Exploring DC

Date: June 23, 2014

Author: astottler

Well, I FINALLY have WiFi! It was a process but here we are. I’ve officially finished my first day of work! And my first day commuting. The Metro system seems pretty good but it’s still a tad stressful! And I’m totally the person who wears running shoes with fancy clothes to save my feet!

I have lots of fun things (read: delicious) to share from the past couple of days. Clearly the best way to explore a city is through the cuisine, right?

On Sunday while my parents were still here, I woke up on the early side, awake but definitely dragging. (The time difference really killed me around 2pm today!) I went and got my first Dunkin Doughnuts coffee! There’s one on campus where I’m staying. I think that no coffee was harmed in the making of the cappuccino-it was so milky!

For breakfast, I had a frittata with sun-dried tomato and ricotta from the restaurant at the hotel.

We spent the day moving into my dorm and gathering other supplies, so we stopped for a quick lunch at Panera. I love their Fuji Apple salad.

And it really should be no surprise that in my first 2 days here, I checked out the highly recommended cupcake shop, Baked and Wired.

All my friends from DC swear it’s better than Georgetown Cupcake-I guess I’ll have to be the judge!

My mom and I split a chocolate with buttercream and a lemon blueberry.

They were really good, don’t get me wrong, but they weren’t anything special. They were solid but not the best thing ever in my opinion!

Despite the order of events, my last meal with my parents was at a little Italian place, and I had salmon.

I had more salmon this past weekend then I probably had the past 6 months combined…dining hall salmon at my school was rare and pretty badly cooked.

Then, I came back to my dorm/apartment to prep some food for the week. It is SO nice to have a kitchen!

I wanted to boil down strawberries and peaches, but couldn’t find peaches so I used strawberries and mango.

This made for the perfect quick breakfast Monday morning-atop yogurt and sunflower seed butter.

I also packed lunch. I actually got to have an oven roasted sweet potato-not just a microwaved one! I made a sort of hash with eggs, cheddar, spinach, and salsa.

After work, I was eager to head out for a run to explore the area. I can see the Lincoln Memorial from the end of my street (I really want to go to November Project at some point! Not quite ready for morning workouts though…) so I headed out in that direction.

It was such beautiful weather to run in! It was lateish evening, but it was still plenty light, and not too hot.

I got some major DC sights in…on only a 3 mile run. I’d say I did pretty well for my first day of sightseeing!

Afterwards, I threw together a quick dinner. I had planned on roasting cauliflower, but the pan I bought is too large for the oven. It’s not a very big pan either….In fact, I’m not sure even what pans will fit in there! Anyways, I microwaved it a bit to soften it (although not enough) and then transferred it to a pan on the stove to sauté it with olive oil, salt, pepper, and cumin. I served it with some pre-cooked chicken strips dipped in ketchup.

Not a bad day of cooking, I’d say!

And definitely a good first work day overall! I’m excited for all that this summer will bring!

WIAW-College is Hard

Date: February 25, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

So…college is hard. I would absolutely love more sleep, but during week 8, that doesn’t always happen. Week 8 is something only quarter system students can truly appreciate. And yes, everyone knows exactly what week it is and the perils of each week. Thank goodness for a little foodie break! Thanks as always to Jenn for hosting this mid-week party!

I’ve had some delicious food in the last couple of days. You’ll notice that nothing is from Tuesday…I’m planning a day in the life post for that day! So-here we go!

A dining hall breakfast of COFFEE, plain Greek yogurt with fruit and granola, and a few bites of steel cut oats because our dining hall has them and I’ve never tried them.

It was Parent’s Weekend last weekend. Which meant a large vegetable delivery. And a delicious lunch out.

A panini with avocado, cheese, and tomato on whole grain bread. Take a second to look at that beauty,

Lots of roasted veggies for snack/dinner. The brussels sprouts are sesame brussels from PaleOMG. They have a curry dipping sauce, which I liked the flavor of, but I think next time I’d try it with a lighter base, such as avocado, or greek yogurt.

And since I had all those veggies for snack and after Crossfit I needed to go to the store and I just HAPPENED to find a parking spot in front of my favorite ice cream place….yeah, this was necessary!

Sunday was my long run day, now that I’m officially in half training! Since I AM officially in half training, I think it’s time to take my pre run meals more seriously. I’ve kind of been just eating whatever before them…I had some banana blueberry oats with sunflower seed butter.

