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WIAW-Short and Sweet

Happy WIAW! Today’s post is going to be short and sweet (literally sweet!). Yayy midterm season. On the plus side, I’m starting to regain my Spanish (ish) accent thanks to singing along to lots of Spanish songs. I love Spanish music!

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…And that was clearly a relevant into to WIAW!

I’ve been feeling a bit uninspired in terms of blogging lately, and I think it may reflect the fact that I’ve been struggling to maintain good eating habits as of late as well. That’s definitely something to work on! I’m past the point in my life where I freak out about my eating habits sliding, and instead I just accept that it happens and eventually will work itself out. More veggies are in order-that usually helps!

So, here are some shots from the past couple of days!

A cappuccino was clearly in order on  Monday morning…

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The craziest thing happened…I drank beet juice and didn’t hate it completely! I keep buying vegetable juice thinking I’m going to like it, and more often than not, this isn’t the case. This was was pretty good-beets, apples, cranberries, cucumbers, and ginger among other things I’m most likely forgetting. And it was such a pretty color!

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Dining hall dinners are, as always, a thing. This one was fairly unexciting-quinoa, salad, roasted cinnamon carrots (ok, those were exciting), and overcooked fish.

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Monday night, a late night bout of deliciousness happened. We have a place on campus open late, and I’ve seen people before with these incredible, giant, chocolately creations, so with the help of my sister, it was time to try it out. This was a HOT gooey brownie, topped with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce. It was as good as it sounds. Sadly, the ice cream fell off before I could get a good picture!

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This morning, I did a track workout. I did 5x1000m at a 10k pace. I’m liking the 10k pace for longer track workouts or for longer intervals. It’s much easier mentally to not totally be dying! Plus, not dying is good since I’m just getting back into speed work! After my workout, I made what is probably my new favorite breakfast: quinoa (Trader Joe’s has pre-cooked frozen, for those of us without kitchens, or who are lazy-I won’t judge!), kale, tomato, and basil, mixed up and topped with roasted sunflower seeds. The fresh basil totally makes this dish!

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Today was an absolutely beautiful day. Or a hot day, depending on your opinion. It was 90-but I’ve spent so many years roasting my brains out at hot softball fields (117-sounds like great softball weather!) that I think my body has permanently adjusted to not really feeling heat. Anyways, I spent the afternoon outside biking around campus and looking at plants for my Bio problem set. True Bio problems.

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And getting a tan. Clearly. Hah. I’m 99% sure given my skin tone that I have a much better chance of turning myself orange from eating to many carrots than getting tan. Such is the life of a person with an off-snow skin tone.

And here are some artsy-ish/I needed pictures to refer to later when doing my homework shots.

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It occurred to me that I have such a beautiful campus, and really need to bike around and take pictures of it for you all to see!

Afterwards, it was hot so the logical conclusion is gelato. Right…?

Salted caramel gelato, which i garnished with a chocolate covered pretzel.

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Dinner was a quick one thrown together by yours truly. A bed of kale, shredded chicken meatballs, a baby sweet potato, salsa, and of course, the most important component, avocado.

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…and now I desperately need to return to studying. So much for SHORT and sweet!

How’s the weather where you are? What do you eat when it gets hot?

Back to Life (WIAW)

WHEW. What an absolutely insane couple of days! My schedule was insane and I’m still running around a bit like a crazy person but it’s whatever. Since I haven’t posted food in forever, this will double as WIAW!

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Things didn’t get too super crazy until Friday. Thursday I got sound wave treatment on my Achilles. It was kind of strange, kind of painful, and extremely short. I have to go back 2 more times. I think it helped? I’ve been on my feet ALL weekend which normally KILLS my achilles, and I have been able to walk so I’m taking that as a good sign! Here’s some Thursday food: IMG_7321 IMG_7322 IMG_7323

So, the dining hall has been stepping up breakfast lately. Bread pudding? Of course I’m going to try that! I’m kind of in love with the blueberry bread pudding. SO good. But really sweet for breakfast! Next time I might bring some back for later! They also had sticky buns. IMG_7329

Lunch-carrots and meatballs. With a side of finally declaring my major! Bio all the way! IMG_7328

I love the shirt, haha! IMG_7332

Super simple dinner-chicken caesar salad and a warm, buttery roll. Sometimes the simplest things are the best. This was followed by a treat thought-the dining hall had a big fat of HOT brownie! IMG_7333

Umm YUM. Friday morning I did a weight lifting work out that didn’t use my achilles so it could rest after the treatment. I did front squats, good mornings, back squats, and RDLs, and then finished with abs. IMG_0030

Breakfast was actually in the dining hall! I tried a weird mixture of steel cut oats, cottage cheese, golden raisins, and later banana, and really wasn’t feeling it. Also pictured is blueberry bread pudding. 🙂IMG_0031

