Born For This

Strange Joys

25 July 2010 by Elizabeth in Ideas

So, I said things had been going pretty rough. I can’t talk about that.

But I have to admit that, deep down, I’m a silver lining kind of girl. I just can’t dwell on the negative.

And, I managed to pull off my first ever french twist a few weekends ago all by myself. Hairspray was involved, but it lasted through a whole (harrowing) day. Pretty baller.

I’ve been finding lots of strange, unexpected joys. Like…I’m really enjoying keeping a house.

I did four loads of laundry, scrubbed down the kitchen and the bathroom, swept, and cooked three meals for five over that hideous weekend. It was wonderful. Seeing everything all tidy, down to the dish towels in the kitchen drawer, gives me such perfect contentment. If you knew me in real life, you might stage an intervention at this point (and if you do know me, don’t bother – it’s a lost cause at this point, because my weekends have been spent arranging flowers, scrubbing baseboards, and re-folding sheets so they better fit the linen closet for some weeks now).

Then there’s cooking. I’ve always been the chef of the house, but I’ve found a new perspective somewhere.

It’s not just about flavors and ingredients and nutrients. It’s about nourishment, tenderness, and love.

Making a blank-slate apartment into a cozy home, choosing to make healthy, tasty food – it’s all about giving love in the here and now, and hopefully building up some of that love for the future. It’s about correcting mistakes from the past and putting the world right again, one dust mite at a time.

I guess I’m already supposed to know that, but clearly I was raised by wolves who didn’t keep a house.

Traditions that endure do so because they’re of value.

Feeling Like Blogging

11 July 2010 by Elizabeth in Food

Well.

It has certainly been a while. I have been busy committing the most egregious blogger sin: writing posts, then leaving them in a draft state while I “think things over”.

As if I needed to edit that recipe just one more time.

So. I’m just doing this, because I’d like to. And there are things going on in my personal life that make this little sphere of food and fitness so very appealing. Is it unhealthy if you use healthiness as an escape?

Don’t tell me yes. It’s only one blog post.

I had people in town this weekend. Family-type people. So I made snacks:

apps

Watermelon chunks, wrapped in jamaican sorrel and topped with goat cheese and mint chiffonade.
Caprese skewers with fresh cherry tomatoes, ciliegine mozzarella, basil from my balcony garden, and a tiny snippet of crispy, salty tempeh bacon. (You could also use raw eggplant bacon.)
Hot peppers stuffed with neufchatel and mozzarella cheese, garlic, and herbs from my balcony.
Figs, broiled with a touch of sugar and a sprinkle of truffle salt.

I didn’t make the olives or the almonds, sorry.

I also made dessert, but my mother thought it looked like frosted corks (rather than mini gluten-free vanilla cupcakes with vanilla bean frosting and fresh berries), so no photo of those. Yet.

And I made the heck out of these scones, which are adapted from a Giada recipe. True love, y’all.

scones

Gluten-free Berry Rosemary Scones

Ingredients:

2 cups gluten-free flour, plus more for dusting (I used 1 cup rice flour, 1/4 cup ground flax, 1/4 cup chia seeds, 1/4 cup buckwheat flour, and 1/4 cup garbanzo flour)
3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small cubes (I used half butter, half coconut oil)
1 cup cold almond milk
1/3 cup strawberry jam (**see step 2 below for what I do, which requires about 3/4 cup of fresh berries and 1 T of honey)

Procedure:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
If you’re being fancy (and I am ALWAYS being fancy), chop the berries and add them to the honey. Mash with a fork until jam-like.
Mix the flour, xanthan gum, sugar, and salt. Cut in the butter (and/or oil – just work it in with your fingers) and mix until it resembles wet sand.
Slowly pour in the almond milk until you can gather the dough into a neat ball. Depending on the humidity and your flours, you might not use quite all of it.
On a lightly floured surface, pat the dough down until it is about 1/2″ thick. Cut using a cutter (3-4 inches) or a sharp knife; I used a knife for these triangles, but followed Giada’s original recommendation the first time to use a heart-shaped cutter. Transfer scones to a parchment- or silpat-lined baking sheet.
Using a wet finger, make a dent in the center of each scone. Fill with a heaping 1/2 teaspoon of jam.
Bake about 20 minutes or until just golden.

They’re delicious. The leftover berry topping is fab on yogurt.

