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Rediscovering Health in the Real World

February 27, 2011 By 30 Comments
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**you can still enter my Green Giant giveaway until Tuesday evening! Just leave a comment on linked entry to enter!**

Today I ran fifteen miles, and it sucked.

It was absolutely the suckiest possible sucky run ever. And that’s saying something.

I don’t really want to delve into the deep extent of said suckiness because I’m actually embarrassed. It took me a full THIRTY MINUTES longer than it should have. Think twelve minute miles and I was TRYING. Just when I thought I had hit my horrible-running low, I went and smashed that one out of the park.

I felt like crap the whole time. Slash I kind of wanted to die. At one point both of my arms fell asleep. Yes, while running. I’m fairly convinced that that is not a good thing.

There are several things that contributed to this fifteen-mile disaster this morning. The first and potentially MOST damaging was my choice of route. Being close to the allegedly beautiful trails in the Berkeley hills, I thought it would be a great idea to run my fifteen miles up in the mountains. I mapped out a quick run on MapMyRun.com through the mountains and then when I checked elevation it said it was 2,000 feet of elevation gain. Whatever, I thought. I’ll be fine.

Starting out, I ran a loop around Cal’s campus, which wasn’t so bad, then headed up the Berkeley fire trail. It really wasn’t that steep, but for some reason I was having TONS of trouble. Like, tons. Then we got to a part where it was just straight uphill and it took my whole breath away just to WALK up it. Nike+ repeated my pace in my ear at each mile. First in the 10s (what I want to be doing on my LRs—I’m slow and OK with it), then the 11’s, then the 12’s, then the 13’s…

I tried to make myself go faster but I couldn’t. Each step of the way, skinny blonde Cal girls were breezing by me up the hill with not even a drop of sweat on their perfectly made-up faces. Then the older out-of-shape (so it seemed) dudes with their dogs started passing me. Then I just couldn’t move. I had to stop after three miles and catch my breath. I’ve NEVER done this. I was rewarded with a beautiful view of the bay once I got up to the first high point.

It took me over an hour to “run” less than five miles.

I almost started crying. I felt like a failure. How could I run a marathon when I can’t even run five miles? And Big Sur is just as hilly! I wanted to jump off the aforementioned high point.

But then I realized I had a choice to make. I could throw it all away right there, or I could own it and do the best I could with what I had.

Instead of continuing another ten miles in the hills, I turned around. I knew it was the only way I would keep running. I ran and ran, back around campus, down to the marina, around a small lake and back up. I was slow. I teared up. My knees and joints ached. My arms fell asleep. I gratefully accepted a freight-train-induced respite. When it was all said and done, the time on the clock was thirty minutes more than it should have been. I was drastically late for book club. My head was light and my body was weak. I salvaged it, but it sucked.

Last week, I ran a very respectable half-marathon without putting in much effort whatsoever. And then this happened. Why? I decided to take ownership and figure it out.

One, I need to be doing more hill work. Running on a couple rolling hills does in NO WAY qualify me to run a 26.2 on a hilly course. There are no excuses anymore.

Two, I need to fuel more intentionally both before and during long runs. I snacked last night, but nothing super substantial. This morning I had two eggs on a tortilla—less than 250 cals. I took a packet of gu at mile 7, but when I almost passed out at mile 11, I realized I had burned at least 1,100 calories that morning but had only taken in 350 max. (I had a few gu chomps in my purse, but my life was saved by Gatorade from a Chevron at mile 13. I inhaled the 20 ounces in half a mile.)

Three, this run wasn’t about a bad day, but it was a culmination of a horrible week. This week, I have completely neglected almost every aspect of my health. And it culminated in today’s suckfest that could have been prevented.

Let me explain.

A week ago today, I left my parents’ home in Sacramento, where I’d been staying for the past two months since I got back from Mozambique, to move in with my sister in Berkeley while I look for a place in San Francisco. I started a new job in the city on Tuesday, and am fully diving into this new life. And it hasn’t been easy.

None of this has to do with my job—it’s sure to be very challenging and extremely demanding at times, but I’m looking forward to that. The problem was with my routines. The things that I am used to doing were all of a sudden not there. This week, with my change in routine, I really lost track of my physical, emotional, and spiritual health. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I started thinking about it (somewhere around mile 11, when I almost passed out.)

For my spiritual health, I usually have a quiet time of prayer, bible study, journaling, and reflecting with God for about half an hour every morning to get my day started right.


This week, the closest I got, despite being in an anxious state that would’ve been eased by this time, was listening to a few worship songs absentmindedly on the BART.

For my emotional health, I usually make the time each day to connect with my loved ones and friends, to recharge relationships. I try to be in tune with my emotions and feelings, and to center or focus myself when I feel off-kilter.

This week, I didn’t even listen to my voicemails. Or my own thoughts.

