Fall Weekend: Caturday and Pumpkin Bread

Date: November 6, 2016

Author: astottler

I’m starting this post on Saturday afternoon while watching college football, with Yoyo snuggled in at my side. It seems like the 80+ degree weather finally broke, and it was a chilly 43 this morning!

This has been a really low key weekend, which was needed after a few crazy ones. I was traveling the last 2 weekends, and had an action packed weekend the week before that with my parents visiting.

Friday morning began with a great Crossfit workout—front squats and deadlifts! I love anything with power movements. We did 10×2 front squats, and I used 125 lbs. The WOD was

15 deadlifts (135 lbs)

15 box jups

15 deadlifts

15 box jumps

rest 3 minutes. repeat.

For breakfast I had something a little bit different. I’m trying to make my way through the freezer, so I made a protein smoothie with a frozen banana, milk, cocoa powder, and Quest salted caramel protein.

I haven’t been feeling meat as much lately for some reason, so my lunch salad was meatless. Pears, dried cranberries, and lots of goat cheese in champagne vinaigrette, with crackers on the side.

And a pice of chocolate.

I can’t believe I only have 2 weeks left of zoo life!

My wild Friday night included plan at a coffeeshop to work on my online Microbiology class. With all the travel lately, it’s kind of been put on the back burner.

I started out by ordering a sandwich. I ordered it on GF bread but I don’t think they actually gave me GF bread because I’ve gotten sandwiches there before that don’t look like that! Despite the results of my gluten experiment, I decided I didn’t want to lose mental capacity so I just ate around the bread. The sandwich was turkey, swiss, and herb cream cheese with a side salad.

After enjoying that, I ordered a baked pumpkin maple latte (decaf!) to sip on while completing an assignment.

I’m not normally a sweet coffee person, but this was no Starbucks. It was really delicious and actually tasted like coffee!

I was planning on watching Game 7 of the 2014 World Series (I have it on DVD) afterwards, but I was craving a book so I stopped by Target to pick one up. This was my night:

I like this book! There’s definitely a lot to it, and it’s fairly dark.

Saturday morning I was supposed to teach spin, but no one came to the class. Instead, I headed out to a 9am Crossfit for some clean and jerk work and a partner WOD. In groups of 3, we split 75-60-45-30-15 push press (65), calories on the rower, and kettle bell swings.

Afterwards, it was time to hit up a St. Louis must-do.

Rumor was they have GF donuts Friday and Saturday mornings, and I picked up a GF pumpkin spice cake donut!

Of course I had to try a bite in the parking lot (but managed to save the rest for when I got home because it needed milk).

It was good, but to be honest, I think I would have liked it more baked. I don’t really like the fried flavor. But my first donut in a very long time was well enjoyed.

I also really like this milk, so I wanted to mention it. It’s filtered to have lower lactose and high protein than normal milk, but mostly I like it because I actually have a pretty strong fear of sour milk, and I feel like if it’s super filtered that’s less likely to be an issue!

My entire day basically consisted of reading my book on the coach with kitties. Mostly Yoyo, but Scooby joined us for a little bit. He sat on my lap but kind of spilled onto Yoyo and was directly on top of him, so I LITERALLY had cats on cats.

photo-on-11-5-16-at-2-14-pm

Saturday night I went to a Crossfit night out.

My local Crossfit here organized a night out at a local bar. It was a really fun night; it was nice to actually talk to people outside of working out (though of course the topic of Crossfit was brought up once or twice 😉 ). It was really interesting learning more about people’s lives outside of them gym, and of course I had to try some local craft beer! It just makes me all the more sad to leave these people in 2 weeks!

One really nice thing was that it was within walking distance of my house, and while the temperatures have dropped quite a bit these past few days, it was a really nice, crisp night to walk.

Sunday morning at 6am, Yoyo busted open my door and before I knew it I had 2 kitties snuggled up on my bed.

Despite their antics, I managed to sleep a little bit longer!

My main event for Sunday morning was going to Crossfit run group. It’s basically just people meeting at the gym to go run together. There was a short and a long option. The short was 1.5, and the long was 5…1.5 seemed a lot shorter than what I was hoping for, so I decided I might as well go for 5 and turn back if necessary. I hadn’t run this far since my stress fracture; I had only run 4 miles 2x, and 3 is my normal distance.

