Monthly Archives: October 2011

Atlanta Marathon Relay

Posted on October 30, 2011 by inmytummy| 17 Comments

This morning was the Atlanta Marathon and Marathon Relay. My relay team originally consisted of me, my friend Joan, my friend Dave and Laura. Unfortunately, Laura injured herself and wasn’t able to run it. I have to admit, I was a little worried when she told us that she couldn’t run. If we weren’t able to find a fourth person, one of us would have to do two legs of the race and I was the only one that was trained to do so. The rules stated that if you ran two legs, you had to do them consecutively, so if I had to do that, I would have had to run 12.3 miles. Fortunately, Mark offered to take Laura’s place so it all worked out in the end. (Thanks again, Mark!)

The race started and finished at Atlantic Station – an outdoor mall in Midtown. Out of the four of us, only Mark had done a relay before. Dave, Joan and I didn’t exactly know what to expect. Our relay order was:

Leg 1 – Me – 5.5 miles
Leg 2 – Dave – 8.4 miles
Leg 3 – Joan – 5.1 miles
Leg 4 – Mark – 7.2 miles

We picked our legs based on what mileage we wanted to run, but I definitely got the best deal running the first leg. Everyone else had to take shuttle busses to their respective transition areas and wait around for a long time in the cold. And when I say long time, I mean a really long time. Mark, doing the final leg, had to wait over three hours!

It was cold at the beginning, probably around 38 degrees but I felt okay. My portion of the race went from Midtown into Downtown which is not an area that I run often, so I enjoyed taking in the sites. There were some hills, but really only one major one. The race was well organized and there were clocks at most of the mile markers (not mile 5 for some reason) and water stops every two miles.

It’s pretty nice to run 5.5 miles after running 13.1 the weekend before because it really did fly by. Before I knew it, I was at the transition and ready to hand off my timing slap bracelet (yes, a slap bracelet, like we had when we were kids!) to Dave. I’m not sure of my exact time, but I think it was in the 56 minute range. After Dave took off, I got in line for a shuttle bus that took me back to Atlantic Station.

Once we arrived, I immediately went to Starbucks to get a warm beverage. Lots of runners had the same idea and it was crowded, but I managed to get a seat. I sat there for about 40 minutes, enjoying the warmth before I went back outside to wait for Dave. While I was waiting, I saw the first marathoner finish in 2:34! Crazy talk. I can barely run a half marathon in that time.

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Eventually, more and more runners started to finish so I made my way down to the finish line to watch while I was waiting for Joan and Mark. I know some people think that watching a race is boring, but I found it very exciting to be at a marathon finish line. I even got a little choked up at times. I’m kind of a sap.

I managed to see Kristy cross the finish line. I don’t think she heard me but I cheered for her. And about five minutes after, Mark crossed the finish line. Our total team time was 4:11 which is a 9:35 pace. Fine with me!

All in all, it was a fun experience but I’m not sure if I’d do a relay again. Even though you are part of a team, you never really get to see your teammates and it’s kind of lonely. Plus, there is a lot of waiting. On the flip side, it’s fun to participate in excitement of the marathon festivities without actually having to run 26.2 miles.

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Posted in Atlanta, Friends, Races, Running

Halloween Party

Posted on October 29, 2011 by inmytummy| 17 Comments

Last night, Jason and I got dressed up and went to a Halloween party that one of his co-workers was hosting. Can you tell who we are supposed to be?

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How about now?

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Is there any resemblance?

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Jason had some trouble finding good vampire fangs and ended up with ones that made him look like a buck toothed character from the Simpsons.

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I honestly could not stop laughing at his teeth.

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Although now I can’t stop laughing because Jason posted a picture on facebook (without the teeth) and a relative of mine said he looks like Stephen King. It’s the wig! Who knew that if you cut an “emo rocker” wig a little bit, you’d turn into Stephen King?

The party didn’t start until 9, so I ate dinner beforehand. I always get sort of annoyed at those health magazine articles that tell you to eat before a party so you won’t end up stopping by the food table every five minutes. Umm, all that ever happens in that situation is that I eat before AND at the party. They did have a really delicious pumpkin dip at this particular party so I think it was worth it.