For my physical health—sleep, I know my body needs eight hours a day.

This week, I got hours less than that, and the thoughts and emotions I was experiencing prevented me from truly feeling rested.

For my physical health—exercise, I make a point to be active every day, usually working out intensely six days a week: four runs, two cross training days, and at least two yoga classes on top of that for lots of stretching.

This week, I walked a lot one day, ran 6 miles one day, and five the other. No stretching or yoga at all.

For my physical health—nutrition, I pride myself on making healthy choices most of the time. This girl needs her sweets, but I usually make healthy meals. I started off the month with a Vegetarian Kitchen Challenge, attempting to spend loads of time cooking healthy vegetarian meals.

This week, the closest I got to vegetarian cooking was reheating two pieces of five-day-old veggie pizza in the microwave.

Not to mention the tons of fake food, sweets, chocolate, and non-nutritive snacks that I spent way too much time eating. I ate poorly, drank alcohol, didn’t sleep, stressed out, and neglected myself.

WHO’S SURPRISED I HAD A BAD RUN TODAY??

Today wasn’t about the run; it was about recognizing what I need to be healthy and happy.

I need to get back on track with what is right for my body, mind and spirit.

I need to make good choices and concentrate on the big picture.

I need to make decisions and prioritize my time efficiently.

I need to rediscover what it means to be healthy in the “real world.”

In Peace Corps, we often referred to the “real world” as working full-time, an experience which many of us, fresh from college or other jobs overseas, hadn’t fully experienced yet. I definitely haven’t. And now with this new life, I need to re-learn how to face daily decisions (and the consequences of them) in a completely new framework. Leaving the house at 7:15AM and getting back at 8:15PM is a whole new schedule I need to figure out.

I know I need to go easy on myself—its my first week (second week) in a brand new place with a brand new job! Of course the transition will be a little bumpy! But there are some things I can choose to do which will make it easier.

This week, I will prioritize sleep, recognizing that feeling rested and alert is crucial to anything else I hope to spend my time doing. I will attempt to eliminate activities that waste my time in favor of using it constructively—especially if that means going to bed!

This week, I will dedicate my time commuting, a time that is often spent frustrated, on prayer and meditation with God, focusing and centering myself on what truly matters before I face each new day.

This week, I will dedicate myself to exercise, recognizing that without it I am grumpy and sluggish. I will weight-train on Monday and Thursday, and I will run on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, as well as stretching, to try to help Sunday’s 17-miler be better than today.

This week, I will make good food choices, recognizing that fueling myself with lots of healthy, fresh food makes me feel good both physically and mentally, and I will attempt to say no to fake foods and unnecessary sweets, knowing how they make me feel later. (Thank God for Trader Joe’s, which netted me five salads, two frozen meals, tons of snacks, and beans for $35. I’d prefer to cook, but right now, it’s hard. So I am going to recognize my limitations and do the best I can with what I have.)

I am going to try to harness my mind. Instead of being overwhelmed or anxious, I am going to harness positive energy and attempt to release the negative. I am going to put myself out there to build new relationships and take the initiative in my professional and personal lives. I am going to try to act the way I want to feel and be the person I wish I was.

[source]

This is a crazy time of life. There’s going to be stress and bad feelings (and bad runs!) sometimes. But dwelling on that in the past has never helped me. I want to go into this week feeling fresh—and end it feeling the same.

There were some benefits of my rough run today.

First, it called to my attention how I need to be treating myself and my body to succeed at this marathon thing.

Second, nobody said it was easy. If it was easy everyone would do it. So buck up, grit your teeth and get it done.

Third, I DID IT. Even if it sucked, I did it. I got out there and I ran fifteen freaking miles even though I would have rather been eating honey nut cheerios from the box while sitting in my pajamas. Sometimes half the battle is just showing up. The rest figures itself out.

I saw this sign in the Haight yesterday when I was checking out an apartment I was really hoping to get. It’s nothing new, but for some reason yesterday it struck a chord with me.

And with that, I’m going to go to bed early to get an early start tomorrow.

Here’s to the week. I hope you all have a great one!

–Courtney

How do you manage YOUR health day-to day? What little tips or mantras help you get by?

*(giveaway link if you still want to enter!)*

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    Marathon Training Emotional Phase Two: Apathy. Plus, a Green Giveaway!

    February 25, 2011 By 29 Comments
    green giant-4-web

    HI! Happy Friday night! (Or Saturday morning for some of you.) I’ve got loads to talk about, but I want to update y’all on the 26.2 saga AND give stuff away! Who doesn’t love that?!