My foot performed fantastically! I was able to cover 5 miles pain-free, which is pretty huge. My legs were feeling it by the end though! A group of 3 of us did the 5 mile option, and apparently our average pace was 9:36, which is not too shabby! It felt good to run longer again, and I’m sure I’ll be feeling it tomorrow. My plantar fasciitis is flaring a little bit from the increased effort though. Running on my foot is pretty variable. I think the fact that I spent the entire previous day on the couch is part of why I was able to cover those miles pain free. I walk and stand a ton at work, which limits my mileage.

I was HUNGRY when I got home and had a few gulps of chocolate milk while preparing lunch.

I messed up flipping my egg, but somehow it turned out perfectly bread shaped! I’ll take it! I made an open-faced egg sandwich with American cheese. On the side was a salad with goat cheese and dried cranberries.

After lunch, I facetimed a friend back home, while mixing up pumpkin bread (and dividing the recipe in half!) Somehow, despite multitasking, I think I managed to not screw anything up.

I asked my mom to dig up my favorite pumpkin bread recipe which I haven’t made in a little while. The recipe is from so long ago, it’s 1. pre-blog and 2. on paper!

I tried to find the link to the recipe, but I can’t find it!

I cut the recipe in half, used GF flour, and used a bit under 1/3c brown sugar and 1/3c maple syrup in place of the full cup of sugar. I also sprinkled a few chocolate chips on top of one side!

Delicious!

Chilly temperatures+pumpkin bread?

NOW it’s fall.

I spent the afternoon studying. I went to Rise for a cozy decaf cappuccino.

Dinner tonight was another warm fall favorite: soup! I heated up some mushroom lentil soup and topped it with fat free cheddar (kind of rubbery but trying to use it up!). On the side I had some buttered toast.

For dessert, I sautéed up some apples with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla. I don’t think I added nearly enough butter, and the edges got sort of caramelized. I served that with some vanilla Halo Top.

It was a great, relaxing, low key cozy fall weekend!

What do you like to do when the temperature drops?

Well That Was Interesting—Gluten Experiment

Date: November 3, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hi friends! I’m currently in quite a good mood. I got some very unexpected good news today, and I had an awesome fall run after work in Forrest Park! It was my fast casual run post stress fracture!

It’s nice to see some 8:xx back in there! I just signed up for my annual Turkey Trot as well. In the past, I’ve done the 10k, but decided to actually use good judgment and just do the 5k this year. As much as I wanted to do the longer distance, it just wouldn’t be smart to run twice as much as my normal with a sketchy foot.

I wanted to share some tidbits from my Wednesday with you. Spoiler alert: I had my first actual gluten (minus tiny amounts accidentally 2x) in 14 months. Whatt??

I woke up pretty hungry on Wednesday morning thanks to a full day of travel and had my usual Cinnamon Apple Cheerios pre-workout. The workout of the day was a Crossfit shoulder killer. I basically trashed my creaky shoulder, but it’s fine because that’s how it is going to get stronger. I just need a few days off from overhead! We did 8×3 push jerks, which I used 85 pounds for. Technically we were supposed to do 70% but my 155 lb one rep max was pre-shoulder injury when I was a whole lot stronger. Then, we did an EMOM for 14 minutes of 5 strict presses on the even minutes and 5 strict pull ups on the odd. I did the pull ups with a band. Immediately following this we did 2 minutes of max burpees. My shoulders are feeling it today, that’s for sure!

Post-workout I had the best breakfast. Cottage cheese with pumpkin butter, sunflower seed butter, and a side of strangely delicious blueberries.

For lunch, I made a hummus, egg (microwaved), and goat cheese salad with some Glutino crackers on the side.

For snack I had a small berry granola bar.

Before the moment of truth, I have some obligatory zoo pictures. Because I only have 2 weeks left.

Bae <3 <3 <3

I’m going to miss my girls!

For my gluten of choice, my friend who works at Panera brought me an M&M cookie. Free food=instantly more delicious.

And then it was time.

*insert jaws theme*

I nervously took a bite. And waited. Then another. I had 1/4 of this large cookie to start, and another bite about 20 minutes later when I felt ok.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. It was hard to imagine it would cause a vicious flare up because I haven’t had anything like that in a while.

If I had to guess what would happen, it would have been what did happen.

My stomach felt ok. My brain stopped working. That was interesting. I had my part of the cookie about an hour before I was off work, and I was inputting data into an excel sheet. And suddenly I kept messing up. I was in this weird fog. I was so incredibly tired that I felt like I needed to fall asleep on the spot. My brian was moving in slow motion, and I couldn’t quite get my brain to communicate with my fingers.