Do you dress up for Halloween? What about trick or treaters? Get any? Last year was the first year that we lived in our house on Halloween and I bought all this candy, thinking that since we live in a suburban neighborhood, there would be a lot of kids. You know how many times the door rang? Once! And I think those people have since moved away.

(By the way, we were Sookie and Bill from True Blood if you’ve never seen the show or our costumes were just that bad.)

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Posted in Uncategorized

Healthy Bar Food

Posted on October 28, 2011 by inmytummy| 17 Comments

Sometimes Jason and I talk about moving to another city. We’re not really serious about it, we own a house here for one thing. But we both feel sick of Atlanta at times and do want to get away. However, more often than not, I find myself enjoying aspects of this city that I tend to take for granted and would certainly miss if we ever did leave. Healthy food in bars is one of those things.

I don’t go to bars that often. I used to, but not anymore. Not for any particular reason, I guess, just going to a restaurant rather than a bar seems more appealing now. However, that’s not to say that I never meet friends for after work drinks and food at bars.

When I’ve gone out in other cities, it seems the bar food is well that – bar food. Nachos, chicken wings, burgers, not much vegetarian stuff. We have that too, of course, but what I like so much about the bar scene in Atlanta is that it is possible to get a healthy meal. Healthy bar food is not an oxymoron here. I know that some people have the mindset that if they’re going to go to a bar, they’re going to eat chicken wings and drink beer. I don’t share that mindset. While I’m down with the beer drinking (though I prefer wine), I genuinely like healthy food and it makes me feel better about the drinks that I’m about to have!

My friend Jamie and I went to The Earl tonight. We hadn’t been in a long time and going out seemed like a good diversion from a crappy week. The Earl is a total dive/punk/kind of hipster bar in East Atlanta.

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You’d never know it from the outside, but they have some really good food,

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including my favorite, the veggie tofu pita.

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I think this pita might be reason enough to stay in Atlanta forever.

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Posted in Atlanta, Atlanta Restaurants, Healthy Choices at Restaurants, Vegetarian

Stress Rears it’s Ugly Head

Posted on October 27, 2011 by inmytummy| 22 Comments

When it comes to food, I think everyone has habits that they struggle with more than others. Personally, my biggie is listening to my hunger cues and boredom eating. One thing that I do not struggle with, fortunately, is eating poorly when I’m stressed out. It’s a good thing because I’ve been extremely stressed out this past week. I’m not at liberty to talk about the reason behind it, but let’s just say I found out some not so great news recently. (It’s nothing related to my health, don’t worry!)

Instead of eating when I’m stressed out, my natural inclination is to sleep. I think it’s partially because I’m not sleeping well at night. Even though I feel like I’m asleep, my waking thoughts are still present, causing me to toss and turn. So it was no surprise to me when I felt like I was going to fall asleep at my desk around 3pm today. My original plan was to do a 3 mile run after work. I’m running a leg of a marathon relay (5.7 miles) on Sunday so I figured I should probably get in at least two short runs this week. But when the clock hit 5:30 and I could barely keep my eyes open, I knew that I needed sleep.

I fell asleep for an hour. It was a struggle to wake up, but I knew that I couldn’t go to bed for the night at 6pm! I finally dragged my butt out of bed, took Murphy for a short walk and tried to make a healthy dinner.

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Dinner was roasted green beans, roasted tofu and socca. This was my first attempt at socca and I can’t tell if I liked it or not. I think I did but it had a slight bitter aftertaste. I’ve never had it before so I don’t know if that’s just what chickpea flour tastes like or if the particular kind of chickpea flour I had was weird. (It was Indian Chickpea flour)

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Italian Style Socca

1/4 cup diced tomatoes
1 cup chickpea flour
1 cup warm water
3 tsp olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp dried basil

1. Using a blender, mix together chickpea flour, water, 1 tsp olive oil, basil and salt. Let sit for several hours or overnight.
2. Add diced tomatoes to flour mixture. Heat remaining oil in deep saucepan over medium heat.
3. Pour mixture in pan and cook for approximately 15 minutes, flipping once firm.