Which took a long time to digest….and then I got brunch….and then another snack…so I didn’t start my run until around 5. It was 8 miles, and it went surprisingly well. My feet hated me, but that’s that…I’m trying to keep my paces on my long runs below 10:00 as much as possible, unless there are crazy hills so I was right on track!

Sunday night after a long couple of hours of sorority requirements, I was talking to my sister and she said “You sound like you need a boba.” So we drove to her newest favorite place, and I had a jasmine milk tea. Sometimes you do need a late night boba!

Monday morning I thought it would be a fabulous idea to do a track workout, despite my long run being Sunday. Which is another way of saying I didn’t think. My legs were definitely a little heavy, so that schedule is going to have to change as my long runs get longer! For breakfast, I had a yogurt bowl, plus half a lemon zest pancake because I really wanted to try it. It was good! But subtle.

I had some leftover oatmeal from Sunday morning, so I brought a little with me to put on top of my yogurt bowl for some extra flavor and texture.

I must be channeling my inner Ashley– not only did I have an avocado and cheese panini, but I also made a Mexican style lunch with sweet potato, asparagus, cottage cheese, salsa, and guacamole. All in tupperware with a kiwi.

That’s a small step up from eating out of a plastic bag, right?

Have a great week everybody!

What’s one of your favorite food combos right now?

WIAW-Healthy Living is About Balance, Pastries, and Ostriches

Date: December 17, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy WIAW!

Today, I’m blogging from Solvang, an adorable little Danish town completely decked out for Christmas. There’s not a not to do here besides eat delicious Danish pastries. There are worse things in life.

Technically I consider myself a “healthy living blog,” and while these foods may not be your typical idea of healthy, healthy eating really is all about balance. How many times will you be conveniently within a mile of about 20 different bakeries, with a father who wants to go into all of them? Balance is trying one of everything…and then splitting it with your family. So here are some things from the past couple of days!

Monday before we left, I went to m gym for an abs class, followed by weight lifting on my own-I did my Jingle Barbells workouts. It was nice to have all the time in the world, and be able to take long rests between sets. I’m normally in such a rush! I followed that with a protein smoothie-I’ve been dying to have one of these for months. Yay for being home!

Milk, spinach, frozen banana, cocoa powder, a little protein powder, and a handful of ice.

Lunch on the road was a bagel sandwich and thai bubble tea.

And then we arrived! Naturally the first stop was pre-dinner pastries.

A blueberry “boat” (probably my favorite o the trip), custard filled pastry, and a Danish “waffle”-a pastry with butter cream frosting and raspberry.

Dinner was at Pea Soup Anderson’s. Anyone who has driven through California on the main, long stretches of road will be familiar with this place-there are signs advertising it hundreds of miles away, and since we were RIGHT THERE we had to get their famous pea soup!

In the morning, we went to the hotel’s hot breakfast. The oatmeal was a highlight-it was very vanilla and cinnamon-y.

Then, I went for a run with my sister and her boyfriend. I’m in WAY better than last time I ran with them (at the beginning of half training in June)-last time I was dying, and this time their pace felt comfortable. I think we covered between 4-4.5 miles?

Then, on our way in to town, we stopped at a little drive in. I ordered a burrito with chicken-it was interesting, the lettuce, salsa, and guacamole were on the outside! A lesser known fast-I’ve eaten very few burritos in my life. And as a result, I never know how to eat them! I’m really uncomfortable eating them-I had one of my first burritos with my friends and they totally made fun of me for it!

And of course dessert.

We spent the afternoon walking around downtown Solvang and wandering into little bakeries. A highlight was our visit to the foot spa for a massage. Since we all know the sad shape of my feet, it was great.

Guess what we did next?

We went to an ostrich ranch! I kinda really really want one. Or at least to ride one-is that a thing?

We even got to feed them. They’re aggressive little guys! (Ok, maybe not little…) We had a bowl with a handle, and you held on the handle tightly while they went at it and just kind of hoped. It reminded me a little of water skiing-you hold on for dear life and hope, and there’s the adrenaline rush that something is going to go horrible wrong, like they will somehow peck your hands off.

My sister’s boyfriend feeding ostriches.

Since we were all stuffed with pastries, we ended up eating a late dinner at our hotel restaurant, which turned out to be really nice.

