Avocado Con| Lemon Ginger Chicken Soup

Date: March 20, 2017

Author: astottler

I love California. I really, really love California. But we’ll get to that. First, I wanted to share another Quick and Easy meal: Lemon Ginger Chicken Soup. This recipe is something I threw together in St. Louis, that came out surprisingly well!

I absolutely love soup, and love having a big pot around for lunches throughout the week. That being said, soup can definitely be time consuming and require a ton of different pots and pans, or even a blender. I wanted something that was easy to throw together, in 20 minutes. This soup is just that. You can really use any veggies here; I chose carrots (just baby carrots from a bag, ready to go) and zucchini.

First, I started by bringing a carton of chicken broth to a boil, and boiling the carrots in that. Meanwhile, I sautéed a package of (pre washed) mushrooms with reduced sodium soy sauce, garlic, olive oil, and green onions.

Add the other veggies to the broth as necessary, depending on how long they take to cook. I added the zucchini about 10 minutes in, and cooked it for 10 minutes. Once the veggies are ready, add the mushrooms and some pre-cooked chicken (I used rotisserie chicken).

Finally, squeeze in half a lemon’s worth of juice, some fresh ginger, and additional soy sauce to taste. If you can find it, the fresh ginger from a tube is a super easy source!

And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for: Avocado Con! Yes, that is exactly what it sounds like. Yes, only in San Francisco. It was basically a collection of food trucks serving special avocado goods. There was everything from avocado fries, tacos, poke, and corn dog battered avocado, to avocado ice cream, avocado cupcakes, and avocado chocolate mousse.

I drove to the city with my college roommate, donned in my most appropriate avocado leggings. We waited in line for a little while to get in, and then did reconnaissance. For lunch, the clear front runners to me where avocado crepes or pupusas with guacamole. I absolutely love pupusas, so that won out!

There were a variety of pupusa flavors to try, and I chose a chicken and cheese, and a spinach and cheese. The two pupusas came with beens, sour cream, guacamole, a mix of chips, and fried plantains.

They were SO delicious. I think the chicken was my favorite! And you really can’t go wrong with fried plantains. The avocado fries also looked amazing, but the line was crazy and we wanted to save room for dessert!

For dessert, we split avocado frozen custard with chocolate sauce.

The avocado flavor was subtle, but it added an extra creaminess!

The fact that events like this exist is fantastic.

After eating, we decided to find good coffee since we were in the city. We found a Blue Bottle a little over a mile away, and took a nice walk through the city, past the ballpark, to get there.

I absolutely cannot wait for baseball season!

Naturally, I got a decaf cappuccino.

It turned out to be such a nice day. Obviously it was foggy because it was San Francisco, but the temperature was moderate and it wasn’t too windy. A nice day to spend outside in the city!

Days like that make me happy to stay in California for vet school!

Chloe’s First Brewery| Pizza Eggs

Date: March 19, 2017

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend!

I want to start this post with a recipe for my new Quick and Easy series, and then I’ll recap the fun had this weekend.

The meal idea? Pizza eggs! Not only are these absurdly easy and delicious, but they’re a fantastic use of extra pizza or tomato sauce. Tip: if you’re cooking for one or two people, freeze individual servings of pasta sauce out of the big jar in baggies for later, and defrost as needed. I can never get through a jar before it goes bad!

We made tortilla pizzas and had a little extra sauce, so I took the opportunity to make pizza eggs.

It’s super simple. Start with eggs (and spinach, if you want it!), and when the base of the eggs starts cooking, add mozzarella and pizza sauce on top, omelet style.

Then flip.

And serve! (Avocado toast with everything bagel seasoning is everything.)

And now the recap! I started Saturday with a spin class from one of my favorite instructors. I figured it would be a good idea to get a little movement in before all the stiffness and soreness from 17.4 set in. It felt surprisingly good, but it’s possible that it was just in comparison to how much pain I was in during 17.4. Either way, it was nice to get a little movement in before laying low a lot of the weekend.

Saturday afternoon, my Flapjacked cookie mixes came! I’m a huge fan of the muffins, so of course I had to give the cookies a try. One thing I will say is that the nutrition facts are a little deceptive. They look pretty good, but they’re actually just for the dry mix, not counting the 6 tablespoons of butter that you add!

That being said, they tasted delicious and felt a little bit healthier than the average cookie.

They had a denser, more oat-y texture than your average chocolate chip cookie.

They get my stamp of approval! That said, there’s a full tablespoon of butter in a serving, which is a lot (especially for someone like me who is very fat sensitive). I think I’m going to try and make them with applesauce in place of butter (or half of each) to see how they turn out. I’m eating these as a healthy cookie, so I wouldn’t mind a healthier texture.

