Author Archives: Emily

Pan Panic

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Whew, it feels like a while since I’ve been here!  I was in a terrible mood yesterday, I’m glad I was too busy to post because I’m not sure how chipper I could have been.  I was out of control hungry all day and in a god-awful mood and I ended up eating all sorts of junk.  On the plus side – I didn’t break my vegan challenge, my house is much much cleaner, and reading all your wonderful comments on my running post put me in a better mood! 

I will show off my newest layer-tastic outfit though  🙂  This vest is one of my favorite items of clothing.

And you better believe I’ve got another layered look planned for Thursday!

Today is going to be pretty crazy as well.  I had lab this morning and the husband has an observation this afternoon so I’m stuck on campus all day.  Once he’s all done and picked me up we are heading straight to Target – our nonstick pans are peeling and I’m pretty sure we are cooking our way to cancer!!!  😮

This morning I got up a bit early to pack a lunch and whipped up some smoothies for Adam and I.

~2cups frozen strawberries + 2cups Silk Light Chocolate Soy Milk + 1scoop chocolate Amazing Grass = tasty smoothie x 2

Lab went well, we had a substitute and we got out super quickly.  I’ve made good use of my campus time thus far.  I finished all of my post-lab calculations and I am officially 2 weeks ahead on my pre-lab work!  Then I started some reading and cracked open my lunch box 🙂

These leftover roasted veggies were soooo good, even better than the first night!

I ate half of this bag of baby carrots.

And I’m about to drink this Naked Blue Machine I picked up at volunteering.

The juice is pretty concentratedly caloric (340 per bottle) but I planned on it being the “bulk” of my lunch so it works out well.

I’ve got to get back to work!  When you ‘see’ me again I’ll be the proud owner of a new set of pans!

What kind of pans do you have?  Any recommendations or horror stories?  I’ve been pretty pleased with our pans but now that they are peeling in little flakes I’m a little freaked out.  Our selection will definitely be informed by our budget, but I want to make sure we get something that will allow us to cook healthfully.

I Love Green Monsters So Much I Want to Marry Them

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I’ll get back to the title in a moment.  First, did you read my last post?  It explains all about the situation with my half marathon.  Please do read it, I would love some input from my wise readers.

This morning I stretched breakfast and lunch out and together across 3 small snack-meals.  First things first, a lemon poppyseed cookie.

Then a small bowl of Kashi Go Lean Crunch with plain skim soy milk.

Finally, my new love – I made my first green monster!

I blended 1 frozen banana with a squeeze of honey, 1cup frozen spinach, and 1cup oj.  Holy yum!  This was tangy and healthy and awesome.

I’ve got to run now to go pick up Adam on my way to school.  He needs the car but he is going to sit in on Anthro with me this afternoon first and I am so excited!  I’m probably going to be late at school waiting for Adam and we have some may-jor cleaning planned for this evening so don’t get to anxious for an evening post 🙂

Have you tried gms yet?  What do you think?

My Love Hate Relationship

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I have a love/hate relationship with running.  I love it, but sometimes running doesn’t seem to love me back. 

Running is my singlemost favorite thing on the planet.  Even when I compare it with things like diet coke, popcorn, and dachshunds, running brings me the most joy.  My happiest moments in life, other than times with my husband, have been during a good run.  And cardiovascularly, even though I seem to suck at everything else, I am made for running.  The few 5+mile runs I’ve gotten to do have been a cinch, and always leave me wanting more.

But my legs seem not to want to cooperate.  Since I was in high school, at random intervals I’ve had hip, knee, ankle, and shin problems.  Bad joints run in my family (my dad was a runner in his 20s and had to quit entirely because of his knees) and I know eventually I will probably have early arthritis in some or all of those spots.  I was diagnosed with tendonitis earlier this year and it seems to be back with a vengeance.  I really think that I CAN be a runner though.  Most of my problems now can be linked back to the fact that I ran improperly because of my surgery foot and the fact that I keep getting impatient and trying to up my mileage too quickly.  Not training properly for my half was a huge mistake.

So where does that leave me with my half marathon???

I am signed up, with one of my best friends, for the Disney Princess Half Marathon on March 7th.  As of right now I can’t seem to run a mile without pain in my left shin.  The Half is 12 days away.  My friend is not ready either, I think her longest run to date has been less than 3miles.  But we are going to try.

I genuinely believe that most people, even couch potatoes, could probably go out to a race and finish 13miles.  And through a combination of running and walking, I am going to try and go finish those 13miles.  It is likely that I will hurt myself so badly I will have to stop halfway through.  It is even more likely that I will not be able to keep up the minimum pace and will be pulled off the course.  Either way, I am going to try.  I paid for this race – I want to at least see some of the sites and have a little bit of the experience.

