How to Spend 24 Hours in Nashville

Date: June 12, 2018

Author: astottler

I know I wasn’t the greatest at blogging this past year at school, but I both had minimal time, and didn’t do many interesting things. I want to get back to blogging a little more now that I’m here because I have more time and am doing and eating more interesting things! (i.e. not zucchini pasta every night.)

I’m working longer hours than I have before, but it’s been going really well. It’s also so nice to go home and relax, not study! That being said…having a little time to relax combined with spending all day doing veterinary medicine and talking about cases has actually made me want to spend some time at coffeeshops studying on my days off. This summer is turning out to be EXACTLY what I was looking for. Some time to relax, some time to actually DO veterinary medicine and practice my clinical skills. Plus, because I’m in a different part of the country, there are definitely differences in clients and cases/diseases, which is what I wanted. I get asked many times a day why I came all the way from California. I know people doing the same program I’m doing 20 minutes from school. It goes to show you that your life is what you make it. I wanted to spend some time in the South, in a different place, so I made it happen. And I’m so, so glad I did. I may have grown up in California and gone to both undergrad and now vet school there, but I’ve managed to spend a few months living in DC, Knoxville, St. Louis, and now Nashville. Not only has it been a blast, but it really opens your eyes to what the rest of the country is like. In a way you wouldn’t get just visiting for a few days.

In addition, I think Jackson is living his best life here. He quickly adjusted, and absolutely loves the place we are staying. He gets along with the other kitties, but mostly he loves looking at little critters out the window. Starting when it gets light around 5am until when I leave for the morning, he’s darting from window to window chirping.

While my days at work are longer than I’m accustomed to, they haven’t been totally wiping me out and dragging like I was worried they would. The only thing is my feet hurt SO much from standing all day! Hopefully they’ll get accustomed to it. In terms of fitness, with longer hours I just try to fit it in when I can. On days I start at 8am I do 6am Crossfit. Because I work 10-12 hour days, I make workouts a priority on my days off as much as possible. I may try 5am crossfit classes at some point…but I”m not ready for that yet!

I’ve been eating the same salad every day at work: peaches, goat cheese, turkey, and balsamic.

But back to the title of this post. Last weekend, my St. Louis friends made the 5 hour drive to visit me here! I worked Saturday, and they arrived Saturday afternoon and left Sunday late afternoon. We did a LOT in the 24 hours they were here, so here’s what to do in 24 hours in Nashville!

Our frist stop was dinner at a brewery really close to me, Tailgate. I’m OBSESSED with the atmosphere here. It feels like summer. There’s an outdoor area overlooking a hill, with lights strung up. At dusk, fireflies come out (which is mesmerizing for someone from California!

They also had REALLY good pizza. They had both GF crust AND cauliflower crust. It was so good we actually went again Sunday afternoon before my friends hit the road.

Everyone who visits me is coming here. It just feels like summer. I honestly didn’t exactly understand summer until I left CA and came to Tennessee 2 years ago. There’s something different on the other side of the country.

Next, we headed downtown to Broadway street. This is the main “downtown” that Nashville is know for. The cool thing about it is it’s a several block area with a whole bunch of bars, most of which have multiple floors with life music, and a lot have rooftop bars as well. We totally lucked out and the weather was in the upper 70s at night. We went in and out of a ton of different places. It was a blast!

On Sunday, we went to brunch at the highly recommended Biscuit Love. We went to the Hillsboro Village location, and I would highly recommend doing this. It’s their newer location, and after looking at their website, I was expecting an hour line to order, but we were able to order right away! Two of my favorite foods ever are biscuits and grits, so that’s exactly what I got. I got a bowl with cheddar grits, eggs, tomato gravy, and kale, and then a biscuit on the side. I only had a little bit of it though. It was good but not my favorite style of biscuit. In terms of gluten while I’m here, I’ve had a couple of small things and been ok, so I’m going with it. I didn’t push it since these weren’t my favorite style of biscuits, but biscuits are going to have to happen while I’m here.

My friends also ordered the Bonuts to share, which are biscuit donuts rolled in sugar and topped with berry compote and mascarpone.

