Cooking at my apartment.

My blogging was so sparse last semester that I don't think I ever talked in depth about how I was doing with the cooking at my first apartment. Throughout the semester, I never stopped loving being able to prepare my own foods and go to the grocery store. It's one of my favorite things about apartment life. I never once opted to eat out to avoid cooking. 

I try to stay organized about my grocery shopping so that I don't grab the wrong things that I won't use, or certain components for recipes but not others. For example, if I don't go in with a plan, I might come out with 3 boxes of delicious cereal but no milk. 4 cucumbers for a salad, but no lettuce or dressing. Or, 3 bunches of lettuce that I'll never be able to eat before it goes bad. Peanut butter, but no jelly. You get the idea. So, I always make a grocery list. I sit down and plan out the meals that I'd like to have for the next week. I like to write the list in the order that I go through the store; usually starting with produce and ending in dairy. I methodically work my way through the store, crossing stuff off my list as I go (or deleting it from my phone). 

One of my favorite parts of grocery shopping is that I generally bring Alex with me. For the majority of last semester, we always went to the grocery store midday on Fridays (which we both had free from classes). Often times, we didn't spend time together all week until Friday, so it became our "thing." However, while I try to be methodical about my grocery shopping, Alex is the opposite. He likes to run all of the store in no particular order, as things come to mind. It drives me CRAZY! The supermarket is giant, so I inevitably have to chase him so I don't lose him, all while trying to maintain my composure and grab the things I need along the way, trying not to allow my organized system to be disrupted. It's equal parts frustrating and hysterical. 

Towards the beginning of the semester, I did several crockpot recipes; usually thick soups or stew-type meals. I still have some leftovers from those in my freezer. As the semester went on, I got very obsessed with roasted sweet potatoes and broccoli and started eating those everyday. Post-marathon, I started making goals to meet a daily protein quota, so I started finding fancy ways to fix eggs so it wouldn't get boring. I also began eating a lot of vanilla Greek yogurt with cereal. And of course, lots of nut butters :)

I haven't busted out the crockpot yet, but I did make blueberry muffins on Sunday night while watching Downton Abbey. 

My mom has been recently obsessed with the cookbook "Thug Kitchen." It's pretty hilarious; take one glance at their website and you'll see why.  Once you get past the language, there are tons of amazing recipes to choose from. AND all of the recipes are vegan! Many of them offer non-vegan substitutions, but even so, most of these recipes are very healthy. A lot of them even offer tips on where to find certain ingredients in the grocery store, which I find helpful, particularly for the more obscure things. 

I made a list of the "Thug" recipes that I thought I would enjoy most, and I'm hoping to try a few soon!

Chickpea Tabbouleh.

"Hoppin' John."

Sweet potato & chickpea wraps.

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I've been running about 30 minutes every day since getting to Oxford - all treadmill miles since it's usually dark in the mornings when I'm running, or just too cold. 

This morning I had the pleasure of having the fitness center to myself the entire time. Loved it.

I loved being able to run without feeling self-conscious - and setting the TV to the channel I wanted!

Hopefully next week I'll go up to doing some 40 and 50 minute runs!

Recovery and 21.

It's been 8 days since my wisdom teeth were taken out, and I'm doing a lot better! I didn't do any activity (other than shopping and a short walk around my neighborhood) until yesterday, which marked a week post-op. Yesterday I took a short 1.4 mile run around the lake in my neighborhood, and it didn't feel to great on my mouth! Not sure if I'm going to try that again today or just wait another couple of days.

I have also developed a complication with one of my incision sites... it's called "dry socket" and it's even more unpleasant than it sounds. Won't go into too many details there, but even with that wrench in my recovery I'm feeling a lot better (and looking a lot better!) and returning to normal activities. The painful dry socket can take up to a month or so to start feeling better so I'm interested to see how that affects my cooking and exercise choices for the next few weeks... you might see a lot of soup recipes on here!

There's much more exciting things going on though! Tomorrow I'm headed back to school with my sister and Alex. I feel like I'm finally getting into a routine here after weeks of travel, then the flu, and then oral surgery. However, I'm excited and optimistic for this coming semester. 