Does this surprise me? Not really? If you look way back into the depths of my blog, you’ll see posts from freshman year of me wondering if I had a problem with gluten because I’d eat pancakes for breakfast and then in class afterwards suddenly feel overwhelmingly and all-consumingly tired.

But I didn’t flare. That being said, I literally had less than half a cookie. At a point when my stomach was 100% perfect to start. I still don’t totally trust it in all situations, and right now it’s not worth risking the fear of a flare. Plus the brain fog? I think I’ll keep avoiding it. But this means I don’t have to worry about small amounts/contamination in things like soy sauce. And if we’re being 100% real here, I really just wanted to do this trial now to know if I can eat the top off pumpkin cheesecake at Thanksgiving without worrying about any crumbs from the crust sneaking their way in. And I think that will be ok!

Because priorities.

For dinner, I made cheesy polenta with an egg that I seriously messed up flipping, and mushrooms with spinach sautéed in garlic and soy sauce.

And of course I needed baseball watching snacks.

I had a little bit of vanilla Halo Top with a GF snicker doodle and some Trader Joe’s Pumpkin O’s.

As for baseball? I just wanted a good game, and this certainly delivered. The fact that I have no investment to either team and yet I’m crazy nervous about the game is why baseball is the greatest sport ever. I’m happy for the Cubs. I really disagreed with some of Joe Maddon’s (the coach of the Cubs) decisions, and I’m glad that the questionable decisions came back to bite him despite the final outcome!

Did you watch the World Series? Thoughts?

California Food Adventures

Date: November 1, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I’m currently in California. I may be 400 miles from home still, but there is something comforting about being back in my home state.

It’s always weird to me traveling and then coming back. I always imagine a ton of different realities for myself. What if I was living there? What would my life be like? This trip was definitely some of that—I was really close to a college I got recruited to for softball for undergrad. I even went on an overnight recruiting visit there! (Which I had totally forgotten I had gone on until my mom reminded me!)

My layover was in the Dallas Fort Worth airport, and I actually found some good options. I got a caprese salad with chicken, artichoke hearts, olives, and fresh mozzarella.

Dinner in SoCal was really exciting though. I was looking at nearby places and discovered one of my favorite East Coast chains was 10 minutes away! Le Pain Quotidien. I went there twice on my trip to DC for the Cherry Blossom race.

I got the grilled chicken and mozzarella tartine on gluten free bread. Their GF bread is really great and seedy. Lots of texture.

Man, I missed California food. And dessert? OMG. Best thing I’ve eaten in a REALLY long time. I have had essentially no non-packaged GF baked cookies since coming to St. Louis. But there was a pie place in SoCal, I Like Pie, that offers a daily GF option.

Honestly, I didn’t have very high expectations for this (I was expecting it to be dry) but it was insane. It was a mini cherry pie.

I brought it to the hotel to eat during baseball and was still really full from dinner, but couldn’t stop eating it. It was so buttery and moist, with delicious cherry filling. The crumb top was of course amazing as well.

I went to bed with a VERY full but satisfied belly!

Monday morning I went for a run first thing. Well, technically I waited around for it to get light out first. The neighborhood of my hotel was borderline sketchy, and safety first!

You know you’re in SoCal when…

Scenes from my run:

Afterwards I sat down for a hotel breakfast. For some reason egg sounded good, so I had some egg substance with a mini blueberry chobani and honey nut Cheerios. How much nut is actually honey nut Cheeries? It says it contains “natural almond flavor.” I guess we’ll find out haha.

For lunch, I picked up some chicken vegetable soup the previous night at Le Pain Quotidien, which came with more of their delicious GF bread.

You better believe I did my research for dinner as well, and it did not disappoint. I went to Last Drop Cafe in downtown Claremont. I got the vegan sandwich on GF bread. The sandwich had all kinds of delicious veggies and dressing, but of course what won me over was the avocado.

Even better? It came with a cookie, and they offer a daily GF cookie option. This was a pumpkin snickerdoodle (!!!) which was the perfect way to celebrate Halloween! OMG so freaking good.

To continue the Halloween celebration through food, since the cookie was small, I decided to get some froyo—pumpkin froyo!

With some white chocolate raspberry and chocolate. Topped with mini m&ms and some hot fudge.

I love cute little downtowns:

I was a little sad to spend my favorite holiday alone in a hotel room, so I tried to quell the feelings with some chocolate from the hotel. And then food network holiday cake competitions which made me want more chocolate, so a Luna bar would have to stand in for a chocolate gingerbread haunted house.

