Another Day, Another Time Zone

Date: January 17, 2017

Author: astottler

I’m finally home after another whirlwind trip across the country. In that week, I was in 3 timezones. I figured I should catch up a little bit on here.

Thursday was my first day teaching spin for the quarter, and I taught both a noon and a 5:30 class back at my undergrad university. It was weird being back, and hanging around campus that afternoon. There are a bunch of new dorms, and things are slightly different! It felt good to be back to my classes too. Both were either full or nearly full!

I brought chocolate milk to drink immediately after the 5:30 class, but even with that I felt like I was struggling to make up the calories all night. My body needed more calories than my stomach could fit! For dinner, we made a stir fry using a ton of our CSA veggies. I don’t know why I don’t do stir fries more often!

Friday morning I was up at 5am to get a quick workout before my flight to Knoxville. My legs get really achy after sitting for so long if I don’t move a little bit in the morning. I did some quick weights: 4 sets of 4 deadlifts, going slow on the way down, at 155#, then 4 sets of 6 single leg squats and 6 pistols. I finished with some weighted planks. In and out really quickly!

I packed leftover stir fry for the plane, which was perfect. I had a 45 minute layover (both ways) so there was lots of running through the airport. My flight from ATL to Knoxville ended up leaving a little bit late, but I finally arrived in time to drive down to Market Square and eat a Subway salad.

Not a bad view from the hotel!

Luckily I didn’t have a terribly early morning. Check out this view!

I found that I knew my way around Knoxville just enough to be frustrated that I was constantly getting lost. I had the same issue this summer: Google Maps does not get along well with Knoxville.

Once my morning activities were done, I headed to the gluten free bakery hoping to snag a gluten free biscuit, but as I suspected, they were long gone. I settled for a delicious GF quiche. I can’t even remember the last time I had quiche.

I spent a few hours relaxing in the hotel. I forgot how many emotions I had attached to Knoxville, and all this travel has been sort of exhausting. Finally, I headed out for a 3ish mile run.

I cleaned myself up and then headed to Market Square for dinner. I was within walking distance, which was so nice! I always feel so awkward eating by myself, but I wanted some actually good food so I decided to sit at the bar and watch football. I started with a Lager.

And then got a cranberry kale salad with feta and rotisserie chicken. So good.

On the way back to the hotel, I picked up a durable looking toy for the psycho pup at a cute little pet shop.

Back at the hotel, I watched more football and snacked on some carrot cookies (which I packed), and a Klondike bar. I don’t think I’ve ever had one!

Sunday morning I was up bright and really freaking early. 5:30am EST. I made it to the airport and back home on my flights no problem (with some airport running, of course). It was weird to arrive in SF at noon! Since I’m becoming oh so familiar with the layout of SFO, I took a detour to another terminal while waiting for my bag to pick up the BEST GF cookie, chocolate chip sea salt. SO GOOD.

For dinner that night, we made spinach and goat cheese bisque.

And with that, another trip was done! I finished booking all the details of my next couple of trips, and to be honest, my head is spinning. I’m excited but exhausted to think about it! Thankfully, I have a free weekend until I’m off to Boston!

Blogmas Day 4: Best Moments

Date: December 4, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Today in Blogmas we’re taking a break from recipes (more to come though) to talk about something a little bit different: being grateful and finding light in dark times. Everyone has been talking about how 2016 was a terrible year, that we’re just waiting to end. While a lot of terrible things did happen this year, life is too short to write off a whole year, or even a whole bunch as we wait for 2016 to end.

As 2016 draws to a close, I encourage everyone to take a moment and look back on the good times in 2016. What’s done is done, but we can shift our mindset. Don’t let the negatives wash out the positives for 2016. Life really is filtered by whatever attitude you take on. I challenge you to look back over the past year and find 10 of your “best moments.” 10 times that you were exhilaratingly happy, times that you were proud, times that you felt loved. Let go of the negativity and hold these 10 best moments close to you as we hop into 2017.

For inspiration, here are my best moments.

A fantastic night with a best friend resulted in a victory in which we won expensive wine.

