Search Fun

Date: April 22, 2013

Author: astottler

As some of you may have seen, some bloggers are talking about their search terms (the phrases people search and then get directed to our blogs). I especially liked this post.

I thought it could be fun to do something similar. As it turns out, about 50% of the searches, maybe more, were people looking for mug brownies. I think I’m going to have to master a healthy recipe once my Spring Cleaning no sweets challenge ends. Which is appropriate given the other 50% of searches had something or other to do with no sugar challenges. I guess I better live up to my reputation! If you haven’t yet, join me on this challenge! Just leave a comment below. All you have to do is not eat sweets for the erst of the month (which is only like 9 days). Anyway, what were some other fun search items?

“my salsa says that there is no sugar added but it has 1g of sugar”

Ok, not that fun, but I could talk about sugar content in foods all day. Very representative of my blog.

“rowing hoodies, i row so i can eat cake”

Bahahaha so true. Sooo true.

“example of my secret dream”

Yeah, no clue on that one.

“healthy living blogs make me always think about food”

Glad to know I’m not the only one! Don’t tell me you guys can’t relate to this!

“sick mono paleo”

Story of my life for the last 2 months…

“you eat all l my proteins cat”

Yes. Just yes. I suppose I do talk about cats a tad bit…

“for me i think it was about…yesterday or maybe about today when i figured this all out.”

Jealous! Please share?

“i didn’t finish my avocado, how do i save it?”

This is practical more than anything. Put it in a ziplock bag and pop it into the fridge! Lime juice prevents browning, or you could just scrape off the surface.

“i love the feeling of glucose filling”

I’m not sure what this means but I don’t think it sounds very pleasant.

“diet makes me obsessed with peanut butter”

I love this. Because who isn’t obsessed with peanut butter?

“why aurora is used in sweets and what its function”

Hmm last I checked I wasn’t used in sweets…but that is a good question, what is my function?

“my cat loves bananas and peanut butter”

Once again, LOVE. My cat likes bread, and I like bananas and peanut butter, does that count?

“i’m dying i haven’t had sugar in 2 days”

Haha, sugar cravings at their finest.

“can i drink recovery drink if im sore”

This one I just want to answer. YES! When you’re sore is when your muscles need the most protein to rebuild!

“overdose cocoa powder”

Yes. Yes, this is possible. See here.

“which will you eat amongst oats(jungle), peanutbutter(black cat) and maize meal(super b) if you want to lose weight”

Ok, someone please explain this to me?

“can I eat a mug brownie every day”

Well, you can certainly try!

“describe the feeling of falling wiping out skiing”

Hey, I only had ONE post about this!

Well, this was certainly fun! It’s always interesting to see what people search for!

Have you started the Spring Cleaning to sweets challenge? Join me!

My Nutrition Philosophy and Why I Can’t Follow It

Date: April 11, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Today’s post is going to be a little different. Plus, no exciting eats today. But take a moment to appreciate this.

I have like 8 mangos and I’m still thinking it’s not enough. Heehee.

Let’s talk Nutrition. It is a love of mine, although maybe it hasn’t gotten so much love lately. I haven’t really talked about my views on Nutrition much, and I have to say, my own eating certainly doesn’t represent my Nutrition beliefs.

Here are my 2 favorite Nutrition books, and believe me, I’ve read a ton. Now that I have a fairly formed belief system, I find it kind of amusing to read some of the books now. That being said, there is no one ideal diet that works for everyone.

This book a Nutritionist recommended to me. I ordered and read it immediately. Bonus: there is an app with all the recipes. My personal favorite is the granola bars.

Also though, the Chocolate Lush saved me when I was stupid enough watch cupcake wars after getting my wisdom teeth out. It is basically warm, gooey chocolate cake. It was painful, but so, so worth it.

The second is this book:

This is the iBook form, I lent my roommate my hard copy. The author was actually my professor for my Nutrition class Fall quarter, although I had already read the book! This is my all time favorite Nutrition book. It is the most comprehensive and easy to understand, and it is very thorough.

So what have I learned from all this?

