Earth Day Celebrations

Date: April 22, 2014

Author: astottler

Happy Earth Day! Did everyone realize it was Earth Day? I would have totally forgotten if it weren’t for several Earth Day Celebrations around campus. In honor of Mother Earth, let’s go through some Earth Day eats, shall we? As always, a huge THANKS to Jenn for hosting!

Also, you will have to excuse me for my mind is mush. I just spent 3 hours typing away on a paper, and I’ve spent about 6 hours total today alone on it. But it is done! Yay! And it was a super cool topic that I loved researching-the effect of exercise on recovery from drug addiction. If anyone is interested in this, let me know and I can talk more about it or provide links!

My morning started off with a KIND bar before spin. Normally I don’t eat before Spin, but I was starving so I went for it!

After spin?

While sure, the designs that have been decorating my milk foam lately are cute, nothing compares to the flavor of unadulterated milk foam.

Then, it was time for Operation Eat All the Eggs part 2. This morning, I mashed up a couple of eggs with a triangle of garlic and herb laughing cow, and served it with a mango.

Nothing too crazy to share from the middle of the day except this fun fruit snacks I received in my Easter basket. I regret not brining more than 2 back to school with me!

They made the perfect pre-workout fuel, when paired with an egg!

I had planned on going to Crossfit tonight, but because of the aforementioned paper due tonight at 11:59pm, I wanted something quicker. I randomly remembered the Nike Training Center app I downloaded a few months ago and never tried. I decided to try and advanced cardio workout, which used minimal equipment and included lots of jumps. I want to work on plyos/agility/sprints more so this was perfect. I really liked the workout-my quads were burning in a way they haven’t in a while from all the jumping! If anyone is interested, I did the Heartthrob. I have to say though, the practicality of using a app was not necessarily there. I don’t have my phone armband with me…so I was holding my phone with my headphones and instructions. And my headphones kept getting involved in my jumps. Plus, I would have loved more space. I think in the future, I’d skip the medicine ball (which I only used for like 1 movement) and take this workout outside, where I’d have more space and where I could blast it out loud without having to hold it or have headphones. And I think this would be absolutely amazing paired with some sprints (which I also really should work on). And now it sounds like I’m talking about fine wine…

The app talks to you while you workout, telling you how much time/what exercise/etc. But it also gives encouragement, which I found sort of funny because a very monotone, sort of computer sounding voice kept saying things like “Fight through the pain.” Seriously, I think my GPS has more animation! I will definitely be using it again though!

I didn’t realize the dining halls were doing anything special for Earth Day until I saw a Facebook post of some of the food they posted (yes, I am friends with my school’s dining hall on Facebook-that just about describes my life). I didn’t realize it was a huge event, but I ended up going with some friends anyway in the hopes of better than normal food.

This dinner experience literally made my life.

There were plants everywhere, and special booths set up giving out free food samples, fresh herbs and strawberries, and even seedlings!

And there were piles and piles of salads-salads as far as the eye could see. My favorite was the beet and goat cheese-the goat cheese was so soft and creamy! And I appreciated that none of the salads had nuts! Also a highlight was some delicious, actually cooked and seasoned cauliflower! Without a doubt the best meal at this dining hall ever.

Sadly, you can’t see in this picture, but I picked up a bunch of fresh mint (although it wilted pretty fast!) which I intend to throw in a smoothie later this week!

I also sampled a little whole wheat, mustard greens filled tart which was delicious.

While I was contemplating a fresh, local, organic ice cream sandwich, I somehow got pulled into the “Trash-ion Show” which was a contest to build the best outfit out of trash or discarded materials. I took the matter at hand very seriously, and spent a majority of the time fashioning an attractive and structurally sound hat out of leaves and a plastic basket. I thought our finished product was fantastic-we had a nice little matching ribbon thing going there!-and apparently the judges did as well-we won!

Besides the glory of victory, each member of my team received a super fancy trophy and an amazing gift basket!

The gift basket included all kinds of organic goodies like apple chips, pasta, almond milk, and Annie’s pretzel bunnies. I’m also pretty excited for the basket, not going to lie. Think of how many mangoes that thing can fit! Mango shopping clearly needs to happen soon.

To celebrate my victory, I split an ice cream sandwich with a friend.

On the way out, there was a table giving out baby plants. And you know I’m not one to pass up on that! I think this guy is a little baby Oregano, but I’m not sure!

