Email Stress?

Date: August 4, 2016

Author: astottler

Does anyone else feel that as we acquire more methods to communicate, communicating becomes more difficult? I feel like in the past few years, even since I started getting 1000 emails a day, it just becomes so much more difficult to send a basic email. With smart phones, we have the ability to check our email every 10 minutes, wherever we are. Which allows us plenty of time to ponder, over ponder, and ponder some more on the response. That’s currently what I feel! Can anyone relate?

My day this morning started with a difficult Crossfit workout, Diane. I saw this last night and thought, “That looks terrible.” I suppose I was slightly comforted when I realized that it was one of the girls, and that I’ve done it a couple of times before. If I survived it before, I could do it again, right? The workout is:

5 rounds

400m run

30 box jumps (20″)

30 wall balls (14#)

To be honest, I wasn’t sure how my foot would hold up with all the box jumps. I only starting jumping to 20 inches a few weeks ago. I planned to do step ups or stop if it was bothering me, but it ended up being just fine! Somehow I managed to beat my best time by a whopping 7 seconds. Hey, I’ll take it!

I think the hot temperatures in Tennessee were responsible for my yogurt hiatus. For some reason, when it gets hot I never want it! However, it was 65 degrees today. (Brr!) So, I’m back on the yogurt train. I’ve been making yogurt bowls with cinnamon KIND granola and sunbutter, and having fresh fruit on the side. Today’s fruit of choice was an amazing nectarine from my roommate, and the world’s largest cherries.

The big event today was taking Chloe to the vet for her annual check up. She was particularly on edge today, I think in part because she tore up her paw pads running yesterday and was a bit painful.

I really enjoy going to her appointments, now that I have seen a lot more of the clinical side of veterinary medicine.

I’m still going strong with the Pinterest recipes. For dinner the previous night, we made zucchini corn chowder, so I had leftovers for lunch with avocado toast.

Plus more giant cherries.

I liked this recipe a lot, but we did make a few modifications. We used skim milk instead of half and half, and it was plenty thick and creamy. I also threw some grilled chicken in instead of bacon. I loved the added zucchini; it made this soup feel even more like summer!

This evening, I taught another spin class back at school. It does feel strange going back, knowing I won’t be returning in the fall. I can’t decide if I feel like I should be going back, or if I feel like I’ve moved on to the next thing. Either way, as always, teaching was a blast. I played a little bit of playlist roulette today though. I chose an old playlist based on the songs it contained, but left the choreography as a surprise. It turned out to be a fun one—we did some watts testing, which is a lot less complicated and formal than it sounds. Watts are a measure of the power, which is a function of the speed and resistance. For watts testing, we basically do short sprints, trying to get the watts as high as possible.

Dinner was another Pinterest win. This one was on my radar for quite a while, and when we had extra butternut squash lying around, I decided it was time!

This is a crispy kale autumn salad with brie grilled cheese croutons. Recipe here. This was a fun one, and unlike any salad I’ve had before. The base is kale, roasted until crispy with parmesan. Honestly, I could have eaten a bowl of just the kale. In the mix are spiced and roasted butternut squash and apple, and spiced pepitas. It is drizzled with a reduced apple cider dressing, and topped with brie filled croutons. My mom actually made this and said it was a bit labor intensive. A couple modifications that could be made to make this easier would be for one, skip the dressing. The salad had so much flavor without it, and I barely put any on. The spiced pepitas were fun, but store-bought roasted pumpkin seeds would have been a fine substitute. Also, I made my croutons by throwing my brie filled bread in the oven, instead of in a pan to cut down on the fat content a bit. Overall though, it was a bit hit in our house!

The cayenne in this recipe had me hankering for something cool to end with.

I’m currently fully on board the Halo Top train, and tried the mint chip for the first time today. It’s GOOD. I made a little sundae by thawing a little bit of plain GF chocolate cake from the freezer (left over from our grad party), and topping it with a serving of mint chip and half a serving of chocolate Halo Top. YUM.

That’s all I have tonight—off to more emails!

Fake Christmas

Date: December 22, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I hope everyone is having a great pre-holiday week! I have a few days of recaps to go through but I wanted to start with Friday. Since my sister and her fiancé are going to be gone for real Christmas, we celebrated “fake Christmas” last weekend. This began on Friday with dinner at Benihuanas as we usually do on Christmas Eve.