    You’ve heard the stories before about my running. Some of them are pretty ridiculous. Many of you who read P&P know that I am training for a marathon, thanks for my glorious stories about how my marathon training started without me and more of the same. A couple of weeks ago, I introduced the Five Emotional Phases of Marathon Training. Phase one, the Honeymoon phase, discussed the initial high that accompanies the first few weeks of marathon training. Feeling strong, happy, and bad-ass despite the fact that you really aren’t doing anything that special. For me, my honeymoon phase peaked at the end of week 3 of training on a super easy nine mile run that left me feeling like I could have run nineteen.

    Two days later though, that feeling was GONE.

    I had done my long run on an early Monday morning instead of a Sunday due to some inclement weather, and so I took Tuesday off (normally an easy 4 or 5 mile day) and set out to run six on Wednesday.

    I wanted to die.

    We all have runs where we kind of hate our lives and would rather be just about ANYWHERE else, but this was different. The first minute, ALL I wanted to do was quit. I mean, thirty seconds out and I almost turned around. Then the guilt set in. This is SIX miles! How am I going to run this plus TWENTY if I don’t ball up? And I wasn’t really tired, or sore or hurt, I just hated it.

    I did it. In a full five minutes longer than the week previously. That week I wasn’t trying. This week I was all in and miserable.

    The next day, I only had to run 5. I told myself I’d go at 9AM to get it over with. I put my running clothes on.

    I didn’t get out of the house until 4PM. And even then, the fact that I did was a miracle.

    Welcome to the second emotional phase of marathon training: APATHY.

    [source]

    At first you’re excited. But then three, four, five, six weeks in, it’s not new or exciting anymore, but you’re still months away from the race so you can’t really look forward to it. You’re running enough that it’s hard and boring, but not long enough to be really challenging or bad-ass. Every day seems the same. Progress stops. You’re just pounding the pavement with what seems like no payoff in sight. You fail to see the point. You’re bored. You’re disaffected. And most importantly, you’re apathetic.

    Welcome to phase two.

    I hung out in phase two for a while… I think that was weeks four, five, and most of six. I didn’t want to run. I dreaded it. I did nothing impressive. A ten and eleven miler were in there, but whatever.

    Who cares. I have ten MORE weeks of this sh*t. Why am I wasting my life getting sweaty? Why am I gaining weight from being so hungry? Why do I have to think about running before anything else, like, having an actual life?

    This is the apathy phase of marathon training. And it sucks.

    But there is good news. You move on and out! I am now in the third emotional phase. You will hear ALLLL about it once I’ve moved on to the fourth emotional phase. Since I am making these up as I go, I can’t really observe what’s going on until it happens, so yeah.

    ——–

    Now the funner stuff: giveaway time!

    A few weeks ago, the nice folks over at MyBlogSpark hooked me up with a giveaway from Green Giant. In the mail, I received a salad bowl, serving spoon, HUGE freezer (insulated) bag that could hold several six-packs or an entire picnic’s worth of fresh veggies and fruits (a more ideal option, I know…), a pedometer and another box with a Green Giant Broccoli with Cheese Sauce. Which came in dry ice. Which of course you’re not supposed to touch. Putting it in your drinking water, however, is ridiculously fun. (Have you ever gotten a cocktail with dry ice in it? Way cooler.)

    I was glad to get this opportunity to review it because I feel like I’m often biased against frozen foods like this. And yes, it’s nice in theory to always eat fresh (not frozen) veggies, but with life’s realities, sometimes it’s better to have something fast and easy and frozen–plus, often you get just as many nutrients with frozen vegetables. This definitely helped alleviate some of my bias and get me on board with frozen veggies.

    I heated up the broccoli with cheese sauce to enjoy at dinner.Super easy. Microwave in bag, let sit, put into bowl, stir, devour!

    Basic stats:

    Pros:

    • Really delicious! I thought it would be kind of fake, processed cheesy tasting, but it totally was not.
    • Comfort food–feels decadent, but it’s low in fat!
    • Super easy–just microwave and you’re good to go.
    • Good source of nutrients!

    Cons:

    • Lots of sodium : (
    • Huge ingredient list
    • Confusing serving size–it says 2.5 servings on the package but that would be a REALLY small portion.

    I ate a good portion of it by itself and then my dad had made some whole wheat pasta and I ended up mixing the two together just out of curiosity. This was REALLY GOOD! If you’re a cheesy pasta person I would recommend this as well. It’s still really good by itself–but having just started a real-world, demanding job this week and finding myself rolling into the house at eight pm with zero energy to chop or cook, it would be a quick two-step dinner (heat veggies, boil water for pasta).

    Overall: the convenience of frozen foods always comes with some disadvantages as well, like the sodium count and long ingredient list, but the ease of preparation is great, especially considering how many unhealthy and less tasty options are out there. I will be buying these and using them for some easy work lunches or after-work dinners. I do wish the sodium was lower, though!

    Want to try it yourself? The lovely folks over there have offered to give one lucky reader the same prize pack (salad bowl/spoon and awesomely huge insulated bag, plus a coupon for a free veggie pack of your own to try out!). Thanks to MyBlogSpark/GreenGiant for the giveaway and good luck to everyone who enters!