Have I been trying to cook myself out of this funk? A little bit. The going has been a little rough, but I’ve learned a lot about myself. And I have miniature blueberry pies in the oven. More on those next time; I have to go see what 387 items iTunes is downloading. (????)

(I am perhaps a wee bit behind on everything. Except work. Never work. I can’t keep working until 8 pm. Project is almost done.)

Oh, and those corks…corkcakes…cupcakes…I’ll post them anyhow. I made the little skewer decorations as well, thanks to some tips from the Martha.

corks

Gym Oglers

04 January 2010 by Elizabeth in Food

What do you do about gym oglers?? I usually take the high road and ignore them, but this dude’s laser eyes followed me on every.single.squat (180 of them, to be precise) yesterday! I thought that moving to a farther corner would solve things, but he was more persistent than I gave him credit for It didn’t help that he looked like Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation, either:

(Source)

I know y’all have a good solution for this

Moving right along, yesterday’s breakfast ended up being quite the use it up winner! I mixed up the following:

use-it-up

Canned pumpkin
Goji berry trail mix
Cereal and granola odds and ends
Marmalade
and flax and chia (not on the use it up list )

Chopping the trail mix…

chopping-trailmix

…the end result:

use-it-bars

Pumpkin bars! Sweet, nutty, and delicious, with a little crunch. For those of you playing along at home, I had to bake this at 375 for about 30 minutes before it would solidify…originally I had thought this would turn into pancakes, but the cereal never really soaked up the moisture like I thought it would.

WB also took care of this little guy:

lone-cookie

(A sugar cookie from last June?)

Off to work…hard to get started after another long weekend, but I have a presentation to make at 10.

So far, so good 2010!

03 January 2010 by Elizabeth in Food, Running

WB and I went for a mega-walk yesterday: 5.5 miles! It included a stop at Starbucks, where I tried my first-ever green tea latte. Not bad! It was really bright-green…my phone was dead, so no photo

Our walk took us past one of my favorite stores, where I saw that this silk dressing gown I’d been wanting for a whole year was on sale. I was too gross to go buy it on our walk, but I sped over after a shower and now it’s all mine!

gown

Dinner was a new year’s day rerun with some canned organic cranberry sauce FROM 2008 (use it up!):

jan2dinner

(Don’t worry, it was still in date. We’re thrifty, not crazy.)

Today’s workout started with a 55 second plank. Yep, it beat me – I gave out just 5 seconds before the timer went off. The biggest surprise was that WB joined me – and held out for the full 60 seconds! Humbled, I did a few sets of the abs that we do in my yoga class, then headed down to the gym for a “hill run” on the treadmill. I’ve never tried to run hills on the treadmill before, and I think my plans were…ambitious. I ended up doing 2 miles that included:

2 short hills (5 min each)
1 long hill (very steep…I ended up walking most of it)
2 x 400 at 10:30 pace
a few miscellaneous minutes of running at 11:00 pace
one scary moment when the treadmill said my heart rate was only 99

I suppose I’ll just call it a fartlek day.

The rest of today holds:

Breakfast – it’s almost noon!
Cleaning
Cooking for the week (using up loooots of things for lunches!)
More quality time with the wii?
Coffee!!!!

An additional goal

02 January 2010 by Elizabeth in Food, Running

There’s another goal hovering over us that doesn’t quite rate “resolution” status: clean out the goshdarn pantry.

We’re not packrats in the slightest (I’m very anti-”stuff”), but we accumulate bits and pieces and odds and ends in our pantry and in the fridge (especially in the door), usually things that were purchased for a specific dish or gifts we’ve received that didn’t find their way into our regular rotation. I hate the space that it takes up, but I also hate that it keeps new, fun things from coming into the house. So, in January (and however long it takes after that), we will be putting some strict limits on what we can buy at the grocery store and farmer’s market, and incorporating at least one “get this out of here” item into every meal.

Some of the highlights of the ingredients to be used:

8 (?) jars of jam/preserves
Several kinds of seaweed
Goji berries (nothing against them, but they’ve been sitting here for too long because I can’t see them in the pantry when it’s so full)
Three kinds of hot chocolate mix
More than 100 tea bags
6 kinds of cereal/granola

Nothing too gross or unusual, but lots of things that have gone onto the “do not eat” list for various reasons. That’s the real challenge ahead of me – incorporating these things into healthy meals and snacks that we’ll actually enjoy!

