Catching Up, Quite Literally

Hi, Friends! I miss you. May I tell you what's been going on recently? I'd love to. Grab yourself an adult beverage because I have one and I don't really like to drink alone.

Ready? That's swell.

Seriously, is there anything better than a Bloody Mary with a side of Rob Lowe? I think not.

I took a vacation this weekend. A much needed vacation. My shoulders were tired from lugging a way too heavy carry-on bag and a brick of a laptop around airports, my feet were sore from wearing big girl shoes - I mean, work appropriate heels, and my eyes were apparently tired because the nerve under my left eye had been twitching consistently for the past ten days.

I earned this vacation.

But like I said the last time we needed to catch up, I'm always thinking about the little things I want to talk to you about, so I take photos so I can remember to tell you about them when I'm not crying under the flat screen monitors in the airport because my plane left without me. Which is a perfect segue...

Airports:

This is a reality for me. I spend a lot of time in them. You'd think that they'd be nicer to me since I try so hard to be considerately efficient in the security line, and I even take my liquids out of my suitcase, even though the hot-shot business travelers think that's lame sauce. But there were enough travel blunders this month to solidify a solid section in the post.

This is the most romantic airport photo I have this month. The nation's Capitol in the skyline, and a predictably late departure rising into the sky. Poetry, really. 

You all are well aware of my nail polish faux pas.

We don't really need to re-live it. I travel with nail polish because I will bite my nails down to my first knuckle if I don't wear it and chipped nail polish does nothing for my credibility in a business meeting.

And I am in desperate need of credibility right about now.

So that happened around 1:30am on a Wednesday, and I finally returned to Madison around 10:30pm that Thursday. However, my bag didn't arrive with me.

There are no more bags left on the belt.

By this time I thought I had paid my dues, but then a week later, I experienced a first - I missed my flight and had to stay overnight in Atlanta. Despite my dad lobbying with the gate agent to hold the flight, that flight was bound and determined to leave at exactly 8:40, even though it was technically the SAME FLIGHT NUMBER as the flight I was connecting with.

I'm getting over it, I swear.

Oh, Delta, I know you had some kind of karmic character-building intentions in leaving without me, thus delaying my vacation by fourteen hours, but I was having none of it. Thankfully Marriott loves me and likes to give me presents when I check in.

Fun Things!
But seriously, These things are fun and kind of strange but mostly just fun.

I GOT ANOTHER ROOM WITH A MURPHY BED.

 Do I look like a girl who is going to have a dinner party for six in my hotel room? Do I look like a girl who is going to teach a morning yoga class in my hotel room? Or do I just look like a girl who likes to fold her bed up into the wall in the morning?

I don't know which one it is, but it was GINORMOUS.

It had a pretty view, though.

I took this photo one morning through my hotel window. There's something inexplicably peaceful about seeing a body of a water and sushi restaurant out your window when you wake up in the morning. And then hosting a yoga class for all of your hotel buddies in your ginormous room.

I'm Making Real Life Progress.

My dad taught me how to make risotto. The recipe is in your near future, and just in time for summer. My god is this vegetable-filled creamy deliciousness one of the best things I have ever tasted.

Fo realz.

And I have conquered one of my New Year's Resolutions!

Sunday Link List

Sunday is here! And I have so many links to share with you!! This photo is the embodiment of the past week for me. After arriving in Baltimore at 1:30am Tuesday night (or Wednesday morning, I guess), all I wanted to do was brush my teeth and get every minute of the four hours of sleep I had coming to me. But when I went to grab my toothpaste out of my bag, the unmistakable smell on an exploded bottle of nail polish wafted up to my despondent nostrils.

Luckily the damage was contained to my travel toiletries bag, but it was the last thing I wanted to deal with in the wee hours of the morning. And no girl wants to retire her favorite bottle of nail polish due to an uncontrolled airplane pressure situation. It's devastating really.

But this is a new week, I'm going for a bike ride, and I replaced my nail polish. It's all good.

Speaking of nail polish, use some nail polish remover to clean up the scuffs on your patent leather.

I think if I had a self-watering herb planter my herbs might stay alive!

Photographers vs. iPhoneography at the Torpedo Factory - get there, DC kids!

This is jewelry and perfume all rolled into one. Very cool.

The weirdest, funniest, and most convincing advertising campaign I've seen in a while.

I love the style that's happening here. The yellow bike in the second look is really what I'm eyeing.

Perhaps Mad Men is not about the fall of Don Draper, but instead about his moral education? An interesting perspective.

Biking to the supermarket has never been easier!