    (And to make it even more special: as a bonus and to celebrate my first week as a San Franciscan–kind of–I’ll also send you a sweet treat that comes straight from my new city.)

    If you want to win, simply leave a comment here. Tell me: do you ever buy frozen vegetables? What are your favorites/what do you use them for?

    Extra entries available if you retweet the giveaway: free prize pack from @CourtPancakes and @GreenGiant at http://bit.ly/fiQKqG! enter by Monday at 11:59PM PST! #myblogspark

    (leave a comment here telling me if you retweet!)

    Hope everyone has a WONDERFUL weekend!

    xoxo

    Courtney

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    Am I a San Franciscan yet?

    February 22, 2011 By 22 Comments
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    I looked disaffected on the BART (public transport).

    I braved a hippy-dippy grocery store where noses were turned up for me for buying the non-organic bananas.

    I joined an overpriced, overcrowded gym full of yuppies and rude people.

    I started a job at a tech company.

    Am I a San Franciscan yet??

    (Short answer: NO WAY.)

    So, It’s only Tuesday and I feel like it’s Thursday night! This real world stuff will take some getting used to–nevermind that I also have to wake up at like, 5AM tomorrow (we’ll see if THAT happens) to run. I missed my first marathon training run today (GASP!) because I had enough to worry about with my first day of work and my first commute besides waking up like two hours earlier. I think (hope?) my body forgives me. I. Will. Run. Tomorrow. (If I write that on the blog, will it make it happen??)

    So I really appreciated the fun comments I got on my first edition of Thailand Tuesday, but that (one-post-deep) series is temporarily suspended today because, as I risk falling asleep at the desk, I wanted to catch you guys up on my first few days of Life Part Two. Okay, so it’s probably actually like part seventeen and a half or something, but who’s really counting?

    Speaking of catching up: I am behind on your blogs. Forgive me. I have to get through a few more days of adjusting to a new schedule and an eeon test or two and then I’ll get caught back up, I promise. :)

    I moved down to Berkeley on Sunday night as I mentioned in my wordy and overly reflective post (per usual on this blog, right?) and then yesterday, my sister and I took a trip into the city to explore slash get me a little more acquainted.

    We started off visiting an architectural site (read: a parking lot. This is what a pair of untrained eyes sees. My sister sees ART. Seriously.) so Caitlin could take pictures. She’s in a Masters’ program at Berkeley for Architecture and totally kicks ass at everything she does, even if my mother and I don’t understand one bit of it. After that, we checked out some apartments and got well acquainted with the bus system. Two dollars a ride adds up, man. Ouch. My wallet hurts.

    We headed down to the Haight-Ashbury district to check out an apartment I’m hoping to beg my way into and grab some grub. We ended up going to a place called People’s Cafe where I somewhat blindly chose the vegetarian Huevos Rancheros. It hit the spot, but at that point of the day a large stack of low-quality napkins would have, too, so I can’t make any claims about the deliciousness of the food, but it was decent.

    Why so hungry? Well, the cool thing about SF is that it’s really walkable in certain areas IF the weather cooperates and you have time (and comfy shoes). I wore a pedometer for the majority of the day just out of curiosity, and without making any strong effort to walk, we walked almost 23,000 steps (not counting the whole day, either.) I’m pretty sure that’s 11 or 12 miles. No matter which way you look at it, that “counts.” It was a nice day, so the walking was fun minus going DOWN stairs, when Sunday morning’s solo half-marathon came back to haunt me in my quads. Owieeee.

    We took a nice long stroll through the Panhandle and then into Golden Gate Park. It was GORGEOUS. It was a Monday holiday and if I’d tried to count the runners, it would have been solidly in the three figures. (Note to self: live near Golden Gate Park.) We passed through some of the popular areas, including the Flower Conservatory, the Academy of Sciences, the de Young Museum, and the Japanese Tea garden (we could only look at some of the pagodas from over the fence, but hey, it’s all good.)

    Walking PAST all of the attractions without going in and paying because most of them were closed and I’m poor? SF style, baby. Actually that’s a lie. Some people spend money here like nobody’s business.

    We headed to the Richmond district for dinner, not until we’d stopped at Green Apple Bookstore and I bought a gently used copy of Cooking Light’s How to Cook Vegetarian for half-price. Then we waited outside in the cold (it’s allegedly going to SNOW in SF on Thursday… I’m skeptical… and hoping that’s a lie) to eat at one of the neighborhood’s most popular restaurants, Burma Superstar. It’s famous for its Tea Leaf Salad which has a ton of ingredients, the most famous being the fermented tea leaves allegedly from Burma.

    I expected this to have a strong and bitter taste but it didn’t, I mostly just tasted the many varieties of nuts, but it was really good.