Hey, you can’t win them all! So, the craziness REALLY got underway. Friday I met with a girl in my sorority for dinner….at 3:45….to talk about her experience abroad in Chile. We had to meet to start prepping everything at 4:30. Last weekend was formal recruitment for my sorority. The way my school handles this is that every girl has to go to these little “parties” with every chapter. So Friday we were there 4:30-12:30, and I didn’t get in bed until 3. My entire Saturday consisted of sleeping ish in, Crossfit, a quick trip to Whole Foods, a nap, and then returning for night 2 of recruitment. I went to Whole Foods for one reason: it’s the absolute best time of year. IMG_7337

MANGO SEASON. When they start going on sale is when they really start being great. I bought 8 mangoes. Which I will admit is a far cry from the 29 I had last year… I also picked up a quick lunch. Brunch? Dinner? IMG_7338

A green smoothie and a blueberry muffin. My meal schedule was so weird. I had very few actual meals. Saturday, we were there from 5pm-2am, when we were physically kicked out of the building. Sunday, unless you count the pb&j (ish) tortilla at 2, my dinner consisted of animal crackers. So there’s that. I was really dreading rush, I must admit, but it ended up being pretty fun. I met and talked to some pretty cool people, and had a shockingly good time performing a ridiculous dance for all our potential new members. There is a video, but I’m pretty sure the Internet does not need to see that. I also developed some bizarre allergy thing on Friday, AKA right as all this craziness started. I must be allergic to something that was blooming, because it’s a lot better now. However, my weird allergy thing plus talking to people for 7 hours a night, plus screaming and singing insanely, my voice has been GONE since Saturday. By the end of the night, I could barely make a sound. The last girl I talked to was legitimately concerned for me! The craziness continued after rush for me-I got out at midnight on Sunday night, and had the pleasure of going home to write and prepare an oral presentation for the next day, as well as write a Spanish paper.  Monday was filled with class and meetings, and a bid day party for our new members. We didn’t get as many as we would have liked, especially given all the time and energy we put into the process, but it is what it is. IMG_0029

Me plus my giraffe, and a baby giraffe for a new member. The craziness continued through this morning. We hosted a breakfast for new members…in my dorm room at 7am. So my room needed to be clean, and I needed to be awake. I didn’t get a chance for a workout at all yesterday, and the day before all I had time for was 20 minutes of HIIT on the Spin bike! Craziness! IMG_7344 IMG_7345

Breakfast was matzah eggs and fruit, since it’s Passover and we’re a historically Jewish sorority. And before class, I made sure to grab coffee. I actually went with my sister! My real sister who despite the fact that she goes to the same school as me, you never see her pop up on here because I never see her! IMG_7346

Big sis and little sis coffee. I will never understand how she can handle so much more caffeine than I can! Ok-WHEW. We’re almost caught up. On the workout front, I decided to run TO Crossfit today. It’s just over 2 miles each way, so it made for a good first run post-half marathon. It was definitely more difficult on the way back though! And LASTLY (I promise, I know this has been a marathon post), dinner tonight: a beautiful avocado atop sweet potato, turkey meatball, and salsa.                           IMG_7347IMG_7348

And now, I’m off to get a start on the million and one things I need to do today!

Catch me up on your lives-what’s new?

WIAW-How We Do Vacations

WOW. I seem to have gotten a bit behind on posting, haven’t I? Thanks to Jenn, we can catch up somewhat in the form of WIAW!

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Friday afternoon, I finally made it home. I was really excited to do 14.4 at my home Crossfit! Since they only have 2 rowing machines, those of us not officially signed up for the open did an 800m run instead of rowing. I wasn’t sure how this workout would go-I’ve never been able to do toes to bar before! I ended up doing it for the first time ever, and getting 5 reps in before I kept failing and decided to just finish with knees to elbows so I could continue in the workout. I ended up getting up to 15 cleans before the 14 minute time ran out.

For my first dinner at home, we ordered food from a local favorite and I had chicken and rice soup. 85% of the reason I order this is because of the avocado!

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Plus a side salad.

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One of the perks of being home-raiding the pantry and or freezer. We always have amazing fudge sauce on hand, so I made a sundae with frozen yogurt and zucchini bread (on the bottom). The zucchini bread was from the freezer!

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For breakfast before Crossfit Saturday morning, I stuffed a whole wheat tortilla with sunflower seed butter, raspberries, and banana, and microwaved it until it was warm and gooey.

At Crossfit, most of the other people were doing 14.4 so I got to choose my own workout from the WODs that everyone had done for the week. I chose one that looked fun-it included pull ups, hand stand push ups (which I did with a box), and front squats. It was a very poor decision to chose anything that involved hanging from a bar, after so many toes to bar/knees to elbows the day before! My hands were SO done!