Aurora’s Nutrition Philosophy:

1. We really don’t know anything about Nutrition. This is an exaggeration, but there simply isn’t enough data to actually know anything for sure. New studies come out all the time. It is fairly easy to manipulate a study to show the intended result (soda companies fund some studies). We don’t know enough about how the human body works at a more complex level to know, for example, whether you get the same benefits from taking vitamins as from eating them in food. Our knowledge is constantly changing, conveniently for the fad diet companies…

2. If possible, try to have a fat, a carb, and a protein, plus fruit or veggies at every meal.

3. Carbs are absolutely necessary for Post-exercise recovery, not just protein.

4. Sugar….let’s not get me started on it. Let’s just say it is not terribly good for you…

5. Fad diets never work. Crash diets never work. You know how they say if you starve yourself, you will lose muscle weight as well as fat? And fat comes back faster than muscle? I had some first hand experience with that. When I was sick, for a good 2 weeks I hardly ate anything (because I felt terrible). I lost weight, including a ton of muscle. And guess what came back right away? The flab. And now the muscle is finally coming back…

6. Whole grains are better than white ones.

7. Avoid saturated fats (eat healthy fats, especially those Omega-3s).

8. More research needs to be done on Nutrition. This is where I come in 🙂

Random picture because I had a ton of words…have you guys tried this stuff? It’s delish 🙂 I just wish almond milk had more than like 1g of protein…

So why can’t I follow my own Nutrition guidelines?

1. Food tastes good. Oops…

2. Eating nuts makes my skin go crazy…so getting healthy fats in can be more of a challenge. And let’s be honest. I’ve basically been getting strictly Sunflower seed butter as my healthy fats as of late. Mix it up!

3. Grains seems to make me fall asleep….Not sure why, and not sure what grains specifically, or all, but that kind of complicates matters.

4. I may be addicted to sugar, hence avoiding it/not eating too much is a bit of an issue.

5. I swear normally I am better with my nutrition…not sure what happened…

6. Sometimes I try to do too much and it all backfires.

If you guys haven’t noticed, I’ve been seriously searching for my Nutrition as of late…And since you guys haven’t seen any cat photos in a while (I’ve been back less than 2 weeks, so I guess it really can’t have been THAT long…), here you go!

What is she doing?

Ohhh cats.

What is your Nutrition Philosophy?

YOGURT and This Week in Photos

Date: March 31, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I’m a bit behind on my postings, but here’s the gist of my week: I’m completely and totally obsessed with yogurt. And sunflower seed butter. And yogurt WITH sunflower seed butter. But seriously though, I’ve been having yogurt like 3x a day. And I just stocked up for school!

Ok, so since I’m a bit behind, let’s do a picture post for the week!

Wednesday night dinner: turkey burgers, salad, green beans, and seasoned butternut squash.

Yes, I had 2 consecutive yogurt meals. This is topped with a 2 ingredient pancake, from Tina‘s blog.

Bubble milk tea with the high school friends. Mango green tea.

Read to go out/shopping. Since you never see pictures of me! Great selfie, I know.

Japanese dinner with the friends, chicken teriyaki. Followed by a movie…Spring Breakers. It was…strange. I wish I had seen a preview/knew what it was about before seeing it. Anybody seen it? Obviously that’s what my spring break is like.

I topped my yogurt with leftover sweet potato and leftover pancake.

The San Mateo Bridge on a beautiful day. I visited one of my friends who is home for break, and we went for a walk along the bay. Supposedly there are feral cats living around there, but we didn’t see any. 🙁 However, I’ve been dying to run on the trail here, so I will definitely be coming back when I’m training for my half marathon. The path apparently connects up to another nice trail to run on, which I’ve run on before, and it is all along the bay. Perfect for a hot summer day! After our walk, we went to her house so her mom could make me some home cooked Indian food. It was delicious! Sorry, no pictures! I got sunburned on the walk though. It was supposed to rain that day, so I was not prepared for the sun!

Greek salad.

Frozen banana blended with cocoa powder topped with chocolate sauce and sunflower butter.

Not gonna lie, I had to make a 7 am yogurt run after spin for this one!

Lunch at a bakery in Half Boon Bay (beach area, but cold and foggy!) with homemade bread. We ate at tables outside the bakery where feral cats lived!

I swear this one could have been Lilly’s sister! She was really sweet and let us pet her. To say that cats are feral is a bit of an overstatement. They lived there and were fed regularly.

Chicks at a farm store in Half Moon Bay.

Ducklings and baby geese! They were adorable! I watched a little duckling fall asleep standing up and it was the cutest thing. If I had gotten a video it would have been a youtube sensation for sure!

Dinner was cheesy garlic herb brussels sprouts with sausage, courtesy of Carrots n Cake. I used chicken apple sausage from Trader Joe’s. It was delicious. On the side? A purple sweet potato! I LOVE these! My best friend brought me one when I saw her on Thursday, and I was so excited! Funny story, I got a strange reputation last year when I would roast up whole yams and eat them like bananas, skin and all, after school before softball practice. I miss that!

