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Excited!

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First things first, my exciting news – one of my best friends and I just registered for the Disney Princess Half Marathon in March!  I am super excited but very nervous.  I am sure you will hear lots lots more about it in the upcoming months, especially once I start my training in September.

My parents had lots of excitment for us at the post office –

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They sent magazines, books, bath products, and a huge stack of cookbooks I’ve stored at home for the last few years.

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That isn’t even all of them, some didn’t make the cut!

They also mailed the two adorable vases I bought an Anthropologie years before I had anywhere to put them.

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Now they are right at home on my cookbook shelf 🙂

Adam and I spent some time talking about his first day and looking over his schedule and then we got started on dinner.  We made a recipe from the March issue of Fitness in under 30minutes!  I’ll post the recipe below but just to warn you, I’m not so big on measuring – I used way less cilantro and peanuts than called for, and more chicken because the husband scoffed at the suggested portion.  Also, where it called for sesame oil and red pepper I used 1t of the chipotle oil* my mom sent instead.

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Here was my portion –

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It was pretty darn delicious.

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Cilantro Chicken with Peanuts, serves 2, from the March ’09 issue of Fitness

  • 8oz skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into strips
  • 1t cooking oil
  • 2t reduced sodium soy sauce
  • 1t rice vinegar
  • 1/2t roasted sesame oil
  • 1/4t crushed red pepper flakes
  • 3/4C fresh cilantro leaves
  • 2C Chinese cabbage, finely shredded
  • 2T dry roasted peanuts
  1. In a medium nonstick skillet, cook chicken over medium-high heat 3-4minutes, or until chicken is tender and no longer pink.
  2. Add soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, and pepper.  Stir and cook 1 more minute.
  3. Remove from heat.  Stir in cilantro.
  4. To serve, spoon mixture over cabbage and sprinkle on peanuts.

If you follow the recipe the nutritional stats per serving are: 231calories, 30g protein, 6g carbohydrates, 10g fat (2g saturated), 4g fiber.

After dinner I ate a serving of Lindt mini truffles (180calories for 3, in fantastmic flavors like cappuccino, caramel, and hazelnut) before I got ready to go out.

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Adam had a first day of medical school mixer at a bar nearish our apartment.  I wore my new perfume – how cute is that packaging?

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And my new favorite shirt.

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I met a lot of neat people, it seems like he has a pretty great class.  We stayed until almost 10 playing pool and chatting.  I drank this x2 –

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The bar made its own microbrews, I had a Blueberry Blonde Ale and an Irish Oat Stout.

My goal is bedtime by 11 again, especially because I’m hoping to get up and cook Adam breakfast tomorrow.  Sweet dreams all!

Have you ever run any sort of race?  How did it go?

Get Excited…

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So this has to be another quick post because Adam is on his way home from his first day of medical school and he is picking me up to go to the post office.

My first day of volunteering went well, just for today I did clerical work a couple of places.  I have to have patient contact for the rest of my time but I really enjoyed today, did you know that when I was a little kid I dreamed of growing up to be a secretary?!  I used to help my mom in her library and I thought that stamping, and filing, etc was just so much fun!

I got a break for lunch around 12:30 today.  We get a free voucher for food but I was a little confused and worried about going over the limit so I ended up with a teeny salad.

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Spring mix with peas, 1/2 a hard-boiled egg, an artichoke heart, green olives, cucumber, balsamic vinegar and evoo.  It ended up being way too salty so small as it was I only ate half.  I’m going to try to get a snack a little later.

I’ve got to run, but I have super super super exciting news coming in the next post.  I won’t be posting until late because I’m going to an event with the husband tonight but see if you can guess my news…

  1. I’ll be going to FL
  2. I am not at all ready
  3. 3:30:00

P.S. Giveaways –

  1. click me
  2. click me also

Mi Casa Es Su Casa

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There was no post this morning because I still wasn’t hungry at breakfast time.  Instead I put away the laundry from last night, whoops!  Then we used the metro to head up to Adam’s campus.  I have to use the car to get to my classes so he will be taking the train most days.  He got some immunizations done and we got our parking passes.

At noon I was finally hungry so we tried out the Tim Horton’s across the street from campus.

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I know that this place is famous for coffee, but I was really wanting fountain diet coke!  I ordered a 6in whole wheat turkey sub.