    We also split potato curry, vegetable samousas, and coconut rice.Sorry for the gross pictures; it was dark and freezing in there. Not sure how the cold affects the photos, but just trust me.

    I also got a Thai Iced Tea for old time’s sake. (Hey, does that count towards Thailand Tuesday??)

    Today I woke up bright and early to take the train over to the city for work. It was a good day and I’m really excited about my job. Definitely going to be a challenge, but I’m looking forward to it.

    I had Thai food for lunch. Okay, maybe it really is Thailand Tuesday. Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of my tofu. Sorry I’m not sorry.

    I didn’t get home til well after 8 (not cool!) because after commuting back I needed to grab some ingredients from the store which took way longer than expected. Thanks to Berkeley’s crazy traffic laws and signs and streets, I also probably committed a gross number of egregious violations just trying to buy some sugar. Praying no tickets arrive in the mail. Yikes.

    I hope that the flourless peanut butter cookies I made taste decent.

    My title of this post is a joke, but at the same time, it’s cool being super new to a place, and wondering how long it takes to “know” it. It’s a HUGE process, and it’s kind of daunting being new, but also exciting. Nailing down an apartment in a cool part of town will help let me put down roots. Some day, I’ll be a San Franciscan. A San Franciscoite. A Sanfranciscatonian. Or -torian. That might be my favorite.

    Okay, after that sentence…it’s bed time.

    I joined 24-Hour Fitness today, bought a coupon for two months of unlimited Bikram yoga for $40 (I already miss it after taking six classes last week!) and am supposedly training for a marathon–one full day of sitting on my butt is enough. Must run. But waking up in five hours… shoot me. We’ll just, um, see what happens.

    Stay tuned for a giveaway tomorrow or Thursday at the latest!

    What makes your city unique? What’s your favorite thing about where you live?

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    [Life] Ch-ch-changes…

    February 21, 2011 By 23 Comments
    SF1

    The last week has been about a lot of “firsts” for me.

    I took my first Bikram yoga class a week ago yesterday and ended up taking six classes this week and loving something I expected to hate.

    I bought my first foam roller and used it to recover from my long runs. I fueled my runs for the first time in the last week, developing a strange affinity for gu and ran my first half-marathon of marathon training season today. (Expect a post on the second emotional phase of marathon training this week, after the honeymoon phase.)

    I bought my first pair of skinny jeans (and a baggy flannel with owls on it just because I wanted to).

    And perhaps most importantly—I made my first life-altering decision since I returned home to America from Africa nearly two months ago.

    While I originally planned to attend graduate school for international communications this upcoming fall, part of me was unsure. I feel like I have a lot of interests that I want to explore and skills I want to develop before I commit to graduate school, as much as I would love being a student again and the flexibility that comes with that. So I started exploring another option: joining the previously dreaded “real world.”

    I went in with an open mind, not really knowing what to expect, but just a few short weeks later, I have officially accepted a job with a tech startup in San Francisco. Professionally, I think it’s going to be an amazing experience, working in a dynamic environment with a bunch of really interesting and intelligent people. And personally, it’s the “next chapter” that needed to come.

    What does this mean? Well, as of today I’m sitting in my sister’s apartment in Berkeley, where I guess I now technically “live”! And by live I mean “littering her previously-tidy place with all my crap.”

    We’re spending a fun day in the city tomorrow, and then I’ll start work on Tuesday. I hope to relocate into San Francisco proper as soon as I can find a good living arrangement.

    I’m excited and happy and anxious and curious and a bunch of other emotions all rolled into one. But mostly, I’m excited. Work is sure to be interesting and challenging, and personally, I can’t wait to make a life for myself in the city. In Africa, I used to talk about how I wanted to live in San Francisco “when I grew up,” and that move is happening a lot earlier than I expected then! While my heart still lives in Los Angeles, I think SF will be the perfect city for me to live in at this time of my life. It’s fun, it’s liberal, there are lots of green and beautiful places, it has public transportation, it has a wide variety of entertainment options, it’s healthy, it’s a foodie capital of the world. I’m sure to grow broke and put on a few living in this city but that’s completely worth it in my book.

    I’m astonished about how quickly life can change before your eyes. How rapidly a sitution can change, how we can make decisions now that shape our lives. It’s funny; moving to another city I’m familiar with already that’s within two hours of my family is just as crazy to me as moving to Mozambique was 2.5 years ago, because it represents a break. I’m at a crossroads, at the close of one chapter (Africa) and at the start of another (my new, adult life in San Francisco). I have absolutely no idea what these next few years will bring, but I can honestly say that I can’t wait to find out, and plan on just trying to enjoy the ride as it happens. I am a person who often focuses on the future and a “plan”, at the expense of the “now.” Africa was a great experience for me in that I really had to try to find the beauty in each and every moment instead of missing them because I was too busy looking forward to the Next Big Thing. I want to love my life as I’m living it, through all its challenges and changes. I feel like right now, sitting in this apartment writing this blog post, like I’m writing the first chapter of a new story. And I am so excited to see how it unfolds.