Speaking of which, I've been thinking a lot about my running goals recently. As I've probably mentioned on here, I had been planning on training hard to run a (hopefully!) very speedy half-marathon this semester. It seemed like a good idea after the marathon. Half-marathons are a lot easier and less stressful to train for (particularly in terms of time commitment). It would also be easier on my body. However, my IT-band injury really complicated that plan. I'm only now starting to get to the point where I can run regularly, and I don't have any sort of base to build on so I should not start a training cycle. When I do run, I'm painfully slow. I've stayed in shape for the most part by doing a lot of rowing and spinning, but being sick for a week and then being out for this past week definitely didn't help. For right now, I have a short term running goal: build my base back up. Hopefully I can get started with that on Sunday or Monday when I'm settled back at school :)

I'm optimistic, because when I came back from Luxembourg, I definitely wasn't in tip-top running shape. I ran about 20-25 miles a week when I was lucky, and there were often chunks of time where I couldn't run at all for a week or two do to traveling logistics. When I did run, I ran VERY slowly. All my runs were easy and I never once did a "workout." However, I came home from Europe, did about 3 weeks of base running, and hit the marathon training hard. I fell into a groove right away. I'm hoping that happens again and I get my mojo back quickly. While I was abroad, it was hard for me to accept at the time, but I think my body really needed those 16 weeks of "easy." I've been constantly in training for something since I was 14, whether it be rowing or running. I try to think that way about this period since the marathon, too. In the 8 weeks between the marathon and winter break, I did a lot of elliptical, but I'm not sure that did much for me. Now I've had about 3.5 months low-intensity workouts and I hope to start this semester with a renewed energy, ready to work hard. 

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Last night, my parents took me out to dinner for my 21st birthday. It's not for another 1.5 weeks but they wanted to do something since I'm about to leave town. We had an amazing cake from Whole Foods for desert... It's called "Chocolate Dream."

For my birthday, my mom bought me my first suit. I found two amazing pieces at Express. I wasn't sure if I should pick pants and a jacket or a skirt and jacket, but I figured I can always add the component I don't have later on. I found trousers and a jacket that fit great. After trying about 47 different stores, I finally found pieces that I felt confident in. I think it's hard for women to find suits that are professional, yet appropriately attractive. I loved that Express had tailored pieces - I won't have to get these altered at all!

This is a very grown up present... Makes me wonder about my age. I'm not sure I feel any more mature or different than I did at 17, though I imagine I must be. In high school, one of my teachers told the class that 21 is the age that women start lying about their age and pretending to be younger. How depressing is that? I think it was hardest for me to turn 20 last year. 20 seemed a lot older than 19. If I have ever had any aging crisis, it was then. Fortunately, it was a bit hard to spend time dwelling on that since I was very busy traveling during that time.

It's also hard to complain when your boyfriend takes you to Paris for your birthday. On the day I turned 20, I got to look down at one of the most amazing cities in the entire world!

I've got a "recipes" post coming soon! Trying to uphold my goal of getting back into my blogging routine :)

Hi, 2015!

I failed to mention this earlier because I didn't want to sound complainy or overly negative, but blogging as been a little bit hard as of late because my computer has had a broken hard drive for the past 6 weeks. It got me through finals week, but as soon as I was home free for break, it gave up on me. Or should I say, blew up on me. It's a complete goner. I took my computer to the Apple store and they fixed it within hours, but when I found out that my university would do free data recovery and the Apple store wouldn't, I had them put the old, blown up hard drive back in. I'll be back at school next week and hopefully able to get some my files - especially my Europe pictures - back, since not all of them were backed up. Even more ironically, I had JUST started doing a huge back-up 2 days before the hard drive exploded on me. 

Anyways, my lesson has been learned. I need to back up my computer way more often than I was doing. However, I've been getting through the last 6 weeks on a myriad of different devices... my mom's PC, sometimes. Other times, her tablet. Recently, Alex has lent me his laptop, since he's been using his family's desktop at home, so that has been a Godsend. So, that's part of why I failed to get back on the blog train. I can write posts on any computer, but the question has really been how to incorporate good pictures into those posts without having to upload them to a bunch of different computers. I tried writing a post on a computer and embedding photos from my phone directly, but the quality just wasn't very good. However, other stuff has been been taking precedence, too. I did some traveling; visited Alex's sister and her boyfriend in North Carolina for about 5 days over New Years, and then after just a couple of days back at home, I took off to Atlanta with Alex and my sister to visit my aunt and uncle, cousins, and grandparents for a weekend.