He has found a new, probably temporary home with my big old plumeria!

Aaaand now I’m off to an early night’s sleep. Well, relatively at least!

How did you celebrate Earth Day?

Salsa-ing Around All Day

Date: January 13, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! WHEW. I swear this is the first free minute I’ve had all day-I’ve been running around like crazy since 7am!

The morning began by teaching weight lifting to quidditch. The only bad thing was that right now we have 2 days they can come, and only 3 people showed up today, which means tomorrow may be kinda crazy. The focus today was upper body and core-the main lift was push presses. I doubt they’ll be as sore as last week! I also taught them forrest rowing form for the conditioning portion of the workout.

After that, I rushed out to squeeze in a run. Fun fact-I’ve never actually done a tempo run before! It’s been on the schedule but it just never happened. I was planning on a 4 mile loop, with 2 miles at 8:00 in the middle. However, things don’t always go as planned. My legs felt heavy at the start, and when I tried to speed it up after the first mile, it just wasn’t happening. I ended up up waiting about .8 miles more when it was completely flat/slightly downhill (instead of slightly uphill) and just do a mile of tempo, since it is my first tempo run, after all. I was able to hold pace and felt pretty good! Things don’t always go as planned, but we have to adjust! My pace was so much better on the part after the tempo run though-interesting. While my heels felt pretty good, the ball of my foot went numb and hurt and it kind of felt like I had bricks attached to my feet….

By the time I got back, I had zero time. Breakfast was prepared the night before-yay for overnight oats!

I made them with raspberry goat milk yogurt-it’s interesting, I could really taste the goat-y-ness. (In a good way-it had that creamy tang of goat cheese.)

And then rushed to class. With zero time-nothing like being late to class to motivate you to bike insanely fast!

Straight after class, I ate my packed lunch and got some studying in.

Yay for leftovers! Leftover egg salad, leftover cucumbers and whipped cream cheese. Our mayonnaise that we made the egg salad with is actually super fancy-it’s “spooning” mayonnaise. I’m pretty sure someone would have to pay me a whole lot of money to convince me to eat mayonnaise with a spoon-but we had to get it because my roommate is allergic to canola oil, and the non-canola oil options were limited.

I also thawed out some more mashed sweet potatoes, and added them at lunchtime.

Then it was off to class-and immediately after class I had to rush to my home gym to do one last spin workout on their bikes-the bikes at school are a little weird and I wanted to practice my playlist at least once on them before I cancel my gym membership. If you’re keeping count, that’s 4 times I’ve practiced this same playlist in the last week. 4 hours of spin, plus biking a ton (an especially large amount thanks to a broken car), after not biking around for a few weeks means my rear end is pretty much shot.

And I have to say, while I didn’t hate it the last time, I definitely liked the playlist more the first time!

After Spin, my car’s engine sounded weird and the check engine light came back on-so it looks like I’m going to be without a car for the second time in as many weeks!

Back in my room, I threw together a super fast dinner from the fridge-more leftover egg salad, plus tomato soup with tons of cheddar.

Plus a Cocoa Coconut bar for dessert(/protein?).

Everything was consumed super fast-then I had to tune my violin. It was remarkably not terrible after sitting in a closet for 3 years! But I wanted the embarrassment of how out of tune it was to be in the safety of my dorm room, not in front of a whole bunch of musicians.

Mariachi was super fun! I’m definitely rusty on the violin, but it wasn’t terrible. It was kind of frustrating because the difficulty of the songs I used to play was much higher than this music, yet my fingers/brain connection is just not there yet! The whole class is conducted in Spanish-another thing it’s been a couple of years since I’ve done! While I didn’t understand everything, I understood enough, and I’m really excited to be speaking it again.

And that brings us to now-the few minutes I have before going to my sorority meeting. While it was a packed day, it was also a good one. And while I could definitely use more sleep, I’m managing.

One thing there was a question about, which I totally forgot to mention-my project will begin next Monday. I want to to plan/prepare/shop. And I need to look into buying blood glucose tests, and if that’s reasonable, or how much I can actually tell from that.

Have a great week everybody!

Crazy days-love them or hate them?

On Obesity

Date: January 8, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Before I get into the topic of today’s post, I’m going to go through my day really quickly! I began the morning by training the other half of the Quidditch team. The movements were a little more unnatural for this group, but their form improved so much by the end! I can’t wait to see how they do the next time we do this workout!

