In my tummy

Friday Night plus a PSA

Posted on March 17, 2012 by inmytummy| 10 Comments

Interesting responses to my last post. I think that if I legitimately had to choose, I’d miss exercising. My problem stems in the fact that while I really enjoying racing, I don’t really enjoy training. Anyway, two days of nothing until the race so yay for that. I embrace it.

Here’s a little PSA for you: Butter toffee coffee is disgusting. I know, that’s a shocker, right? I bought this big variety pack of K-cups on Amazon and decided to try the butter toffee flavor. I’ll preface by saying that I like flavored coffee.

#kcups#

However, this tasted like butter. Bleh, butter flavored coffee. And yes, I realize that I’m killing the earth, one K-cup at a time. I do other things to make up for it. Reusable grocery bags cancel out K-cups, right? Doesn’t my K-cup organization method rock, by the way?

Okay, public service announcement over.

Last night, Jason and I went to this relatively new Mexican restaurant called Red Pepper Taqueria. (Thought: why aren’t they using the URL redpeppertaqueria.com? It redirects to eatatredpepper.com so they own it.) We started out with the salsa trio.

#salsa trio#

The one on the left was sort of thick and weird, but the other two were good. The problem, and my problem with all Mexican restaurants, is that it came with a crapload of chips and they all seemed to find their way into my mouth.

With our chips, we had some fun drinks. I had a white sangria and Jason had a margarita. They were mostly fun because of the glasses that they were served in. Drinking from mason glasses makes everything taste better.

#white sangria and margarita#

For my entree, I had the de la costa salad minus the bacon chips and with tuna.

#de la costa salad#

I did not eat that fried thing on the left. 12 million chips were enough fried foods for the night, I thought. This came with a really good dressing. Some sort of cilantro ranch, but it didn’t taste like cilantro. It tasted more like onion dip.

Jason had two tacos. I’m not sure what kind, but he wanted me to take a picture of them too.

#dos tacos#

And that, my friends, was my Friday night.

→ 10 Comments

Posted in Atlanta, Atlanta Restaurants, Date Night, Drinking, Fish

If You Had to Choose

Posted on March 15, 2012 by inmytummy| 23 Comments

My race is on Sunday which means one thing: it’s taper week. Okay really it means a lot of things, but the taper week is the most important one because I love it. I read about how a lot of people hate tapering, how they feel lazy, how they feel like they aren’t going to be prepared. Not me. 30 minutes of exercise three times a week this week is all I have to do? I’ll take it!

I feel like it’s a faux pas (at least in the healthy living blog world, which is where my head is half the time), to say this, but I’m going to come out and admit it anyway: I work out so I can maintain a relatively normal weight. Sure, there are plenty of times that I like it and I obviously do like running races, but you’ll probably never hear me utter the words, “It’s so nice out; I just can’t wait to go running.” You might hear me say, “It’s so nice out; I just can’t wait to sit outside on a patio somewhere.” or even more likely, “It’s so nice out, but I’m going to take a nap anyway.”

I like how I feel after I work out and I get sort of anxious when I don’t work out, but I feel like that’s related to being worried about weight gain more than anything. It’s a healthy habit (the working out) that I’ve created for myself, but it’s a struggle because inside I’m inherently lazy. That’s why I have no sympathy for people who say that they don’t like working out and just can’t do it. Guess what? Half the time, I don’t like it either, but I know it’s good for me and I make myself do it.

After my [tapering] 20 minute run, I went home, walked Murphy and made myself a random dinner of Brussels Sprouts, mushrooms and Trader Joe’s Tofu Edamame Nuggets.

#dinner#

The tofu edamame nuggets were good. They totally tasted like chicken nuggets. Of course, I haven’t had real chicken nuggets in at least ten years, so what do I know.

While I have to force myself to work out sometimes, I don’t have to force myself to eat healthy. Sure, there are times when I eat poorly, but generally, I like eating healthy food. I think it tastes good. This meal tasted good to me. Yes, a pizza would have tasted good too, but I don’t crave junk food much at all. It hurts my stomach when I eat it and I feel sluggish and gross.

So, if I was given the choice of not exercising but eating healthy or exercising a lot but eating unhealthy, I think I’d pick the first one. I mean, I like the way I feel from doing both and don’t intend to ever make myself choose, but if I had to pick, that’s what I would pick.

