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Murph+Chocolate Making 101

Date: May 27, 2020
Author: astottler
Categories: Uncategorized

With another Memorial Day weekend come and gone, I completed my 7th annual Murph in honor of those who have bravely served our country.

I have completed Murph on Memorial Day every year since 2014, including with a broken foot in 2016, and while visiting DC for a wedding in 2018. This year was a little different in its own way. Quarantine Murph. Despite the circumstances, I was determined to complete the workout in whatever way I could. I haven’t run much since dealing with a nasty chronic ankle injury in December, but last week I finally worked up to running 2 miles for the first time. For my Murph this year, I did:

1 mile run

100 DB rows (in place of pull ups since I did not have a pull up bar)

200 push ups

300 squats

1 mile run

Murph is one of my favorite Crossfit workouts, and it has definitely evolved for me over the years. The first few times I did Murph, it was with banded pull ups and knee push ups. Last year, I did kipping pull ups and 100 push ups strict and 100 from my knees. This year, thanks to the 1000 push ups that have been programed for us in quarantine and all the work I’ve been doing on them the last year, I finally completed all 200 push ups from my toes. That was a big accomplishment for me! I have to say, it helps to not have the pull ups, but my post-Murph pain is definitely not as bad as it used to be. My shoulders are definitely super sore from the push ups though, but it’s crazy how much stronger I’ve gotten. Even when we feel like we aren’t making progress, there are metrics like this to remind us that we are. I believe I finished around 52 minutes.

The other reason I wanted to post today was that I finally completed my first batch of solo homemade chocolate! My sister makes the best chocolate, straight from the raw bean. After making it with my brother in law when I visited them in February, I’ve been wanting to try my hand at it. This ended up being the perfect quarantine hobby, although I’m not starting it until week 11 of quarantine. I’m going to go through my experience with the process here.

Because I don’t have quite the equipment or experience my sister does, I ordered bulk roasted cacao nibs from the supplier she uses for her raw beans. I used 2 1lb bags for this batch.

To make chocolate, a melanger is a piece of equipment that is absolutely necessary. I ordered one from Amazon and it came in a week!

The first step from the roasted nibs is to grind them up in a blender, and then slowly add them to the melanger.

I had to monitor it pretty closely for the first 30 minutes or so because it was still so thick that the wheels kept threatening to hurl it over the edge, so I had to tame them back into the machine. Once the chocolate progressed and became more liquidy, this was no longer an issue.

Then, the chocolate just hangs out in the melanger, and it grinds for 24-36 hours. I got really excited when my equipment arrived and started the chocolate immediately, so I opted for the 24 hour time because the 36 hour time would have involved me waking up at 4am to tend to the chocolate.

1.5-2 hours before it’s done, add the sugar. I added 8oz to my 2lbs of nibs, making this chocolate 80%. Next time, I think I’m going to add 10oz and make it closer to 76%. (My sweet spot for chocolate is 75-80%).

I added my sugar 2 hours before finishing (at the 22 hour mark). Once the time was up, I poured all the chocolate out into a chilled bowl and stirred. And stirred. The mixture needs to be an even 82 degrees. Once it reaches this point, it then needs to be heated up to 90 degrees, and then it can be poured into moulds. This is the tempering process. This is responsible for the crystal structure of the chocolate, and the texture. I accidentally heated by chocolate back up to 110 degrees instead of 90, which meant I had to cool it all the way back down to 82, and then heated back up to 90. The cool thing about this process is that if you mess it up, you can always remelt it or re-cool it and start again.

FINALLY I had it in the moulds.

Once it is in the moulds, shake out the bubbles and then immediately place it in the fridge until it is completely hardened. This took about 45 minutes for me.

So far, it looks like my tempering went well! The chocolate has a shine, and doesn’t have any discolorations. My kitchen and I may have ended up covered in chocolate, but it was all worth it!

Day 5

Date: May 6, 2020
Author: astottler
Categories: Uncategorized

Aaaand we’re back! We are approaching the end of this full week of eating! Let’s dive right in!

Workout: First thing in the morning, I went for a 1.5 mile run. This is a big deal because it’s the furthest I’ve run since rehabbing my ankle injury. It actually felt pretty good! I followed this with a few sprints.

Breakfast:

Peach yogurt, blueberry chex, blueberries, and sunbutter.

Lunch:

Spinach wrap with chicken, mozzarella, spinach, and Trader Joe’s Spinach and Kale greek yogurt dip. Side salad dressed with aged white balsamic. Plus a piece of my sister’s homemade chocolate.

Snack:

White cheddar rice cake with avocado+cumin.