I finally made it out to some Stanford baseball games. One of my big college regrets was not going to more games, so I made it happen in my final year.

Doing better than expected in the Crossfit Open. I didn’t rank super highly by any means, but I made some big breakthroughs in Crossfit and I think they started to come out in the Open. Plus, good workouts with good people? Always fun.

Going to Seattle for spring break with some of my best friends, and especially this night. I had dark beer for the first time and the beer I had was the best I’d ever had. Still on a beer kick since then!

Running the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler in DC. This race was a dream for me to run, and I was so excited to get in through the lottery. I may have been slightly sick, had a broken foot, and run in sub-freezing 50 mph wind, but it was all totally worth it.

Going to a beach house with some good friends. It was so great to spend time together, get off campus, and unplug (no cell signal there).

Not letting the boot hold me back. I tried to have fun with it and do all the same fun activities with it. I put lights on it. It was my pal, my trusty sidekick. Always find the positive in negative situations.

This is one of the moments where I was just so overwhelming happy. I had a little graduation party during the last week of school, and everyone I care about came. It was incredible. There was a school tradition of walking around campus as a giant group on the last night of the year, ending in the fountain. I had never been since I would usually go home earlier than that, and everyone wanted to go. I had just gotten my boot off and could barely walk, and surely couldn’t make it all the way across campus on foot. My friends literally took turns carrying me across campus. So grateful for them.

Visiting Emily in Nashville when I was living in Tennessee. I had such an amazing time, and it was great to see a friendly face and catch up after some time living alone, plus getting some solid life advice.

My time in Knoxville was incredible. I think one of the best moments was leading an alpaca around, although I don’t have pictures of that for confidentiality reasons. It was one of those moments where I just thought, “this is so freaking cool.” When I came home, I felt like a completely different person thanks to all my experiences there. And it got me even more excited about my future career path.

Coming home from Knoxville and seeing old friends, and getting a good look at this view. I love my city.

Doing something I never thought I’d do: go to a country concert. After living in Tennessee for 5 weeks, I felt pretty qualified to attend a Florida Georgia Line concert in St. Louis. I went alone, but still had a blast. Made me miss TN!

The Giant’s wildcard win, which was incredible and allowed me the chance to take a trip to Chicago (my first time there!) to see my home team play in the playoffs. We can also toss in our Game 3 victory which was the biggest roller coaster of emotions and kept me up past 3 am.

Bottle feeding young goats at Grant’s Farm. Or even just being surrounded my goats. I love goats.

Running the Halloween Race in St. Louis. It was my grand return to racing post-stress fracture, and it’s always fun to do races in new cities.

Yindi (Tasmanian Devil) playing with a pumpkin. This made my morning, my week, and my year. This was the only thing that was going to cheer me up the day after the election.

Wine tasting in Missouri wine country with my fantastic coworkers. But seriously, my zoo buddies were incredible and I miss them dearly!

And finally, having the opportunity to spend hours a week with this fantastic creature. I miss Kali!

What is one of your best moments?

Coming Home

Date: August 3, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hi friends! It’s been a little while. I’m home for all of 3 weeks, and it’s going to be a little bit of a vet school app bootcamp here. I’m struggling a little bit with the flow of my main essay, so I’m hoping this blog post is a nice little warm up to get my creative juices flowing!

Let’s catch up! I’m back in California. But let’s take it back a little bit for some food+fitness+life, shall we?

Tennessee Food

I finally improved the appearance of my new favorite breakfast a little bit. It’s just a sunbutter+blueberry sandwich, soaked in 1 egg white and then baked in tinfoil! Super easy and delicious, and the egg adds a little kick of protein. I ate theses with copious amounts of watermelon.

There was a Wednesday night Farmer’s Market with tamales. I had a delicious sweet potato tamale the week prior and was hoping for another one, but I was on the later so so cheese was my only option. Still delicious! On the side was one of the weirder things I’ve eaten. I sprinkled salt, pepper, and garlic on lettuce leaves and then dipped them in guacamole. It was just too much lettuce…

I’m a pretty big fan of Publix now. It was the closest grocery, and had lots of great healthy+GF options. And gourmet yogurt. This and the bananas foster yogurt was delicious!