Have you ever had socca? And how do you deal with stress?

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Posted in Vegetarian

Friends in the Carolinas

Posted on October 26, 2011 by inmytummy| 15 Comments

Blogging is a funny thing; somehow I feel like I’ve become friends with a ton of people that I don’t actually know. But when it comes to meeting them in person, they are always exactly like I thought and conversation always flows very easily. I know that people might find it odd, but I feel like I have friends all over the country.

Dinner on Saturday night was with some of those friends. Kelly, Jen and I made plans to have dinner at Soul. Unfortunately, there was a really long wait and they didn’t take reservations. We ended up going next door to another bar and hanging out while we waited. I didn’t even realize it, but somehow almost two hours had passed and we still hadn’t gotten a table. I never saw the layout of the restaurant but I’m assuming that it was because we were a group of eight (everyone’s husbands plus Sean and his girlfriend Jackie.). At this point, we were all pretty hungry. Kelly had run 20 miles that day, Jen is 7 months pregnant and I’d run 13.1 So we scrapped the Soul plan and went to another restaurant nearby – Bistro Le Bon.

I ordered some mussels as an appetizer.

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I prefer a red sauce, but this creamy, curry sauce was good too. For my entrée, I had the turbot, which actually came with more mussels. Bonus! By the time we ate, we were pretty exhausted so we went straight back to the hotel.

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Blogger meet up photo fail, I know.

The next morning, Jason and I decided to have one last meal in Charlotte before we headed back to Seneca to get Murphy. I used my Yelp app and we set off for Common Market. Yelp made it seem like a restaurant but when we got there, it was actually a market. So we went to Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar instead.

I’d seen this restaurant on several Charlotte blogs. We have a ton of burger places here in Atlanta, so I wasn’t really overly excited about it, to tell the truth. Well, I quickly changed my mind when I realized that not only could you build your own burger, but you could build your own salad!

My version of the perfect meal:

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Romaine lettuce, avocado, feta cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms and red pepper with a veggie patty and peanut soy dressing on the side. This was by far the best thing I had to eat in Charlotte.

As soon as we got back in the car, I reclined my seat back and in the blink of an eye (really two hours), we were in Seneca. But before we got to Jason’s parents house, we had another meet up to attend!

Jaime, my twitter friend, happened to be visiting her boyfriend who is getting his PHD in physics at Clemson, which is literally minutes from Seneca. We met her at Starbucks and had a quick cup of coffee while we chatted.

Again, meet up photo fail! I don’t know where my picture taking brain was this weekend!

Lots of running, lots of food and lots of friends, both new and old: A great weekend!

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Posted in Blogger Meet-Up, Vacation

Rocktoberfest Half-Marathon

Posted on October 24, 2011 by inmytummy| 31 Comments

I think I’ve explained why I decided to do a race in Charlotte, but if not, this is the reason: Back in the beginning of summer, my good friend from high school, Sean, and I decided that we wanted to run a half-marathon together. He lives in the DC area so we thought that North Carolina would be a good in-between place to do a race and signed up for the Rocktoberfest Half-Marathon (which I also saw referred to as the Dowd YMCA Half-Marathon.) Really, Sean got the short end of the stick when it came to travel distance. Charlotte is about four hours from Atlanta and close to seven from DC. Raleigh would be more in the middle but there were no races in October, which is when we wanted to run.

Jason and I left Atlanta around 2pm yesterday, stopping in Seneca where his parents graciously agreed to watch their Grand-dog Murphy for the weekend. We stayed and hung out for about an hour before hitting the road to Charlotte. We got in around 8, checked into our hotel and met up with Sean for some Thai food at Basil Thai, which was recommended to Jason by a co-worker.

Our hotel overlooked the Charlotte Epicentre which I guess is some sort of outdoor mall with bars and restaurants. The problem with this was that last night, there was a rooftop fashion show going on which we could see and hear very loudly from our hotel. It normally wouldn’t have bothered me that much, but considering I had to be up at 5:30 and the loud music played until midnight, it was annoying.