    [postsecret]

    I had an epiphany tonight when I was walking around Berkeley with a good friend looking for a place to eat. Neither of us had a specific hankering for any particular thing. We checked out one place and it wasn’t what we wanted, and then we meandered across the street just to check out the menu at a diner-looking place called the Saturn Cafe. We just decided to eat there, why not and it turned out to be a full diner-style vegetarian restaurant.

    I realized there, over my cowgirl buffalo “chicken” salad, that we don’t always know right away how things are going to turn out. Sometimes we DON’T have a plan, sometimes we DON’T know anything for sure. But sometimes, if we let ourselves wander, we might find ourselves ending up in a place that we wanted to be all along.

    What does this mean for P&P? This is good news! Living in a foodie capital and a very international city, in an area of California that is not only beautiful and cultured but that has no shortage of amazing day trips close by, will be awesome to experience through a blogger’s perspective. Also, I’m thankful every day for the new people that I “meet” and befriend through P&P. Knowing that there are other people out there with similar interests that I can easily relate to is awesome, and I want to say thank you (while I’m being all mushy and retrospective) to everyone out there reading this! I get a lot of joy from blogging and hope that this transition helps me prioritize it as a source of happiness and fun in my life. I also hope that I can meet some SF area bloggers! I’m looking forward to making new friends and would love to get in touch with other bloggers in the area and getting to know new people. It’s going to be a crazy few months.

    So that’s what’s going on in my life. One door closes, another opens. I’m trusting God. Here goes.

    –Court

    How do you manage blogging while working full-time/being busy? Any advice?

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    Five Faves Friday

    February 18, 2011 By 11 Comments
    fff3

    Happy Friday!

    Fridays are meant to be a HAPPY day, so once in a while (read: when I remember and am actually making the effort to blog) I like to talk about a few things I’m digging (hence, five faves Friday. Just for fun, because I like the letter F.) Nothing wrong with waxing poetic (read: rambling) about things that make you happy to get you in a good mood for the weekend, right? So in no particular order, here’s what I’m digging this week.

    1. Bikram yoga.

    Okay, so six days ago I was dreading going to my first Bikram class, convinced I was going to hate it. But now, I’ve been to six classes and I love it. I can’t explain it. There’s something about it… I don’t really subscribe to the this-yoga-is-the-only-way-to-life philosophy that occasionally seems to be espoused, but I usually can’t concentrate through thirty minutes of regular yoga, yet the ninety minutes in this steam bath just seem to go by and somehow, I can actually FOCUS. And that alone is a big miracle. (If you’re interested in Bikram, I posted about my first class here.)

    http://www.nataliedee.com

    2. The Cheesecake Factory.

    Okay, there’s a lot of things to hate about this place. It’s expensive, there’s often a wait, and somehow they manage to pack 2,000 calories and a week’s worth of sodium into a kid’s meal entree without the soda and fries–but still. All joking aside, CF IS a stressful place to go and watch your diet, but I just love it. I love the fact that the menu is three thousand pages and you can pretty much get anything you want and know it’s going to be pretty decent. I love the ridiculously sugary sweet strawberry and raspberry lemonades. And I love the cheesecake.

    The portions are difficult to manage, but I’m pretty happy when my “small” house salad and “small” pizza for the lunch special are the size of my head. I’m a girl who likes to eat. (This would be a pizza with goat cheese, eggplant, red and yellow peppers, artichokes, tomato, onion, and pesto. Yes please.)

    And I might even half half of a fried mac & cheese ball. Yes, you heard right. The already nutritionally devoid dish of fatty and sodium-laden mac and cheese is then rolled into balls and fried. If you eat all four (smallish) balls in the appetizer order, you only consume SIXTY-SIX grams of saturated fat! But who’s counting? A bite or three of anything won’t kill you. But maybe there’s an exception made for these. I’ll take my chances…

    Whatever. I love this restaurant. Where else can you go with a group of twenty and everyone can find something they want?? (Not that I’m constantly dining with a group of twenty, but you know what I mean.)

    And can I just say something? I’d rather go somewhere where I know the portion will be so big that I can definitely take some home, OR somewhere where the portions are small, where I know I’ll eat everything. When it’s awkwardly in the middle, I often intend to save some, but then am still hungry, and then end up eating all of it instead of taking home like five bites of a sandwich–give me the big plate please. Two meals! I love leftovers.