I got paid in green juice.

I believe it was pineapple-apple-kale? In terms of green juice, I love anything with kale and pineapple! And this was made fresh this morning!

I also requested the pulp.

All the fiber and other good stuff is there! I had visions of stirring it into my oatmeal, but it was a lot blander than I was expecting. And my oatmeal was already really thick so I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Immediately after training, I did another run through of my Spin audition playlist. I feel really confident about it-I love the playlist, which is exactly how I need to feel about it! I’m in the process of arranging a live run through-as in I gather a whole bunch of people and practice with them as students. I left my workout feeling energized and happy.

My hunger was kind of strange today-it’s weird for me waking up early to train people and not going straight into a workout, so my eating routine for the whole day was kind of thrown off.

I still got some good stuff in there though!

Chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, and roasted carrots.

For snack a little later, I had a Quest bar, which may not have been the best decision for me. From all of yesterday’s Olympic lifting, my legs were aching a bit and protein seemed like a solid idea though.

The problem was that I really didn’t like the aftertaste of the bar and had to eat a date afterwards to cleanse my palate, plus my stomach starting hurting a little later. Not sure why I eat a food that I know doesn’t always work for me!

I thought about going to yoga, but then got wrapped up in other things instead. I had a dining hall dinner of a burrito bowl with mahi mahi.

I think one of the things I don’t prefer about this bowl is that the only seasoning really seems to be citrus. I would love some more spices up in there!

Today I also had a fair amount of sugar, in the form of chocolate and cookies and hall meeting. But such is life. It’s interesting to feel the changes in my body when I eat it though!

Onto today’s topic.

Has anyone thought about the fact that so few bloggers write about obesity? Most talk about reasonably healthy (comparatively) people getting healthier. Which is great-don’t get me wrong! And maybe those people are more the audience of healthy living blogs anyways, but it seems a bit like an elephant in the room to not discuss the obesity epidemic. I’m not even going to get into the percentages in this post, because they can be looked up and are constantly changing.

Today, I cracked open this cookbook, written by one of my favorite people ever, Robert Lustig, a scientist and doctor who looks at obesity, especially in children.

I’ve talked about Robert Lustig before in the context of sugar metabolism, but this book goes a little deeper into more recent possible causes of obesity.

One of the first pages in the book directed me to this video-if you have a few minutes, it’s really interesting, and kind of mind blowing, in my opinion:

This is a TED talk addressing insulin resistance and obesity, as well as the stigma we as a society put on obese people. What was really interesting to me was when Peter Attia discusses how maybe obesity does not cause insulin resistance, but rather, obesity is a side effect of insulin resistance. It is a sign of metabolic disfunction. The hormone insulin removes sugar from the blood and stores it as fat. High levels of insulin will as a result cause more fat storage. No one could ever really figure out why obesity would lead to insulin resistance, but the other way around? It makes so much sense!

Now back to the book-where has insulin resistance come from? It’s not calories in, calories out. It is so much more than that. It’s not just about weight-some obese people do not have insulin resistance, and some normal weight people do, and are at risk for the related diseases. Listen to this: “the majority of the people today, regardless of weight, produce twice as much insulin for the same dose of glucose as people produced 30 years ago.”

Think about that for a second.

That means, MOST people are storing more fat for the calories they are eating than did people 30 years ago.

Think back to 30 years ago-think of movies. Everyone was much slimmer back then. And there wasn’t a significant shortage of food then-food isn’t really more available now.

Things like this make me angry. So angry. Our food system is toxic. In a day and age where we strive for advances that make our lives easier, we pollute our food system in a way that makes eating truly healthfully nearly impossible. (I understand that my readers may disagree with me on this point, but keep in mind, I’m speaking of the general population, which tends to lack knowledge about eating healthfully-clearly healthy living bloggers will have this a bit more figured out!)

THIS is what I want to do with my life-I want to cure the obesity epidemic. I want to uncover ever underlying cause, and help work out a solution.

But it’s not just the obese. Take me for example. I’m a pretty healthy person. I’m extremely active, I eat my veggies, I try to balance my meals. But I still crave sugar and overeat it and feel awful. I still have plenty of days where I’m dragging. I still sometimes struggle to eat healthily. I’m sure my liver isn’t happy with me for the sugar in all the cookies I ate.