I mis-read the race information and thought it said that packet pickup was until 6:30am. Turns out it started at 6:30, so we were very early. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing because the YMCA was open and warm and we got chairs to sit in. The race itself started at 7:40.

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It was cold in the beginning but I knew that after we started running, the weather would be perfect.

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After about a mile or so, I heard someone calling my name and it was Kelly. She and Nicole were also running the race. The four of us ran together until about Mile 5, when we lost Sean to a port-o-potty. I ran with Kelly and Nicole until about Mile 9 or 10. They were running about my pace and had a lively conversation going which made the miles pass by quickly. We walked up some hills, but mostly ran. Right before the tenth mile marker, I happened to look behind me and saw Sean. Kelly and Nicole went ahead and I ran with Sean for a while. At this point, I was getting pretty tired and my hips hurt. I stopped to walk and Sean went ahead.

There was a clock at Mile 10 and it read 1:47 when I went by. I thought that maybe I could run the race in less than 2:20. The last few miles were difficult though. The course wasn’t as hilly as the elevation chart made it seem, but there were some definite hills and my body just wasn’t having it anymore, so I walked up some of them. Nicole had mentioned that there was a big hill at the end, so when we headed uphill again around Mile 12, I asked another runner if this was the big hill. Because if it wasn’t, I might have cried. Fortunately, it was and finally the finish line was in site. (Up another hill, how mean!)

I ended up finishing in 2:24. It’s a pretty average time for me on a hilly course, similar to my times for the Publix GA halves that I’ve run. Surprisingly, I felt pretty good at the end of the race.

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We went back to our hotel, where I took a nice bath and we headed out explore and get some food.

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We walked around for a while and settled on Blackfinn (which I later found out is a chain that they also have in my hometown) where I had a celebratory post-race Blue Moon and a veggie burger.

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Ninth half-marathon completed!

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Posted in Blogger Meetup, Friends, Races, Running, Vacation, Vegetarian

An Away Race

Posted on October 20, 2011 by inmytummy| 21 Comments

The only other time that I’ve done a race out of town was back in 2006 when I ran the Charlottesville Half-Marathon. Kind of funny that for my second out of town race, I’m doing one in Charlotte. I’m notorious for two things – worrying and not thoroughly packing. Seriously, when we went to Vegas, I forgot toothpaste and a razor. You know how much toothpaste costs in the store of the hotel? I digress. So you can imagine that right now I’m worrying about packing.

Running a race in another city is a whole different ball game because if I forget something important, I’m pretty much screwed.

Am I forgetting anything? This is just the stuff I need for the actual race, not stuff I need for my trip in general. I’m not bringing my Garmin.

1. capris

2. short sleeved shirt (if it’s warm)

3. long sleeved shirt (if it’s cold)

4. fleece to wear before the race that Jason can hold

5. socks

6. underwear

7. sports bra

8. body glide

9. spibelt

10. gu

11. English muffins

12. Peanut butter

13. Knife to spread pb on English muffin

14. Headband

15. Hair ties

16. Ipod

17. Headphones

18. Running shoes

Speaking of number 15 – hair ties, I went to the gym after work to run my last three miles and forgot to bring a hair tie. I asked around a little bit but no one had a spare so I ran without. It wasn’t that bad, actually.

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Posted in Races

Fall is Here

Posted on October 19, 2011 by inmytummy| 18 Comments

Fall definitely made itself known today. I don’t think it got above 50 degrees. And while I was freezing in my office, drinking cup after cup of tea (which subsequently gave me a stomachache – damn stevia) to warm up, there was something really nice and comforting about going home after work and digging my favorite sweatshirt and sweatpants out of the closet for a walk with Murphy.

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We leave for Charlotte on Friday afternoon. I’m taking a half-day at work so we’ll be able to get there at a decent hour. To be honest, for a while, I was sort of dreading this race. Even though I was fine with my 15K time last weekend, the fact that I was much slower than the previous year didn’t exactly make me feel like I was going to kick ass in this half-marathon. Plus, the elevation chart is downright scary. I’ll admit that I don’t really have any idea how to read an elevation chart, but that hill at the end looks pretty cruel.