I ordered the vegetarian portabello mushroom burger, which had a lots of veggies, lots of cheese, and lots of mess.

And since this is vacation, dessert happened (again) as well. Bananas foster and lava cake.

Everything has been delicious, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t ready to go back to my routine. I wanted to do nothing all afternoon but curl up and sleep. But such is life. Everything is about balance.

Oh, and one more though about my 5k on Sunday-I probably screwed myself over with pacing as well. I thought I could have held an 8 minute pace, but based on my pace estimates, my first mile was probably 7:30, and the last two 8:30-so if I go out that fast there’s no way I could hold an 8:00 pace! I think I need to practice running more at that pace-to get my body used to the effort as well as the feel.

Have a great week everybody!

Favorite pastry?

Ghost Run

Date: October 26, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

We made it to the weekend! Woohoo! I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m about ready for a nap. But let’s go through the past day first, shall we?

I stayed up too late on Thursday night. I wanted to make a spin class for Friday morning, but I decided to do a “Spin Challenge” instead. Which is another way of saying I was too tired to make a class, so I’d throw a ton of songs together and wing it-it was practice making up a routine on the spot.

My Friday morning started off with a crash and a bang. As in, I fell off my bike. At the bike racks. And it was not moving. Yeahhh it was too early….

Anyways, the playlist turned out really well, and I really enjoyed the class I made.

One thing about making a class on the spot is you get to go with whatever feels right on the bike in that sequence-it’s much harder to think about all the rhythms when I’m not on a bike. When I’m making real classes, I might actually take me notecard to the gym and write everything out as I go. The only problem? I started cooling it down on Song 15….and then another song came on. Whoops.

One tendency I have is to spend a lot of time in the saddle when I’m making classes myself. If I’m leading classes like that, everyone will hate me. So I tried to work on that a little bit. Another thing-I feel like I get a better workout when I’m doing a class I made than the classes I go to here. I can’t tell if I’m pushing harder on my own because I’m distracted by all the choreography or if I just make different/harder classes.

Nothing noteworthy happened the rest of the day. But TODAY I woke up and ran a 5k! It was a Ghost Run (and I think the name is super cute given Brooks sponsored it!), so everyone dressed in costume, which was AWESOME. Not going to lie, it was great having such a low key race. And short. Last night, I stayed up late and ate cheese fries (not sure how I feel about them….), and I lifted heavy weights in Crossfit. Not exactly the best pre-race practice, but it didn’t matter! Plus, I could haven whatever I wanted pre-race since it wasn’t 13.1 miles.

Pumpkin bread from the freezer.

I was a baseball player. That should be no surprise, given my previous years’ costumes.

Just for fun, why don’t we look at some costumes from the past few years?

Super awkward photo of me from last year.

Sophomore year of high school. Junior year I looked the same too…

Anyways, back to the race! I ran it with a friend, so I just went her pace the whole time.

They had some pre-race food-mini bagels and black and orange fortune cookies-so cute!

There was one family who went all out-check it out!

Too cute!

10am…

And then we were off! We ran through neighborhood areas-the trees were so pretty!

There were a lot of houses decorated for Halloween!

Along the way, there were “ghosts” you had to catch who would give you prizes!

Here’s one!

I ended up with these:

And before we knew it, there was the finish line!

This was such a fun race! I love Halloween and dressing up-it was convenient my go-to costume was so runnable! AND, this was my first run post-half marathon! How did it feel? Not bad-the feet behaved. I thought my calf was sore…but then remembered it’s just a bruise from falling off my bike. My legs were kind of heavy from not enough sleep and Crossfit last night, but overall it was good!

On a semi-related note, my knee has been hurting since yesterday afternoon. It feels like it’s hyperextended (so running is fine-walking kinda hurts). I finally figured out it’s probably from…you guessed it, falling off my bike.

After the race, we went out for brunch.

This was good, but a little dry for my taste!

Aaaand just now I decided I should actually have some vegetables and protein so I made myself what turned out to be an incredibly spicy Mexican salad at the dining hall.

I’ve been really bad about eating “real food” lately. When I’m in my dorm or in a rush, it’s so easy to just grab a bar, or a slice of pumpkin bread, or chocolate milk. I have definitely not been eating enough veggies!