How about you? If you had to pick, would you rather eat healthy (say 90% of the time) and not exercise or eat junk food 90% of the time but exercise a lot (and pretend that what you ate did not have any impact on your level of physical fitness)?

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Posted in Random

What’s Cooking

Posted on March 14, 2012 by inmytummy| 16 Comments

I often have a backlog of pictures of food. I tend to take pictures of pretty much everything that I make, especially if it’s from a recipe, but if it doesn’t go with what I’m blogging about, it doesn’t get posted. But I wanted to show some recent eats that didn’t make it to the blog. Until now.

Spinach Stuffed Flounder with Feta (not stuffed and with catfish that I accidentally bought when I meant to buy tilapia):

#Spinach Feta Flounder

Cozy Millet Bowl with Mushroom Gravy and Kale:

#cozy millet bowl#

Skillet Cajun Flounder with Tomatoes (again with catfish because that’s what happens when you go to Costco) with Garlic Spinach:

#Cajun Flounder#

And that’s what I’ve been cooking. Cause I know you were wondering.

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Posted in Cooking, Fish, Vegetarian

Day of Pampering

Posted on March 12, 2012 by inmytummy| 24 Comments

I decided to treat myself to an afternoon of relaxation yesterday. Jason bought me a gift card for a one hour massage for Valentine’s Day. The thing was burning a whole in my pocket. I could not wait to use it. I called up Natural Body yesterday morning and made an appointment for that afternoon.

#Natural Body Spa Gift Card#

#Natural Body Spa#

I told my massage therapist that I had two problem areas. One was this sore spot in my left shoulder/upper back that I cannot get rid of. I’m assuming it’s from sitting at a desk with bad posture. (I’m left handed and yes, I use the mouse with my left hand. Some lefties don’t.) He said that’s a hard area to massage because you have to get under the shoulder blade. Makes sense to me because it seems like as much as I try to get Jason to rub my back there, the sore spot never goes away. I wanted him to focus on my hips/IT Band too. Really, I sort of wanted a butt massage but I felt weird about asking a dude to rub my ass.

Like all massages, the hour went by way too quickly. Afterward, I decided that my pampering didn’t need to come to an end quite yet and I walked to Yoforia which was a few shops down.

#Yoforia#

Yoforia is good and I like that they use organic yogurt, but the topping selection is much better at Menchie’s. Just saying. Although going light on the toppings is probably a good thing.

#Yoforia#

Even though it was sort of nice out, I got cold eating my yogurt and then I got a little mopey that I didn’t live in this area and that I wasn’t at the Mexican restaurant next door, drinking margaritas with my husband and baby. I realize that makes no sense since I don’t have a baby and really, I don’t like margaritas either. There were just a lot of cute families there.

To distract myself from getting mopey about something completely irrational, I bought bulk quantities of hummus and feta cheese.

#alttext#

I mean, that counts as pampering myself, right? Or maybe it’s just gluttony. Costco has really good hummus though.

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Posted in Random

A2Z

Posted on March 10, 2012 by inmytummy| 16 Comments

Going on Day 3 of writer’s block, I came across this A-Z survey on Meals & Moves. Perfect.

A is for age: 33. And my birthday is in a month. I don’t want to talk about it.

B is for breakfast today: I’m waiting for Jason to wake up so we can have Saturday morning pancakes. I imagine they’ll look like this, only without the butter because I hate butter on pancakes:

#pancakes#

C is for currently craving: Well, those pancakes look pretty good.

D is for dinner tonight: I haven’t even thought about it yet. I need to grocery shop in a bad way, so maybe I’ll make something fun.

E is for favorite type of exercise: I guess running, when I’m not hating it!

#charlotte race#

F is for an irrational fear: I don’t think it’s a huge fear but I really don’t like those palmetto bugs (waterbugs, extremely large roaches, whatever you want to call them). If you live in Georgia, you know what I’m talking about.

G is for gross food: Mayo, blue cheese, swiss cheese, stinky cheeses. As you can tell, I’m pretty picky with cheese.

H is for hometown: Rockville, MD as immortalized in the REM song, “Don’t Go Back to Rockville.” I smile whenever I hear it.

I is for something important: I just signed up for The Color Run on 4/7. (The ATL one was sold out but they added a new one about a half hour away. Anyone want to join my team?)

J is for current favorite jam: Does this mean song or jam as in jelly type thing? We’ll go with song. I really like that Fun. song, “We Are Young.” I wonder if the rest of the album is any good.

