all.

The photo below is a Manzanita tree-it looked like someone had dripped red paint all over the bark-it was an amazing looking tree.

The next picture is what the petrified trees look like when they were first discovered and before they have been cleaned and exposed.

When we went on the path to see some ash fall, we had a great view of the former volcano.

And here’s a shot of me with all the pale and sparky ash.

And another picture from the hike. My dog is quite photogenic!

Afterwards, we headed back to downtown Napa to Oxbow Public Market for lunch. It’s an indoor market with places to eat and buy gourmet foods. We went to a place we discovered last year that appeared on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives for their arepas. They were so, so delicious. I got the vegetarian on a sweet corn arepa, which was filled with tofu, fried plantain, avocado, and black beans. So, so good.

For the last hurrah before returning home, we went to a highly recommended (by the Internet) bakery called Sweetie Pie where we shared a coconut raspberry bar, salted caramel fudge cake (my choice), and chocolate soufflé cake.

Then it was time to say goodbye to Napa, and we headed home.

We haven’t taken my dog on a trip in years, but luckily this area is very dog friendly. In addition to lots of outside seating and water bowls for dogs placed outside, almost everyone who passed us stopped to comment on how cute he was and to pet him, which he of course loved. One funny thing is that even though he’s 13 now, almost everyone asks if he’s a puppy.

He clearly had a great time, and slept the whole way home.

Overall, it was a really fun couple of days! We did some different things that were more dog friendly, and had a great time!

Do you have a vacation spot your family likes to go?