How messed up is my metabolism? I’m willing to bet it’s not running as nicely as it could and or should be. And I’m a relatively healthy person.

I’m not through the book yet, and I’m still working on figuring out the toxins that are contributing to metabolic dysfunction, but what I do have to tell you guys is that I’ve been inspired, and am planning a big blog project for the near future. As a blogger, I have a voice in the community, albeit a small one. I have an opportunity to make a difference in a few people’s lives, if I take it.

I’m going to wait until everything is better planned out to give you guys all the details, but I’ll just say that I’m going to spend some time really analyzing what happens to food in our bodies as we eat. I am not going to promote any type of ‘diet’-but I will ask you to consider this: how many of you are constantly trying to lose those last few pounds? Or know someone that is? I’m willing to bet most people.

Consider this-if we store more fat per glucose now than we did in the past, of course we’re going to carry extra pounds. We’re going to work on fixing the problem of the American metabolism.

(But I promise there will be plenty of ‘normal’ blogging as well!)

Butternut Squash Soup with Citrus Cranberry Relish

Date: December 29, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Ok. This may come as a big surprise, but I have some recipes to share with you! To be fair, they’re from my grandma. But I’ve been doing some more interesting cooking!

On the fitness front, I’ve had a couple of rough Crossfit workouts, and then this morning I went to a spin class with one of my favorite instructors, which was awesome, and followed it with my new favorite treadmill run. If you’re interested, here it is!

I love intervals because it is much easier for me mentally to push myself for a shorter amount of time. I just plug in my audiobook and zone out-right now I’m listening to Divergent-has anyone read it? I really like it!

Back to food-I have a couple of things to catch you guys up on!

The other night for dinner, we roasted up a spaghetti squash and made homemade marinara sauce with fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic, and olive oil, topped with fresh mozzarella.

Yesterday, my family went to the farmer’s market and picked up a few things-most notably dried persimmons and Afghan food, which has served as a couple of lunches these past two days.

This is spinach and pumpkin bolani-the sauces are unpictured.

For dinner last night, I made stuffed sweet potatoes, filled with an over easy egg, gruyere, and sauteed kale. With a side of broccoli, ketchup, and fig balsamic tapenade.

Last night, I also prepped a big bowl of overnight oats made with frozen cherries and cherry greek yogurt. I think I’m going to do overnight oats more next quarter because it’s a pretty complete breakfast and I can just take a bite here or there pre or post workout.

And now for the recipes! My grandma made both the soup and relish for Thanksgiving this year, and I gobbled up the leftovers. The citrus cranberry relish has been a staple at Thanksgiving or Christmas for as long as I can remember, and the soup was a new addition this year because my grandma knew I am in love with butternut squash soup!

Cranberry Relish with Orange

(From Mark Bittman’s Cookbook)

1 large navel orange

4 c (about a bag) fresh cranberries

1/3-1/2 c sugar or to taste

Instructions:

1.Remove orange zest and set apart. Remove and discard white part of orange and separate orange into sections discarding white part.

2. Put orange zest and flesh in food processor with cranberries and sugar-chop.

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

(From Jeanne Lemlin’s Veg. Classics)

2 T olive oil

2 medium onions, finely diced

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 T minced fresh ginger root

1 T curry powder

4 c water

7-8 c peeled, seeded, and diced butternut squash (about 1 large 3 lb squash)

2 t sugar

1 1/4 t salt

1 (14 oz) can coconut milk

2 T lemon juice

Instructions:

1. Warm oil in large stockpot over med heat. Stir in the onions, garlic, and ginger root and cook 5 mins. Sprinkle on curry powder and cook 1 min, tossing constantly.

2. Pour in water and bring to boil. Mix in the squash, sugar, and salt, and lower heat to a lively simmer. Cook 30 min or until squash is very tender. Pour in coconut milk and simmer 5 mins. Stir in lemon juice.

3. Puree soup in blender (let cool a little first).

My favorite way to eat this is topped with creme fraiche and the above cranberry relish!

In other baking news, I was looking through Cooking Light and made the spur of the moment decision to make the Triple Chocolate Muffins.

I think this was a good recipe, but I went wrong by using whole wheat pastry flour in place of normal-as a result the muffins were a bit dry and crumbly. I usually don’t think twice about swapping the two flours, but I guess most of my baking is banana bread, or variations on banana bread, and the banana gives it a little extra moisture.