    3. Healthified junk food.

    So it’s more than halfway through February and I definitely haven’t been as savvy in the kitchen with my Vegetarian Kitchen Challenge (VKC) as I had hoped or intended, but I definitely have been eating more vegetables. However, I’ve also been eating a lot of junk, and it’s often at the same time. Example: sometimes my veggies comes in the form of sweet potato (fries) and portobello mushrooms (on an unhealthy sandwich) from Auburn Ale House…

    But other times I try to recreate my own healthier versions, like black bean burgers (made with vital wheat gluten, which makes a BIG difference in texture!), stir-fried sesame kale, and oven fries. You still get the yumminess, but without the “ew” that comes later. (I love unhealthy food, as you can definitely see from this post, but I recognize the importance of balance and I know when I’m too liberal with my unhealthy choices that I feel it in my body, which has been happening lately.) So I’m striving to make more swaps like this.

    These were the best oven fries I have ever made. Fingerling potatoes from a CSA, sliced thin, tossed in EVOO with cajun spice and a generous amount of S&P, and baked for ten minutes at 425, then flipped and baked for ten on the other side. WIN.

    4. Blasts from the Past.

    So I’ve been at home for a little while as of late, and that means cleaning out my closets, literally. I haven’t lived in this house for seven years, and so lots of childhood remnants have just been lingering around waiting to get cleared out. And I have found some absolute gems. Check THIS out.

    And that’s just the START of it. I think it’s official. I need to do a full Blast from the Past post so I can share these delights with you guys.

    Speaking of blasts from the past, check out what I bought spontaneously like the day after I got home from Africa without thinking and just rediscovered in a drawer.

    Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies! These are the best. So the calorie counts went up and the size went down from what I remembered, but they still taste just as delicious as can be. I hope these are around forever. Thanks Little Debbie.

    5. Cute stickers on fruit.

    Okay, so I always think that fruit stickers are funny (like the ones of fuji apples here that say “gee whiz!”) but we’ve been buying a lot of clementines recently, and the “cuties” as they are called have the best stickers ever. Seriously. There are a bunch of different ones and every time I grab a piece of fruit I’m excited for the sticker. I’m a huge loser, but I own that.

    This one says “party in my tummy,” if it wasn’t clear. And no, I didn’t include something involving fruit to make up for the rest of this post just so I can still call myself a healthy living blogger. That would be downright silly.

    I know there’s already five out there but if I could have a bonus “fave” (and I can because it’s my blog… deal!) it would be Words With Friends. I love this game. Someone out there invite me to play. My user name is CourtPancakes and I will kick your butt with 100+ words like “QAID.”

    More likely, I will suffer a horrible loss at your hands as I grasp for two-letter words because I invariably seem to have all consonants or all vowels. (See above.) Oh well.

    That’s all, folks! Have a rocking day! And stay tuned–my next post will have a Big Life Announcement. (Duh duh duhhhh…. cue drumroll please… and don’t stop until my next post. Just kidding. you can stop.)

    What are YOU digging this Friday? What do you order at Cheesecake Factory? Do you play Words with Friends, iPhone people?

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    Thailand Tuesday: Cooking School Edition

    February 15, 2011 By 25 Comments
    tt_snacks

    Hello! Double post today–this never happens. Check out my v-day pictorial if you’re in the mood. It. Is. Delicious.

    Anyway, I don’t really do well on the blog with posting constantly or with regular features (case in point: the second installment of my Five Faves Friday was a “Saturday Edition”--that about sums it up). But I realize that I have SO much awesome otherworldly (so to speak) content that I haven’t featured on the blog yet, and with the fear of turning into a cookie-cutter copy of a ton of other (awesome) bloggers… I really need to make myself get this stuff up, because I want y’all to see it! (If I get through Thailand maybe I can start a Vietnam Vednesday and a Cambodia… I got nothing.)

    Anyway, quick precursor: I spent a few weeks in Thailand in November/December and got to do some pretty amazing things. I figured, this being a travel/food/happy blog after all, that I could start out with something near and dear to our hearts: cooking class in Thailand!

    I went to Thailand with very few concrete plans besides a flight into the country, and one of the only things I knew I simply HAD to do was take a cooking class (or three) in the beautiful northern city of Chiang Mai. There are a ton of options, and we decided to go to Baan Thai Thai Cookery School. (“Baan” is Thai for house/home).

    We were taking class with a group of people from all over–the States, Canada, Slovakia, Scandinavia… Thailand definitely attracts travelers from all over the world. Our first assignment was to pick which dishes we wanted to cook.

    Easier said than done. There were SO many choices and of course I wanted to learn how to make everything, but I ended up choosing the spring rolls, the pad thai, the hot and sour soup, green curry with chicken, and mango with sticky rice for dessert.

    After making our choices, we took a “field trip” to the local market inside Chiang Mai’s old city (the center of the city is surrounded by moats and a city wall. It’s awesome. Will post more about it later.) Here we got a lesson from our teacher about the principal ingredients in all Thai cooking. The produce and random fruits and fish and herbs there was just incredible.