Giant’s preseason game! And they won! YAY! Can’t wait for the season to start!

Best ballpark for the best team!

And of course no ballpark experience is complete without a Ghiradelli hot fudge sundae. We know how to celebrate baseball here in San Francisco! Seriously, these are the best.

Thai salad and cornbread.

Apple crisp! I found apple crisp topping at the grocery; it is a mixture of brown sugar, oats, etc that you cut butter into and then top apples with. Yum! Frozen yogurt on the side of course.

I had some artistic friends over tonight to help dye eggs! I think they turned out pretty well. 🙂 How cool is the tye dye one? I’ve gotten dye packs before with things like that, but I never read the directions on how it works before, and I’ve glad I did! It’s super cool! There are these plastic sleeves with the print that you put the egg in. Then, you dip the whole egg with the sleeve into boiling water, and the sleeve shrinks to fit the egg perfectly! How cool is that?? It might be hard to crack the egg open though. Do you guys eat your Easter eggs? One of my friends doesn’t and was shocked by the idea, because it had never occurred to her. On that note, any good hard boiled egg recipes?

An artsy shot, because I’m so artsy.

Aaaand Lilly watched us chat late into the night.

I also got some good workouts it, that I thought I’d discuss really quickly. Wednesday I lifted weights for the first time. It was a short and fairly light workout, but I was still sore so I’ll take it. Gotta get back slowly! Thursday was morning yoga, and a long walk with my friend. I can tell how much stronger I’ve gotten since just last week. I have to say, I had a particularly bad case of mono, but I recovered remarkably quickly, especially given all the other things I came down with as well.

Friday I got my rear end into gear quite early for a 5:45 am spin class. Yes, I willingly rise at 5 am on spring break to work out. It was one of my favorite teachers, and it’s the last opportunity of break for me to go! It was an awesome class too, Easter themed. Well, sort of. We climbed Mary See Mountain, and Recess Peanut Butter Egg hill.

And today’s workout was great. As in, I’m going to be veeery sore. I’m already pretty sore and it’s 1 am (see what I do for you guys! It’s technically Easter!). First, I did this workout from Anne, which incorporated situps, box jumps, and kettle bell swings. It took me about 20 minutes, but I wasn’t really timing. I did step ups for some of the box jumps because my jumping is not as great as it used to be. But I really loved it. My abs were definitely worn out. I seriously wish the STUPID gym at my school had kettlebells. How can they not have them? Madness I tell you. After my mini workout, I went to a new yoga class. I ended up really liking the class, although I wasn’t a fan of the teacher’s voice. Any Friends fans out there? It reminded me of a mild version of Janice’s voice. I told my mom this and her response? “Oh. My. Gawd!” Haha! But the class was probably worth it. I think it complemented my mini workout really well. And we grouped all the standing balances to the end of class, which killed my hamstrings and ankles!

After class, guess what I did? Practiced soccer! I started soccer when I was 5, and played through my freshman year of high school. Now that I have more time, I signed up to play Intramural soccer. I’m pumped! It’s been a while though, and from being sick, I’m still terribly out of shape. My muscles are not used to kicking also, so I will most likely be sore. But regardless, I can’t wait to play again! My dad is a big soccer player; he STILL plays. So he was more than happy to help me out with some practice!

Ok, that’s enough from me today. Since it’s 1:15 am…Happy Easter!

Do you dye eggs? What do you do with your Easter eggs?