Hillsboro Village is a cute little area near Vanderbilt, so we walked around there a little bit before heading to 12 South, my current favorite neighborhood, to take the iconic Nashville picture.

While there, we had to stop at Jeni’s ice cream. Another place that everyone who visits is going to go to. I’ve been DYING to try the gooey butter cake flavor, which is actually GF! When I went before and when I passed by a Jeni’s, they were both out! So of course that had to happen. It’s AMAZING. I got it with dark chocolate.

After we saw everything in that neighborhood, we walked the pedestrian bridge. We were going to try and park on the other non-downtown side of the river, but we drove in circles across the river trying to find a place to enter or park, so we ended up parking downtown in a cheaper lot that our Uber driver from the previous night actually recommended. To get to the bridge, we walked through Broadway, which was just as much in the day as at night.

Note: we didn’t actually go to CMA Fest, but there was a lot going on all weekend!

Here are the views from the bridge:

And then it was back for pizza before they headed out. I am so thankful for my zoo friends. You know true friends will drive hours to visit you! (They drove 10 hours to visit me in Alabama last year!) It was such a great weekend.

And that’s how to spend 24 hours in Nashville!

Behind the Scenes of Blogmas | Galavanting in SF

Date: December 10, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Even though it’s Blogmas, real life is still going on! I wanted to share some things from non-Blogmas life. So let’s do it!

Am I Kali yet?

One of my best friends ever from college came to visit! She lives about 2 hours away, and I recruited her here to help with Blogmas. So look for that post next week 🙂

The first thing on the agenda was to take a trip back to our college campus to have dinner with our 3rd roommate from last fall. It was nice to catch up, and I don’t think I’ve had guac in like 6 months.

On the way home, we stopped at Zest, a GF bakery near me. I needed a cupcake for my Blogiversary, after all. She has a gluten intolerance, so had no problem with that stop. We shared an amazing warm cinnamon roll and lemon poppyseed loaf.

We weren’t sure what to do for the rest of the rainy afternoon, and found ourselves in the mall. A Sephora recently opened there. They apparently have some type of technology where the computer scans your skin tone and finds the perfect shade of foundation of lipstick for you, and then you can “try it on” on a computer screen. A few of my friends have had fantastic lipstick success, so I wanted to try it out to find a shade of red lipstick. Even though I’ve never worn lipstick before. Go big or go home, right?

After the mall, we made dinner, which will appear on Blogmas in a few days! I’m kind of crazy pumped about it.

That evening, we trekked 20 minutes south to see some other college friends, and so I could introduce them to Yumi Yogurt, a classic froyo place in this area. I got butterscotch! We ended up heading back to their house and chatting until late into the night. So good to be reunited!

My college friend/roomie is fantastic, and if you’ve been reading for a while, you may remember she has an orchard with incredible persimmons. I had my first persimmon in many months, and I’m so excited. Apparently Chloe is too.

We decided to spend the day (post-rush hour traffic) in San Francisco. It was so good to be back there. We went to the Ferry Building, which is one of my favorite areas (I love the Embarcadero). It was typical San Francisco weather.

The Ferry Building has an amazing farmer’s market on select days, and I had never been before on one of those days. Sadly, the farmer’s market was pretty small this time of year.

A (decaf) Blue Bottle cappuccino was necessary. I love quality coffee.

This area is so incredibly gorgeous at night too, with the Bay Bridge lit up.

We wandered in and out of the shops before grabbing lunch at Mariposa, the gluten free bakery. I had an incredible turkey, cheddar, and cranberry sandwich.

The entire time I was eating this, I kept saying, “I missed CA food so much.”

Next up was one last coffeeshop that we had been meaning to try. I had a (decaf) cafe au lait for the first time, and it was nice and milky!

We beat rush hour traffic on the way home, and watched Friends for a while, before cooking dinner. Another Blogmas feature! (Although granted, less exciting than the previous night.)

Dessert was another form of persimmon: persimmon sauce (like applesauce in the slow cooker) with vanilla frozen yogurt and an oatmeal cookie crumbled on top.