In recent news, I'm back to running. Not very long, and not every day in a row, but I've run up to 5.5 miles or so without problems. I'm still rowing and spinning and going to PT, but I'm scheduled for a follow up with my doctor back at school when I return and hopefully I'll finally be cleared and back to normal. Hopefully I'm posting running workouts again soon!!!

It's been about 5 degrees on most of the days I've been running recently...

Speaking of which... I order new running shoes for a major bargain on Amazon. These are the breast cancer edition of my regular shoes. Sorry for the blur.

Also, I've got my wisdom teeth removed. Except for the marathon, I doubt whether I have ever been more nervous for anything in my life. I mean, I was already losing sleep over this in early December. December! I had never had a surgery before, never been sedated or put under or cut open or anything like that, and I was nervous to do so. Partially, I was completely psyched out by all of those awful (and admittedly, sometimes very funny) viral videos on the Internet of people having crazy reactions to the anesthetic. I did NOT want that to be me. I also wasn't looking forward to what I expected to be a weekend full of pain and swelling. I was also hard bent on NOT taking the Percocet that my surgeon was going to prescribe me. There are a lot of personal reasons for this, of which I'll spare you. Anyways, in sum, I was just dreading this procedure. I just had it done on Thursday, and I'm doing all right. I've only had to take Motrin - the pain is really not bad and almost nonexistent, but I've been wearing lots of scarves and staying inside everyday since the procedure since I definitely have a lot of swelling! It makes me feel weird not to look like myself. I hardly had any the first day, but my face has pretty much looked like a potato since day 2. Today's day 3, and I expect to be able to go out and do some normal activities by tomorrow, but I'm just not up to it yet. In all, the procedure was about what I expected in terms of recovery. 

2 shots of me directly after the surgery.

This is me today: 

Yep. Full on ninja mode.

My grandma knew I was pretty nervous so she gave me this little stone, which I kept in my pocket during the procedure!

During and directly following the procedure, I didn't have any weird reactions at all. They actually didn't give me an anesthetic, just laughing gas and novocaine. The laughing gas was nothing special - it just knocked me out! I had to take an Ativan about 2 hours before my appointment, and that didn't seem to have any effect on me. My surgeon told me that it must be having a great effect on me then, because I was probably so nervous it just made me feel regular! Once combined with the gas, I fell right asleep - or at least I think I was asleep for awhile. I don't remember them putting in the IV or giving me the novocaine, but I do remember the middle and end of my surgery and a lot of loud drilling, which they had to do to wrench my teeth out. As soon as they took the gas off, I felt just regular - if not a little grumpy because having gauze jammed in your mouth can be an unpleasant sensation. I read THIS post several times before having my wisdom teeth removed and this probably was the most accurate for what I ended up experiencing and made me feel better because it was honest and funny at the same time. If you have to have yours out, I suggest reading it :)

I guess I've seemed a little miserable during the last couple of days... so my mom gave me an early birthday present!

I'm so excited for that to go on my fridge in my apartment!

When I was fresh home from surgery I was STARVING because I hadn't had anything to eat since dinner the night before... which is just way too long. My mom brought me a caramel mug cake, which ordinarily I probably wouldn't choose to eat but at the time I just inhaled it (as fast as someone who just had four large molars removed can) and it was delicious! So now I keep looking up recipes for new mug cakes, since I'm still on a mostly liquid/mushy foods diet. I found this - the absolute holy grail of microwave mug baking. There's a ton of great recipes for all sorts of mug cakes and cookies, all of which can be ready in a matter of minutes. 

Other things I've been doing in the last few days, aside from obsessing over the art of baking in the microwave... watching A LOT of Gilmore Girls on Netflix. I'm sure I have seen every episode about 98375928 times since I used to follow it on TV and my sister and I would often borrow the boxed sets from the library and binge watch them. I've been watching so much Gilmore Girls in the last few days that I haven't even touched the stack of DVDs I rented before my surgery. 

So that's the update... I'll keep posting as I'm able and hopefully a lot more once my poor computer is fixed!