Category Archives: Vegetarian Meal

Where Did the Day Go?

Posted on January 25, 2012 by inmytummy| 15 Comments

Today felt busy. Tuesday’s are my double workout day meaning that I do weights and run. My legs are fresh from taking Monday as a rest day so usually it goes by pretty quickly. Today, however, I was tired. Starting a new job is exhausting. I’m sure some of it is because before yesterday, I hadn’t gone to work since November, but I think a bigger part of it is just trying to learn so much new stuff in such a short amount of time. I remember feeling tired for a while when I started my last job too.

Nevertheless, I went to the gym after work. Fortunately, there is an LA Fitness literally 5 minutes from my office and even more fortunately, it wasn’t that crowded at 6:15 pm. I did my weights and halfway into it, a man stopped me and corrected my form. I never know how I feel about this when it happens. On one hand, if I’m doing something wrong, I’m not doing it on purpose and would rather learn to do it correctly. But on the other hand, it’s not really anyone else’s business how I’m lifting weights. This was just a random dude, not a person that works for the gym. I don’t know how I feel about someone trying to help me. I guess I should just take advantage and remember that they really are trying to be helpful.

By the time I finished my weight routine and my three mile run, it was already 7:30 and I live about 20 minutes from the gym by my office. Making a home cooked dinner was obviously not happening! Fortunately, I went to Trader Joe’s over the weekend.

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Entire dinner – Vegetarian Pizza, organic arugula and Goddess dressing – brought to you by Trader Joe’s. My long day wasn’t over after I ate though; I had a freelance writing assignment to work on. I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this, but I write deals for a daily deal website (called Home Run) a few times a week.

By the time I got everything done, it was after ten. Where did the day go? I guess that’s what happens when you go to the gym for an hour and 15 minutes after work. I might need to reevaluate my double workouts.

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Posted in Strength Training, The Gym, Vegetarian Meal

Asheville Saturday

Posted on December 4, 2011 by inmytummy| 16 Comments

Our trip to Asheville began with a trip to Jason’s parents house in Seneca, about halfway between our house and Asheville. After dinner at a restaurant called Sole with Jason’s parents and Grandmother, we drove into Clemson to meet Carla for a drink at a bar called Nick’s.

Carla and Jason actually know each other. Jason’s a bit older, so although they weren’t in high school at the same time, they went to the same school and they were in the same church youth group. Small world, right? (We knew this beforehand, it wasn’t something we just found out last night.) I was camera-shy for some reason, but we hung out for about two hours chatting.

After a quick trip to Starbucks this morning, we headed out of South Carolina and into North Carolina. We arrived around 1 and had just enough time to check into our hotel before meeting Jen and her husband Anthony at Plant, a new vegan restaurant in Asheville.

My phone said that Plant was a walkable distance, so we headed off (in the wrong direction at first. I hate the iphone maps app). We had to cross a highway exit ramp and as we were in the middle of it, waiting for the cars to pass, we heard people yelling from a window and it was Jen and Anthony getting off the highway. So we jumped in their car with them and headed to the restaurant. (That’s normal right? I mean getting into the car of someone that we’ve never actually met in person in the middle of an interection?!)

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I don’t know if I’ve ever actually eaten at a 100% vegan restaurant before. I went out on a limb and ordered the Seitan Shaved Reuben.

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I thought it was absolutely delicious. Jason wasn’t as thrilled with his Ginger Saute. It was sort of..sparse. But the sandwich was delicious and it was fun to finally meet Jen after exchanging tons of emails with her in the past few months.

After lunch, we walked around Asheville for a while, popping into stores here and there. Jason says this town makes my inner hippie come out. I guess it’s been lying dormant since college. Asheville does remind me of Burlington, Vermont, where I went to college.

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I kind of want to live here. Although the owning a house in Atlanta and not having jobs here does pose a problem.

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Posted in Blogger Meetup, Restaurants, Vegetarian, Vegetarian Meal

Sort of Tabbouleh

Posted on June 20, 2011 by inmytummy| 14 Comments

My MO for the day was to use up any fresh produce I had in the fridge. I took a look and found spinach, orange pepper, cherry tomatoes and celery. I wasn’t sure what to do with the celery but everything else went into a tabbouleh of sorts.