This was my Tuesday morning:

Yayyy for 6am flights! I actually woke up before my alarm. Go me? I guess 3:55am pacific time=5:55am central time which=late for Crossfit.

Apparently getting to my gate super early is becoming a habit for me…plenty of time for breakfast though! I had a bar that I brought, and supplanted with “fruit.”

Lunch in Dallas was also good. I found a Southwest salad (with avocado!) plus part of a GF brownie. Yum!

I made it back to St. Louis in time for Crossfit.

Sidenote: I don’t understand St. Louis weather. It was 85 degrees when I got back. How is it over 20 degrees colder in SoCal than Missouri in November?? And how can it be 40 one day and 80 the next??

At Crossfit we did 1 rep max sumo deadlifts, and I fit 220 pounds. It was probably the slowest deadlift I’ve ever done but I got it up! For the WOD we did Annie with some push ups added in. Annie is 50-40-30-20-10 of double unders and sit ups. My double unders have seriously gotten so much better over the past year.

And how I’m blogging with the kitties and baseball 🙂 I can’t believe I’m only in St. Louis for 2.5 more weeks though!

Where is your favorite area to eat?

Haunted Houses and Sangria

Date: October 30, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Halloween weekend! I’m currently sitting at the airport. I arrived at my terminal nearly 2 hours before my flight was supposed to leave…definitely expected things to take longer! So I figure, why not blog my Friday and Saturday?

Friday morning started the way it normally does, with Crossfit. We did back squats, for long sets (which stink). Then an EMOM of 5 burpee pull ups on even minutes, and 10 wall balls on odd.

I had a festive breakfast afterwards—pumpkin yogurt with cinnamon granola and sunbutter.

For lunch, I made a salad with hummus, goat cheese, champagne vinaigrette, and a microwave egg because I’m not cooking in the morning. My new tip for microwaving an egg is to rub a little olive oil on the bottom of the bowl, because the egg slides out much more easily then! Plus crackers.

This was my afternoon:

After work, my coworkers and I had plans to go to dinner and then to a haunted house. On the way to dinner, we got stuck in insane traffic. What should have been a 10 minute drive turned into over an hour of standstill.

After sitting for an hour, I was texting my mom asking if she knew what was going on (I heard it was something political) and apparently Joe Biden was there? I asked where the event was, and she told me “The Pageant.” I asked my friend where that was….and she pointed right up. Apparently we were right in front of it!

When we FINALLY made it to dinner, this was so necessary:

We went to Seoul Taco, which was a Korean-Mexican fusion. I got a bowl with chicken and brown rice; there was no fusion in this though—it was all Korean flavors!

So good!

Then, we made our way to Creepyworld, a haunted house. I had never been to a really legit haunted house, so I didn’t really know what to expect, or how I would react!

We waited in line for 1-1.5 hours before finally going in.

This was intense! It took us over an hour to walk through everything! It was really cool. There were 12 different areas with different decor. There were plenty and people and props ready to jump out and scare you! I had a good time, but apparently I’m not too easily scared!

But what was supposed to be a reasonably early night turned into a 12:30 bedtime. My alarm felt far too early before my 8am spin class on Saturday!

Before spin, I had a bowl of Cinnamon Apple Cheerios. I’ve never been much of a Cheerio person, but I’m loving them pre workout right now!

Class went well! Afterwards, I made a Flapjacked muffin and had some fruit on the side.

And then, I was off to see my zoo friend play lacrosse! Somehow I forgot to take any pictures. I’ve never watched lacrosse before and it was fun to watch! She of course rocked it too, even though they lost (it was a close game!).

On the way home from the game, I got some groceries to prepare for my night and for my trip. And because I had no vegetables.

For lunch, I had an egg white scramble with spinach and laughing cow, and avocado toast.

I spent the afternoon packing and doing chores, and prepping sangria.

Here we have jazz apples and raspberries soaking in vodka.

For the wine, I found Robert Mondavi on sale. Remember when I visited that winery in the spring?

We had such a hard time opening the bottle with a pocket knife corkscrew. And then opening the martinellis.

For the sangria, I mixed the fruit with Sauvignon Blanc and sparkling apple cider.

I was adamant about dressing up.

Unsurprisingly, I was a baseball player. My friends were a lax bro and a rugby player. Then, it was on to haunted house number 2, Darkness in Soulard.