And later, a handful of cereal before going for a 10 mile bike ride to get outside and away from screens! It was CRAZY windy out there, especially since my biking route takes me into cornfields with no protection from the wind. The first half of the ride I felt like I was barely moving, but on the backend I was FLYING.

Dinner:

This is my classic fresh produce, throw a bunch of veggies together meal. I massaged kale with balsamic and garlic, then threw on top roasted carrots, red pepper hummus, and an egg.

Dessert:

More ice cream cake!

Evening snacks:

Wine for Bachelor night (Listen to Your Heart right now).

And chocolate chex before bed.

And that’s that! Hope everyone is surviving week 8 (?) of quarantine!

Day 3—Quarantine Birthday

Date: May 4, 2020
Author: astottler
Categories: Uncategorized

It’s my birthday! I feel like a lot of people have been sad about being quarantined for their birthdays, but I really didn’t mind. The weather was beautiful, and I just wanted to make the most of it.

Breakfast:

Berry cheerios and my protein hot chocolate creation: 1c soy milk, 1 tablespoon dark cocoa powder, 3/4 scoop of chocolate protein powder.

After breakfast, I visited my favorite produce stand and came home with a big box of fruits and veggies. That place just makes me so happy.

For my workout, I did 6×3 heavy squats at 175-185, followed by a modified Filthy Fifty. I remembered doing this on my birthday a few years ago and wanted to revisit it! I’m definitely fitter than when I did this maybe 6 years ago.

Lunch:

One of my current favorite salads: Pear Gorgonzola dressing, blueberry goat cheese, and chicken. With a side of Cheddar Veggie straws and some homemade chocolate my sister sent me for my birthday.

Birthday cake:

Check it out! This was made 100% from scratch and I was very impressed. It is gf chocolate cake, with mint chip gelato and chocolate on top! SO good!

For my birthday, all I really wanted to do was sit outside, watch baseball, and drink beer. I picked up some beer from a local brewery, and streamed a 2019 baseball game. I miss that! Jackson also came outside to hang out.

Dinner was kind of random. It started with homemade cheddar biscuits, a recipe that is sort of my own.

For the biscuits, sift together the dry ingredients, then cut in the butter. Once the texture is crumbly, add the milk. The mixture may need to be worked with your hands a bit. For these, we added some cheddar too!

Dinner was broken up my a Zoom birthday party with my vet school friends. The second part of dinner was thrown together, but got the job done! Some grilled chicken pulled from my freezer with ketchup, and green beans with balsamic glaze.

I had a great birthday, and felt the love from everyone in my life! The whole day just made me so happy.

Full Week of Eating Quarantine Edition—Day 1

Date: May 1, 2020
Author: astottler
Categories: Uncategorized

Wow. It’s been such a long time since I’ve posted here, and boy what a time it is. We are closing out Week 7 of the COVID-19 quarantine and things have been both crazy and quiet. Given everything that is happening, I thought it would be a good time to come back here and post some meal ideas, especially given I’ve eaten every meal at home for 7 weeks now. I also thought it would be fun to include my workouts that I’m doing this week, given they’re definitely a little different. I’m really lucky now in that I have acquired a fair amount of gym equipment. I ordered a few things off of Amazon, but most importantly, I’m renting a dumbbell, a barbell, and some plates from Crossfit. My Crossfit has maintained a great community during this time. We still have programmed workouts everyday, there are plenty of live zoom classes, and we get a daily text from our coach with an individualized workout. They’re going above and beyond, and in this time, it’s been amazing to have that solid community and structure in my life.

Quarantine has also been a wonderful excuse to reach out and reconnect with old friends. I suppose perhaps that is how I found my way back here!

First, I’ll cover some of the meals I have made lately, and then I’ll move to my full day of eating!

One of the big things to come out of quarantine is that I’ve finally conquered my fear cooking chicken. My cooking method of choice is getting thin sliced chicken breasts, and baking them at 350 for about 25 minutes, with a pan of water on the lower rack in the over (a separate pan from the chicken) to keep the chicken moist. Game changer! This is a chicken breast with pesto, roasted carrots, and kale massaged with balsamic and olive oil.

This combo was surprisingly delicious. Baked chicken, hummus, zucchini roasted with Elote seasoning from TJs, and more massaged kale. Can you tell I visited my produce stand this week? It just makes me so happy to go in there.

More zucchini. This time zucchini noodles with pesto, chicken, and mozzarella.

Baked chicken with BBQ sauce, rice, and an artichoke (boiled for about 25 minutes) from the produce stand. I made a mayo-balsamic vinaigrette dipping sauce like I always used to have with artichokes growing up.