New Beginnings

Date: March 25, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Yeahh so guess who is behind posting again? Me! I swear I planned on posting Friday. And Saturday…Here’s what ends up happening. I usually like to post at night to recap my day. Makes sense, right? But see the thing is, when I am at home, my family likes to watch TV episodes at night, so we end up getting really into it and watching until late (we have the shows on DVD). And then it is late. And since I’VE BEEN ABLE TO WORKOUT (yay!) I have to wake up at a reasonable hour. So I don’t want to stay up even later…yeah let’s just say I should not try to wait until late to blog because at that point it just doesn’t happen. So since I’m a bit behind…I was really sore from yoga on Thursday! I have now found my downward dog muscles…It’s amazing what a month off can do to you! Friday I ended up decided to skip my planned run, especially since I was planning on running on Saturday. I’ve been trying to have SOME type of activity to do each day, and I ended up decided Friday would be baking day. I wanted to make something complicated, and the winner was…Boston Cream Pie! For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, it is 2 layers of sponge cake with pastry cream between the layers and a thick chocolate glaze. I just used the recipe from our America’s Test Kitchen Cookbook. I’ve made the recipe once before, and it’s pretty complicated although not terribly difficult. It is just a lot of steps. And hey, it was the perfect opportunity to use the new mixer! (Note: I’ve misspelled “the” every single time in this post…) Here’s the process:Yes. It was delicious. I like how this isn’t SUPER sweet. I think I could have taken the cakes out a bit sooner though. Eek looking through my pictures, I realized I’m getting ahead of myself on meals! I had some good eats! Guess what? I had my first yogurt bowl! I know so many of you swear by them, so it was time to try it! (Sidenote: Kefir and cereal is seriously delicious as well, for all you yogurt bowl lovers.) Plus, I got some sunflower seed butter, which doesn’t seem to make my skin break out. I’m pumped. These guys, plus some pumpkin bread I found in the freezer, which I swear we didn’t have any left of, but hey, I found basically half a loaf, so I’m not complaining!Yogurt bowls? I’m a fan. I’ve been dying to recreate this since but I have had to eat really lightly because I’ve had morning workouts. Lunch was also good on Friday. Apparently we had some whole wheat tortillas hiding in the fridge. I filled it up with rotisserie chicken, jack cheese, tomato, spinach, and pesto, and then popped it into the microwave. Yum! Plus half an artichoke.

Dinner was a scramble filled with veggies, plus some oranges. I wanted to keep it light to save room for my day’s work!

Saturday morning I head over to the track for a workout (!). I did some running, mixed in with some abs and sprints. I ended up running 2.5 miles, which were broken up into miles chunks (plus the half mile). Given this was my first time running since I got so sick, and the first time in over a month, I’d say it went pretty well. I have a ways to go to build up my stamina, but I felt pretty good, and my legs didn’t really feel tired at all until the final half mile. It also occurred to me while I was running how much better running is than erging! However, I’m REALLY sore today. I’ve never been this sore from running. Even my arches are sore. So once again, I have a ways to go! After my workout, I cleaned myself up and my parents and I drove over to Berkeley to have lunch with my grandparents, since we won’t be seeing them on Easter. Their new favorite place is a Korean restaurant called Bowl’d, so we all went there. I got a chicken bowl, and here’s what it looked like:It was really good! The bowl had various types of rice, noodles, and vegetables. Topped with a citrus soy sauce, which was vaguely sweet (almost like a teriyaki sauce). I liked it! But the bowl stayed VERY hot the whole time, and I was constantly in danger of burning myself!

My whole family was ready for a nap by the time we got home, so I read in bed with this little guy:I love my cats. We ended up ordering a quick dinner from a local diner-type restaurant, and I chose huevos rancheros.Hey, anything with avocado and I’m sold!

This morning I headed over to one of my favorite spin classes. I had to get there early to sign up, so I did some crunches while I waited. It was a great class, I was able to push myself more like I normally do. My stupid bike seat started sliding back towards the end of class though, even though I tightened it. I got off my bike once to fix it, but when it slipped a second time, I just gave in and finished the class. 4 hills! Whoop! Which, I must say, is way better than 1 30 minute hill…

I didn’t snap a picture at breakfast because I was in a hurry, but I had a sort of yogurt bowl: kefir with peanut butter puff cereal and sunflower butter, plus a mango (of course). We still have like 8 mangos, which are all starting to be ripe. This will not be a problem.

After spin, I went to the farmer’s market.My best find? Avocados! They were 6 for $5. They also had mini avocados, which I naturally had to get.I think I am going to try to sprout the pits, and see if I get a mini avocado plant! I’m not sure they will sprout though; they are so tiny!

Have you guys ever gotten kettle corn at the farmer’s market before? It is by far the best kettle corn out there. So naturally we bought a reasonably sized bag (as opposed to giant. See? Showing restraint). We also bought an apple pie from a stand that came from a local pie restaurant that we used to always go to when I was little. My mom and I have both been dying for apple pie lately because it keeps coming up in the books we are reading. It cost just as much if we bought slices as to buy a whole pie, so a whole pie it was!

After the farmer’s market, I began this blog post and then went out to Indian food with Jessica, one of my best friends from High School.

