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Do it for me!

Copycat

I saw this on Kristy, Sarah, Christin and Heather’s blogs, so I thought it would be a fun thing to do too. Especially since I had some wine last night and am not exactly feeling chipper or contemplative right now! Ugh.

A. Age: 32. It’s not so bad, really!

B. Bed size: Queen.

C. Chore you hate: Putting away laundry. I don’t know why. I just hate doing it. Also, doing dishes is bad too. I pretty much hate all chores.

D. Dogs:

E. Essential start to your day: Brushing my teeth. I have to brush them first thing.

F. Favorite color: This changes all the time.

G. Gold or silver: Silver, but I don’t really wear a lot of jewelry aside from my wedding ring. Actually, that’s not true, I wear some funky necklaces and stuff sometimes, but not really like nice jewelry where you’d have to choose silver or gold.

H. Height: 5’7.

I. Instruments you play: None. I am not musically inclined. At all. I played the flute in 4th grade.

J. Job title: Graphic Designer. Although I’ve also deemed myself as the Director of Social Media for my company. That really just gets a big eye roll from everyone!

K. Kids: Ahh, the question that everyone asks me. And the answer I always give – we’ve only been married for 8 months. Not yet!

L. Live: The ATL. Actually, if you want to be technical about it, I live outside of the ATL.

M. Mom’s name: Sheryl

N. Nicknames: Lee is a nickname. And no, it’s not for Lee Ann. Trust me, you’ll never guess.

O. Overnight hospital stays: None, knock on wood.

P. Pet peeve: Rudeness

Q. Quote from a movie: “It’s Friday, you aint got no job and you aint got shit to do!” Okay, this is extremely untrue right now since I do have a job and I do have shit to do, but it is Friday right? And that was the first movie quote that popped into my head.

R. Right or left handed: Left!

S. Siblings: Younger brother and sister – Eric and Emma.

T. Time you wake up: During the week, 7, on weekends, whenever I want, but that usually ends up being 7 too.

U. Underwear: I’ve always liked the Victoria’s Secret cotton ones that are 5 for $25. I’ve always disliked the word panties.

V. Vegetables you dislike: Eggplant, asparagus

W. What makes you run late: Filling these type of things out

X. X-Rays you’ve had: Teeth, foot

Y. Yummy food you make: Hopefully you’ve seen it already!

Z. Zoo- favorite animal: Elephant?

Big Green Salad

While a big salad is often my go to entree when I go out to eat, I don’t eat a lot of salad at home. When I go grocery shopping, I usually buy most of my produce for specific recipes, so aside from lettuce and maybe carrots and peppers, which I like to have on hand for snacks, I don’t have a lot of salad ingredients. A lettuce salad equals a boring salad. I don’t know if I was subconsciously craving nutrients when I did my last grocery shopping or what, but I discovered that I had a ton of vegetables in the fridge and they needed to be used.

That would be lettuce, bok choy, broccoli, portobello mushroom, brussels sprouts, tomato, cucumber and avocado. Yup, I think that’s enough for a big restaurant style salad.

I’m not a fan of raw broccoli and I don’t know if you are supposed to eat brussels sprouts raw, but I can’t imagine they taste good if you are. So I decided to roast some of my veggies beforehand.

I combined the mushrooms, brussels sprouts, broccoli and bok choy with a tablespoon of olive oil and then seasoned them with Emeril’s Essence. I roasted them at 385 degrees for 20 minutes.

When the roasted vegetables were ready, I put them on top of lettuce, cucumber, 1/4 avocado and about a 1/4 cup of shelled edamame. Then I topped it all with a little bit of Ginger dressing and some nutritional yeast!

Just like a restaurant style salad, only better. By the way, roasting bok choy isn’t the best idea. It got really limp. (TWSS?)

Going along with my green theme, I had something green for dessert.

Guilty pleasure. Seriously. My name is Lee and I’m addicted to low fat ice cream treats. We can’t all be perfect, right? And if this is my downfall, I’d say I’m doing pretty well.

I keep forgetting to mention this, but Tina and I are arranging an Atlanta Blogger Dinner on Saturday, March 12th. Email me if you are interested in coming. We’re trying to get a final headcount by the 5th.

On Flexibility

I’ve said it before, I’m not flexible. I can’t even touch my toes. It’s something that I work on and hopefully one day will achieve. Or I’ll at least achieve greater flexibility. Aside from being physically inflexible, I’m pretty inflexible mentally.

I’m not a go with the flow type of person. I like routine in my life and when my routine gets interrupted, well, I don’t like that. Tonight’s plan was to go to the gym after work and run 4 miles. I had Jason set the rice cooker so our rice would be done at 8, which would also be when our Vegetable Korma from the new issue of Cooking Light would be ready.

Well, as you can probably guess, my night didn’t go according to plan. When I got in my car after work, I realized that I’d forgotten my gym bag. So I drove home instead. There was traffic and I got home ten minutes later than I normally would have. When I got home, Murphy was rambunctious and in desperate need of a walk. So I took him for a 20 minute walk around the neighborhood.

Then I went to the gym. I like the gym near my office much more than the one near my house. For one, the one near my house is incredibly hot. The cardio machines are upstairs. Don’t they realize that heat rises?

I got on a treadmill after waiting in a line five people deep. I ran for 2 miles and it sucked. I’m not normally a big sweater but I was drenched. The run felt much more difficult than it should have. After 2 miles, I got off my treadmill like a good little time limit rule obeyer and waited in line again, also behind five people. I did the second half of my run and it was also kind of shitty.

When I got home, Jason told me that the rice cooker had never started, so our rice wasn’t ready. Plus, it was already 8 o’clock and I still had to make the Korma.