This salad is kind of strange, but it’s been a staple for me throughout the years, although probably not within the last year. Hard boiled egg, hummus, goat cheese. That’s it! This meal made me so happy because it’s simple, delicious, and healthy. And I love cheese puffs. These are Barbara’s baked cheese puffs, and these were a treat as a result of a very rare Whole Foods visit.

Another one of my favorite produce stand meals. Balsamic kale, roasted carrots, hummus, over easy egg.

Another artichoke, but this time with avocado toast. I love my avocado toast with 1/2 an avocado, cumin, a splash of lemon juice, feta, and an over easy egg. Basically my avocado smash, but the lazy version

Given we were on week 7, I decided having a super stocked freezer was no longer quite as necessary. That, and my mom warned me ice cream might be coming my way for my birthday. Honestly, when all this started, the main foods I stocked up on were veggies. I had a few bags of frozen veggies, and some canned veggies. Which I realize would not provide the calories long term in a crazy situation, but priorities, right? These were frozen butternut squash spirals that I sautéed. Served with baked lemon garlic salmon. Salmon is another meat I’ve gotten pretty good at cooking in the last year. For the Trader Joe’s salmon I normally get, I do 14 minutes at 425. This was a bit thinner, so I only did 11 minutes at 425 and it came out perfectly. Plus some sautéed spinach.

More salmon, this time teriyaki, plus frozen stir fry veggies. After royally messing up a number of stir fries lately with fresh veggies, I have decided to just make them with frozen from now on.

One random quarantine discovery was these gluten free spinach tortillas. This wrap is a winner. 2 laughing cow wedges (this is cheddar), red pepper, spinach, and chicken. With a side salad dressed with simple aged white balsamic, salt, and pepper.

And another meal of salmon similar to the above.

Ok. Without further ado, let’s move on to my full day of eating! Plus a little bit of day in the life of quarantine.

Breakfast:
I forget to snap a picture, but another quarantine staple has been protein hot chocolate. I invested (ok, only a $10 investment but 100% worth it) in a handheld frother and this has been game changer. My recipe is about a cup of soy milk with a splash of milk heated up, then blend in about a table spoon of DARK cocoa powder, plus 3/4 scoop of chocolate protein powder. Right now I’m using PE Science chocolate. I also had a chocolate rice cake with sunbutter.

I’m currently starting my first week of my clinical year, which is my last year of vet school! I’m on the Anesthesia rotation virtually now, so we had morning rounds. We were hoping to see horse anesthesia, but there was a problem with the connection. Here is my rounds buddy (one of them):

Lunch:

For lunch, I had the hummus, goat cheese, and egg salad mentioned above, plus a few GF crackers.

I also had the best cookie ever, a GF chocolate chunk cookie from Salty Sweet. These are the amazing cookies I used to get at the SFO airport that I’m sure I’ve mentioned before. I happened upon them and where else to find them and that has been amazing. My parents also sent these for my birthday!

After lunch, I had to prep for afternoon rounds, which involved making an anesthetic plan for a kitty patient. I also discovered the Giants were streaming a classic baseball game on facebook, so I watched this while working. During the last few weeks, I’ve had a lot of screen time and the weather is beautiful, so I try to get outside as much as possible. Normally I would try to go for a walk before afternoon rounds, but it was SO nice to see baseball again.

Snack: I had an unpictured white cheddar rice cake with kale greek yogurt dip, and then a handful of blueberry chex cereal right before my workout.

Workout: This one I made up myself since the prescribed workout was basically the extra credit I did yesterday, biking and running.

4 rounds:

15 deadlifts (130#)

15 box jumps

15 med ball cleans (14#)

I followed this up with an online abs and yoga video with my yoga group. I am now part of a group that does daily Zoom yoga classes together, mostly with videos from Corepower. It’s been a good time, and also good for me to get back into yoga. On literally the first day gyms were closed, I did yoga and planned to do it frequently during quarantine. I never did it until I joined this group of high school friends a couple of weeks ago.

Dinner:

This salad was a real winner, and my first time trying it. I did lettuce with Bolthouse Avocado Salsa Verde dressing, Mexican cheese blend, corn (frozen then sautéed) with Elote seasoning, and chicken. So good!

Dessert: A clio yogurt bar and a few spoonfuls of my birthday Jeni’s ice cream—blueberry and lemon!

Nighttime snack:

Caramel rice cake with sunbutter. This has been another staple if I’m hungry in the evening after dinner.

And that was my day! Wow, it’s weird to be back here but it also feels really, really natural. Hope everyone is surviving this quarantine!