To start off, we made eggs and homemade refried beans on tortilla chips for breakfast (the chips were the “use it up” food):

tortilla-eggs

Mine felt a little bit naked without salsa or hot sauce, but we can’t buy any because there’s no room in the fridge door.

I also put some orange marmalade (use it up!) in my coffee…no photo, because you really couldn’t see anything special about it She couldn’t see anything special about any of it:

cat-special

After all that settled, it was off to the gym for strength (legs day) and 2.8 miles on the treadmill:

Warm up (.05)
11:45 page (1)
2 x 400m at 10:00 pace with 1.5 min rest breaks in-between (.8)
2 x 400m at 11:00 pace with 1.5 min rest breaks in-between (.8)
Cool down (.15)

I’m trying to use my “off season” running to increase my slowest pace to 11 min/mile..doesn’t seem too far-fetched, but I only have about 6 weeks left if I’m doing the race in May that’s caught my eye. I also read an article recently that recommended resting (or cooling down) until your heart rate was about 120, so I’m using that a guide to my rest breaks and cool down.

New Year’s Day

TOAST-nye

We mostly lounged around and played Wii games. We ate the obligatory lucky black-eyed peas and cabbage:

nyd-dinner

(Maple-seasoned peas, cabbage braised in tomato juice, curried pumpkin soup…surprisingly, all vegan)

We also went for a “short walk”, which ended up being 5 miles. We found one of these guys wandering in our neighborhood without a collar:

westie

He definitely didn’t seem like the outdoorsy type, so we followed him around, instructing him to go home, until it was dark and getting cold. He was worn out, so I had to take the lace out of my shoe and make a leash for him. Luckily, one of his neighbors saw us walking him and showed us where he lives…at least, it was his best guess The doggie went right up to the door to sniff the food dish and lie down, so we figured if he was that comfortable it was a familiar house. (We even waited another 15 minutes for his owners to get home, but no luck.) I know I would want someone else to do the same if my cat-baby ever got loose, so I didn’t mind the extra 1.5 miles it took us to follow the dog and make our way home from his house.

Lunchtime…anyone have any healthy recipes that use a jar or two of jelly?

Well, hello there! It’s resolution time!

31 December 2009 by Elizabeth in Food, Ideas, Things I Love, Things I have Learned

In a syndrome all too common in the blog world, real life intervened and put this blog on pause. I’m thankful that all the schedule disruptions were positive

Before I begin catching up on the last several weeks, I wanted to jump in with the present moment: new year’s eve! It’s one of my favorite holidays, in no small part because I loooove to set goals and take the time to reflect on the directions I’m taking my life (and sometimes the directions my life is taking me!).

I learned several things about setting goals this year. The first: one thing at a time! (At least for big things.) I got a lot accomplished this year that had been hanging around on my list for far too long (some of it more than two years) because I focused on one thing at a time.

Next up: have a clear vision of the future. Not the whole future (no crystal ball in my apartment), but some sort of vision that’s at least a few hundred yards down the road. The clearer this vision, the more memorable and motivating it is!

Finally: keep track. Keeping track of workouts, food, and money was a habit I tried to form for several years (in keeping with my fitness and financial goals), but this was the year it finally stuck. I don’t have a real secret for what changed, but I think the constant motivation of the blog community played no small role!

For 2009, I had one “resolution”: to live richly. 2008 was spent trying to get my feet under me and figure out my job, my relationship, and my family. That flailing definitely laid the groundwork for my 2009 successes, but I believe I owe more to the calm created by my solo resolution. Having just “one goal” for the year made it easy when I got stuck – whether I couldn’t make up my mind about what to eat, how to spend my money, what to do next, or what attitude to have, I could just do a simple test: does this help me live richly?