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It was pretty so-so but the mustard was fabulous, it was really runny and sweet; does anyone know what kind this might have been?  I doubt we will be going back to Tim Horton’s much – we try not to eat a ton of fast food so if I’m going for it I’m going for Wendy’s! – but I did really like that they didn’t waste plastic.  Places with ‘for here plates’ always get points in my book.

Our meals came with doughnuts so I ate half of a maple glazed.

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I love maple (my mommy’s favorite flavor) so it was ok, but I still don’t see what all the fuss is about doughnuts.  Growing up on an island I don’t remember tasting one until college and I was thoroughly unimpressed. 

After lunch we took the metro back home and then walked to the hospital so I could get my TB test cleared.  I also spoke to the office about shortening my hours, looking at the husband’s schedule 4 was a little late for us.  Now I will be going from 8-2, Monday – Thursday, for the next three weeks.

We have more errands to run (post office, Goodwill, Target), so I will leave you with pictures of the new apartment, enjoy!

Bathroom –

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Bedroom –

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Office –

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Livingroom (/wierd extra space turned work out area) –

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Dining Room –

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Kitchen –

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What is your favorite room in your spot?  In this apartment mine is the dining room!

Cold and Not So Hot

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My volunteering meeting went well – I completed orientation and once my TB test gets cleared on Friday I will be ready to start.  I am trying to get in as many hours as possible before school starts so I will be going pretty much full-time for the next three weeks – Monday through Thursday from 8am to 4pm.

After volunteering I came home and met up with the husband for more local exploration.  We drove out to Erie and walked around the waterfront a little bit.

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We spotted a cute ice-cream stand and I bought a lemon ice.

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I ate about half before handing it off to Adam.

We did more house-fixing when we got home and then headed out for our first Buffalo run!  I ate a Stoneyfield YoKids Banilla yogurt to refuel first.

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We did 2miles around the neighborhood in 20minutes.  I am painfully out of shape, I can’t wait until 2miles don’t kick my butt any more!  I kept my heart rate monitor on through 10minutes of floor work (stretching, 100 abs reps, and 50 arms reps with my 5lb weights) and all total I burnt 344 calories.

When we were done we cooked our first Buffalo dinner!  We made cold avocado soup and sandwiches.

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We used our George Foreman to make the grilled cheese sandwiches, I used 2 slices of reduced fat colby-jack on mine.

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And the soup was a Rachael Ray magazine recipe which I will include for those of you who enjoy cold soup, but it didn’t really float our boats.

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No-Cook Avocado Bisque, serves 4

  • 2 large avocados (we ended up accidentally buying “Slimcados” which have 35% less fat and calories but tasted the same)
  • 2C buttermilk
  • 4 scallions, green and white parts sliced separately
  • grated peel and juice of one lime
  • 16 ice cubes
  • salt
  • 1lb tomatoes, coursely chopped (we used three plum tomatoes)
  1. Put 1 avocado, buttermilk, scallion whites, lime peel and 3/4 of lime juice in the blender.  Blend on low speed and then blend in ice cubes one by one until smooth.
  2. Meanwhile coarsely chop the remaining avocado and then combine with tomatoes, scallion greens, and the rest of the lime juice.
  3. Divide soup among 4 bowls and top with with guac.

We were excited to have leftovers for lunch but after tasting it we are less excited!  I ate about half of my bowl (but my grilled cheese was great!).

Now I’ve got to go because we are watching old episodes of “My So Called Life” that we Netflixed, night!

Do you like cold soup?  I had some kind of cold fruit soup a few years ago that I loved but now I’m not sure if I enjoy it.

The Migration

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I’m back!  It’s been very strange to go almost a week without blogging, I’m glad to get back to it 🙂

Physically, the move went very well.  We stayed on schedule, nobody got lost or in an accident, and we had a nice stay in a hotel room between our old and new homes.

Emotionally, not so much.  Y’all, when I saw our new apartment I sobbed.  We had to move in blind (we only saw pictures of another apartment in the building) and our apartment was not at all the floor plan we were promised.  Plus it was filthy.  Moving in/setting up took 4x longer than planned because we had to spend so much time cleaning.  Several things are broken and we heard from another tenant that the landlord doesn’t ever fix things.  We had to buy heavy duty cleaner and clean the oven twice but now it should finally be ready to use.