I went to the grocery store to pick up ingredients for dinner, and had to snap this picture:

For most, wearing flip flops to the grocery store is not a big deal. For me, it is! After numerous foot injuries, especially my stress fracture, I truly didn’t think I’d ever be able to wear flip flops again. The fact that I can just gradually slip them on and go to the grocery is huge!

Also huge? I started playing grocery store monopoly. I’ve been asked about a few times lately, and I figured, hey, I’ve been doing the shopping a lot more for my family lately, I could see myself getting really into that!

Man, is it addicting! I’ve one away from winning a lot of things! (although obviously I do not have high hopes). There are some instant wins and coupons though, so now I have enough instant wins for my family to get free donuts! Win!

That night for dinner, and I made a soup for my Quick and Easy series, which should come up next week. Served with Brazilian cheese bread. This frozen delicacy takes any dinner form good to great in 20 minutes.

After dinner, we tried out an incredibly local brewery (it’s like a block from Crossfit). Even better, it was dog friendly, so Chloe had her first brewery experience!

She was bad, then good. She was pretty barky with another dog at first, but then calmed down. EVERYONE wanted to love on her, so I guess she got away with some of that behavior because she’s cute? Eventually she settled in with her bone though.

Bone=uninteresting unless I’m holding it….

Most of the beers were IPAs, which we knew coming in, but I got a porter blended with brandy that was really good!

Froyo was on the way home, and I’m not one to pass up that kind of opportunity.

Dulce de Leche, chocolate, and hot fudge.

Check back tomorrow for soup and a little California flare!

17.4 on St. Patrick’s Day

Date: March 18, 2017

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I hope everyone had a fantastic St. Patrick’s Day, wore plenty of green, and ate plenty of Irish food!

I began my day with a greenish smoothie. I added spinach to my typical smoothie with banana, salted caramel protein, milk, and just a touch of cocoa powder (so as not to ruin the green too much).

On the side, I had half a packet of maple brown sugar oatmeal with some extra plain oats thrown in to cut the sugar.

For lunch, I made a wrap that I’ve been loving lately. I’m planning on doing a full post on it for my quick and easy series, but basically it’s a tortilla stuffed with white cheddar laughing cow cheese, turkey, spinach, and red pepper.

PicMonkey Collage

I actually rarely like red pepper, but I do in this context! I had that with a very simple salad: just high quality blueberry balsamic vinegar!

For a little lunch dessert, I had the remaining bite of a leftover Rule Breaker brownie. I think the brownies taste better than the blondies, but they would be improved with chocolate chips.

Friday was all about preparing for the death that was 17.4. I made sure to carefully fuel myself. In the afternoon, I had some tea (the house was cold!) with a Luna bar and a ginger chew.

Cat nap:

And then about an hour before leaving, I had a few crackers and another ginger chew.

Then, it was time to get pumped up to go!

17.4 was 16.4.

13 minute AMRAP:

55 deadlifts (155# women’s RX)

55 wallballs (14#)

55 calorie row

55 handstand push ups

First of all, I remember last year being awful well enough, but I also have blog documentation. I was super happy and proud of how I did last year. I finished the row in 12:59, which was perfect since I don’t have handstand push ups. The problem with that is that I felt like I needed to improve upon last year, and I was happy with last year, so anything less than last year’s performance would be disappointing. On the other hand, I knew this workout played to my strengths a lot more than some of the other ones.

I actually looked to last year’s post for how to do my deadlifts. I started with 2 sets of 10, then moved to sets of 5, and smaller at the end. (In retrospect, one method I heard was good was going 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1). I was actually in theory far better trained in deadlifts this year, because we did weekly 20 rep sets at a fairly heavy weight. I definitely regretted 1. not going as heavy as I probably could have during those workouts and 2. missing so many due to travel!

I think the deadlifts crushed me roughly equally this year vs. last year, but maybe I was a little stronger. It’s really amazing how much you just lose all core strength! After the deadlifts, I did the all too familiar 16.4 waddle from the bar to the wall. Last year, the wall balls absolutely destroyed me. This year, interestingly, not so much. I feel like with the workouts that have been repeated, it always surprises me what has been improved. Last year in 16.5 which was a redo of 14.5, I was shocked by how much “easier” (it’s all relative) the burpees felt. This year, the wall balls were shockingly fine. I did my first set as 15, and then did sets of 10 the rest of the way. Last year, I was getting no repped (or coming very close to it) and couldn’t do more than sets of 5 or less. I only got no repped once this time. Maybe all the long, heavy sets of squats and presses helped this? I got off the wall maybe 45 seconds earlier than last time?