Since I can’t eat a lot these days, for my meal I ordered a salad and fried rice. There were able to make it with gluten free soy sauce which was awesome!

Then, we returned home to make Christmas cookies and watch the Polar Express. I had only seen it once before, but I was in the mood for a different movie this year and really enjoyed it! For cookies, I made my healthy polka dot cookies.Since my sister was eating them, I threw in some honey for extra sweetness, and made about 1/3 of the cookies with normal chocolate, not mint, chips.

I started “Christmas” (Saturday morning) with a Crossfit workout. I worked on power jerks, and the then WOD was an ascending ladder of double unders and a descending ladder of kb swings. My double unders were actually really good that day for some reason!

Then, it was time to put on our fake Christmas best and head over to see my grandma.

For lunch, I had soup (shockingly)—Manhatten clam chowder—and then some of my dad’s sweet potato fries. It was nice to see my family, but unfortunately we had to run out of there after dinner to take my puppy out of her crate.

At home, we ate homemade desserts (this is cranberry apple cobbler) and made mimosas—both with fresh squeezed orange juice and with crane-raspberry juice.

Chloe enjoyed her first Christmas! She loved opening her presents from Grandma.

Rain has been in the forecast all week, but we got a reprieve from it on Saturday night so we decided to take the opportunity to visit a nearby neighborhood that goes all out for the holidays. We decided to bring Chloe to enjoy the sights and sounds!

Fake Christmas was fun, and it’s only drawing out the celebrating!

Now It’s Christmastime

Date: December 15, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

It’s my first full week of break! The first part of this week has been spent doing not so fun things (I was on call for jury duty today), but this weekend was fun and definitely put my in the holiday spirit!

Finals over=champagne.

Friday night I went to my dad’s company Christmas party. I’ve actually been to more of my dad’s company Christmas parties than anyone in the company!

It was a lot of fun and the food was of course delicious! After appetizers and drinks, we had salads and then a family style meal.

I apparently missed snagging a picture of the meal, but of course I captured the flourless chocolate cake for dessert!

And then Sunday was the day of the Silicon Valley Santa Run! This is my 4th year doing it, and the race’s 5th year.

The race was at 3pm so eating beforehand was different. I had my typical yogurt bowl for breakfast.

And then oatmeal plus some chicken for lunch. Plus a couple of these guys: AMAZING. I’m obsessed with glutino’s regular yogurt covered pretzels and the peppermint ones are just perfect.

Then it was go time!

The weather report was not too promising, with rain threatening at the start.

We also brought psycho puppy for her first race experience!

It was maybe a bit cold.

I goal time was under 27:00, which I knew was very doable given I had hit that pace during a longer run earlier in the week. Unfortunately, my garmin couldn’t find me! I was running blind. In multiple senses, as about 5 minutes into the race the sky just opened up. It started pouring like crazy, and given it was already so cold, I couldn’t feel my legs or hands! And then the rain started to hurt more as it hit my skin than it should have. I couldn’t tell if there was hail on the ground or not, but then I noticed there were little balls of ice all over my shirt. There was nothing I could do but push through it; it was definitely the crazier race I have ever done because the weather just felt insane. Meanwhile, I had no idea of my pace but I think I was around where I wanted to be. From the ice, I couldn’t feel most of my body! My garmin finally found me with just over a mile to go, and the mile it clocked was right where my pace needed to be.

Unfortunately, I don’t know my actual finishing time. I’m 95% sure my official time was wrong because it clocked me crossing the start line 6 seconds after the gun start, and there’s no way that is possible. I would guess it was at least 30 seconds, as the start was super slow. It was an especially small race this year thanks to the weather, and since it was small and the start was slow I’m wondering if it picked me up too soon. Ah well. It was still fun!

There’s definitely something to be said for shorter races, especially when braving the elements!

After the race, we bought a cheese tamale and walked through the Christmas display.

Then it was time to go home. On the drive back I tried to take a selfie with Chloe but all she wanted to do was a) sleep or b)lick my face.

Now I feel in the Christmas spirit! In other news, I just found out that I got into the Cherry Blossom 10 miler in DC in April! It’s a capped race, so there’s a lottery to get in. I missed it last year but I got in this year and am SO EXCITED!

How do you get into the holiday spirit?