On the life front, I spent most of the day trying to figure classes, declaring major, spin jobs. I think I found a couple of places to apply once I do my CPR certification this week, but one of them I think is a pretty long shot.

Have a great week everybody! Anybody have exciting plans for New Year’s? I currently do not-but I’m working on it!

My Little Adorable Wake-up Call

Date: December 20, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I must admit, I haven’t been the greatest about posting. Or at least it seems! With Christmas less than a week away, there seems to be so much to do! I think I’m actually more or less done with Christmas shopping. I CANNOT wait to share with you guys what I’m doing for people, but it will have to wait until after the recipients who read my blog have opened their presents!

I never recapped my last day (ok, morning) in Solvang!

Here are a few of the last pastries of the trip (or of the next few months-WHEW we ate a lot of pastries!)

Blueberry boat.

Cappuccino at an adorable bakery.

A much more delicious version of a poptart.

On our way out of town, we stopped to see mini horses. I really want one. Not quite as much as an ostrich, but still!

It was a long drive home, but a delicious and interesting dinner made up for it. I tried Ethiopian food for the first time! (For others in the area, it was called Walia).

I honestly couldn’t tell you what anything was. We got somethings with chicken, some things with other meat, and veggie combos. But really, everything I tried was excellent. What is really cool also is how the food is served. There were no utensils-the table got served all the dishes on a giant platter.

(Excuse the awkward hand in the picture).

This was served with Injera, which is sort of like a spongy bread made with teff. It has a vaguely sourdough flavor, which was great to cut the spice.

You use the Injera as a utensil and kind of just go at it. Being the totally neat person that I am, somehow I ended up totally soiling 3 napkins, and still ending up with food all over my hands, while the rest of my family had barely used one napkin. I don’t get it!

And then Thursday. That was an interesting day, thanks to a 4:30 am wakeup, courtesy of this little guy:

He’s sort of in the habit of coming into my room in the middle of the night-loudly. For some reason, at 4:30am, he desperately needs attention, and won’t stop meowing and purring, which would be great and all if I actually wanted to be awake then…

I went to my home gym for a spin class with one of my favorite teachers, and then desperately needed to go to yoga because I’m so tight, but yoga was an awkward amount of time from the end of spin-not really enough to leave…so I killed time by doing some abs and a treadmill workout. I started with an 8:00 mile, and then did 10 2:00 intervals at about a 7:30 pace, with 2:00 of walking in between. It was a good one-my legs were done by the end. I’ve been really loving running lately-ever since my 5k, I’m starting to feel faster in my every day runs. I think part of my problem was being overly ambitious in my 5k-I wanted to break 24:00, when I should have been racing to break 25:00-next race I will definitely not go out so fast!

After yoga, I over caffeinated myself with a curiously strong cappuccino.

After some quick grocery and Christmas shopping, it was lunchtime! I picked up some turkey apricot soup at Whole Foods, plus some carrots and guacamole.

Whole Foods’s eggnog selection was quite dissapointing-they didn’t have either of the two types I was hoping for. I got a baby jar instead-it was good but very vanilla flavored.

My afternoon was spent cursing my printer and working on Christmas things. Then, I threw a bunch of things together for dinner, and the flavors worked really well together!

The basica idea was sweet potato nachos-all the toppings, but with sweet potatoes in place of chips. The result reminded me more of deconstructed veggie tacos, or a Mexican style vegetarian chili.

Topping the sliced sweet potatoes was this mixture-my idea was for this to be black beans, but I’m also trying to incorporate more veggies into my life, so I added some kale, and half a can of diced tomatoes and jalapenos, plus salt, pepper, and taco seasoning. (Of you’re wondering about the things in there that look like carrots and cabbage, the only kale I found came in a ‘salad mix.’)

Then, I topped everything off with guacamole (of course), fresh salsa, and cheddar cheese.

And believe me, much more guacamole was added after the fact. I’m just a little obsessed. I’m seriously considering making a 2014 calendar consisting only of avocados. Too far?

And with that, I leave you. Hope everyone has a great day-and remember, I’ll do the drawing for my 12 Days of Christmas Giveaway tonight at 9:00pm PST.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever woken up to?

Given I’m cat-deprived, I can’t complain about Charlie too much. I used to have this alarm clock that had nature sounds, and for some reason it was set to blast the sound of rain as my alarm, so it sounded like extremely loud static. Not pleasant.