It’s feeling just slightly like spring! Well, maybe not, it’s snowing here, but I can fantasize. This week, I’ve been thankful for consistency, good food, good company, and getting back into the swing of things here. And thank you to the two people who actually texted me to say you’ve been reading my blog!
{Good Things}
CPR + First Aid: I did the first step re-upping my first aid and CPR certification (required for my RRCA run coaching cert, and my ACSM personal trainer certification.) You can now take part of the class online as long as you do the in-person training to actually get a little hands on time. I passed the online modules, but unfortunately my in-person was rescheduled because of the snow storm, so I still have to take it!
After having to re-schedule an in-person coffee date, I had a great zoom call with my friend Sonya, who closed her (successful!) photography business to embrace her calling, and pursue coaching for creatives full time. It’s always great seeing people step into their zone of genius.
The plants in our Springfield Office (VVM Hub) I’m delighted each week to drive out and work in this beautiful space!
Worked on some speaking applications! This year, as I build Ompractice to serve thousands of people through yoga and meditation, I’m also looking to speak more about the things that I love helping people with: wellness, productivity, business, and women’s empowerment.
Fitness, this week: I’m starting to feel back to my old self. This week I got in a series of excellent workouts, while maintaining my run streak – including in an accidental flurry. On days I head to OrangeTheory, I try to start on the weights, and then I simply do my mile when I hit the treadmill before joining everyone else with the pre-planned tread workout.
Monday: Yoga Nidra with Amy at 1pm on Ompractice (45 minutes); OrangeTheory
Tuesday: OrangeTheory
Wednesday: Foundations with Traci at 7:30 on Ompractice (60 minutes)
Thursday: Yoga for Tight Shoulders and Neck at 12:30 ET with Niki on Ompractice (amazing!)
Friday: walking meeting and “rest day mile”
Saturday: OrangeTheory
Sunday: “recovery mile”
Bertram and I are practicing alone time. Because I’ve worked from home over the past three years that I’ve had Bertram, we’ve not been diligent about practicing alone time beyond my daily runs and the occasional grocery shop. I’ve been practicing progressive alone time, including when I’m at OrangeTheory and still feel the need to check in with him on the nanny cam. Here he is quietly howling like a baby husky. We just have to keep working at it.
Watching: I’ve been chipping away at my goal of 52 new to me movies this year. (Preferably without a cell phone in hand.)
This week I watched a documentary – Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski. Had no idea where it was going to go when I sat down to watch it. Clearly, neither did the director and producers. Pretty wild. CW: nazis.
The Incredibles 2 – great!
Flavorful Origins – a Chinese cooking series of the flavors of Chaoshan (on Netflix). I’ve noticed that Netflix has been auto-playing dubbing lately, which, if you watch with subtitles, you’ll notice a HORRIBLE mis-match. I complained about this last week when watching BorderTown. I highly recommend just listening in Chinese and reading the English subtitles rather than the dubbed version.
Newton Historic Jackson Homestead
Creative Date: after driving by the Jackson Homestead and Museum over a thousand times (literally), I finally decided that this would be the weekend to explore it! (For $8, I got myself a ticket that gives access to the Jackson Homestead and the Durant-Kenrick house, which I’ll save for another weekend.
The house was stop on the Underground Railroad, and the museum is three floors of history including a history of slavery and anti-slavery in the North, a rotating exhibit which featured the Newton architect Annie Cobb who was one of the women who exhibited at the World’s Expo in Chicago, and a historical toy exhibit, which even featured the now “vintage” game boy color, circa 1992.
I was delighted to find it to be a well curated little museum with things to see and read around every corner. Here are some of my favorites from the trip. (Including the mustache mugs!)
{Good Eating}
This week brought the delivery of a Green Chef box, another new-to-me box which I had yet to try. While I love these kits for the novelty of having my dinner picked for me, the cooking time on these is always nearly double what it takes for me to make a fairly sophisticated meal from scratch. (Want to try Green Chef? Feel free to use my affiliate link for 4 free meals.)
Batch cooking this week: for meal prep last week, I made a green tahini charmoula, soft boiled some eggs, made a batch of pepita chili, and baked chicken thighs with za’atar. All good choices! This weekend I cooked up eggs and a batch of Algerian Jewish beef, onion, and coriander stew. I also started the marinade on a chicken that I plan on roasting later in the week.
What I ate:
Chicken Katsu bowl, with cabbage, carrot, and pineapple slaw with sesame seeds. Tonkatsu sauce, and a togarashi spiced mayo. (Green Chef)
A big green salad, with romaine, green goddess, chunks of feta, and za’atar chicken.