Friday morning before my friend woke up, I went to 6am Crossfit and it was a good and tough one, but I’m really happy with how I did. We did our 20 rep set of deadlifts, which I did at 150#. It actually felt better than last week’s 145# so I guess I’m getting stronger? The WOD was TOUGH. 20 minute AMRAP (yuck) of 5 power cleans at 95#, 10 toes to bar, and 15 wall balls. I was determined to do toes to bar because they definitely need work. I considered scaling the cleans, but 95 really isn’t that heavy for me, so I decided I just needed to suck it up and do it, and it was definitely the right decision. I wasn’t the fastest in the class, but I’m still proud of Rxing this workout. I got a bit over 6 rounds in.

For breakfast, I had an amazingly right hachiya persimmon.

So ripe it was bursting!

I also tried a GF garlic bagel from Mariposa. Not bad!

I brought my lunch to the library again to work on classwork, and of course it involved persimmons. Salad with cranberry chèvre, persimmons, and champagne vinaigrette.

That evening was my dad’s company Christmas party! I have never missed one yet. I decided to break out the festive red lipstick.

Before and after:

Family selfie!

This is always a fun and festive event. It’s crazy how much all the kids have grown up! (Me included, I suppose.) And I’m always on board for good food and wine.

Salad:

Dinner was family style. I had some cedar plank salmon that was absurdly good, rice pilaf, roasted veggies, mashed potatoes, and spaghetti squash.

(The plates were absurdly large.)

Dessert: flourless chocolate cake with raspberry puree. YUM.

It was a fun night, and definitely a holiday tradition.

What’s going on in your life?

First Day in California

Date: November 21, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! Today was my first day back in California so I thought I’d share my meals.

Breakfast:

I woke up 6am after 6 hours of sleep, thanks to a touch of jet lag. My stomach is still on central time!

I ordered a whole bunch of Flapjacked muffins and they actually beat me home! They arrived within like 3 days of shipping. Double chocolate is my favorite. I swear it’s like lava cake if you uncool it a little (and there are no eggs so no worries about that!)

I spent the morning running errands with my mom (which included a trip 2 Old Navy and 2 groceries). My grandma is coming into town today so there was lots to prepare!

Lunch:

My mom made crockpot lemon chicken rice soup a little while ago and thawed some out. I ate that with added spinach and feta. Avocado toast on the side, with Trader Joe’s Everyday seasoning blend.

Snack:

I saw someone on Instagram post about this company’s new sunbutter, so I checked them out. When I saw they had GF nut free bars, of course I had to try them out. The base of these bars is a seed blend of pumpkin, sunflower, and flax seeds. I ordered 2 flavors: chocolate and sea salt and apple ginger. It’s a smaller company, and I actually got a handwritten note which I thought was a really nice touch.

This was really, really good. It was chewy and had the perfect amount of salty. I will definitely order these again. It’s always nice finding new bar options other than just Luna bars!

I also had a couple of pieces of crystallized ginger.

Workout:

I went to my home Crossfit, the one where I first started Crossfit. I haven’t been too much lately, but this time I’m here for the long haul! For strength, apparently we’re doing endurance in preparation for the Crossfit Open, so we did one set of 20 back squats at 60%. Yuck. Yuck yuck yuck. I hate long sets. I used to think 10 was long…I was panting by the end of the set. We then did strict press for a set of 20.

I’m really proud of how I did during the WOD. I Rxed it, and it’s not one I could have Rxed a few months ago.

50 double unders

30 pull ups

30 wall balls

50 double unders

I knew right away that the pull ups would be my slow point here. I started doing sets of 5 kipping but ended up breaking it up even smaller as I went through. The pull up bars here were sort of hard to hold on to, so that made things more difficult.

One of my biggest downfalls for double unders is having tired arms. When my arms are tired, my double unders go. So coming off pull ups and wall balls wasn’t fun. I finished in 7:28. I was the last one to finish, but not by a lot, which I’m proud of!

Dinner:

My mom and I were on our own tonight, so we made one of our favorites, an open faced turkey and havarti sandwich.