The row was not fun. I don’t think I had as much grit in me here as I did last time, because I was pretty sure at that point I could make the time cap. It was not fun. I wanted to die. I didn’t actually die though, so that’s good. I finished my 55 calories on the row at 12:43, sliding in 16 seconds faster than last year. Hey, I’ll take it!

Last year, I was immobile for probably a week after, so I immediately refueled with chocolate milk to try and ward off some of the impending soreness.

I repped South City Crossfit (St. Louis) green for the workout!

After watching a few other heats (I went first. Always.), I returned home to an Irish feast and my dad’s green pants.

I of course had to have a taster glass of Guiness. I actually didn’t really like it. The flavor is good but it needs some fizz!

And the meal: cabbage, roasted carrots and potatoes, rotisserie chicken, ketchup (necessary for chicken and potatoes), and Irish Soda Bread. For the soda bread, we basically just added dried cranberries and raisins to biscuit mix.

For a little something green for dessert, I made a single serve sugar cookie with green sprinkles.

That evening, I went out with a high school friend. We went to a British-style brewery, which was definitely a first for me! The beer I got wasn’t very fizzy, but it was full of (non-bitter) flavor. Interesting!

How was your St. Paddy’s Day? Anyone do 17.4?

NEW BLOG SERIES/PAGE: Quick and Easy Meals for Busy Students

Date: March 17, 2017

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

You may or may not have noticed, but the ol’ blog has a fresh new page! It’s titled “Quick and Easy Meals for Busy Students,” and you can check it out through this link, or clicking on the top tab.

So what’s that all about?

Basically, I’m going to vet school. It’s going to be really freaking hard. I’m going to have very limited time to cook, but I want to still eat healthy meals. In general, i I can’t have it in front of me in 20 minutes or less, it’s simply not happening. I also HATE cooking meat/don’t always trust myself, so plenty of vegetarian or pre-cooked chicken meals are included!

With no extra time, I decided I wanted a page to scan where I could just look at pretty food pictures and pick one out. Simple. No thought. 5 minutes tops. Therefore, a created such a page! Sometimes I scan old food photos or blog posts for meal ideas, but with this page, I’m basically doing that ahead of time. Before school starts, I have PLENTY of time to look for all the ideas I might need for next week. Some ideas featured are recipes that are already posted on the blog, but others aren’t. As a result, I will be doing a series of posts giving instructions for these meals. Some I have regularly, some I don’t. I hope both you, dear reader, and I find this helpful!

Pi Day!

Date: March 16, 2017

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

You better BELIEVE I celebrated Pi Day on Tuesday!

Sadly, I am not capable of reciting hundreds of digits of pi, but I am certainly capable of eating delicious pie!

My morning started off with a little walk with Chloe and some of my friends! They actually love walking with her, and are even willing to get up for a 7am walk with the sunrise and the pup!

For breakfast, I had my typical pre-spin meal of fruit and a flapjacked muffin.

Also—I’m playing around with less ridiculously large pictures, so let me know what you think!

My pre-teaching spin snack was Berry Cheerios.

Class went pretty well, but I feel like a lot of the playlists I’ve been doing lately have had really similar formats. Sometimes after teaching a lot without a break, I get a little uninspired. I vowed to bring something different on Thursday, so I actually just now spent a good deal of time finding some fresh music, and let the music dictate the format. I think it’s a good one! A lot of the songs are new and haven’t made it to the radio yet, which always gets me excited. Check it out here on my spotify!

I ate lunch outside afterwards because the weather was insanely nice. I had leftover chicken dijon stew with some GF fire roasted veggie crackers.

On my way home, I stopped at Whole Foods to pick up a GF pie for Pi Day!

That afternoon when I arrived home, I had a quick snack of a lemon blueberry muffin and the rest of the lemon yogurt I used to make the muffins.

Then, it was time to drag the kitties to the vet for their annual checkup. It was really rough. Charlie is the biggest scaredy cat, and his tail puffed up the second he got in his crate. He HATES the car, and was panting and drooling the entire drive there. He also had an accident in his crate since he didn’t use the litter all day. While we waited for the vet in the room, I was able to hold him (cat urine and all) and he calmed down a lot, but the entire process was just the saddest thing.

On a happier note, I’m going back to working at the vet in a couple of weeks, now that my crazy traveling is over! I’m really excited to be back.

For dinner, we made pizza pie! Tortilla BBQ chicken pizza pie, that is!

I used Trader Joe’s pulled BBQ chicken on top, along with pizza sauce, spinach, mozzarella, and red peppers.

We served the pizzas alongside roasted brussels sprouts.

(We used the rest of the BBQ chicken for the following night’s dinner, in salad form!)

And then, it was time for the pie! It was SUPER crumbly. Blueberry peach, with a crumble topping.

Post dinner snack was a brown rice cake with whipped chive cream cheese.

How did you celebrate pi day?