Roasted garlic-herb chicken with cheesy mashed potatoes, sautéed chard, cabbage, and apple. (Green Chef) It’s amazing what a little cheese in mashed potatoes can do to brighten my mood.
Hawaij-rubbed steaks with herb sauce, feta, pistachios, farro with a tomato sauce, and collard greens. (Green Chef) The leftovers were great the next day with some eggs and sardines.
A caviar bowl: sushi rice, salmon caviar, soft boiled eggs, green tahini, picked daikon and garlic flower, and a little bit of sharp mustard. I got the caviar at Bazaar. (When I’m not blessed with a delivery from Zabars, I’ll either pick it up there or at Berezka.)
Pepita turkey chili, with peppers. With whole foods parm crisps crumbled on top. (The secret ingredient is Trader Joe’s new pepita salsa, which if you haven’t tried it yet, go, and grab two.)
Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese with herbed turkey. Sometimes I’m craving comfort food, and this is one of my top contenders.
Trader Joe’s Mash-up: Channa Masala + Organic Tomato & Roasted Red Pepper Soup (see the photo up to there). This was genius at the tasting station, but I made tweaks using the low sodium tomato soup this time around, and adding some more of the herbed turkey breast.
A kale salad with pollo asado seasoned chicken, roasted delicata squash, pico de gallo, and an egg. (Yes, I did say chicken chicken.)
Thai green curry with eggplant and wild cod. Topped with a little yogurt and cilantro.
Snacks of note: the crispy okra from Trader Joes. I munch through the whole bag with glee. Also – this delightedly vinegar shot that I snagged from my friend Jacqueline’s pantry last week. So good! (I snagged a bunch of these at Star Market today. I suspect making my own would be wildly cheaper, but portable is great!) Our Springfield office was stocked with laughing cow cheese wedges and string cheese, so my day was made.
Desserts of note:Whole milk ricotta two ways: day one with maple syrup and cacao nibs, and day two with chocolate sesame butter.
Also: Enjoy Life sunseed chocolate protein bites. These were on the “new” shelf at Trader Joe’s, and are already backlogged from the supplier. Wild Ophelia Vosges Sea Salt Dark Chocolate Bites with Soft Caramel. (Pro-tip: these are something like $11 at Starbucks, but can be acquired for free with the free food/drink reward on your Starbucks card!)
And: a scoop of Ben and Jerry’s Coffee Toffee Crunch.
I’ll leave you with a parting shot of Bertram – doing what he loves best – napping in the sunpatch.
Hello! I’m not quite sure how the weekend is over, but I thought I’d check in here for a fitness update, and use my little corner of the internet as an added source of accountability. I have a habit of signing up for things and then worrying about them later, which is terrible for my wallet, but great for unlocking fitness achievements that my normal brain would be wary of. Somewhere along the line I looked at my fall racing schedule which had become a tad crowded, and I thought that I’d better start actually *training* for these races.
Some of the highlights of my upcoming season include: Sharon Sprint Tri, the 200 mile Reach the Beach relay, the B.A.A. Half Marathon, Tufts 10k, and the Savannah Rock n Roll Marathon. Yep, that makes me tired even thinking about it! Knowing me, I’ll stuff in a few 5k’s in there as well, and another triathlon if I can manage it. As a self described reluctant runner, for the past few years I’ve been using racing as my race training, but I decided this year I’d at least make a go of running during the week, and I’ve taken advantage of our office track workouts to get some speed in.
Knowing that I have a good amount of miles to get in in the next few months, I finally found a new pair of sneakers to add to my rotation – these bright and happy Mizuno Wave Sayonaras from Heartbreak Hill Running Company. I knew I wanted a neutral-ish shoe with a little bit more padding than my usual minimal options, and so I tried on about 20 different pairs of shoes, and ended up with these. (For those curious, these are actually mens – I wear a mens 10 on my ski feet, which limits my color options, but the turquoise and orange are right up my alley!)
Here are my workouts from last week. I’m on a three month streak walking 10,000 steps a day, so none of my rest days are fully rest days, but I have a good base of walking to make that doable:
Monday: 10k steps (rest)
Tuesday: Track workout! 8 x 400 (1:30 rests). Mile and a half warm up and cool down at faster than normal pace. (Running with officemates at their leisurely pace is simply additional speed work for me!)
Wednesday: OLY class! Worked on cleans, hovering around 95.
Thursday: 10k steps (skipped a short run) (a.k.a. team potluck)
Friday: 10k steps (rest)
Saturday: 7.2 miles long and slow + 3 mile walk (overshot route, had to get home)
Sunday: 10k steps (rest)
Definitely some swimming and biking missing, but I’m back on the wagon this week, and hoping to get in a slightly more varied set of workouts!