I had one last honey lavender iced latte at K Brew while finished up the first draft of my essay!

Tennessee Life

On my last day, I got off pretty early. It didn’t take me long to decide what I wanted to do. I went to Ijams one last time for a little hike by the river. I took a slightly different trail than the previous time and explored some different areas.

And then Saturday I was homeward bound. What is crazy? There was literally no line going through security in Knoxville. As in, I was literally the only person.

California

My favorite cookies ever happen to be at one of the places in the SFO terminal. I was hoping the entire 5 hour flight that 1. I would happen to pass it and 2. they would still be open! It turns out, the place was right by where I exited security, so I picked up a spicy cinnamon GF cookie. I think I preferred the non-spicy version I tried previously, but this was the only option.

To be honest, it feels weird being home, especially the first day or two. I feel like I was worlds away, and came back a different person. I had so many new experiences in Tennessee, and I did so much in a short time. To be honest, I’m glad I’ve moved on to new things instead of moped around about how I was going to miss my undergrad. At first, I didn’t feel ready to go to TN so soon after graduating, but I think it was for the better.

Sunday, I dove right back into things. First, I went to a spin class at the local studio. Then, I made amazing banana bread. I used my tried and true recipe, and separated it into two halves: one plain, one with raspberries and chocolate chips.

For dinner that night, I was back to the soup+avocado toast grind. Butternut squash chicken soup.

That evening, I met up with my college roommate for the Panic at the Disco+Weezer concert. I’ve grown particularly obsessed with Panic over the course of the last year, so when I was able to make the concert work given my travel dates, I was excited! Honestly, I could care less about Weezer. I probably haven’t listened to them since middle school, but liked them well enough then.

It was a great show, but we had seats on the lawn so unfortunately we were pretty far back. I haven’t been to many concerts lately, but the concerts I’ve been to I’ve always been able to be closer to the action. Maybe next time!

I enjoyed Weezer as well, and found I knew more songs than I realized.

In terms of workouts, I’ve been going back to my home Crossfit. We tend to do more barbell movements there, and I’m already feeling this morning’s workout! For strength, we did back squats. It was supposed to be 5 sets of 3 at 90%, but since I lost a ton of strength with my foot injury, I did 5×5 at 70%. I’ve squatted some since my injury at the TN Crossfit, but it was pretty low volume. So I’m going to be feeling this. The WOD was also a heavy one: 15 Min AMRAP of 10 hand release push ups and 5 deadlifts, which I did at 155#. While my squats may have gotten weak, my deadlifts have progressed because it was one of the few movements I could do for a while! I made it through almost 12 rounds.

I also went back to teach spin on Tuesday! I’m subbing as much as I can in the few weeks I’m home. I saw a ton of regulars, which was just so fantastic.

Screen Shot 2016-08-02 at 3.49.06 PM

And finally, wrapping up some food for the week.

When my roommate came, she brought a ton of AMAZING peaches! They don’t last a long time because they’re perfectly ripe, so we’ve been eating them like crazy. No problem for me! I had a peach+nectarine for breakfast the other day, with a side of banana bread.

Yesterday I had a cappuccino with a really delicious cranberry oat bar to fuel an essay brainstorming session.

And finally, the best thing.

We made Brazilian Cheese Bread! I got the idea from Alison. It’s made with tapioca flour and cheese, and is naturally gluten free. I used this recipe. They came out beautifully, and it was a super fast recipe!

We served them alongside Grilled Peach and Goat cheese salad, which was amazing with the fresh summer peaches.

What have you been up to??

WIAW-Last Week

Date: July 26, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello from Knoxville! Today, I’m linking up to WIAW. It’s been a little while!

wiawphotobutton-1

This is also my last week in Knoxville. I have a crazy couple of weeks ahead. I don’t think I mentioned this here, but this fall I’m going to St. Louis to intern at the zoo! And my start date got moved up. So. I will fly back to California on Saturday. Then, I have 3 weeks to finish vet schools apps and figure out housing/logistics for St. Louis. AHH. So much to do!