It ended up being a buffet, which was just as well since neither of us would have known what to order anyways. She had never had Indian food before, and I never know what to order since I’m not exactly sure what anything is. The end result? We basically got some of everything to try.It was really tasty! It wasn’t too spicy, except for one thing, which I figured out fairly quickly and avoided. Jessica didn’t fare as well. Her plate got completely mixed together, so she couldn’t tell what anything was and couldn’t identify the really spicy item! We used the warm Naan served on the side to take away some of the kick.

After a fun lunch, we saw a froyo place that I had not tried yet right across the street, so NATURALLY, what choice did we have? And hey, it’s been over a week since my last one! It was a Tutti Fruiti. The yogurt was good quality and the toppings bar was a good variety, but the flavors weren’t especially interesting. But I guess at this point that’s hard to expect given how many places I’ve been to. It was a great afternoon; we probably stayed in the yogurt place chatting for an hour! I miss that girl!

Other than that, I haven’t done too much up until now. There’s one last thing I want to talk about though (hence the title of the post). As some of you may know, I walked onto my college’s crew team this fall after never having rowed before in my life. My school has a program for novice rowers, so the fall was spent teaching us all how to row. It was an awesome experience, one I wouldn’t trade for anything. I met some truly amazing people. Come winter, the novices moved in with the varsity rowers, recruits and Olympians alike, starting with winter camp (which you can see in my earliest blog posts). Through blogging about this, I found some other rower/former rower bloggers (shout out to Brittany and Theresa!), which is totally awesome. But then winter quarter got hectic. Rowing took up 5 hours every day, and I was only getting about 6 hours of sleep a night, and certainly not putting 100% into my classes. I can’t help but think this is part of why I got so sick. It probably didn’t help that the first day I was sick I spent a couple of hours freezing my drenched butt off in the bay…ANYWAY. These past few weeks have given me some perspective. I realize there’s no way I can keep that type of schedule up anymore. I spent a lot of time on softball in high school, but that was MY sport. I had to remind myself that while I loved rowing, I had only been doing it for a few months, and it really wasn’t MY sport. I had such an amazing experience, but I’m not up to full strength. Racing starts in less than a week. And most importantly, an aftereffect of this stupid illness (mono) is that I will need more sleep for a while. So I decided I cannot continue to row. One again, I wouldn’t trade anything for the opportunity to row at a high college level, but it is time to move on, hence the name of the post. Right now, I’m training to get back into shape for Intramural soccer, which I’m pumped for. I started playing soccer when I was 5, and haven’t played since my freshman year of high school, and I’ve really missed it. And I want to really get into running. I can’t wait to have more flexibility in my workouts and in my life. Seriously, I’ve never had this kind of freedom. For so long, anytime there was any event or activity, I automatically knew I couldn’t go. In high school, it was because I had softball, and this year it was because I had crew. I’m excited to try new things and meet new people. I feel like I have so many more opportunities now, and I think I will have a chance at not going through life as a sleep deprived zombie. (Speaking of which, has anyone done a zombie run? I think it sounds like fun!) It’s also important for me to have a good quarter academically, given I had to drop 2 of my classes because of the mono last quarter. Like I said a minute ago, a really want to get into running. I really want to try one of those “Mud Runs” where you have to go though/over all kinds of obstacles. That’s total body fitness right there! Anyway, I wanted to let you all know what is going on with me. I decided a little while ago, but i wanted to wait until everything was finalized. To end, here’s a picture of my favorite flowers, which my cats have been leaving alone so far (last year I found my birthday bouquet scattered around the house).The picture doesn’t do them justice!

What fun or interesting runs have you done?

Weekend Eating

Date: January 20, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! I’m a little bit behind on posting. Friday night dinner was a repeat of the salad from lunch, plus some leftover brown rice. I also had some banana with cocoa powder and peanut butter, and a slice of cinnamon raisin toast. I went to the dining hall just to grab some bananas and decided I might as well at least eat something while I was there, so toast it was!

Here’s a terrible picture of one of my experiments. Banana, mashed with cocoa powder, then microwaved with egg and some oats. It was ok, but nothing to write home about. I had a really fun Friday night. I watched some friends perform in a poetry slam (never been to one before, but some of the poets gave me chills!), and then I spent the night with my friends.

Saturday, I was up bright and early, due to an inability to sleep in. I was really hoping I would be able to hold out until 10:30 when brunch opened, but I ended up eating something in my room around 8:30.

Sweet potato bread plus pistachios and frozen blueberries. This was the perfect fuel for a mini workout. Since we have some freedom this weekend, I decided to do some medium speed erg work. I was only on the erg for about 12 minutes, but I was really tired and sweaty afterwards! Impressive!