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Sort-of Tabbouleh
Serves 2-3

1/2 cup bulgur wheat
1 cup water
6 oz fresh spinach
1/2 orange pepper, diced
1 cup cherry tomatoes, cut in half
1/2 cup feta cheese
handful fresh parsley
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice

1. Cook bulgur wheat in water. I used a rice cooker, but you can also cook on the stove.
2. While bulgur is cooking, lightly saute the spinach until it wilts.
3. After bulgur is cooked, mix with spinach, pepper, tomatoes, feta, parsley, olive oil and lemon.
4. Chill in fridge for an hour or more.

I’ll have some leftover for lunch tomorrow too. Now what to do with that celery?

I’ll be the first to admit, organization is not my strong suit. (I mean, unless you want to hire me for a great job, then I was just lying and I’m really organized.) The term Adult ADD springs to mind. So packing for a trip is not exactly my favorite thing to do. I managed to get together some toiletries and other necessities and put them on the dining room table.

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(I wasn’t trying to be artsy there. I was being lazy and didn’t want to take out my flash so I had to put the camera on the table, hence the weird angle. And yes, I use an external flash for pretty much all my indoor photos. I know that using a flash is faux pas in the food blogger world but I believe that there is a way to use one correctly and have it look nice. Umm, tangent. See, adult ADD.)

I really wanted to take some Stevia in the Raw because I like it in my morning coffee but a co-worker pointed out that trying to bring a white powder (it’s in packets, it’s not just like a baggie of stevia) into Mexico would probably land me in Mexican jail. Point taken. I guess I’ll use regular sugar while I’m there.

Okay, I’m going to try really hard to focus and clean the kitchen. I hate coming home to a messy kitchen. We’re not leaving until Tuesday so I still have time to clean. And eat the celery.

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Posted in Recipe, Vegetarian, Vegetarian Meal

10 Course Vegetarian Tasting Dinner

Posted on June 16, 2011 by inmytummy| 26 Comments

I had a fabulous dinner last night with a group of Atlanta bloggers. Laura sent out an email a few weeks ago asking if we were interested in a blogger get-together, maybe a tasting dinner at Rosebud. While the idea of a tasting dinner is nice, it’s usually something that I don’t like to participate in because aside from the occasional fish or seafood dish, I don’t eat any other meat. So tasting dinners and tapas restaurants and things of that nature always end up being a lot of money for not a lot of food. So, I asked Laura if she could ask about the possibility of a vegetarian tasting.

Rosebud’s chef, Ron Eyester, is known for his meat dishes, so we were all pleasantly surprised that he readily agreed to do a veggie meal! Apparently a few people on twitter were surprised too. (And I felt famous because people were tweeting about a meal that was being cooked for me and my friends!)

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When we got there, we were seated in a small room in the back. We were originally told that we were going to have a 5-course meal but it turned into a 10-course one! This was Ron’s first foray into vegetarian cooking and I think he had fun with it! He told us a little bit about each course as they came out and emphasized the restaurant’s relationships with local farms in the area. I love the whole farm to table concept and everything tasted very fresh and flavorful.

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I was joined by: Laura, Laura’s friend Corinne (who coincidently just moved here from literally less than a mile from my mom’s house), Stacy, Alayna and Heather. Kristy was supposed to join us, but she had to work late. (We missed you, Kristy!)

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First off, we were given a cocktail. This was tomato infused vodka with soda, cucumber shrub, heirloom tomatoes and agave nectar. I had no idea what it would taste like upon hearing the description, but it was light and sweet.

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Our first course was a pink eyed pea pate topped with radishes. I loved this. It had a great hint of spiciness to it.

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The second course was a piece of mozzarella cheese (made in-house) with tomato, cilantro and apricot. There was almost a soup-like sauce underneath and we were encouraged to eat it with a spoon after we finished the cheese. We did not need much encouragement!

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The third course was also tomato based – ripe summer heirloom tomatoes with an olive oil and sriacha sauce.

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The fourth course was a combination of two soups. The yellow soup was potato and in the middle, under an egg, was a creamy broccoli.

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The fifth course was Brussels sprouts topped with fried wontons and served with a curry sauce, this was served family style.