After Crossfit, my family and I drove down to Monterey for a little weekend vacation. On the way, we stopped at a little bagel shop that we used to always go to when we had softball tournaments.

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A turkey and avocado sandwich on a whole wheat bagel.

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Taro bubble tea, which actually turned out to be blended-which meant it was a smoothie like texture with tapioca balls at the bottom. I actually enjoyed this flavor-I’ve never tried it before!

For dinner the first night, my family ordered room service and split salads, potato skins (I haven’t had these in YEARS), and roasted artichoke.

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Sunday morning was my long run day. I’m officially in taper! 9 miles it was for me! I made sure to carb load up before running.

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I’m slightly concerned that I haven’t had my typical pre-run breakfast a single time before a long run during this training cycle. I’ve done a few of the runs in the afternoon, which I’ve never done before, and I guess I just didn’t bother with it before then. 

I found a trail that took me from our hotel, along the water through downtown Monterey. 

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I was probably not nearly as well rested as I would have liked to be but the run went fine! The thing was, we ended up not getting to eat lunch until super late! We finished lunch around 4!

My family decided to walk around Monterey in search of lunch, and I was instantly drawn to a little restaurant that was all about artichokes.

To start, we shared a fire roasted artichoke and artichoke dip.

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For my main dish, I ordered a turkey and avocado sandwich on a croissant. It came with roasted artichoke soup.

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This definitely hit the spot after 9 miles. More importantly than lunch, however, was dessert. Which is basically how my family does vacations. DESSERT.

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A brownie hot fudge sundae from Ghiradelli. Yummmm. 

For some crazy reason, we weren’t hungry for dinner yet! On my run, I found that there is a little Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey, which we had never heard of! We rented a 4 wheeled bike-car thing, which was a lot of fun!

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The biggest attraction of Fisherman’s Wharf was the caramel apples, and we picked up a couple for later.

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I also saw Divergent-I’ve been listening to the audiobooks of the series on my long runs so I was excited to see it! I thought it was pretty good. My gripe is probably only because I read the book, but I felt like they left out a lot of details that while if they included everything the movie would be insanely long, I felt that without them the movie was a bit confusing.

Dinner was cheese and crackers and a caramel apple. 

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Monday was our last morning, and we drove to Carmel to explore the little shops. A highlight? Cheese tasting!

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Followed by tasting lots of little tapenades and sauces at a fancy little foodie store. We walked away with some quality white balsamic, which I cannot wait to use!

For lunch, we stopped at a Mediterranean place with amazing hot bread. I had some delicious and perfectly cooked salmon with saffron sauce.

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They also brought out a little complimentary dessert!

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After lunch, we walked down to the beach to soak up some beautiful views.

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Before dessert round 2! 

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In my family, if you don’t roll home from a vacation, you’re not doing it right! There was lots of great food over the weekend, but I’m definitely happy to return to a routine today!

How do you eat on vacations?

 

WIAW-Finals Week!

Happy Wednesday! I’m finally done with 2 of my finals, so my schedule has opened up a bit so I have time to blog! I’ve been so far behind on sharing food pics with you guys! Good thing it’s What I Ate Wednesday!

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I promise I’ve actually been eating things besides chocolate chip cookies lately!

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A burrito bowl with salmon.

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A whole wheat pancake with Greek yogurt and fruit.

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Giant containers of vegetable soup.

On Friday, I baked Hamentaschen, a traditional Jewish cookie made on Purim, to sell and donate the proceeds to charities my sorority supports. They’re basically jam cookies, and they came out really well!

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I definitely bought a couple on Sunday! So delicious! And they revived my Bio-slaughtered brain in the middle of my studying marathon.

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Cottage cheese with sunflower seed butter and berries.

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x2.

Since Friday was Pi day (3.14), I made my own contribution to the cause in the form of a mini-sort of pie.

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The “crust” was sunflower seed butter, banana, oats, and vanilla. Which is a delicious combo!

Topped with berry compote:

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I actually wasn’t a fan of the combo, and opted to separate the berries and the “crust.”

Friday night I went a bit overboard at the Whole Foods hot/salad bar and made a massive plate. At least I thought to get a box to take some home!

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This salad was insanely epic. It included all kinds of delicious veggies-shredded beets, cauliflower, marinated mushrooms, a bit of guacamole. I topped it with some apple cider vinegar and olive oil. And on the very top is Chicken Masala and a lentil dish. SO delicious. 

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Another study snack.

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Brunch-a salad with beans, rice, and salsa plus a biscuit.

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Lunch from the Grad school cafeteria while studying. I decided to go somewhere different to study for a change! This salad had an apple cider vinaigrette, and included egg, artichoke hearts, cauliflower, roasted sweet potatoes, and golden raisins.