K is for kids: Does he count? Look at that tongue!

#Murphy tongue#

L is for current location: Atlanta, GA

M is for the most recent way you spent money: That Color Run that I just wrote about, well, it was not free.

N is for something you need: A massage! And I have a gift certificate for one too that my lovely husband bought me for Valentine’s Day.

O is for occupation: I work in the marketing department of a promotional products company. If you need any promotional products (seriously anything!), please let me know!

P is for pet peeve: I answered this recently but when people call Barnes & Noble, Barnes & Nobles. Also, people who don’t respond to emails.

Q is for a quote:

Source: killmydaynow.com via Lee on Pinterest

R is for random fact about you: I played rugby in college. I was a second row for anyone who might know anything about rugby. Also, I sucked. (It was a club sport, so anyone could play.)

S is for favorite healthy snack: Hummus

T is for favorite treat: Frozen Yogurt

U is for something that makes you unique: I have a really good sense of direction. I also tend to know what states most colleges are in. I’m also pretty random.

V is for favorite vegetable: Broccoli

W is for today’s workout: Nothing! Or maybe taking Murphy on a walk.

X is for X-rays you’ve had: Foot, ankle, teeth

Y is for yesterday’s highlight: Going to Tuk Tuk with Jason and our friend Joan.

Z is for your time zone: Eastern

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Posted in Random

Not My Last

Posted on March 8, 2012 by inmytummy| 17 Comments

As I started to run on the treadmill tonight, I envisioned myself typing out this blog post. In my mind, I was going to say something about how running has been tough lately, but I finished strong my last week before the taper. But it wasn’t true.

Yesterday’s 3 mile run was good. I ran at lunch and when I run during lunch, I tend to run faster because I need to fit the entire workout in a 30 minute time frame. (The rest of the hour is used traveling to and from the gym and changing.) I ran a little faster than normal and felt good. Then today, I was supposed to run 6 miles. I ran 5. And they sucked. It was probably due to running faster the day before, but that 50 or so minutes could not come fast enough.

I didn’t get home until 8 and threw together a pretty simple dinner – Trader Joe’s Gnocci ala Sorenta (or something like that), Morningstar Farms Veggie Meatballs and some steamed kale.

#alttext#

On Twitter today, there were tons of tweets about the Marine Corps Marathon. I thought about how once in my life, I wanted to be one of those people who ran a marathon. And I did run one. But I didn’t catch that marathon bug that most people did. I had a bad race and honestly, never wanted to do it again.

That’s not how I feel about half-marathoning. As much as I’ve been complaining about being sick of running, I’m at the very end of my training. The race is an week and a half and hopefully the training will pay off. And while I do intend to take a break and focus more on shorter, faster runs, I don’t think this half-marathon will be my last.

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Posted in Races, Running

New and Old

Posted on March 7, 2012 by inmytummy| 10 Comments

I bought a couple of new products over the weekend and I thought I’d share what I thought of them. First up these Feta Herb Hummus chips from Smartfood Select.

#Smartfood Feta Chips#

I used to love Smartfood popcorn when I was a kid. These didn’t taste anything like that but they were really tasty. They’re called hummus chips because they’re made with garbanzo bean flour. The feta taste was pretty strong. If you don’t like feta, I don’t think you’d like these. They came in a few other flavors though.

I was wandering around Target and picked up some Grammy Sammys. (Sammies?) They’re marketed towards children but that’s never really stopped me before.

#Grammy Sammy#

I thought it was going to be an organic pop tart type thing. The box was small, but I wasn’t prepared for quite how small the Grammy Sammy was.

#Tiny Grammy Sammy#

110 calories for that tiny little thing? I don’t think so. It tasted fine, but way too small.

The last new product was the Kashi Banana Chocolate Chip granola bars. I’m not a huge fan of Kashi granola bars in general (9 times out of 10 when I’m buying a Kashi product, it’s a frozen meal or pizza) but I thought these sounded interesting.

#Kashi Banana Chocolate Chip Granola Bars#

These were good enough but they had a weird texture. Very gritty. I wonder what the half serving of veggies that’s advertised on the box is. Maybe it had to do with the grittiness?

Out of these three products, I’d definitely buy the Smartfood Selects again. The others, probably not.

Last night, we had something for dinner that was not new. It was taco night in our house. I suggested fish tacos but Jason wasn’t in the mood, so I made veggie taco meat instead.