Bad first impressions or not, however, this is where we are going to be living for the next year so we are making the best of it.  Our last apartment was so small that it was pretty easy to find a way to make storage work.  Once things were cleaned up and we started to decorate things looked a whole lot nicer.  Dare I say I practically love the apartment now!  I’ll be posting pictures later this week.  Plus we love our neighborhood – right on our street there are several restaurants and bars, plus a fun hippie-ish coffee shop.  And the closest grocery store is Wegmans, which beyond rocked my socks when we went there last night.

During the move I did manage to register for school.  I only was able to get one class (Gen Chem I) but that is better than nothing.  And today I have a meeting to get set up for volunteering.

I don’t know whether it has been the stress, the busyness, or what but my appetite is gone.  I did the photo montage in my last post but realistically I ate about half of each of the dishes shown.  We’ve been doing hard work moving (my thighs hurt so bad from the stairs I hobbled for two days straight!) but hopefully once I get back to traditional exercise my hunger will return.

I’ll be back this evening with a normal post, later!

What was your worst moving/living experience?  How did you make the best of it?

Thunder, Turkey, Too Much

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I am so hungry!  I’ve eaten so much, as you will see in this post, and I am still starving!  I finally just stopped eating because it was getting ridiculous.

We didn’t have much to get at the grocery store for this week – milk, bread – but we stocked up on some snacks for our upcoming road-trip.  Due to some plan changes I just found out that I will be driving from the city to Buffalo alone by myself in the car.  It’s a little scary – moving vehicles put me to sleep in minutes – but my plan of attack is to do a lot of snacking and chug some sugar free energy drinks.  By the way, for obvious reasons, I won’t be blogging during the move.  We lose our internet this Wednesday and it won’t be set up in Buffalo for about a week so I will be taking a quick hiatus.

The errand took a little longer than planned because we got caught in a massive thunderstorm –

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I looked like a drowned rat.  By the time we got home I was (wet) starving so I grabbed my emergency candy from when I thought the CPR class was running until 6.

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Limited Edition Coconut M&Ms.  These were really good, the coconut flavor was very present without being too strong.  Plus some had cute little palm trees stamped on them.

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I also love these “what’s inside” nutrition stat bubbles.

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What a clear, colorful way to make sure important information does not go overlooked.  My only complaint is that they do not list trans fat in the bubble – that is by far the most important thing I look for when I read nutritional labels.  Even when I am totally pigging out I never eat trans fat.  With the disagreements over how trans fat effects fertility it is disgusting to me that this [added] ingredient is still in products.  It’s one thing to say that Big Brother shouldn’t put laws on how much fat products can have or restrict supersizing, it is up to consumers to be informed.  But when it comes to trans fat there is a real glut of information, even many informed consumers aren’t informed and they deserve to have risk-free food.

While we were cooking I also lopped off the top of a kiwi and ate his brains out with a spoon.

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This was the best method at maximizing flesh eaten and minimizing mess I’ve found so far.

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For dinner we sauteed extra lean ground turkey with frozen collard greens and some peas and then added Newman’s Own Cabernet Marinara.  We ate that on top of some wheatberries Adam cooked in bulk the other day.

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I ate a ton of toppings over 1/3C of wheatberries.

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Tasty, and quick.

Of course I was still hungry after dinner, so I dipped into our car snacks stash and at a small large bowl of cheddar goldfish

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And finally a mini strawberry rice krispies treat.

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As I said before, I’m still hungry, but it was time to stop.

Unfortunately I never got in even a mini workout, but I am just so wet!  I need to go shower so I can snuggle up in bed.  I’ll leave you with some interesting happenings online –

1. Surprising Secrets of Celebrity Chefs from MSN.  My favorite tip was from Ming Tsai, there are so many wonderful, easy applications for store bought wonton wraps.

2. Kath and Caitlin both blogged about free samples in bloggerland.  I don’t get many samples (although I’d like to get more!) because my blog is pretty teensy and I don’t ask for them.  However, when I do get freebies I think I do a good job of mentioning that the item is a sample.  I will always be completely honest about how I feel about a product – if it’s bad it’s bad, my blog isn’t big enough to be worth compromising my integrity.  While I don’t get a lot of free samples, I do do a fair amount of product reviews on here.  I know sometimes it seems like I gush about everything but honestly, I’m just really excited about food!

What is a non-negotiable for you on nutritional labels?

What do you think about blogger freebies?

“How to Save a Life”

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Did anyone guess correctly?  I was at a CPR certification training!  Actually, we went to an advanced emergency professionals’ training so I am AED/CPR certified now.  Also exciting was that it finished earlier than scheduled at 3:30.