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Another burrito bowl dinner tonight, plus brussels sprouts and mushroom gratin on the side. The bowl was beans, fresh salsa, mango salsa, cheese, corn, and TONS of salmon. I think there were like 2 fishes worth of salmon in there! The gratin was SO good. I may need to recreate this sometime at home!

And now we’re all caught up!

What’s your favorite way to eat brussels sprouts?

 

WIAW-Lately

Hey guys! It’s Wednesday and I’ve officially on that dead week grind. I have an infinite amount of studying to do before Monday, but a collection of delicious things from the past few days is a great way to break it up! Thanks as always to Jenn for hosting!

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To be perfectly honest, I have not been super inspired with my blogging lately. I may be having a mid-life blog crisis. What is the purpose really of my blog? Should I make my writing voice more formal? Is this really a “healthy living blog”? What does that even mean? What valuable content can I contribute to the vastness that is the Internet? I’m also starting to think about myself and how to be a better person. I think that’s something we can all work on! It’s interesting because I have a post from sometime around this time last year talking about a similar thing. Although of course it sounds silly looking back on it now just in the way I worded everything!

I suppose my current contribution to the Internet is my food as a college student. Which means easy and microwave friendly, more often than not! And many times lazy-I am not ashamed of ziplock bag pictures! (Ok, maybe I am.)

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This is an easy breakfast that never gets old. An orange and scrambled eggs with interesting cheese. Microwave scrambled eggs are SO easy, and are indistinguishable from stove scrambled eggs. And a quality cheese completely makes the dish.

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Brunch of a whole wheat waffle and a little bit of yogurt+fruit. Image

Dining hall dinner-Indian food! I admit, I ate virtually zero vegetables this day, and normally I would have a bed of spinach in there, but some days I’m just really not feeling it.

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A ziplock bag lunch which is always a winner, and so, so easy. Simply microwave (or bake if you’re fancier than I am and have an oven) a sweet potato, season, and top with salsa! I have little guacamole packets which I put on at lunch time. I also packed some hardboiled eggs for protein. To season, I used this amazing salt blend:

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This is SO GOOD. It has a very smoky flavor, and reminds me a bit of barbecue sauce.

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This dining hall dinner was a complete WIN. I seriously lucked out. Salsa baked chicken, cilantro brown rice, salad, and the star of the show-roasted cauliflower and carrots! I don’t know why the dining hall always insists on steaming cauliflower, so this was quite the treat! I definitely brought back some to pack in my lunch for the next day.

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My yogurt mess really is quite the mess in this picture because it rode around with me all day. It is reduced berries with sunflower seed butter and plain yogurt-my favorite!

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If you haven’t tried dried persimmons, this should be a priority in your life. We all know I was a tad obsessed with fresh persimmons this fall, and while these definitely aren’t the same, they seem to disappear quite quickly!

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In other things that you should go out and buy: this. Now. Run. It’s delicious! Everything I could have hoped for and more. Creamy goat cheese, sweet and fruity blueberries. Amazing.

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An unexpected treat-dinner in the form of a care package from home! Vegetable soup and a corn and cheese cake. There was another cake as well but it seemed to disappear before the picture was taken! Yum!

I guess one contribution I have to the healthy living world right now is my attempt at a microwave St. Patrick’s Day cookie. Which may actually be made in the oven if I can get the microwave version to turn out first (it’s lower commitment!) 

I did make one major mistake though. Check out the results:

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Pre-“baking.” (Wouldn’t it be awesome to have an Easy Bake Oven in a dorm room??)

Post-“baking.”

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These don’t really look like St. Patrick’s Day cookies, do they? Let me explain. 

We already know about the Mystery Bread I’m obsessed with. (Which is now solved, by the way!)

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See the green things? Those are sunflower seeds. Sunflower seeds react to turn green under certain baking conditions. I wanted to make green sunflower seed butter cookies. I SWEAR I thought it was baking powder that caused the reaction, but I failed to check before producing marvelously un-green cookies. It’s actually baking soda. So attempt #2 will come soon! The good news is, they tasted great!

On the fitness front, today I did one of the “girls” at Crossfit-Helen. This is 3 rounds of a 400m run, 21 kettle bell swings, and 12 pull ups. This one is harder than it sounds! I’m happy to report that I beat my last time by about 20 seconds, but I used much less assistance (a thinner band) on the pull ups! 

Tomorrow, I’m supposed to run 6 miles but I’m considering cutting it to 5. Today is my heaviest week of running on my training plan (4,6,4,12 miles), and despite following the training plan twice already, I’ve never actually fit in all the runs for the heaviest week! My calves are feeling a bit tight so I might cut it to 5 and then play it by ear. Lots of rolling out will be happening tonight between studying though!

Have a great week!

Any fun St. Patrick’s Day Traditions?