#Veggie Taco Meat#

I mixed some Morningstar Farms soy crumbles with half an onion, a little bit of salsa and some Trader Joe’s taco seasoning (which doesn’t have the gross additives that other brands do).

#Veggie Soft Taco#

Our taco bar was self serve; aside from the fake meat, we had cheese, lettuce, onion, tomatoes and Trader Joe’s Avocado Verde sauce.

Sometimes new things are fun to try, but I do always find myself going back to my old favorites.

→ 10 Comments

Posted in Cooking, Product Review, Vegetarian

11 Miles

Posted on March 5, 2012 by inmytummy| 24 Comments

Sunday morning came around and I did still did not want to run. I honestly thought about skipping it; I thought I could just have a two-week taper. But then I thought about how mad I’d be at myself for doing that. After a few hours of grumbling and generally acting like a bratty baby (sorry Jason!), I laced up my shoes and headed out the door.

Originally, I had these grand plans of where I’d run. First I thought I’d drive to a MARTA station and park my car there, run to another MARTA station 11 miles away and take MARTA back. That seemed like a pain so I made up another route where I could start and finish at Whole Foods. Again, it seemed like too much trouble to drive the 15 minutes to get there, so I ended up just running near my house. There’s a 7-mile loop that I like to run if I turn right at the end of my street. I turned left, ran two miles that way, two miles back and then did the 7-mile loop.

Sometimes people ask me what I think about when I run long distances. Pretty much this:

• I’ll just run slow. It won’t be that bad.
• Two miles already, this isn’t bad. Oh wait, how many more to go?
• Jason said he was going to the gym. I haven’t seen him pass by. I wonder if he skipped it.
• Oh, there’s Jason! Yay!
• Running back past my house again sucks. So tempted to stop.
• I’m at CVS. Time for a Gatorade and to eat my Gu.
• How do people not like Gu? The chocolate kind tastes like frosting.
• I’ve already run 7 miles, only 4 more to go!
• Oh, wait, I’ve only run 6 miles. Damn.
• What can I have for lunch?
• My new boots are coming tomorrow.
• I hope I don’t crap my pants.
• I hope my ipod doesn’t die. It doesn’t look like it has much juice left. (It didn’t die)
• I like my new job much better than my old job.
• Sunday Sales are on the ballot in my county on Tuesday. I wasn’t going to vote in the primary (I’m a democrat, so there’s not really a point.) but now I am. Alcohol brings out my civic pride.
• I like that my boss eats healthy food.
• My hips are hurting.
• What’s the point of an author tag on a blog? Is it just to show that the content truly belongs to that blog?
• Would anyone let me post about promotional products on their blog?
• What’s for lunch?
• My eyebrows are looking rough. I need to get them waxed, but that’ll involve wearing clothes that aren’t pajamas.
• I feel like my bra is chafing. If this bra that I spent $60 on chafes, I’m not going to be a happy camper. (it wasn’t)
• 1 mile to go!
• Keep running because it’ll hurt more and take longer if you walk.
• Oh hey, there’s Jason again. He’s going to work so I won’t see him. Boo.
• I did it!
• What’s for lunch?

And like that, 11 miles was done.

#After the run#

I got home by 1:30ish and I think that was key in making sure the run didn’t take up the entire day. I sometimes will wait until later to run (especially if it’s cold out) and by the time I get home, it’s already almost time for dinner, or at least time to think about dinner.

I made some coffee…

#Coffee#

…ate my lunch and then proceeded to sleep for an hour and a half on the couch. Murphy was so good and didn’t wake me up demanding a walk!

#Murphy#

(Someone needs his hair did. Looking a little fluffy.)

I actually didn’t feel tired or achy at all when I woke up, so I decided to make a good dinner.

#spinach artichoke chili#

This is spinach and artichoke white bean chili and it’s delicious. I did modify the recipe slightly. I had a 10 oz package of frozen spinach and didn’t want to only use half, so I just stuck the whole thing in there. That made it really, really thick, so I used 3 cups of broth instead of 1.5. I also used only two cans of beans. Then I topped it with parmesan.

Kitchen time wasn’t over at dinner. It was one of those days where I really felt like cooking, so I made Peach Protein Muffins for snacks to take to work.

#Peach Protein Muffins#

The peaches at the grocery store looked horrible, so I just used canned peaches, the ones in juice, not syrup. Worked for me.