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But I’m not dreading it anymore. I don’t know if the change in the weather had anything to do with it, perhaps my pink sweatpants have magical mood altering powers, but now I’m excited to race. Maybe my time will be good and maybe it won’t be, but the race is 2 (okay really more like 2:30) hours of my weekend. The rest will be spent exploring a new city with Jason, seeing an old friend who I probably haven’t seen for a year and having dinner with some Charlotte bloggers. Good stuff.

In an attempts to use up some produce before we leave, I made an interesting salad for dinner. This was hardly a recipe, more like a mish-mash of ingredients, but it was good nonetheless.

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Mediterranean Couscous salad with arugula
Serves 1

1/4 cup couscous, dried
1/2 small tomato, diced
1/4 cucumber, seeded and diced
1/4 cup crumbled goat cheese
1 tbsp hummus
1/4 tsp dried basil
2 cups arugula

Basically, cook the couscous and mix everything together. Pretty easy.

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Posted in Races, Recipe, Vegetarian

Collaborative Cooking

Posted on October 18, 2011 by inmytummy| 10 Comments

As the husband of a healthy eater who cooks vegetarian or pescatarian meals only, I think it’s safe to say that Jason doesn’t exactly look forward to the meals that I make, especially when they’re on the weirder side. That’s not to say that he doesn’t like them, but I don’t think that say, tofu tacos, conjures up the same sort of excitement for him that a steak and mashed potatoes would. He’s a good sport though and every so often, we make a meal that both of us love. Last night was that rare occasion when we both thoroughly enjoyed our dinner.

I went to Trader Joe’s on Sunday and picked up a package of pre-cut Asian stir-fry vegetables and some frozen shrimp. I’d recently seen a spread in Cooking Light that promised to show Six Steps for a Better Stir Fry.

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I used that as my guide for cooking the veggies. while Jason came up with a marinade for the shrimp. I wish I knew exactly what he used, but it was some mixture of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sriracha and Italian salad dressing. We added the shrimp and marinade to the veggies and let them cook down.

Meanwhile, I boiled some Udon noodles and mixed them with the Cooking Light peanut sauce that was featured in the article.

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And there you have it, a meal that both we both enjoyed tremendously.

(PS – I know I’m slacking with the photography challenge. I have issues following through with things.)

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Posted in Uncategorized

The Pumpkin Trick

Posted on October 17, 2011 by inmytummy| 28 Comments

While I like canned pumpkin and find myself adding it to things like yogurt quite often, I’m not the type of person who just loves it so much that she feels the need to start pumpkin stockpile. Although lately, I’ve kind of wished that I was one of those people because I haven’t been able to find canned pumpkin anywhere.

Until I went to Trader Joe’s this afternoon and low and behold, there was an entire display of the stuff. Score. I also picked up a box of pumpkin bread mix. I actually had the ingredients to make the pumpkin bread – oil and eggs – but instead of using them, I used the pumpkin trick.

Do you know the pumpkin trick? I’m not sure where I learned it, exactly, but when you’re baking something from a mix, you don’t really need the additional ingredients that the back of the box specifies. You just need a can of pumpkin.

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Just mix the pumpkin into the boxed mix. It’s that simple.

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I thought about doing muffins, but opted for a bread instead. Here it is going into the oven:

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Obviously, licking the mixer is required, especially since there are no raw eggs. And honestly, who am I kidding? I totally would have licked the mixer if there were raw eggs. Salmonella be damned.

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45 minutes later, I had a piping hot pumpkin bread.

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Buy using the pumpkin trick, I was able to take the calories down from 250 to about 160 per slice! And I think it tastes the exact same, maybe a little less cakey, but pretty close. Even though I did this with a pumpkin bread mix, you can do it with anything. I’ve used chocolate cake and you can’t taste the pumpkin.

Thank you whoever created the pumpkin trick!