Happy Holidays! It is Christmas Eve Eve! i’ve never been one to celebrate Christmas Eve Eve but it means that Christmas is just a couple of days away. This morning at spin my teacher gave everyone holiday chocolates.
For some reason every year I love making turkey shaped cookies.
The next morning we went to the city to do some last minute Christmas shopping. More to come!
What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Hey everyone!
I’m finally home for the holidays! I want to take this time off to make some serious progress on this blog. And enjoy time with my little helper….
I’m so excited to be home with my pets again (and family). I’m hoping to really figure out blogging over my break. I’m also enjoying a lot of down time after a busy quarter.
One thing I missed when I was at school was food freedom. There were certain things I couldn’t really have at school, since I had no way to make them for myself. It’s so nice to see some type of food on another blog and just make it! It’s definitely something I took for granted before I left.
Breakfast this morning was an egg and veggie scramble with mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes, bruschetta, and cheddar, topped with avocado. Sadly, I did not get a picture. I am getting a little better about taking pictures of my food, but it is going to take some getting used to. Just to keep this fun I’ll share a couple of shots from the past week.
Asparagus soup with homemade whole wheat bread in the bread maker. Topped with Smart Balance. SO good.
Christmas cookies! (Sorry for the poor picture quality.) Have you ever made Spritz cookies? My family makes them every year. They are made with a cookie press, and they have a slightly almondy flavor. Plus, they’re so much fun to decorate! We tried the chocolate variation for the first time this year. They were good, but not really that different than the regular kind. My favorite ones are the green cookies though.
Ok, when getting out the toppings for our cookies, I came across these in the pantry. 
When I tried them, I knew I had to share them with you guys! They are basically broken bits of Trader Joe’s regular peppermint bark and they are so good! It’s a great way to satisfy ones sweet tooth with something small.
As far as workouts go, I haven’t posted much about them in the past. Yesterday was 80 minutes on the rowing machine, my longest row yet! I’m trying to work my way up to be ready for the season. I followed that my 20 minutes of abs. This morning I lifted weights with a trainer at my gym. I love coming back to my gym at home. Everything is so familiar and comfortable, and much less crowded than the gym at school. I also miss all my classes and instructors at the gym! I’m pumped to return to a spin class tonight!
Hope all is well for everyone!
Do you have a favorite type of Christmas cookie?
I’m back! If you’re reading my second post, I am ever more ecstatic! I was planning on posting this about a week or so after I wrote it because I wanted to try my hand at writing posts a little before I completely jump into everything, but I’m so excited about this blog that I just couldn’t wait! I have already been practicing taking pictures of my food! I didn’t get a ton of pictures, but here is one I did manage to get!
Chocolate mint smoothie, before I added cocoa powder. The green is from spinach. Adding spinach to smoothies is my new favorite thing, you can’t even taste it! Into the blender went a frozen banana, vanilla almond milk, cocoa powder, spinach, a little honey, and peppermint extract. The result? A little too much peppermint. Ok, a lot too much. The smoothie was SUPER minty and I couldn’t actually taste anything else besides the mint…oops. However, I think this idea has potential!
I also did make rice crispies yesterday 🙂 I used brown rice cereal, and just made the recipe on the rice crispies website, and added holiday M&Ms. I partly wanted to make this because I got marshmallows at Halloween with every intention of making popcorn balls, but when Halloween came I was too lazy. Speaking of lazy, I truly believe that laziness is the mother on invention. So here’s an idea: don’t have a microwave safe mixing bowl to heat your marshmallows (I didn’t), or too lazy to do dishes? Enter creativity! I spread my marshmallows on a sheet of waxed paper and microwaved them on that, and then added them to my mixing bowl. But if you do choose to do this, make sure to watch them so that you don’t end up with marshmallow goop all over the microwave! And seeing as it is my roommate’s microwave, I don’t think she would appreciate that much. Anyway, the rice crispy treats turned out well and after a few minutes in my dorm’s lounge, they were totally gone.
On a similar note, as a lazy college student, I can offer all kinds of tips on how to avoid washing dishes, or avoid using dishes in the first place. Right now, I have been eating nearly everything out of paper cups with plastic forks because I am out of nearly everything else, or I simply want to avoid dishes. Mug cake in a plastic cup? Sure! Sliced apples? Why not! Life was certainly easier back before I ran out of paper plates…but seeing as I am going home in less than a week, there’s no point in buying them now! Hopefully you enjoyed hearing about my dish sagas! I better get my butt studying!
Hey guys!
This is my first blog post! If you are reading this, WOOHOO! ONE READER! I’ve been reading so many healthy living blogs and it has inspired me to create my own. There are several reasons for this:
First, a little bit about myself. I am a college freshman (WOO) living in California, on campus. I am a collegiate rower, but before this year I had never rowed before in my life. I love cats. I absolutely LOVE cats and my crazy and quirky cats are one of the things I miss most about home. I first got interested in nutrition and fitness several years ago because I was a competitive softball player, and I did a lot of conditioning to improve my game. With an increase in workouts, I began to see the impact that nutrition could have on my performance, both in workouts and in games. Although this is the first time in 13 years that I am not playing softball, my experiences with softball shaped so much of who I am today, and for that I am thankful.
Nutrition is my passion. Right now I am planning on earning a degree in Biology with a focus in Biochemistry. I am interested in the scientific side of nutrition as a job rather than the dietician/nutritionist angle. Ultimately, I would love to do nutritional research. But that’s enough about me for now, let’s get back to the blog!
First of all, I must be honest with you guys. I am writing this post long before it will ever be up on the blog. Partly because I have finals next week and should be studying…and partly because I have yet to come up with a catchy name. So if you future people are reading it, that probably means I was able to come up with a decently catchy name and caught your attention!
Back to the goals of this blog. The whole healthy living lifestyle appeals to me so much, and I love the idea of sharing my endeavors with the world. I have a fairly sizable knowledge of nutrition, partly through tons and tons of reading, and partly through my first college nutrition class! (BEST. CLASS. EVER.) Many of the women with healthy eating blogs are in their 20s or 30s, and some even have families. I wanted to offer the world a different perspective, as I am younger than many of these women. I’m sure many of them remember their college years and the impact that healthy living or unhealthy living had on their lives. There are also a ton of stories of women who were always fairly active, then go to college and are exposed to all kinds of junk food, and maybe alcohol, and quickly gained the freshman 15. Then, somewhere in their college years, or after, they finally decide to try being healthier, and then they get into nutrition/fitness. That’s awesome that they found something to be passionate about and made healthy changes in their lives. Since I have yet to have these experiences, I’m hoping to sidetrack the whole unhealthy period and go straight to the healthy living! As my first quarter draws to a close, I can definitely understand how eating and exercise habits worsen. I’d be lying if I said I have been eating super healthfully this fall. I managed to avoid the freshman weight gain only because I have been rowing, but I don’t always feel as well as I know I could. Wow this was a lengthy post! I’m glad you stuck around and I can’t wait to see you guys back here!
I couldn’t resist having my kitty be my first post! This is obviously very fitness/health related.