I thought this one was scarier than the last one, although not quite as extensive. There were lots of well hidden people ready to pop out at you, and the scariest part was it was so hard to tell what people/bodies were real or fake!

The next stop was Ballpark Village.

There was an event going on, and we just wanted to watch baseball/hockey, so we didn’t end up going in. Instead, we opted for froyo (or in my case, frozen custard) at the fudge place.

And then we headed back to my friend’s place to watch scary movies. I was home by 11!

Can I confess something? I really can’t bring myself to root for the Cubs. I really want to root for them. I do like the players. But in my heart I can’t. I hate being a sore loser, but after being the lone Giants fan in Chicago, it’s become ingrained to fervently root against them.

Oh well. I’m still enjoying watching the World Series!

What were you for Halloween? Who are you rooting for?

I Swear He’s a Polar Bear

Date: October 27, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello, hello!

Happy mid-week/almost Friday! I thought I’d do a workout/zoo/food update here today spanning yesterday and today!

Yesterday morning began with Cinnamon Apple Cheerios and Crossfit, as per usual. For strength we did max weight for pull ups. LOL. I can’t do weighted pull ups. So I worked on strict pull ups. I sort of got one! Just a little kick at the end…getting closer! The WOD was 100 double unders, 80 kb swings, 60 goblet squats, 40 hand release push ups, and 20 pull ups. Plus 100 V ups at the end (which I’m sore from because I’ve been entirely neglected abs. oops).

Breakfast was one of my favorite fall breakfasts, and in my opinion, the best use of Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Butter.

Cottage cheese with pumpkin butter and sunflower seed butter. I love that sweet and salty!

And zoolife: fall is full swing here in St. Louis. Zebras eating fall leaves? Too cute!

Lunch: All summer and fall I rocked the goat cheese, peach, and chicken salad (with balsamic). Peaches are pretty solidly out of season now, so I’ve switched it up with apple and Irish Cheddar, and now, Bosch pear, chicken, and parmesan, with Champagne vinaigrette. Plus GF crackers on the side.

For snack, I had my typical Luna bar, plus some candy that has been finding its way into the lab.

After work on Wednesday, my coworkers and I stayed afterwards to go to Boo at the Zoo. The Zoo does not hold back on decorating, and Boo at the Zoo is an opportunity to see everything lit up at night. I apologize for the photo dump.

I was STARVING by the time I got home. I cooked up a fast dinner of a salad with champagne vinaigrette, an over easy egg, goat cheese, and hummus. Plus buttered GF toast on the side.

For dessert I made another pumpkin microwave bake. Semisweet chocolate chips, pumpkin pie filling, egg whites. Plus a pumpkin cookie.

This morning (Thursday) I did a 3 mile run. Nothing crazy. 9:45 pace which is average/easy effort. Right now I’m not really doing more than 3 miles because both feet sometimes start to feel weird things with more than that. I’m accepting that I can’t run long right now. I spend a ton of time on my feet all day and walk miles and miles around the zoo, so I realize I can’t stress my feet with longer runs. Not worth risking another stress fracture.

Breakfast was a flapjacked muffin and blueberries.

When I was getting ready for my run, Scooby and Yoyo were rolling around play-fighting. I guess they got over it, because when I left for work, this is how I found them:

Can we take a moment to appreciate my other 2 babies?

She walked out of the den with straw stuck to her face!

Lunch was an exact repeat of the previous day.

So our polar bear is playful. I walked up today to find a brown polar bear. Looks like someone is pretending to be a brown bear for Halloween! I had to keep explaining that yes, he is a polar bear. He’s just extremely dirty. Oh Kali.

And then he jumped into the water, creating a cloud of dirt.

For snack I had one of these chocolate chip granola bars. They’re actually really good. They remind me of a donut for some reason that I can’t explain.

For dinner, I made a pretty mediocre grilled cheese. I was using frozen bread. I thawed it in the microwave but I guess not enough. the cheese didn’t get melty enough in the middle. My kale salad was also mediocre because I didn’t have enough lime juice left.

I feel like this evening was one of those days I had a bottomless appetite. I made another pumpkin pie thing for dessert and had a few pumpkin cookies. I kept expecting to get full and I kept not. But now sort of regretting that because I’m finally feeling eating all that food at once! Do you ever have those bottomless days?

That’s all I have for today! I have a busy few days ahead! I have Halloween festivities followed by more traveling!

What’s the magic tip for making grilled cheese?