But instead of worrying about that right now, let’s just sit back, relax, and check out today’s food.

At 5:00am, pre-Crossfit, I had a few bites of cereal. Now that I’m getting used to being up so freaking early, I can tolerate a little something pre-workout.

The workout kind of stunk. We did EMOM for 8 minutes of 3 overhead squats, slow on the way down. The workout was a 30 minute AMRAP of 800m run, 20 UNBROKEN wall balls, 20 pull ups. I got through 3+ sets. For the pull ups, I did the first 10 with no band, and the second 10 with a band. Because that’s a lot of pull ups.

Breakfast: A fantastic idea, with poor execution.

I’ve been into having granola bars (Luna) for breakfast lately, but I’ve also been having them for a snack so I wanted to mix it up. And I haven’t been feeling yogurt at all. But I have been into sunbutter and jelly. So I made baked sunbutter+blueberry french toast. Basically, the night before I made a sandwich of sunbutter and blueberries, and soaked it in an egg white in foil. While I showered this morning, I threw it in the oven. It was great until the egg totally stuck to the foil taking it out. Whoops. I’m not sure if I didn’t buy nonstick foil, or if I didn’t use the nonstick side…realistically I probably just bought cheap foil…either way, it tasted good! Plus cherries on the side.

Lunch:

Super simple. Salad with lettuce, tomato, chicken, and Bolthouse Farms Creamy Garlic. Quest chips. I actually really like these! Also more cherries, which are shown in the snack picture:

Snack in the afternoon was the above pictured Luna!

After I got off today, I hit the grocery store for what I hope will be the final time. I’m REALLY trying to have nothing left!

While making my meal, I snacked on watermelon, as per my usual dinner making snacking habit.

And ate the last couple slices of zucchini in my fridge.

Dinner:

Currently loving this salad. Lettuce, tomato, corn, cheddar, and avocado tossed in lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper, topped with BBQ chicken.

Dessert:

Still loving these salted caramel froyo bars. It’s a nice healthier alternative!

And a little later on, half of this bar. I tried them for the first time last week, and I’m on board!

And just for fun, I have a few scenes form yesterday’s (short) run. Thankfully the heat doesn’t bother me (and it was only 1.5 miles), but it was weird having my breath be cooler than the air. I’m going to miss Knoxville!

Only a few more days!

Taking Yourself Out

Date: July 24, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Weekend!

It’s my last weekend in Knoxville. I had some things I had been wanting and planning on doing this weekend, but things fell through and that really threw me off. Instead of moping however, I decided to take myself out this weekend: to spend a weekend by myself, doing things I want to do, having a good time, regardless of whether it is generally socially acceptable to do these things alone. Because why not enjoy my last weekend here? I came up with a pretty full schedule!

I got off pretty early on Friday, but I came prepared with my laptop and headed straight to a local coffeeshop to work on my vet school personal statement essay. I have a decent idea of what I want to say, but it’s a matter of putting it together. I decided it was essential for me to write this in a relaxed, low-key environment, so I’ve been working on it here and there the last couple of weeks. Again, embracing the slow Southern lifestyle!

Next, I headed to Panera for dinner, where I got my favorite: half Fuji apple chicken salad. I also packed some crackers to go with it!

Next on the agenda was a night exploring a little bit of downtown. This was one of the things I was most worried about feeling awkward doing alone, but I decided to just go with it; why not, right?

I picked out a place with rooftop seating, and a live band. I figured I’d feel less awkward with live music.

I ended up having a great time. When I walked in, the Giant’s game was playing on the TV, which was the most amazing thing for me. I sat down to watch it, chatted with some nice gentleman from Colorado, and then headed downstairs to see the band.

And was home all by a reasonable hour!

On the schedule for Saturday morning was a Crossfit workout. The temperatures were supposed to be pretty scorching this weekend, so I was expecting the gym to be a hell-hole since there is no AC. It actually wasn’t bad!

The workout wasn’t super hard, but it was a fun one! It was a partner circuit workout, that included stations like “conversation wall sits,” complete with conversational topics, ball throws, and a mini game where you had to race your partner to 50m on the rower, and you had to do as many burpees as you went over by, which was hard! My closest was 52m on the last round!