I am really not sure what kind of range of people signed up for this Half, but it seems like a definite possibility that if I finish I will come in last.  I’ve come in last in more than half of the races I’ve ever run in.  At a race in high school I came in waaay last and then proceeded to puke my guts out.  And I’ve been cool with it.  I am a secure enough person not to be too shaken up by my last place, although it is embarrassing.  But in a BIG race like this Disney run?  I am terrified.  It is going to be MASSIVELY embarrassing.  But I’m going to try anyways, and hopefully my friend will be able to be with me through the whole awful/wonderful thing.

How do I feel now though???

Disgusted with myself.  I truly didn’t think I could lose as much respect for myself as I have.  It’s one thing to set a goal and not achieve it, but I didn’t even try.  I didn’t just want the experience of running a half marathon, I wanted the experience of training for one.  And more than $100 later in race fees I don’t have that.

I am pissed that I have tendonitis.  I am pissed that I had foot surgery. I am really pissed that I probably have tendonitis from running funny on my surgery foot.  But I am rational, and I understand that sometimes things happen.  I know that I have to let go of that anger.

But I can stay angry with myself.  All the out of my control stuff aside, I would be in a better race place right now if I had trained properly.  My training log is a joke.  Stretching daily would have helped.  Strength training would have helped.  Ultimately, I hope that I have learned from this.

So what happens next???

I’m pretty sure I’m going to be in intense pain post-half.  Whether I do 13miles or 4miles my body is not ready for either.  And obviously I’m going to push through more pain on race day then I would reasonably do in general.  I plan on taking at least 7 – 14 days off my legs after the race.

Then, I’m going to train again.  I’ve already written up a plan, I’ll be posting it later, to sloooooooowly increase my mileage.  I am going to start at 1mile – just one mile, absolutely no more in a given day – adding 1/2 a mile each week.  With lots of strength training and stretching built in.  I CAN run long distances.  I CAN be a runner.  I just have to approach it in a more mature way.

Advice?  Thoughts?  Criticisms?  Stories of your own to share?

I’m a Chickpea Kind of Chick

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I did go to the Spot as planned, but first I had a few other things on the agenda.  Like eat a lemon poppyseed cookie –

And do the quickest gym trip ever: 11minutes (1.14miles) on the treadmill followed by 10minutes of strength training.  I was on a tight schedule and I didn’t want to do much anyways because I’ve got the strangest interval session ever planned for tomorrow morning.

My study session went very well, and while I was there I ended up accidentally ordering a FEAST.

The diet coke was obvious, but the roasted red pepper hummus sounded tasty so I ordered that as well.  I had no idea it was going to be so big!

I ate 3 breadsticks and ~2-3T of hummus, thankfully Adam showed up later to finish off the rest.

I enjoyed a cara cara orange when I got home,

and then I made a delicious dinner, officially checking off all my to-do’s for today, yay!  We had the 2nd half of this box of falafel mix to use up,

but this time we fried the falafels.  Which was hella fun because it meant we got to use our tongs for the first time.

Frying produced such better results than when we baked them.  Our side dish was delicious too, against all odds.  I made Roasted Cauliflower, Chickpeas, and Olives from Cooking Light, but I realized to late that my olives were not pitted.  I went ahead with the dish, sans olives, but I cooked it for about twice as long as the recipe recommended.

All total dinner was a raging success!

Pretty good for a Monday 🙂

What is your favorite way to eat chick peas? I like falafel the best, then hummus, but I want to experiment more with roasted.  That method is taking blogworld by storm and I think if I slow-roast it could become a favorite.

Death and Taxes

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Hey guys!  Sorry for rushing out on you last night, I managed to get to the hospital just in time so that neither the husband nor I had to wait.

This morning I went with a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast before volunteering.

I topped 1/3 cup oats with a splash of soymilk, a big shake of cinnamon, 1t maple syrup, and natural peanut butter.

Delish!  The mix of flavors in this was great.  I usually am not the biggest oats fan (especially without banana) but lately it’s been tasting so good to me.

Volunteering went well today, they kept me super busy for a change.  There’s another volunteer on my same shift now and we get along really well so it makes the time pass all the more quickly.  On my way out I used my lunch voucher to fill up a little container of pineapple.

Then for lunch lunch I made a big plate of roasted veggies.

Okra fries,

and kale crisps with garlic powder on them.

Sadly my tasty lunch was ruined by the fact that I was on hold for 15+ minutes trying to get my W-2 form.  I still just can’t quite get myself away from the soul-crush that is the NYC DOE.

I have plans for a study date this afternoon at the Spot and then a quick but fun dinner.  Hope everyone is having a great Monday!

Have you started your taxes yet?  Do you go it alone or have someone/a service help you out?  We are using H&R Block this year.  Our goal was to finish them weeks ago but the lack of w-2 forms is really gumming up the works.