It definitely helps that it was an emotional goal, too, not a rational one…I’ve spent many years failing with rational goals, so I’m finally ready to own up to the fact that satisfaction, for me, is rarely a mental thing. Once I accepted that, my quality of life increased almost instantly – which isn’t to say it’s been a hedonistic year. Though I bought myself a pair of Louboutins (oh, the things you missed over the past month or so), I also doubled my net worth, got a much better job, and made good on a lot of promises to my family and around the house. I just enjoyed it all the more because I was willing to make a life that worked for me, rather than the life I felt would logically be best.

goals So, for 2009, I lived richly. I made myself a list of sub-resolutions that fell under that umbrella: use my journal/planner, prioritize, live in good health, live economically, drink more wine and eat more salad and soup, travel, keep a tidy space, enjoy everything, and slow down. And I did all of those, though the journal/planner suffered some neglect in November. I also ran my first half marathon, ran several other races, took two glorious vacations with Wonderful Boyfriend, began eating a high raw diet, became a lot nicer to my co-workers, and ditched a lot of things that were weighing down my life (literally and spiritually). The hardest part was definitely slowing down while still living in the moment, but it’s been well worth it. (My need for speed comes from childhood, when I wasn’t expected to live very long so I got a jump start on lots of things…that’s a long story for another day, but hey, 28 years and I’m still here! Suckas!) (And yeah, that’s a whole folder I keep for goals in the picture. Don’t be jealous.)

For 2010, I’m keeping this resolution. I plan to live richly for the rest of my life, in fact. However, my official resolution for 2010 is even bigger than just living richly! It is:

Nope, I can’t tell you now – for me, goals are like wishes; if you let them out of the bag too soon, there’s no way they’ll come true. I won’t leave you completely hanging, though, because I have some subgoals that are far more concrete and shatterproof. In 2010 I hope to:

Run a 5k in less than 25 minutes
Run a half marathon in less than 2:20
Do a pull-up
Travel to two places I’ve never been
Read a new book each month (I get stuck in ruts and reread my old favorites over and over)
Upgrade the things in my wardrobe that should no longer leave the house on my body…and get rid of them
Fit a sample size for an upcoming event (it’s not certain, but I have some theories Not jinxing this one!)
Save 50% of what I earn

I’ll be checking in on these goals as the year goes on – I do daily and quarterly reviews on my own, so I might as well share those in the days ahead.

I’ve been so inspired by the health/fitness/green monster blogging community this year – thank you all for everything you give every day! (I know who my readers are ) (Don’t I?) (And thanks for hanging in during my unexplained absence. Patience is a virtue.)

And now, back to this….

nye-spread

champagne-nye

nye-cat

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Uuuugh

19 November 2009 by Elizabeth in Fitness, Food

Not feeling so hot! At first I thought I was gluten-ed somehow on Saturday, but if that’s the case I was sicker than I’ve been from that in a long, long time. In fact, I was sick so long (and so very, very sick) that I am wondering if there was something amiss with the tasty raw treats from the farmers’ market. The gluten-ed symptoms (likely caused by the cheater cheater salsa that had malted barley in the flavoring) wore off after a day or so, and I was left with…well, it wasn’t good. I didn’t eat at all yesterday, and I missed three runs and a yoga class. In fact, I had to leave work at lunch and come home to sleep.

On the bright(er) side:

toasts

This is what I will be eating today. Udi’s whole grain bread, toasted, with a little bit of earth balance.

Without getting into gross details, I have to say that I don’t know how I used to live with gluten! Before I knew I was allergic, I had zero energy. When I was 25, I had to take a nap at lunch in order to make it through a day at my full-time office job, and I would still sleep 10-11 hours every night. I’ve always needed to own pants in a wide range of sizes, because when I get “hit” my stomach balloons up 3 or 4 sizes in a matter of hours. I’ve really been enjoying not feeling like this!

I did get in a three mile walk last night, though part of it was a trip to the grocery store for some stomach meds. I never take things like that, but desperate times call for desperate measures, right? (Or shallow times…my dress for next weekend’s events arrives today and I can’t wait to try it on…but my stomach needs to cooperate!) And I did some weights this morning – more on that later.

I am off to the office, toast in hand.

Blogfast in bed

16 November 2009 by Elizabeth in Food, Running

These long recap posts are stifling! Especially since life continues to go on around them. So, I am back for a regular Monday, and on schedule to be back in the saddle.

Breakfast:

(Don’t act like you don’t know what that is.)

almond-milk

(Except you don’t know the cool part – I made my own almond milk! Well, almond “mylk” from an Ani Phyo recipe. More on that when I’m not trying to make it to work on time for freakin’ once.)

gm-dha

The green monster comes with a sidekick now – vegetarian DHA! I have so much to say about that that I’ll save it for another post.