“Consciousness is only possible through change; change is only possible through movement.” ― Aldous Huxley, The Art of Seeing
Some days I get this momentum, this feeling of never ending energy. For me it’s all about the inertia – getting going is always hard – okay, sometimes brutal – but once I’m moving, I can go on forever. Today felt like one of those days. After a few days of laying low, I was ready to get out and MOVE. An early wakeup at 5:05 to get to November Project. Stadiums. Up the big steps, down the little ones. Watermelon. Being last. I show up at the 5:30 because it takes me double the amount of time to do the full tour as everyone else. If I come early, the 6:30 class starts by the time I’m finishing up and I still feel inspired by the party. And then I registered for the B.A.A. Half! That’s two half marathons that I’m registered for. (I’m also going to do the Chilly Half again. Even though I swore after I finished it last year that I’d never run it again.) This afternoon I went to Olympic lifting clinic, and then headed out for a long walk with a friend. The next few days I’ll be laying low again, tapering for a race this weekend – I’m looking forward to the rest too!
Two links tonight:
:: Watched this clip tonight – all you can eat with Giannis Antetokounmpo – an interview over food with the adorable rookie from the Bucks.
:: This woman who DOMINATED American Ninja Warrior. Yep, it’s a Buzzfeed article with gifs. Just click on it and thank me later.
Meal planning again – I really do look so forward to this process. Usually, the beginning of my weekends are spent curled up with a new cookbook, reading it from cover to cover by Saturday afternoon, meal planning for the week, shopping and prep cooking on Sunday. This weekend I was totally swept up reading Naomi Duguid’s fabulous Burma: Rivers of Flavor – the ultimate armchair vacation cookbook.
On Saturday I set to work making a little list of what was left in my fridge that I wanted to use up: asparagus, baby spinach, ham, cucumbers, two zucchini, coconut milk, feta, bacon, beets, basil succotash, basil oil, brussels sprouts, Anson Mills rice, eggs, carrots, avocado and tomatoes. Of course there are plenty of bits and bobs, sauces, condiments, and probably things in the way back of the fridge that I just haven’t noticed for a while – all fair game too. And then my pantry is stocked for the apocalypse, so I like to build upon the fresh stuff, but sometimes pantry goods get the starring role in the meal.
When I went to the store, I tried to pick up some meat, some fruit for the week, things to round out my lunches, pantry staples I was running out of: sardines, Red Boat fish sauce, an extra avocado. And by store, well, that’s a lie, we all know that I have a problem. “Store” is more like, three or four or five stores. By choice. For pleasure. Sometimes I stop by Trader Joe’s just for the sample first, you know, to clear my mind. Then I’ll head to Russo’s in Watertown to see if they have Chip-In eggs (they didn’t), or interesting peak produce. Then to Whole Foods for Sunday night fish and an olive sample and a little cup of bionically filtered water, and Trader Joe’s again (to see if they have the free range organic chicken thighs that I eat a lot of (they did.) And another sample.
So here’s what I came up with, accounting for a few days that we’ll likely be eating out because of our super late schedule:
:: Grilled Blue Fish, Mashed Potatoes, and Asparagus with Mustard Vinaigrette. I try to do fish every Sunday if I can because I know that I’ll be able to cook it right when I get home, and usually it’s a quick bet after an afternoon of prep cooking.
:: Saucy Spiced Meat & Potato. This one is from the Burma cookbook. It’s sort of like a spiced stew with ground beef (actually, reminds me a lot of sloppy joe mix.) and I’m not quite sure what I’ll pair it with yet – a big mess of sautéed spinach, and likely a simple salad. I think it suggests an okra/shallot stir-fry in the book, which would be nice, but I don’t have okra.
:: B.L.A.T. Salad. Yep, bacon, lettuce, avocado and tomato salad. The feta might go in here too. And beets on the side.
:: Burmese Grilled Chicken. Also from Burma – chicken with an exciting! marinade of ginger, turmeric, garlic, chile, and fish sauce. I’d bathe myself in Red Boat fish sauce… I’ll probably pair this with a quick pickled cucumber salad.
:: Ham & Cheese Omelette. I have leftover ham. And leftover cheddar with hatch chiles (sucker purchase after eating a sample). And eggs that are a little old, but not too old, that I really want to use up. And I like to channel my French side in the summer time. On the side some stewed zucchini, tomato, and garlic, and a side salad. Ooh la la!
:: Coconut Rice Pudding. I have rice, coconut milk, and some delicious Nielsen–Massey Organic Fairtrade Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Extract that was sent to me to try out for my blog. (Really good timing, P.R. folks – I usually make my own, and I’ve just run out of a large batch that had lasted for months.) I really love Thai mango sticky rice, so I might do some sort of play on that.