I started getting all pissy and then I realized that I need to be more flexible. So what if I’m home and cooking dinner an hour later than I’d wanted? So what if the rice wasn’t ready at the time that it was supposed to be? So what if the potatoes in the korma took much longer to cook than the recipe instructed? In the grand scheme of things, these are tiny little details of my day, details that I will forgot by tomorrow, probably.

And the korma was good. It was 9:30 before we ate, but it was good and that’s what’s important. And maybe one day, I’ll be able touch my toes too. Or maybe I won’t. I’m flexible, or at least working on it.

(recipe from March 2011 issue of Cooking Light)

Nut Butter Fail

For whatever reason, I like to bake or cook on Sunday nights. It’s a relaxing way to end the weekend and I have food for the upcoming week. Last night, I tried my hand at homemade nut butter. I’ve tried to make nut butter in the past but never really got past the finely crushed nut stage. Last night, I combined some raw cashews with some shredded coconut and a drizzle of agave. And processed. And processed. And processed. I ran the food processor for at least ten minutes and it never really got liquidy. It was more like the consistency of a larabar.

The coconut really made it oily which you’d think would help with the consistency, but it didn’t. Semi-fail. My food processor is old and the blade is dull. That could have been it.

Jason’s been really wanting to go to this restaurant, The Blue Ribbon Grill, near our house. We live outside of the city and the restaurants near us, besides Mellow Mushroom, don’t typically cater to someone that prefers healthy, mostly vegetarian fare. But since I usually have more say in where we go, I told Jason I’d go wherever he wanted. He was really hoping Blue Ribbon Grill was like Merlotte’s in True Blood. What do you think?

Living in Atlanta is different than living in the rest of Georgia. This definitely felt like the rest of Georgia. That said, the food was very good. I had a salad with crab cakes on top.

I was good. I compromised and let Jason choose! Now it’s my turn to pick the restaurant again, right?

New Jeans

One day two weeks ago, I went to Filene’s Basement on my lunch break. I tried on a bunch of stuff, including a pair of jeans. I’m basically between two sizes. Really, that’s not true; I’m the bigger size of the two, although sometimes stuff fits the smaller size. I tried on the jeans in both sizes and the bigger size fit better. The smaller size fit, but they were tight.

I thought that since I’d started Weight Watchers, it would be stupid to buy the bigger size jeans. I also didn’t buy the smaller sized pair either. I left without anything.

I thought about those jeans all week. I really needed a new pair and I realized that I was being ridiculous for not buying them because they weren’t the size that I wanted to be. No one is going to know what size I’m wearing. If I can squeeze myself into the smaller size, they’re probably not going to look as good as the size that actually fits. I am going to be more comfortable if my clothes fit me correctly.

So I went back and bought them. In the bigger size. And if I lose weight and they’re too big, they were $40, it’s not a huge deal. Stacey and Clinton from What Not To Wear always tell you to dress for the body you have, not the body you want. I pass up a lot of clothes because I refuse to try on the bigger size. Size is just a number. A number that varies from brand to brand, at that. I refuse to let the size of my clothes make me feel bad about myself.

I probably should get them hemmed though.

Long Run – Done

On Thursday night, I met my friend Jamie at Deckard’s American Tavern, a new bar in Midtown. (I wrote a review on Yelp, if any local people are interested.) Deckard’s happens to be in the same shopping center as Whole Foods, so after dinner, I made a quick pit-stop. Shopping for food after a couple glasses of wine usually results in buying some random stuff.

I had a chance to try out these items before yesterday’s nine mile run. I mixed with oatmeal with the yogurt and put a tablespoon of flaxseed on top.

The oatmeal was good, although with 12 grams of sugar, it’s not something that I would buy regularly. The yogurt was meh. I wouldn’t buy it again. Murphy, on the other hand, was literally licking his chops at the sight of it.

Joan and I decided to go to the Silver Comet Trail to run. We met around 12:45. The weather was perfect. I was in a t-shirt and shorts. The Silver Comet Trail is always a pretty place to run and there were a lot of people out enjoying the weather.

We ended up walking for the first mile. We were talking and neither of us is very good at talking while we run. It’s a skill that I really would like to acquire. After we passed mile marker 1, we ran to 4.5 and stopped and turned around.

(Old picture, but you get the gist)

We were running pretty slowly, but my legs were definitely feeling it. Maybe because I skipped my tempo run this week? I don’t know. I definitely felt like I was running way faster than I actually was. When we turned around, I had a GU and that did help give me some energy. Miles 4.5-8 were fine and I felt good but the last mile seemed to really drag on. After what felt like an hour, but was really like 11 minutes, we made it to the trailhead and were done.

Next week’s long run is actually a 10K. My first race of 2011!

The Selfish Runner?

I’ve been running half-marathons for almost six years. The reality of my long run taking over my weekend has been something that has become the norm. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve uttered the phrase, “I can’t, I have to run.” Jason wanted to do something tonight. We barely get to spend time together because of his schedule, but I didn’t want to, because I had to run. I had to run tonight (I did 3 miles) and then I am running 9 miles tomorrow. Sometimes I feel selfish about it. Running always seems to be my top priority. I base my life around my training runs. Sometimes I wonder how life would be if I wasn’t a runner. I would be able to get spur of the moment drinks with my husband on a 70 degree day in February.

But I don’t think I’d be happy while I’m doing it. Even if I wasn’t running, I feel the need to exercise. I can’t imagine being the type of person who just doesn’t work out. I need to work out. I need to feel the sweat, to get my heart rate up, to push myself. And this is time consuming.

But, it’s something that I have to do for myself and in turn, this makes me a better friend, a better wife.

Do you ever feel guilty for putting exercise first?