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Rosebud is known for Southern style food, so it was no surprise that a plate (again, served family style) of mac & cheese came out. It included Sweet Grass Dairy goat cheese, dinosaur kale and cauliflower. Very good, but very rich.

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The next course was supposed to sort of mimic a meat dish – tempura eggplant topped with yellow filet beans. I normally am not an eggplant fan (something about the texture) but I thought this was delicious.

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Nope, still not finished! I noticed that I stopped cleaning my plate at this point, though. Our next course were rice grits with oyster mushrooms and leeks. This tasted similar to a risotto and was quite filling.

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Next we had the start of the desserts. Our server (who was great, btw), brought us a sliver of blue cheese topped with balsamic drizzle and blueberries. I’ll straight up say it: I hate blue cheese. I tried a little tiny piece to confirm that, which I did, so I just ate the blueberries.

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And finally, we were served a large bowl of salted caramel ice cream (not pictured) topped with a bruleed peach.
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Then, to top it off, Ron brought over a bottle of bourbon from his bar across the street, The Family Dog. I’m not much of a liquor drinker (especially straight up), so I didn’t really drink much of my glass, but it was a very nice gesture.

I was very, very full at the end of the evening (we were there for almost 4 hours!) but I had such a good time. Blogger dinners are always fun, but I really think this one took the cake! I will definitely be going back to Rosebud in the near future.

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Posted in Atlanta, Atlanta Restaurants, Blogger Meet-Up, Vegetarian, Vegetarian Meal

Nothing Weird

Posted on June 10, 2011 by inmytummy| 21 Comments

According to Jason, I have a habit of putting weird things in our meals. I mean, in my mind, things like chia seeds, quinoa and tofu are totally normal, but I can see how putting them into foods are not exactly the norm. So, as one of many attempts to make sure Jason is enjoying his new way of eating, we had lasagna tonight. While I was making it, I promised that there was nothing weird in there. (He knew about the fake meat.)

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I was googling lasagna recipes last week and came across The Engine 2 Sweet Potato Lasagna. I like sweet potatoes, I like lasagna. Why not? This was quickly shot down as being too weird, so I made this veggie lasagna instead.

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See, nothing weird! This was pretty good although I’m definitely going to make the sweet potato lasagna one day. I’m actually interested in reading the Engine 2 Diet book, but that’s a post for a different day. And since I made a “non-weird” dinner for him, I’m making Jason watch Les Miserables on PBS while I sing along. Payback.

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Posted in Vegetarian, Vegetarian Meal

Fend For Yourself + Photo Final

Posted on June 8, 2011 by inmytummy| 18 Comments

Jason and I went to the gym after work and got home around 7. I had it in my mind all day that I would make veggie lasagna but I knew that it wouldn’t be ready for another hour and I was hungry. When I’m hungry, I have a very hard time not snacking and oftentimes, I’ll snack and snack and then by the time dinner is ready, I’m not necessarily even hungry anymore but I ended up eating it anyway, you know, because I made dinner. Waiting for dinner to be ready is a bit of a struggle for me, especially when I’m really hungry. Jason, on the other hand, had eaten a snack right before the gym, so he wasn’t hungry at all. Between the two of us, the idea to make lasagna was quickly scrapped and we had a “fend for yourself” night.

Here’s what was fended:

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Shockingly, there were no refried beans in this meal. I know, I’m as surprised as you are. Instead, I sauteed a yellow squash, some frozen peppers and some Morningstar Farms Chik’n strips and put them on a bed of romaine topped with some black olives and goat cheese.

Tomorrow is my final photography class. We have two final projects; we can either do one or both. Last Saturday, we had a field trip to the Southeast Railway Museum which is this random museum with old trains. Despite the fact that I had never heard of it, there were a lot of people there. Lots of kids. I guess kids like trains. The first part of the final project was to show 6-10 images of the train museum. The second part, which was optional, was to take 6-10 pictures with a common theme. I did both, but I didn’t stretch too far for the second one. I took pictures of produce. Regardless, I’m happy with how everything came out. I need to take them to work so I can color correct them (I have Photoshop at work, I use iphoto at home, but I’m thinking of buying Lightroom.) but here are some of my favorites.