And fitness? There’s plenty of that too:
The three miles of walking on weekdays is my usual their and back commute walk. Our evening strolls are walks, although this week we’ve been adding in some running intervals. These aren’t always what I end up doing, but I find that if I schedule out my workouts, I’m more likely to commit to doing them.
Monday: 3 mile walk + 6 mile slow run
Tuesday: 3 mile walk + evening stroll
Wednesday: 3 mile walk, CrossFit Olympic Lifting Class
Thursday: 3 mile walk
Friday: 3 mile walk+ evening stroll
Saturday: CrossFit (or day off)
Sunday: CrossFit Class + Open Platform
What’s on your plate this week? Also, for those of you who have Burma, have you cooked from it? I have lots of notes, but I’m not sure what to tackle next…
A Sunday night with no new Game of Thrones? What will we do? Oh, that’s right, the new season of True Blood starts tonight. Thank goodness for HBO. It’s been quite a long week, but this weekend I spent some time busying myself around the house, plenty of time out doors, and eating a few special meals out. On Friday night we had our usual Friday night dinner date at the Cottage. I went for the chicken tortilla soup, and a side of mashed potatoes. I don’t know. It was cold, a little rainy, and I just really wanted mashed potatoes. Potato police, just leave me alone.
Last night, we ended up at Gustazo in Belmont, for a Cuban dinner. We shared pork chicharrón with guacamole and mango salsa, Devon had the churrasco steak with chimichurri, and I went for the picadillo – ground beef with stuffed olives, tomato, topped with a fried egg, with buttery rice and sweet fried plantains. And then there was dessert. Gustazo has no liquor license (b.y.o.b.), but my goodness do they have good coffee. I went with the Cafe Bonbon – the Cuban equivalent of Vietnamese coffee, strong espresso with sweetened condensed milk – and the flan con coco. “That’s one hell of a flan!” Devon said to me, and I’d have to agree. Not too sweet, and the absolute perfect quivering creamy texture.
To balance these meals, I’ve been an active bee. Last week I mentioned my participation in the Runner’s World Summer Running Streak – I’ve really been enjoying the momentum that running a mile a day gives me – it eliminates the stress of choice, and I’m just so excited to get out and run. It’s also given me confidence to run longer distances – a few weeks ago I ran the Newton 10k and PR’d, and yesterday I ran the Heartbreak Hill Running Company’s Firehouse 10-miler. 10 miles – that’s a good 4 miles longer than I’ve ever run before. I wouldn’t say that I trained for it, but the goal was just to run and finish, and finish I did. (Actually 10.88 miles. We got a little bit lost.)
Here’s a snapshot of last week in fitness:
Sunday: Kayaking on Lake Waban, 1 mile run + 2 mile walk on the Charles
Monday: 3 miles of walking (to and from work), + mile run
Tuesday: Rest day (drove to work) + mile run (in rain boots!)
Wednesday: 4 miles of walking + mile run (in flip flops!)
Thursday: 2 miles of walking, mile run (in the pouring rain!)
Friday: Mile run, work meeting walk (with a work dog!)
Saturday: Firehouse 10 miler! (10.88 miles)
Sunday: 1 mile run, an hour of Open Platform at CrossFit
The Meal Plan: Meal planning! I still do that. Except when I don’t. Lots of comfort food for this week, because I set off to the store without actually planning out my meals or consulting any one of my million cookbooks. Today I ended up at four grocery stores to get everything I wanted. Well, actually, I wanted matcha and glutinous rice flour to make these, but I couldn’t find the rice flour at any of the four stores, and I didn’t really feel like spending $20 on sub-par matcha. First stop was Russo’s, then a brief pit-stop at Stop & Shop, specifically for some Goya Black Bean soup, because, while it isn’t particularly healthy, I crave it enough that I cave in once and a while. And man, the entire Goya aisle makes me tingly and excited. Then Trader Joes, because, even if I don’t need anything at Trader Joe’s, I always need a sample. And finally Whole Foods, because on Sunday night I like to get some good fish for dinner.
Sunday: Copper River Sockeye salmon, black bean soup, rice, and avocado.
Monday: Spaghetti and Meatballs (i.e.: convenience food from Russo’s), and tomato basil salad.
Tuesday: Shakshuka (a.k.a. Eggs in Purgatory) with feta and salad
Wednesday: Pancetta, peas and orzo (from Nigelissima)
Thursday: Turkey chili with cheddar dogs and fried egg
Friday: Out to dinner
See that crispy salmon skin? Nobody ever wants to eat it except for me. What will you be eating this week?
The Second Lunch is a (mostly) food blog by Sam Tackeff about recipes, food writing, ingredient hunting, travel, healthy living, fitness, and everything in between.
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