From there, I went to the farmer’s market at Market Square. It was much bigger than I was expecting!

I actually found several places with GF baked goods. I picked up a mini loaf of lemon poppyseed bread.

And for lunch, I grabbed a vegan (sweet potato and collard filled) blue corn tamale, and some mango lemonade.

I walked around downtown a little more before heading back to cool down a bit before making a trip to the zoo. I had actually visited the zoo briefly as part of my summer thing, but I wanted to get the full walk around! It’s a really nice zoo—they even have camel rides!

After the zoo, I made a simple dinner. I threw an ear of corn in the oven, and then had a veggie burger and avocado toast.

My last item on Saturday’s agenda was a baseball game. I went to a Tennessee Smokies game. The Smokies are a AA affiliate of the Cubs. This has been on my to-do list since I got here! The stadium was really nice, and I got great seats.

It felt so weird to go to a baseball game in a dress…in SF, I would be bundled up in layers upon layers, and still be freezing! Although as I arrived, there was a thunderstorm, and the game was delayed about 30 minutes! After that though, it was a nice night.

Dippin’ dots are actually one of my favorites…only the chocolate though!

Unfortunately the Smokies lost, but it was a close one!

I had a pretty relaxing Sunday pre-Crossfit, involving Grey’s Anatomy (as much of this weekend has had). Every other Sunday, my Crossfit does “Girls Doing Girls,” a female-only glass where we do one of the benchmark girls workouts. I had originally planned on not coming and doing spin instead, but 1. I was feeling Crossfit and 2. my foot has been bothering me a little bit lately after standing a lot this past week and I didn’t want to clip into the flimsy spin shoes. I also thought it was going to be too hot at the 11am class time, but it hasn’t been too bad!

For the workout, we did Nancy, which is:

5 rounds:

400m run

15 overhead squats (Rx is 65#)

My foot felt fine for the running, which was good. I chose to just do 45#. It’s easy to forget, given my broken foot, that my shoulder still isn’t as strong as it was pre-injury. I went from babying my shoulder up to a point where I was able to do everything, albeit light, to having a broken foot and forgetting about any shoulder issues. But the reality is it isn’t as strong as it once was, and I hardly started doing overhead squats before I broke my foot. Plus, this workout kills your wrists. I think I did it, or something like it, once at 55# and that was awful. Anyway, that’s a long way of saying I used 45#. It was a good one; I was able to do the squats unbroken, and finished in 18:17, dripping sweat.

After Crossfit, I headed to Subway to pick up lunch. I haven’t been there in a very long time, and I have a lot of gift cards there! I love that you can make any sandwich a chopped salad now! I used to live off Subway back in my softball days where I was at a tournament every weekend.

Also, if you’re into volume, you get a lot of bang for your calories with these salads! I got mine with turkey, provolone, tomato, cucumbers, olives, and oil and vinegar, salt and pepper. Plus some baked chips on the side, for old time’s sake.

I took my salad to go and drove across the river to Ijams Nature Preserve to go hiking.

It was so peaceful out there, and just what I needed! So quiet. It was a beautiful day too, hot but nice in the shade.

Apparently it was Pokemon hot spot—I saw several kids catching Pokemon there!

That being said, I think it was 96 or 97 degrees out (36 degrees celsius, according to the car), so I was definitely sweaty by the end.

Not that I needed an excuse for froyo…

Menchie’s is growing on me. I like that they list allergens, and have healthy options. Plus they have hot fudge, although I didn’t get any today. But chocolate covered strawberries? What?? For my ice cream, I got salted caramel and milk chocolate.

The rest of the evening involved Netflix and dinner.

This is a totally random dinner, but I made it last week and enjoyed it. Zucchini, cheddar cheese, eggs over easy, and guacamole.

After dinner, I headed downtown to try and work on my vet school essay. I wasn’t in the right inspirational headspace though, so I made an outline of what I have left to say and called it a night.

I can’t believe this is my final weekend here! I feel like I’ve been here forever, but also like no time has passed. Strange how that works!

What did you do this weekend? Do you ever take yourself out?