When Life Hands You Lemons

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It’s been a packed (but great) day and I have to leave the house in exactly 15minutes to pick up the husband from a hospital shift so I’ll make this speedy.

Our last night of family time was a lot of fun.  We watched “Zombieland” which was actually pretty fantastic.  I did some pretty serious damage on these chips and salsa (2-2.5servings) before I told the husband to take them away from me.

Then I switched to a much more munchable baby carrots.

For breakfast the boys hit up McDonalds, I want to call their food greasy but it’s hard to judge when you ask for a diet coke before 10am.

I was starving so I made up 2packets of oats.

Mmmn!

We streeeeeeetched out our goodbyes but finally got on the road around 11, our trip was an easy 4hours.  When it was my turn to drive I ate a medium french fry from Wendys.

Really quick – the point of the vegan challenge is sooo not to eat french fries but my only options were fast food that I could eat while driving and I was starving.

I can’t even tell you how proud I am of the dinner I pulled together with our empty fridge.

It was so healthy and tasty, rocked my socks!

Quick quick – while the husband cooked some balsmatti rice I marinated 1/2 a package of chopped tempeh in apple cider vinegar and tamari.  Then I sautéed an onion on the stove, and added in a can of collard greens.  Finally I poured the tempeh and marinade into the skillet, added a pinch of cornstarch and cooked.  The bowls were rice, greens, tempeh, + your choice of seasonings.  I did a big dollop of chilli garlic paste.

Perfection!

I had to drop off the husband at his shift and then I did some restocking at the grocery store.  On my drive home I grabbed a  Simply Lemonade.

For $1.50 I was pretty darn impressed with this.

And it was the perfect match with the baking I did when I got home!

Lemon Poppyseed Cookies from Eat Drink and Be Vegan.

I had two and was, as usual, blown away by the awesomeness of the recipes in that book.  Sweet and tangy and yummy.

Now I’ve got to split, I hope y’all had a great weekend!!!

Packed Snacks Save the Day

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It’s been a great day of family fun.  Bowling was great; especially because we had the bumpers up so I scored more than a 40 for a change!

While at the alley I snacked on a Buddy Fruit pouch.

Mushed fruit pouches are kind of my favorite thing but I never buy them because of the packaging waste.  However, the road trip seemed like a good excuse and it was a nice treat.

I tried to eat this Chocolate Green Superfood bar.

Eeeeeeyuck!  I had a bite, and I regretted it, the flavor tasted way off to me.

Unfortunately the superfood bar had been my main plan for the evening and I was starving by the time we made it to dinner.  I had a slice of bread (x2).

I’m not 100% that this was vegan but I was starting to feel faint by the time we sat down.

For my meal I ordered a plain veggie wrap.

Another failure; the wrap was chunks of cold lettuce with cooked peppers, which I hate.  I demolished the fries but couldn’t even choke down half of the sandwich.

Thankfully I had a better back up plan for dinner.  I’ve been eyeing these Allergaroo packages for months and I was glad to have an excuse to buy one.

The nutritional stats were pretty impressive and the meal was super tasty and ready in under a minute.  It would be super easy to stir in some veggies to this too.

All total this was probably my hardest day of the vegan challenge.  I am still pretty hungry (starving actually) and will definitely do some snacking this evening.  We are heading home tomorrow so I’ve got to soak in some family time but I’ll do a snack recap in the morning.  Good night!

What “for kids” foods are you a fan of?  I kind of love them all 😉

Deers Eat Oats, and Does Eat Oats, But Little Lambs Eat Ivy

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The boys stayed up past 4am last night playing video games and for some reason I thought it’d be a great idea to sit up with them.  Nooooooooooo.

Somehow I managed to drag myself out of bed for breakfast around 10.  I packed a packed of Apple and Cinnamon quick oats from home.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this (Adam got the packet in a med school care package).  I wouldn’t go with added sugars and finer cut oats on a daily basis, but as a convenience item it was pretty tasty.

I also had a tropical fruit cup I found at the store last night.

There wasn’t a lot of fresh fruit available, we went at closing time, but the nutritional stats on this were pretty good.

Lunch was another marriage of home food and in-law food.  The banana and almond butter packet from home,

on a hamburger bun.

Yums.  I think this is a snack I will be repeating at home!

It’s nap time around the house now, but this afternoon we are going bowling!  I had hoped to get in a run while we were here but my left leg hurts so bad I can barely walk, what the hell is the deal?!?  Post-bowling we are going out to dinner, and I think the family consensus is Mexican, so we’ll have to see how many vegan choices I have.  See you in a while, crocodiles!

How do you make your oatmeal?  Microwave, stove top, quick oats, packets, overnight???  I do Old Fashioned Oats, but in the microwave or soaked overnight.