Lunch:

Raw veggie burgers! Adapted from another Ani Phyo recipe. Easy as pie, but much tastier.

burger-raw

Served on a romaine “bun” with avocado, radish sprouts, and a little bit of ketchup.

sprout-lid

Accompanied by raisins, almonds, and an apple (not pictured). It’s like I’m five years old, but healthier.

POTM! POTM!

It is a month of acronyms for me. NaNoWriMo, POTM, a never-ever-ending list of SharePoint code words (not really, but they sound more fun when I act like someone intentionally made the software difficult to get along with), and emails from my high school regarding my upcoming reunion (eek), full of acronyms because the school’s name is so embarrassingly long that everything we do must be abbreviated (MBA for short). (No, that’s not code for ‘I’m going back to grad school,’ because I’m not. Yet.)

So I’ve been trying to POTM (Pile On The Miles), but my pile is a bit smaller than I had anticipated – I’ve only been averaging about 10 miles per week. Matters weren’t helped by the fact that on my first run after my half marathon I FELL ON MY FACE at about, oh, mile 0.3 of a four mile run. I finished that run, knees and lip bleeding all the while, mostly because I was meeting WB at the farmer’s market at the end of my run and had no way to get in touch with him.

I’ve been cramming in most of my miles on my lunch break, but it is still in the 80′s here much of the time (seriously now, it is NOVEMBER), so I’ve been looking forward to mornings like this one where I actually make it out of bed without an hour or so of snoozing. I spent some quality time with the treadmill – just 1.2 miles, but it was my fastest 1.2 treadmill miles all year (and worth “missing” an extra 20 minutes of sleep to crawl into workout gear and stumble downstairs to the gym).

Off to work! It’s pouring rain right now (and I don’t really want to leave my bed and my smoothie to go out and wait for the bus), but I’m hoping that will clear up so I can pile on some more lunchtime miles. Happy Monday!!

Short and Spooky

29 October 2009 by Elizabeth in Running

choco-monster

That spooky creation is today’s breakfast: a chocolate green monster (the plain jane banana-kale green monster with some cocoa powder and two extra kale leaves for a boost).

This “settling into a new routine” thing hasn’t happened so much yet, but I’ll take last weekend’s party (courtesy of moi) and the previous weekend’s wedding (no, not mine) over a routine any day Lots to recap (and lots of raw recipes!), but right now I’m only looking forward to this weekend…

lanterns

Nope, not because of halloween. It’s my first half marathon!

I’ll be honest – training hasn’t been a priority for the past 5-6 weeks. I might not have run a single step in two weeks. But I’m not worried – I think I can make my easy goal, finish the race, and have fun.

I’ve got my playlist cooking:

playlist

Er, why, yes, I do listen to the same song every mile to get my rear in gear. I’m changing that for this race since I realized that 13 repeats is a bit much…I’ll be switching between three songs.

One final bit of spookiness (our little piggy bank – yes, the cat is in a halloween costume, and she won a prize thankyouverymuch):

peeg5

(We also won a costume contest last night. $100 for clothes we already had in our closet! This is rapidly becoming my new favorite holiday )

Raw-cos (raw tacos)

09 October 2009 by Elizabeth in Food

This week’s lunch: Raw-cos

raw-cos

Like tacos, get it?

Filling ingredients (quantities given make 5 servings):

4 shiitake mushrooms, diced small and sauteed (I sautee in olive oil)
1 lb firm or extra-firm tofu, drained and pressed
juice from 1 lime
1 T cumin
2 t chili powder (I used ancho)
1.5 t garlic (I use granulated because it’s not as pungent as fresh)
dash of cayenne
big pinch of oregano
salt to taste , and anything else that strikes your fancy.
7 carrots
6 stalks of celery
4-6 sunchokes (a big handful)
3 hot peppers (jalapenos, anaheim, poblanos, etc)

Wrappers and final toppings:

20 romaine leaves (1 big head)
sliced avocado
sprouts

Dice the tofu and mix with spices and lime juice; set aside. Wash, trim, and peel the veggies as needed, then slice or grate them in the food processor. Adjust spices (raw veggies can really suck up the flavor, so don’t be shy!), then leave overnight to allow flavors to blend.

To serve, spoon filling onto lettuce leaf. Roll up, or fold like a taco.

It’s another really tasty, balanced, and filling raw (mostly) lunch that served me well all week! You could, of course, vary the ingredients by what’s in season, available, and tasty to you.