I have loved everything that I've eaten that Paul Virant has masterminded. I don't think this Rhubarb Beer Jam  will be any different.

Another Manfred in London

That's right! Exactly two years after I left, London was finally prepared for another Manfred to take it by storm. So Liza decided to pack her bags and remind London what Manfreds are all about!

Since my semester abroad is the reason this blog exists, I thought I might regale you with my pictureless (ugh, I know!) musings from that semester. Reading these posts again is both strange and comforting to me. When I left London two years ago, I felt more lost, confused, and exhilarated than I had ever felt. I finally had a semblance of how much bigger the world is outside of my own little bubble, and was daunted by the possibilities and opportunities it presented.

I am so grateful that I had that realization because it has afforded me a sense of peace since then. Now, it's comforting to know that I can take chances, embrace opprotunities, and not let the little things stress me out because the world is so much bigger than me, and I know things will be okay.

And that's liberating.

I started a blog.

I went for a scenic run and was proud I cooked a meal.

I was sad that I couldn't watch the Bachelor.

My life changed at Borough Market. Bad Romance was first starting to get popular.

Shady dudes tried to steal my money. One was successful.

I was a brat at Stonehenge.

I wrote about the coffee in London. I hadn't had Monmouth coffee at this point, clearly.

I complained about stuff that was bothering me.

I went to an ultra-lounge in Paris on Valentine's Day!

Time was slipping away and I fell in love with Prague.

I'm a knitter. And a made friends with Dolly.

I went to Italy and Spain on Spring Break.

Shopping at Waitrose was the best way to spend my birthday.

I did a Q&A session with Liza.

I finally realized the beauty of a relaxing night, sipping a Guinness.

I tried to talk myself out of some homesickness.

I made a lot of local friends.

I learned a lot about living as variously as possible.

 h yeah, then I was Jonesing for London nine months later.

 Have a great time in London, Liza! Try to find Kevin for me, will ya?

Sunday Link List

Happy Mother's Day! I hope all of you made your moms feel very special today. My mom lives very far away from me, so a phone call and secondary hugs from my Dad and sister had to suffice this time. However, I am hereby calling Memorial Day weekend my unofficial Mother's day since I will be seeing not only my mother, but both of my grandmothers! That's a lot of wisdom I have to tap into in one short weekend.

I am thankful that I got to play with my former roommate this weekend, because if you can't hang out with your mom on Mother's Day weekend, you should probably get to chat with your best friend in Starbucks on a Sunday morning after a night of wine drinking and nail painting. I got to do that, so I'm a happy girl.

I also found this blog this week and it is quite clever.

I'm afraid this poor model will one day be "that girl".

Maybe I've been listening to the Jillian Michaels podcast too much, but I love the articles on this site.

Have you ever seen Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead? It'll make you want to invest in a juicer like this.

Find a local farmer to buy your food from on this website.

Hello, dream kitchen! But naturally, my Kitchen Aid will be yellow.

I am bound and determined to make the most delicious Ploughman's Sandwich for you all.

Have a safe trip to London, Liza! Make sure to get some coffee here. It'll be the best cup of coffee you've ever had.

What's a Vegetarian to Eat?

For the past year, I have been a "vegetarian". The decision was spurred by my desperation for pain-free digestion (I know, already! My life is really glamorous!), and stuck with me once I started feeling good after meals and realizing that it's not that hard to eat a plant-based diet.

This is me eating vegetarian cupcake batter. 

I say that I'm a "vegetarian" because I'm not a full-fledged, militant vegetarian. Frankly, if it weren't for industrial farming, pink slime, and hormone-laden feed for animals, I probably wouldn't qualify myself as any kind of special eater, and I'd try to reincorporate meat into my diet.

I am a "vegetarian" because I spend a lot of time at client lunches and airport dinners with people I don't know, and it's easier for me to explain why I don't want to go to the best barbecue place in town if I'm a vegetarian. People seem to get that.

That's hasn't stopped people from asking if I want the chicken salad sandwich after I say I'm a vegetarian. The great salad conundrum, I know!

The reason I'm a "vegetarian" with quotation marks is because I'll eat fish. Sometimes. Like, maybe once every three weeks. I like seafood, and I make sure whatever I'm eating isn't corn-fed and farmed. But I don't depend on fish as the cornerstone protein of my diet.

Enough explanation! I eat lots of plants!

Carrots are plants. 

However, the past year of vegetarianism has made me confront some of my food demons. Just like other normal people, there are some foods I just don't like, and there are some foods that I just thought I didn't like. Coincidentally, quite a few of the foods on my "yuck list" as a meat eater are foods that are stereotypically "vegetarian".