    We had some free time to wander through the market, and of course I grabbed a Thai iced tea (strong, with a ton of condensed milk and sugar–love it) and some peanuts glazed with something delish. Total cost, one dollar. This is why Thailand is my favorite country.

    When we got back to the cooking school, we relaxed on our cushions while the staff prepped the ingredients, and we got to enjoy a tasting plate of thai snacks. Check this out.

    We have (clockwise from left): two small oranges/tangerines, Thai version; java apple; Thai grapefruit; some sort of plum/peach I’d never seen before; Thai rice cakes; sesame balls (my favorite! I think it was taro or sweetened red bean paste which was then fried–delicious) and lastly, an unnamed snack made of sweetened fruit and sticky rice wrapped in taro and then rolled in coconut (if anyone knows the name, tell me!) plus similar sweet peanuts in the middle.

    I wish every day started like that.

    We learned about the basics of Thai cooking–the seasonings (soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, mushroom sauce, shrimp paste… a lot of these smell NASTY but are soooo good); the spices (coriander, cumin, cadamom, anise, bay leaves, thai garlic) and herbs and veggies (thai ginger, a ton of different type of chilis including “mouse shit chili”, keffir lime and leaves, lemongrass, several kind of eggplant).

    The first course was the pad thai. We started preparing our ingredients at the table (wouldn’t it be great if all cooking started like this?) and then went over to our personal woks to do the cooking. After a short demo, we were turned loose.

    I learned a ton of new things today. We cooked everything but the noodles in the wok, then just smushed them up to one side, added some water and cooked the noodles right there. Super easy and quick.

    Yes, I made this.

    (I made the mistake of eating most of this because it was around lunch, failing to recognize that I’d be cooking myself several MORE meals in the next few hours–needless to say, a ton went untouched, and I’ve got a HUGE appetite. Today I met my match.)

    Thai cooking tip: if a recipe calls for fish sauce or oyster sauce, USE IT. While salt and soy sauce are touted as substitutions, it WILL taste much different. These sauces smell pretty horrendous out of the bottle, but they add a rich, salty, and distinctive flavor that is crucial to an authentic Thai flavor.

    Next up were the spring rolls, which were much easier to make than I thought. Make filling, put in rice paper, roll up and seal with some water, drop in vat of boiling goodness, consume.

    One of our teachers also friend the small Thai bananas and shared them with us, and me being a lover of all things banana (and all things fried), rated it two big Thai thumbs up.

    Then it was time for hot and sour soup, which I thought would be complicated and filled with oil. Neither! Pretty easy.

    Believe me when I say that the apron adds twenty pounds. But it was the only picture of me from the day (albeit unattractive), so here it is. (Actually, after this cooking class, maybe this is an accurate shot…)

    The most complicated recipe was the green curry paste. It had a ton of ingredients that needed to be mixed and mashed and it was a group effort, for sure!

    But the results were absolutely delicious.

    The last course (yes, we were all barely able to stand up at this point) was dessert. I went with the mango and sticky rice and was NOT disappointed. I had heard this was a classic Thai dessert and I was skeptical, but I tried it very soon after I arrived in the country and almost died of ecstasy. You sweeten the rice with coconut milk and palm sugar and with the mango… man.

    This was an amazing cooking class. I learned so much and now am totally not intimidated of Thai cooking. I wish I had gone to a class every day I was there! If anyone goes to Thailand, you HAVE to do this–the entire day was maybe $30 for all the food and an 8-hour experience and it might have been the most expensive thing that I did when I was in Thailand.

    I leave you with a Thai recipe! I have several so let’s start with a classic.

    Phad Thai (fried noodles) recipe courtesy of Baan Thai

    Ingredients:

    • 250g rice noodle
    • 50g chicken in small pieces (or can sub textured soy or vegetable protein)
    • 3T oil
    • 20g spring onion
    • 1t sugar
    • 2T fish sauce (can sub soy sauce)
    • 2T oyster sauce (can sub mushroom sauce)
    • 1 egg
    • 30g bean sprouts
    • 1T chopped garlic
    • 50g tofu, cut into 1cm cubes
    • 1/2c water

    Directions:

    1. Heat oil over low heat, add garlic and fry til fragrant
    2. Add chicken, tofu and stir until the chicken is cooked
    3. Break the egg in and spread around with the chicken
    4. Add noodles and water, stir until tender (push the other stuff up on one side of the wok so the noodles can cook in the water)
    5. Season with the fish sauce, oyster sauce and sugar
    6. Add bean sprouts and green onions/chinese chives
    7. Turn off heat
    8. Serve with fresh vegetables (cabbage, bean sprouts, spring onion) and garnish with lime juice, grounded peanuts and chilis to taste.
    9. ENJOY!

    Have you ever taken a cooking class?  What is your favorite Thai food??

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