As I’ve said before, Saturday brunch is my favorite meal of the week. So even though it was only 11, and I had already eaten, I couldn’t pass up he opportunity. I was planning on just having a smoothie, but the avocado was calling.

I make my Mexican food into a salad! Greens, chicken, black beans, salsa, rice, and a TON of smashed avocado! Yum! Plus a little watermelon.

After my salad, I realized that today, for the first time, crepes were offered at brunch, so I had to try one.

The crepe was actually pretty small and thin, and not sweet at all (so it fits my challenge). And don’t worry, on top is just reheated frozen blueberries, a little butter, and some peanut butter on the side. This guy was ok, but it gave me an idea, so I fixed myself up half a waffle.

Topped with more blueberries and a side of peanut butter! Now this was good! I may have to do this again! Some days there are whole wheat waffles available as well, so maybe then!

I don’t know what it is about brunch that is so darn delicious. I always have to fill myself up, because there are so many options! More on weekend eating later in the post! After brunch, I packed up my things and headed home. Since I had just eaten a big meal, I wanted to digest before hitting the gym ( which, by the way, never happened…), so I watched my parents eat. I don’t know what it is about being home, but I have the urge to snack on everything in sight!

I don’t have too many pictures, but here are some highlights: cashews with 100% dark chocolate (no sugar)-this is one of my favorite things! Cheese and crackers. Mango (though sadly, the mango was mostly bad…)

Some of these guys (so addicting!)

I basically spent the day eating a lot of foods with no nutritional value. Do any of you guys have problems eating well on the weekends? I don’t know what it is, but I always eat badly/eat a lot on weekends. Any tips? My goal for tomorrow is to pack each meal with awesomely nutritious foods!

What else did I do today? I made Julie‘s Peanut Butter Granola .

I made a few small changes. I omitted the cinnamon, and used 1 tablespoon of brown rice syrup and 1 tablespoon of honey, instead of 2 tablespoons of honey. Not going to lie, a lot of this didn’t make it into the oven, and hardly any made it through the day! While this was good, I liked her Almond Butter Granola even better! The almond butter perfectly complemented the vanilla. Yum! When I made it before ( I didn’t make it today), I made the same 1/2 brown rice syrup substitution, added raisins, and slightly reduced the amount of oats so it would be gooier. SO good. I didn’t do a lot this afternoon but enjoy these guys.

I didn’t end up hitting the gym because I was full, and then time flew by, and I had plans with one of my friends from home tonight! Before I met up with her, we made breakfast for dinner!

A big ol’ egg scramble! In the mix was liquid egg whites, onions, tomatoes, spinach, cheddar, and chicken apple sausage.

My scramble, with bruschetta, plus a biscuit with Smart Balance and a blueberry mixture I whipped up. Ok, that’s an exaggeration. I heated up frozen blueberries on the stove.

Good enough for me! I don’t know what it is about biscuits that makes them so irresistible. I definitely went back for thirds! Warm, flakey, buttery. What could be better?

For dessert, I heated up half a frozen banana and mixed in cocoa powder, plus a little peanut butter and granola.

Who needs sweets? By the way, at home, we have dark chocolate cocoa powder, which is why this is so dark. I like it though, I don’t need to add as much. I need to get some for myself!

After dinner, my friend and I decided it was a crafting kind of night. She had browsed a ton of blogs with awesome ideas, and decided to make a headband. We made a quick run to the craft store for materials. I love all the bright fabrics, and of course the adorable ones with cats…yes, I definitely have a weakness….While there, I came across the knitting section. I have not knitted at all in years, and have a ton of unfinished projects, but I decided my sewing skills were lacking anyway, so I went for it! I figure, knitting is something I can do while I’m in the van on the way to practice. There are actually quite a few girls on my team who knit. Random, right?

I was a little worried about my knitting abilities after years, but it came back very naturally. Just like riding a bike! (Ok, that is such a lie! My first few weeks on a bike oriented campus after not having ridden in 10 years were…interesting. And painful.) Here’s what I picked out:

I’ve always liked mixing 2 different yarns at once! I think I may make this into a circle scarf my connecting the ends when I’m finished. Any thoughts? After some quality time with one of my best friends, I returned home and watched Caste and Friends with my parents and crazy cats.

Well, crazy or sleepy?

Have a great night! Here’s to a nutritious and healthy Sunday! Maybe I’ll make my favorite smoothie for breakfast and finally share it with you all! On tap for me tomorrow is Spin, plus my missed workout today!