Trains:

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Produce:

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Do you use any programs to “process” your pictures? I am actually pretty decent at Photoshop (I’m a graphic designer) but I don’t have it at home. Like I said before, I use mostly just use iphoto.

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Posted in Photography, Vegetarian Meal

Where Do You Get Your Recipes?

Posted on June 6, 2011 by inmytummy| 11 Comments

I’m not big into creating my own recipes. While I’ll throw together something from time to time, I’m much more comfortable following someone else’s recipe. I get my recipes from a lot of different places. Sometimes from other blogs, sometimes from cookbooks, sometimes from magazines (I have subscriptions to Real Simple, Cooking Light and Runner’s World) and sometimes from the cooking websites like allrecipes or Food Network. But I got tonight’s recipe from the back of a bag of shredded cheese!

Yesterday, I went to Trader Joe’s and picked up a package of sausage-less soy sausage. I had no idea what to do with it, it just looked interesting.

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We generally have shredded mozzarella in the house and I happened to notice that there was a recipe on the back that I could use the sausage in. And, to top it off, I had all the other ingredients on hand!

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Kraft Tomato and Spinach Pasta Toss

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I used my fake sausage and added mushrooms but other than that, I followed the recipe and it was actually pretty good. I don’t eat pasta very often. I’m not sure why, but this was definitely a meal that I’d make again. Who knew you could get a good recipe from the back of a bag of cheese?!

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Posted in Vegetarian Meal

A Day Together

Posted on May 31, 2011 by inmytummy| 21 Comments

Because of Jason’s work schedule, we very rarely get to spend the entire day together. It normally only happens when he takes a weekend day off and that’s usually because we’re going somewhere or we have some sort of plans. We don’t really ever have a day to just bum around together very often. Mondays are his normal day off so we actually had the whole day yesterday to spend with one another.

We decided to go to brunch in the morning at Murphy’s. Neither one of us had been there before but it’s actually where Murphy the dog’s name came from. When we were thinking about getting a dog, we were literally driving around calling out names of places and streets to see if any of them were a good fit for a dog name. Murphy stuck.

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I had the Eggs San Francisco with no hollandaise sauce.

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Even though we heard great things, neither one of us were too impressed by this restaurant. I’m not very into Southern-style food, which is what this was, Jason realized he didn’t like poached eggs which is what he ordered and to top it off, our server kind of sucked.

Dinner, however, was much better! Because Memorial Day is somehow synonymous with barbecueing, we fired up the grill.

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On the menu were Black Bean Burgers from Daily Garnish, veggie kabobs with mushroom, onion, red pepper, cherry tomato and zucchini and grilled corn. Our eyes were a bit bigger than our stomachs and we were too full to eat the corn.

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(There are three burgers because dividing the recipe in half was easier than dividing it into thirds!)

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All washed down with a cold beer that I’ve had in my fridge for over a month!

I try to be mature about it on the blog and not constantly whine, but it’s really hard to only have rare days that you can spend with your husband. I try to tell myself that it makes us cherish them more.

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Posted in Atlanta Restaurants, Vegetarian Meal

Warriors Eat Golden Bowls

Posted on April 21, 2011 by inmytummy| 15 Comments

I was on Facebook last night and saw a status update from my friend Amy asking if anyone wanted to do the Warrior Dash with her. Oddly enough, I had been talking to Jason about it a few hours prior. I thought that it might be something we could do in 2012, but after I saw Amy’s facebook post, I decided that 2011 would be a fine year for me. Maybe Jason will join me next year!

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What really sealed the deal was that there was a Groupon. The race is held in Mountain City, Georgia, about two hours from Atlanta. It’s both Saturday May 14th and Sunday May 15th but the Groupon was only good for the Sunday race.