I'm talking about you, mushrooms, beans, and tofu!

So here are two list: Things I Still Don't Like and Things I've Decided to Like.  These are all things that I "didn't like" as a meat eater and have retried in the past year. Hooray for lists!

Things I Still Don't Like:


1) Mushrooms

I've honestly never been able to get over the fact that they are fungus. The texture is weirdly spongy, and they are a little too earthy for me. Probably the fungus on my tastebuds.

2) Tofu

I think my biggest problem is that people try to make tofu something that it isn't simply because it's spongy, flavorless smushed up soybeans. Putting barbecue sauce on tofu doesn't make it a steak. "Be who you are and be that well," St. Francis de Sales said, and tofu, you are not a steak.

3) Brussel Sprouts

I get that this is like, the most stereotypical food not to like, but I feel like sprouts have gotten, shall we say, fashionable recently, and I haven't been able to get on board. They're just too cabbagy (yes, it's a word now) for me, and my thought is, "No wonder so many recipes tell you to cook brussel sprouts with BACON."

Bacon makes everything taste better, and I'm not ashamed to say it.

Things I've Decided to Like:


1) Quinoa

I will go ahead and say I full-on love this. I had a bad experience with it due to my ineptitude early on, but when I decided to charge ahead with this vegetarian phase (sure Matt, it's a phase!) I gave it another shot, and I'm so glad I did. I eat this all the time!

2) Avocado

My entire life I've thought that avocado was goss, slippery, green mush that ruins perfectly good salsa. Then I learned as a vegetarian, restaurants that are scared of vegetarians seem to love putting avocado on stuff. So I tried it again. And then I had really good guacamole. And then I learned it was a superfood, and I was sold.

3) Beans

I'm still on a learning curve with beans. As a meat eater I had serious texture issues with beans (Soft but grainy? Mushy but firm? Excuse me while my mind explodes.)

But just like the mushrooms and avocados, I had a give them another shot for vegetarian solidarity. Now I'm a total convert to black beans - make these burgers STAT - and I straight up snack on garbanzo beans.

White beans and kidney beans I'm still coming around to, but I'd say I'm off to a good start.

What food do you wish you liked but you can't seem to convince your brain to like it? Mine is strawberries, so if you made it to this question you can yell at me about it. What food do you love that I should try? Don't say strawberries.

Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hey guys! How was your weekend?

Okay, so I kind of regret asking that. At this wonderfully awkward exciting age of low-mid twenties, it's probably the most loaded question you can ask. 'Cause seriously, even if you say, "It was great!", the person who asked you in the first place will inevitably ask, "Yeah? Whadjya do?" 

Well, a great weekend for me consists of running early on Saturday morning, unpacking a suitcase, catching up on my DVRed shows, and baking cookies. It normally involves going to bed before midnight, too.

I know that's not the coolest answer out there by a long shot. I'm pretty certain my particularly inquisitive friend was hoping for, "Oh you know, I went out, I was hungover until 3pm the next day, and dude, I'm pretty nervous to check my credit card statement, because I have a vague recollection of ordering 28 tequila shots for 28 of my closest friends."

I didn't give that answer, but I did drink some wine and rearranged my room! But I don't know if that does anything to help my case.

These cookies were inspired by the Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies I saw at Whole Foods a while back. It's a super chewy cookie with rich dark chocolate and just enough coffee to make everyone who has had one say, "Hey, there IS coffee in here!"

Yeah! Did you think I was lying to you?

The coffee/chocolate combo is a chef stand-by. Ina Garten and Paula Deen are particularly fond of it, and rightly so. The bitterness of the coffee flavor really enhances the richness of chocolate, and makes chocolate desserts that much more delicious.

So if you're ever making a chocolate cake and you see that it calls for a teaspoon of instant espresso, that's why. These cookies are seriously channeling that combo. They've kind of taken it to a whole new level, if I do say so myself.

So can we make a deal that if I keep baking things like this on my weekend that you'll stop thinking that I'm a total loser? That'd be great. 'Cause then I'll probably share with you.

Okay, I'll probably share with you either way, but don't tell the super judgy people that.

Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies
Makes about 3 dozen cookies
Total Time: 15 minutes prep, 12 minutes in oven

Ingredients:
1 cup all purpose flour

1 3/4 cup bread flour (NOTE: you can use all purpose flour for all 2 3/4 cups, but I ran out of AP after 1 cup, so this is what I actually used to make these)

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 sticks butter (salted or unsalted) at room temperature

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs

1/3 cup strong coffee

1/3 cup finely ground coffee grounds (I used the Starbucks Espresso blend)

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375°F.