I guess I managed to have a pretty productive Sunday. Having to run a long distance doesn’t have to take up the entire day. I just need to get started earlier, I realized. One more long run and then it’s the race!

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Posted in Baking, Cooking, Running, Vegetarian

No Run Today

Posted on March 4, 2012 by inmytummy| 8 Comments

It’s very frustrating to me, but I’m still very much feeling burnt out from running. The thought of running 11 miles today made me want to crawl up in a ball…and I did; I ended up taking a 2-hour nap instead of going for a 2-hour run. I will admit though, that my original plan was to do the run on Sunday. We got some major storms last night and the forecast called for rain this morning too. Jason and I ended up having a nice date night, which involved wine, so it really was never my intention to run today (I don’t drink the night before a long run. Well, not usually.)

It was raining when I woke up but it had mostly cleared up by noon and I thought that maybe I should do the run and get it over with. I much prefer doing my long runs on Saturdays. I feel like when I do them on Sundays, it somehow takes the entire day and by the time everything is said and done, the weekend is over. Yes, I could do them early in the morning and avoid that, but the mornings are really the only time that I get to spend with Jason.

This is just a long-winded way of saying that I didn’t do my 11 mile run today. That’s not to say that I didn’t do anything; I went to the gym for a nice upper body workout. I’m still vaguely following the LiveFit Trainer. By vaguely, I mean that I’m doing the strength portion of the workouts when I decided to have a strength training day and I’m doing them in order but I’m not doing them lots of days in a row, like you’re supposed to, nor am I following them with cardio. I’m also not following the nutrition plan. I’m sure this is why I’m not really get much in terms of results, but it still provides a nice structured weight lifting routine which I like.

I’m just taking it easy tonight, to mentally and physically prepare myself for the run tomorrow. That means no wine and a good carby dinner. My friend Emily recommended the Pesto Pizza from Trader Joe’s so I bought it last weekend. While the pizza has the roughly the same nutritonals as any vegetarian pizza (this one was three servings, 310 calories each), it’s quite a bit smaller. It fit on a dinner plate.

#Trader Joe's Pesto Pizza#

In order to keep myself from demolishing the entire thing, which I could easily do, I made sure to serve my portion with some filling sides.

#alttext#

I had a slice of pizza, some leftover Asian veggies and some kale that I steamed and then added nutritional yeast and salt to. And you know what? It was plenty filling. (Edited to add: I ate another piece several hours later!)

Hopefully this will provide good run fuel for tomorrow. I’m also thinking of starting and finishing my run at Whole Foods so I can get a little treat when I finish.

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Posted in Running, Vegetarian

Don’t Give Up Now

Posted on March 2, 2012 by inmytummy| 10 Comments

I was hoping I’d wake up this morning and feel like I just couldn’t live if I didn’t go for a run. Nope, didn’t happen. In fact, I don’t think that’s ever really happened. I’m not a stranger to this feeling of burn out. In fact, it pretty much happens every time I do a half-marathon. I really enjoy racing, but training, well, not so much. Unfortunately, I enjoy racing when I’ve had a good race, which means I have to train.

Despite my crappy attitude, I saw this post on the Georgia Marathon’s facebook page and it made me feel motivated to get yesterday’s missed five miles done:

#alttext#

I mean, I can power through my training for two more weeks, right? And then I never have to run another half-marathon. But you know me, I’ll probably sign up for one right away. I wish I could say that my 5-mile run was great, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t horrible, mind you, but it was just sort of meh. While I felt fine physically, time went by pretty slowly. Maybe I need some new music.

The problem with running five miles at the gym after work is that I get home at 8pm. I’m usually pretty hungry at this point, so dinner after a longer gym workout is often something pretty quick. No cooking this late.

#Trader Joe's Curry#

I bought this curry at Trader Joe’s last weekend. Originally I thought about taking it to work for lunch, but I wasn’t sure how strong the curry smell would be (it wasn’t strong) and didn’t want to be that girl who stunk up the kitchen. The package suggested serving it over rice, but I opted for some kale instead, which I previously steamed.

#Green Curry over Kale#

(Hello super grainy pictures. Note to self: bump down the ISO!)

This was good, but it was definitely more like a soup. It gave the kale a good flavor, however, so my mission for an easy, healthy dinner after the gym was accomplished.

Two more weeks until the race!