Yesterday, I didn’t have time to run to the dining hall for an egg, so my protein source was a “protein shake.” If you take the word “shake” literally! I found vanilla Designer Whey protein, at CVS of all places. I’ve been wanting it for a while, so I bought some. I ended up mixing it with almond milk, Trader Joe’s pumpkin spice chai mix, and sunflower seed butter, and shaking it up in my water bottle. It was delicious! If I had more time in the morning, I would have thrown some actual pumpkin in there too!

Ok, I think it is most definitely nap time for me. I have a full to-do list for this weekend-including laundry, vacuuming, and rearranging/cleaning my room. My plans for this afternoon are to go hole up in a local coffeeshop and do homework all day.

Have a great weekend!

What is your favorite Halloween costume?

Anticipation (T-7 days)

Date: October 13, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello friends! I finally found an enjoyable way to do laundry-blog while it’s in the washer! And sheesh, apparently SUnday night is the best time to do it, every single washer was free!

Here’s some random food from yesterday. Since this is a food blog and all.

Pumpkin+honey+tons of spices, with sunflower seed butter and cottage cheese.

Dinner-teriyaki tilapia, grain mix, thai chicken, salad.

I had every intention of studying bio last night, but I got hijacked by/crashed a quidditch party. My sister is the captain of the team, and her boyfriend is Jewish and makes latkes. Which were delicious. Plus, they made homemade applesauce-AMAZING! My sister also made butterbeer, which is WAY too sweet for me, so I went for the less sweet ice cream with caramel sauce. WHich should give you an idea for the sweetness of the drink. And then-genius: applesauce, ice cream, caramel sauce. You all should go out and make applesauce and then try this. Needless to say I ate way to many latkes and ice cream, and my stomach has been hating me lately. I was worried it would be an issue on my run, but it was fine!

Guys. This is where I run. This is seriously the prettiest and most scenic place I can think of around here.

I wasn’t pushing the pace, but I felt really good.

So what do I do when my ultimate goal, pushing hard race pace turns into a comfortable run? I have no idea how fast I should go out next week now! This felt really good! The run featured rolling hills, with a decent sized hill around mile 4. I’ve done this run 3x: the first while training for my first half, and then early in my training for this half. The first time: I took the big hill at a 12/13:00 pace. Last time, I was proud to be around 11:00. Today, I did it sub-10. To be honest, I didn’t really feel the hills that much. I guess I was a little more out of breath. It’s amazing what hillwork/speedwork will do for you!

Also, I’m fairly certain of one thing. I’m going to be sobbing the first 3 miles. I get choked up just thinking about the race-I can’t explain it, it just makes me so happy. I’m unbelievably excited! My last race, I felt so lucky to even be physically able of running, so I’m not really sure what my excuse is this time!

I’ll probably be sobbing the last 3 miles as well…my feet starting killing around mile 4 of today’s run. That means what, only 9.1 miles of intense pain? Funnnn.

After my run, I went to get gas, which happened to be next to the grocery store, so I grabbed a quick lunch there: mango kombucha and a turkey sandwich.

Aaaand the aftermath. I’m a bread picker for sure.

And since I was right next to my favorite froyo place…I mean I couldn’t not get some!

They had toasted coconut, which is a new flavor! I got some of that alongside chocolate and my all time favorite, salted caramel pretzel.

I then went to the Stanford Nike store to pick up my race day packet…only to be greeted by an hour long line. I simply didn’t have the time today-3 midterms next week have to take priority. It means I have to fight the crowds at the expo, but that’s ok since I wanted to go to the expo anyway. I also learned that right next to the Nike store, a Soul Cycle is coming! I’ve been wanting to try that for forever, and here it is, an easy bike ride from my dorm. As an avid spinner, that makes me pretty freaking happy.

On the way out of the mall, I picked up some oatmeal cookie type things, which were delicious.

And after a night of homework, I had a random snacky dinner, which included a granola bar, figs, chicken, and this plate.

I swear, my stomach hates me. If I eat the wrong food, I get a stomachache. If I eat too much of the right food, I get a stomachache. If I eat the right food at the wrong time, it rebels. And given I did all three this past weekend…I think a week of clean eating is in order! I can’t afford to have stomach issues on race day!

Which is a weird note to end on. Here’s a cat picture.

Enjoy your Monday!

Do you have any random pains when you run? How do you deal with them? Do you prefer races, or just running solo? How sick are you of me talking about running? I promise things will change up a little more in a week!