Combine flours, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. Set aside.

Beat butter, sugar, vanilla, and coffee until creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture and coffee grounds. Once combined, stir in the chocolate chips.

Put dough in refrigerator until firm, but able to be scooped on to cookie sheets. About 20 minutes.

Scoop dough onto ungreased or parchment paper-lined cookie sheets (about 12 fit on a standard cookie sheet). Bake for 10-12 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through for even baking.

Let cool for 2 minutes, and transfer to wire racks to finish cooling. Enjoy!

Sunday Link List

I hope everyone is having a great weekend! As you can tell, it's a beautiful day here in Wisconsin. The lightning really sparkles in the gray sky. Unfortunately, this weather makes me much more inclined to buy cute summer clothes while wandering around a mall since I'm pretty sure riding my bike wouldn't be the brightest idea. You know, with all that beautiful lightning.

So after this weekend, I'm not allowed to buy anything ever again. If you're interested in eating pasta with parmesan cheese or eggs any style for the rest of the month, I'm your girl. I will be preparing those spartan meals in very cute clothes though, so that's a plus.

Here's what I've been reading this week! The internet is a magical place.

I made this pasta with braised kale for dinner. It's freaking delicious.

This dress will be a summer staple for me.

Someone want to plot a creative bike route with me?

Our next family vacation, perhaps?

I hope this happens to other people besides me.

Never have I gotten more compliments on a nail polish. Ever. I love it.

25 things that will make your life easier. Particularly love number 3. Need to work on number 22.

Let's make these ice cream sandwiches for Memorial Day weekend, okay Mom?

Next Time I Run a Half Marathon

I've had about six weeks to reflect on the half marathon I ran with my dad, and I'm starting to feel like some of the lessons I learned are sinking in.

Reader's Digest Version of the race:
1) I ate half of an egg sandwich on a whole wheat english muffin. I was NOT hungry.
2) The first four miles went according to plan.
3) My Crohn's got angry.
4) I told it to shut up.
5) It was really crowded. The whole freaking time.
6) I leaped across the finish line with a crazed smile on my face.
7) I didn't PR or break my 2 hour goal.

In the past six weeks, I've cut back on my running to about twice a week. But don't worry! I've amped up my cycling, my weight training, and my yoga. And I feel so much better than I did the week leading up to my race in March.

That realization got me thinking about one of the first long runs I did to train for the National Half. I ran 8 miles at around an 8:30 pace. It was one of the fastest long run I did leading up to the race and you know what? That was after I had done a bunch of yoga and cross training that winter, with some running mixed in.

So for my next half marathon, I think I'm going to take a different approach to my training. At this point, I know that I can run 13.1 miles. What I need to do now is focus on what will make me a strong runner.

That all said, here's my master plan.

1) Run three times a week.
Two runs during the week and one long run on the weekend. I think if I use these runs wisely and use the extra time that I would have spent getting training runs in doing other workouts, I think it will make me a stronger, more efficient runner.

2) Speed, Stress, Slow.
Those are my three types of runs. One weekday run will be my race-pace "Speed" run, the other will be a "Stress" run such as hill repeats, interval training, or a tempo run. My weekend run will be a standard LSD (long slow distance) run that gets progressively longer leading up to race day. I think these will all complement each other and make each training run meaningful and *possibly* fun.

3) Weight train.
Only running three days a week leaves me some time to do other workouts besides running! Which I forget I love until I return to them after some sort of hiatus, like training for a half marathon. I love the feeling of sore muscles after weight training and I'm convinced that if I focus on strength as opposed to just endurance, it will improve my endurance as well.

4) Make time for yoga.
Yoga is the last piece of the puzzle for me. I love everything about it - it's challenging, meditative, strengthening, and humbling. But when I'm training for a race, it makes more sense for me to get a training run in in the 45 minutes that it would take me to do a yoga workout. I think that if I make it a priority it will pay off and ultimately make me a better runner.

5) Protein.
Running makes me ravenous. And protein can be hard as a vegetarian. I'm already trying harder to incorporate more eggs, Greek yogurt, beans, lentils, nuts, and dark leafy greens (which are packed with protein) into my diet. Greek yogurt with slivered almonds is my new favorite snack.

So what's next on the docket? A DUATHLON. For as much as I love running, I think I might have been born to be on this bike. It's my newest obsession.

Anyone interested in a long ride this weekend? What about a duathlon? What half marathon are we going to run to test my new training plan?