I have to admit; I’m a little nervous. It’s basically a 5K with 12 obstacles during the course. The obstacles differ depending on what city you’re racing in but in Georgia they are:

1. Road Rage (climbing over wrecked cars)
2. Slithering Swamp (run through muddy water)
3. Barricade Breakdown (climb over barriers and under barbed wire)
4. Great Warrior Wall (climb over a big wall)
5. Tire Tread (run through tires)
6. Chaotic Crossover (cargo nets)
7. Arachnophobia (go through tangled ropes)
8. Blackout (crawl through dark tunnels)
9. Cargo Climb (another cargo net)
10. Petrifying Plunge (slide down a mud hill)
11. Muddy Mayhem (crawl through mud under barbed wire)
12. Warrior Roast (jump over fires)

I looked up some Youtube videos and it really doesn’t look as scary as it sounds. The only one that sort of scares me is, oddly enough, the Great Warrior Wall. I don’t have that much upper body strength. Other than that, I think it sounds really fun!

And what do soon-to-be warriors eat for dinner? Golden Bowls! The Golden Bowl is my favorite thing to get at The Grit in Athens. My friend Jamie introduced me to it when I first moved to Georgia and although I’ve only been to Athens three or four times, I’ve gone to The Grit each time and always ordered the Golden Bowl.

I never really thought to recreate it at home until recently. While I cooked some basmati brown rice in the rice cooker, I pressed the tofu to get some of the moisture out.

I cooked the tofu, onion, yellow squash and green pepper according to this recipe from Vegetarian Times.

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I put some rice in a bowl and topped it with a secret ingredient: Mama Pea’s MMMM sauce. This stuff is like crack. So good!

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And then I put the tofu/veggie mixture on top.

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While it wasn’t quite as good as The Grit’s, it was still pretty damn good. Jason said it was one of the better tofu dishes that I’ve made.

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Posted in Races, Vegetarian Meal

I Ran Before I Crawled Before I Slept

Posted on April 10, 2011 by inmytummy| 27 Comments

Even though I know that I don’t need to carbo-load before a 5K, I like the tradition of eating pasta the night before. And I know that Jason likes it when I cook pasta, so I made Ellie Krieger’s Pasta Primavera on Friday night.

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I used zucchini instead of asparagus and penne instead of spaghetti. We ate it with some Alexia garlic bread while we watched the movie An Education, which was very good.

I was up at 6:45 am yesterday to drive down to East Atlanta to run the Run Before You Crawl 5K. I’m always paranoid about getting to races late, so we ended up being 45 minutes early. It was warm out though so it wasn’t a big deal.

My friends Joan and Randy were doing the race too, but walking because Joan hurt her foot, and my friend Darin had texted me earlier in the week saying he was going to run it also. The race was pretty small, maybe only a couple hundred people. It went through a bunch of neighborhoods in East Atlanta. Like most races in Atlanta, this was another pretty hilly course. And like most races that I run in general, I started off too fast.

By the time I got to mile 2, I made the decision to take some walk breaks. By 9am, when the race started, there was a good amount of humidity in the air and I just wasn’t feeling like pushing myself. I did a run/walk combination for the last mile and ended up finishing the race in 30:08. Not bad considering the walking.

The pub crawl was after that race, not part of it. All of the runners/crawlers were divided into five teams. (You could pick which team you were on.) All the teams would go to five different bars, but in a different order so the places didn’t get too crowded. You were supposed to stay at the bar for 45 minutes. Our team started out at So-Ba.

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From there, we went to the Midway Pub and met up with a friend of Darin’s. It was around 11:30 at this point so we all got some food. I had the veggie burger and some fruit.

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Then we went to Holy Taco.

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Then the Flat Iron.

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And finally, the Earl.

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Yes, I went to 5 bars during the day time. After the crawl was over, we went to Darin’s house which was nearby. I fell asleep on his couch.

Yesterday was fun, but it’s not something that I want to do again for a long time, maybe ever! I don’t really drink that much anymore. I rarely drink during the week at all and if I go out on the weekend, I’ll usually have two, maybe three drinks. While my 25 year old self loved to do drinking activities like this, my nearly 33 year old self really does not. I have the tendency to feel guilty about nights (in this case, days) like this and this time I’m not going to let myself feel that way. I once asked one of my friends, who is seven years older than me, if he feels guilty if he goes out and drinks a bunch. He said no because it doesn’t happen very often. So that’s how I’m choosing to feel now. Instead of worrying about the calories that I consumed (which is what I feel guilty about), I’m just going to say that in order to lead a healthy life, it’s okay to be unhealthy on occasion.