We got a late start this morning (more on that later*) so we had to rush to the American Red Cross center.  It was so hot outside that even speed walking felt like a major chore!  I was sweaty and sticky and my thighs hurt from all the Warriors in hot yoga yesterday!  I didn’t get a chance to eat breakfast but I felt myself getting a little sleepy so at the 10:30 break I bought this winning combo –

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I shared a few lifesavers with Adam but the sugar/caffeine combo was just what I needed.

When we broke for lunch Adam and I went to the deli next-door, the only food spot for blocks, and I got paninnis.  Mine was The Chipoltes grilled chicken, salsa, chipolte, avocado, swiss, lettuce, tomato, and mayo.

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It was pretty tasty but super duper spicy.  I ate 90% of the sandwich but left most of the chips.

The day consisted of lecture, video, practice; repeat for each topic.  This was my first class ever so while I knew the basics I found it very informative.  We had a 40question test before we were certified and I only missed 1 question (and the teacher said it was a stupid, poorly worded question)!

This evening we have to make a teensy grocery trip, make dinner, and even though I’m sore I would love some sort of mini work-out.  See you this evening!

*later – I realized I had yet to set yearly goals for 24, I like to do them on New Years and birthdays.  Here we go:

  1. Go to bed earlier…
  2. …and wake up earlier!
  3. Complete at least one of the prerequisites for the RD programs.
  4. Run more regularly…
  5. …and complete a half marathon!
  6. And finally, since I had to weigh myself to program my heart rate monitor and I practically fell off the scale in shock, lose 10pounds.

Are you CPR certified?  Why did you decided to take the course?

Do you set birthday goals too, just New Year’s ones, or none at all?

Birthday Bikes and Black & Whites

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Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me…..  I have to give Adam credit, I’ve had a really great birthday so far!  It’s hard to believe that I’m 24, I feel like I should still be in college (which I guess is a good thing since I’m planning on redoing my undergraduate!).

We woke up early (for a birthday!) at 8am to take showers and head to the train to Manhattan.  I ate a Cool Mint Clif Bar for breakfast en route. 

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My chosen birthday activity gave me a chance to use my birthday present from my mom and dad – my new heart monitor!  I got the Polar Sport RS100 and I think I’m in love.  Activity # 1– 2 hour bike ride in Central Park.  We rented bikes from the same spot as a couple weeks ago, I can’t believe I didn’t discover this sooner!  The two hours were great, but almost over too soon.  We did a full loop around the park, plus a couple little loops within.  I was so proud of myself – I basically learned how to ride a bike a few weeks ago when my parents were here but this time I wasn’t afraid at all and I even stood up down most of the hills.  The loooong uphill stretches were a little difficult, but fun.  On one of the more difficult hills I started murmuring sweet nothings about the goodness of diet coke so we made a quick pit stop:

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I earned that guy!  When I checked my heart rate monitor after we turned in our bikes here were my stats –

  • 1hour 52minutes
  • 62 average heart rate
  • 647 Calories burnt

I was surprised by how high the calorie burn was but I’m pretty sure it was accurate (you program in your weight/height/age/sex so the only way for it to be off is if your heart rate is off but that seemed pretty spot on).

Activity # 2– reconsume those calories and then some!

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The hour+ wait in line was so worth it!  I ordered a black and white milkshake and it rocked my socks.

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Halfway through I switched with Adam and finished his black and white malt; I love when we prefer each others orders, we are such a good pair!

Shake Shack is one of my favorite spots in the city and I was really pleased to see all of the ways they made an effort to go green –

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Equally exciting were these Prius sponsered solar powered wifi/power spots –

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If I wasn’t moving next week I would definitly bring my laptop there.

On the way home we stopped at Economy Candy because my dad had a candy order he wanted me to mail him before I moved!  We have to make a stop at Trader Joes tonight to complete his package 🙂

Once we got home I did the “Pilates for Dummies” video I Netflixed.  It was about 30minuteslong and a pretty good workout except maybe a little bit too ‘dummied,’ I would have prefered a few more reps.  I also did 5 sets of 10reps of arms exercises with my 5lb weights.

After we shower we are headed to fun activity # 3 – the movies!  See ya later.

What was the most fun bithday activity you have done?  I love, love, loved riding through Central Park.  Throughout the years my parents have surprised me with – rock climbing, parasailing, skydiving, a tattoo, and a flight lesson.  I loved sky-diving but I think the most thrilling were actually the tattoo or the flight lesson.