Wiped

Date: July 7, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello! I’m finally blogging on a week night. I finished my day, and am now awaiting a visit from my friend’s 2 new kittens! I only met them last week briefly at the vet, so I cannot wait!

So, what are my days looking like? I started my morning with a really hilly 3 mile run. Workouts before work are pretty essential for me because I’m allergic to everything at home (i.e. Charlie, Lilly, and Chloe), and I’m allergic to everything at work (i.e. every animal there), so a little workout and fresh air helps keep things under control. Side note: my hip has really been bothering my lately when I squat for some reason. Not the motion of equating, but being down in a low squat position. I went to a yoga class yesterday, but I also played a softball game yesterday which stiffened it up. Anyways, I’m trying to avoid squats for a little while.

Sidenote: Guess what? I’m going to IDEA World Fitness Conference next week! Is anybody else going to be there? I’m pretty pumped! I’m going as part of the college program, so hopefully I’ll get to meet other students! Additionally, I’m signed up for all kinds of spin workshops!

Anyways, post-run I was running a bit late so I had a super quick breakfast of an Oatmeal Raisin Luna bar and mango. For some reason I have so much trouble finding the oatmeal raisin flavor…

Today, I worked 8-4, which was a fairly ideal schedule in my mind. Evenings are usually pretty slow. At 12:30, I broke for lunch.

Lunch was Trader Joe’s chicken strips, brown rice, and leftover green beans. I haven’t been a fan of TJ’s chicken lately. There have been a lot of tendons or something in it lately and the texture has been kind of gross.

During my lunch break, I stopped in to the nearby froyo place for a small container of chocolate sorbet with blueberries and a couple of raisins.

Tonight was my spin teaching night, so I sprinted out the door at 4 to make the traffic-filled drive across the bay. Maybe it was the holiday weekend, but traffic wasn’t awful. I had a pre-workout granola bar in the car while driving.

I have to get to spin pretty early to avoid even worse traffic, so I’ve gotten in the habit of taking power naps in my car when I arrive. It makes a difference!

The class went pretty well. It was a smaller class than usual, but I think everyone got a solid workout in!

I came home and unleashed the ~~beast~~ puppy. She was a little crazy, but now she’s asleep.

The first week of work, I came home totally wiped, and after dealing with animals all day, I had little patience for my little puppy. Now that I’m getting more into the routine though, it’s getting a lot better! That being said, I’m looking forward to my pillow tonight!

Dinner was a Trader Joe’s salad with leftover cheesy polenta.

On Sunday night, my family made our annual 4th of July cake. Normally, we do a big sheet with a berry flag pattern, but we simplified since the holiday had already passed. This year, we used a gluten free chocolate cake mix.

For dessert tonight, I had a small slice of this. Unfortunately, my stomach doesn’t like something in this cake and I honestly have no idea what it could be, but I had my reoccurring illness issues on Sunday after having this, and I’m feeling kind of off now. My stomach is 99% healed, but there are some random things that are still iffy!

So that was my day! Also-I updated my Races page FINALLY!

What is your favorite granola/protein bar?

4th of July!

Date: July 5, 2015

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello! I hope everyone had a fabulous 4th of July! I visited a friend in Monterey, and we watched the fireworks over the bay from Santa Cruz.

When I arrived in Monterey, our first stop was Carmel to visit the beach. The entire town of Carmel, including the beach, is incredibly dog friendly so I’m definitely brining Chloe later this summer when she’s old enough!

We stopped for dinner at a little cafe hidden inside a small shopping center off the main street of Carmel, and I had roasted chicken and the veggie of the day, asparagus, with lemon and thyme.

Since it was 4th of July, ice cream was necessary. We both got fudge ripple!

It was a beautiful day-pretty cool by the water but still warm enough to enjoy the fresh sea air!

Backing up a bit, Friday night I made red, white, and blue banana bread. This stuff is insane. I just use my regular banana bread recipe and throw in blueberries, raspberries, and white chocolate chips! I made it for the first time last 4th of July and knew I had to make it again!

In terms of workouts this week, it’s mostly just been Crossfit. I’ve been trying to get out the door for a run lately but it just hasn’t been happening. Since I don’t have a summer half marathon, the schedule and motivation is just not there right now! Additionally, my work schedule this past week made it hard to fit a run in. Such is life.

I apologize for the infrequent posting, but I promise a food+life update tomorrow!

What did you do for the 4th of July? Any patriotic treats?