This sandwich was from a cookbook that we first made years ago. It’s mayo+dijon, grated Havarti cheese, red onion, arugula (we used spinach though), turkey, apple, and ground pepper. The whole thing is put in to broil until the cheese is bubbly. We got the Havarti from Trader Joe’s and it was actually pretty different. It was softer and creamier. It was good! On the side, we roasted shaved brussels sprouts with a touch of oil, garlic, and pepper, and then added truffle salt when it came out of the oven. SO good.

For dessert, I had a piece of gluten free orange cranberry bread. It’s not “healthy” bread, but it’s delicious and that’s good enough for me, especially for dessert!

Here’s the recipe.

Plus a few milk chocolate chips.

I hope everyone is having a great short week leading up to the big holiday!

WIAW- St. Louis Classic

Date: November 15, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Wednesday! We’re going to do a WIAW for my last Tuesday in St. Louis! Thanks as always to Jenn.

WIAWbutton

Breakfast:

A few snap pea crisps. I often grab a couple of these before meals while I prep my food.

Then I had a flapjacked muffin (double chocolate, the best flavor) with blueberries.

I got a little bit of a late start to the day because I wanted to watch a short Netflix episode on the couch, and before I knew it I was trapped under 2 kitties.

Finally I was on my way to Blueprint for a little victory lap. After 3 months of intense research, I have determined that Blueprint has the best coffee in St. Louis.

Across the street, there was an international foods store. I popped in to look around and came out with a few interesting looking bars.

Pre-lunch snack:

1 of the 3 thin bars

Lunch:

Half Panera (St. Louis Bread Co. here) Fuji Apple Chicken salad with Vans Say Cheese GF crackers.

Snack:

A piece of the other new bar I got (it’s basically just dried apple covered in chocolate)

And a Luna

My workout for the day was Crossfit. We found our 3 rep max front squat, and I finished at 145. I don’t think i’ve done a 3 rep before but I predicted I would be around 145! The WOD was 15 Min AMRAP of 15 burpees, 10 ring dips (I used a band) and 5 shoulder to overhead (I did 75 lb push presses). I finished just under 5 rounds.

Funny story….yesterday’s WOD was 3 rounds of 50 double unders, 15 kb swings, 50 doubles, 5 power cleans. That’s a ton of double unders….In the middle of my second round of double unders, and I looked down and saw blood running down my thigh. I thought, “Wow, I can’t believe I whipped myself hard enough to draw blood?” But it turned out that my rope has exposed sharp wire at the bottom and it may be time for a new rope….

Dinner:

I apologize for the terrible lighting. I had avocado toast, a Dr. Praeger’s super greens frozen patty (with ketchup), and then on the side, I sautéed up some mushrooms and spinach with garlic, soy sauce, and coriander.

Dessert:

I FINALLY got to try this St. Louis classic. This is my second time having gluten since not eating it anymore thanks to a chronic stomach condition. But I HAD to try this St. Louis classic before I left. According to Wikipedia: “Gooey butter cake is a type of cake traditionally made in the American Midwest city of St. Louis. Gooey butter cake is a flat and dense cake made with wheat cake flour, butter, sugar, and eggs, typically near an inch tall, and dusted with powdered sugar.”

Ii picked up my piece from Park Avenue Coffee, which is supposed to be one of the best places to get it (featured on Food Network!). They have an insane number of flavors, but I had to go with the classic. (Also apparently you can order these online to be shipped anywhere, and there’s a box you can check that’s GF?)

Because I’m a scaredy cat and not trying to die, I just had a corner of it.

Guys this was SO delicious. I don’t even know how to describe it. Sort of like a combination between a sugar cookie and vanilla cake?

(I actually went back later and had most of the rest of the piece!)

Since I only had a little (initially) I had a snack a little later of a piece of a lemon poppyseed oat bar and a Yasso salted caramel froyo bar.

That’s it for the day! Here’s a picture of Yoyo, ensuring that he will always be around my neck (he likes to sleep on my neck) even after St. Louis, by sitting on my scarf.

Is there a food your area is known for?

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?