Tag Archives: cottage cheese parfait

Time to Celebrate

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Today is my MPH graduation day.

I know a lot of students don’t even go to their Master’s graduation. They figure they’ve been to their undergraduate ceremony, so why do they need to go to another? And I get that, especially as many of my classmates are in their 30′s. But for me, commemorating my MPH is so much more than just reflecting on two years of HARD work, it’s celebrating my complete transition to an adult.

I went into a Master’s program straight from undergrad. I moved from Michigan to Chicago (away from family) and had to start my life in a new city (granted I knew Ian and a handful of other people in the city). I really came into my own as I had to figure out what was important to me and what was not. I also ended up working a lot this past year and have had to learn to balance school, work, and free time.

It’s been a hectic two years but I have to think that I’ve grown and matured a lot :) .

Last night Ian and I decided to start the celebration off with a mini date night. We have dinner plans with my family tonight so we kept dinner simple (and cheap!) and headed over to Flaco’s Tacos, a quick serve Mexican restaurant in our neighborhood.

I started with a glass of sangria (hey- we were celebrating!)

And we split some chips and salsa

I kept my meal on the lighter side and ordered two tilapia tacos.

They were okay, a little on the bland side with too much slaw filler, but overall not too shabby. I loved that the fish wasn’t fried and was seasoned nicely without being oily!

It was so nice out last night (after it cooled off) and we weren’t quite ready to head back to our super hot apartment so we ventured downtown to Sprinkles so Ian could pick up a cupcake. The ominous clouds must have spooked away the usual Sprinkles customers because we didn’t have to stand in a line for 15 minutes to get a cupcake. Woohoo! I debated grabbing one as well, but when I saw they didn’t carry vegan gluten-free cupcakes I decided not to. My stomach has been way too bizarre lately to risk it.

Luckily, as we were walking home we passed a Whole Foods and stopped inside so Ian could pick up some grapefruit. I just happened to walk past the bakery section when I saw this baby:

Chocolate peanut butter vegan and gluten free cupcake??? I was sold!

Even Sonic was interested in the cupcake once we brought it home…

I guess the furbaby takes after his mama ;)

After starting our laundry back at the apartment (the only not fun part of the night), Ian and I dug into our cupcakes.

A banana cupcake for him:

And a chocolate peanut butter cupcake for her:

Delicious!

We spent the rest of the night watching t.v. and sweating on the couch. Property management, please turn on the AC!

It was so hot that we had to sleep with the fan on which is never a good thing for Sonic. He appreciates the cool air but is terrified of the fan! As a result, he sleeps at the top of my pillow (between my head and the wall) so he is as far away from the fan as possible. Also, whenever we turn the fan on, he attacks my head during the night. I’m not sure if its because he’s scared and wants to wake me up or if he’s just not used to being so close to my hair but he will actually grab pieces of my hair in his mouth and pull them out of my pony tail. Then he starts to clean the piece of hair. What a weird furbaby…

Case in point, I went to bed with a normal ponytail and woke up like this:

Attractive right?

Anyway, I woke up early to get a run in before it got too warm and knocked out four miles. When I got home I did the advanced core workout from Advanced Marathoning and then dug into a cottage cheese parfait for breakfast

Fig jam, cottage cheese, banana slices, walnuts, blueberries, gf granola, and crunchy sunflower seed butter. Yum!

I’m relaxing around the apartment this morning and then grabbing lunch with my mom once she gets into town. The festivities begin this afternoon!

Happy Friday :)

Almost Wordless Thursday

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First I want to thank all of you for your comments on my last post! I somehow managed to survive my capstone presentation and today have my second of three presentations this week. I’m sure you’re jealous ;) .

Also, I’ve had two pain-free and hamstring-spasm free runs this week! Yesterday I completed a strong 5 miles and today another good 3. I’ve missed feeling good after a run! Fingers crossed that my hamstring continues to heal!

Lastly, if you haven’t already, don’t forget to enter my RnR race bib giveaway (half OR full marathon). The giveaway closes Friday evening, so make sure to enter before then!

And now on to yesterday’s eats:

Breakfast: cottage cheese parfait with fig jam, banana, strawberry gf granola, and walnuts.

Lunch (at nearly 3:00 after capstone): arugula, mushrooms, tempeh, and avocado sauce.

 Dinner: vegetable hash (let me know if you want the recipe- it’s another simple one!) with a fried egg.

Dessert: unpictured celebratory vanilla ice cream cone with sprinkles and nuts from Dairy Queen.

I’m off to tackle another busy day. By this time next week I’ll be all done with school! Have a wonderful Thursday!

Friday Things

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1) I need to remember that I am no longer 21 (and slowly approaching old lady status). Going out for a late (9 p.m.) dinner and drink on Thursday night and then getting up early (5:15 a.m.) on Friday is not as easy as it once was. Hence the “Friday Things”, my mind is too tired to write a proper post.

2) A side salad and fried pickles do not make for a good or healthy dinner.

3) I have to give a presentation today, it’s like my 100th this semester. In the next four weeks I’ll have to give at least 4 more.

4) A cottage cheese parfait made it back into the breakfast rotation this morning. Today’s had cottage cheese (duh), fig jam, banana, raw oats, walnuts, TJ’s gluten-free granola, and sunflower butter. It was pretty amazing.

5) Speaking of food, yesterday I made Ian a smoothie with banana, milk, vanilla chobani, cinnamon, and cookie butter (there may have been a crumbled cookie in there as well- his request). It tasted like liquid banana bread. Unfortunately I have no idea of how much of each ingredient I used so I can’t post the recipe on the blog.

6) I am so sick of the elliptial, please heal fast hamstring.

7) I have class and work today, but I know many of you have the day off. Enjoy it :)

8) Sonic is doing much better, he actually sat on the desk near the window. Baby steps.

9) I don’t care what your political views are, this site is pretty funny (back story found here).

10) In one week I leave for Boston!!

Do you have the day off? If so, are you doing anything fun?

Midweek Recap

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Hey guys, I hope you are all doing great :) . The week is more than half over, that’s something to celebrate about right?

I have to admit that as much as I love doing WIAW posts and joining up with other bloggers, I always feel so detached from you all on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that in the future but in the meantime here’s an update of the past day or so.

Tuesday evenings are usually calzone night in the apartment but after coming across this recipe earlier this month I strongly suggested that we give it a shot this week and I am so glad that we did!

I halved the recipe and made it in three smaller dishes- one for me to eat that night, one for leftovers, and then another (the larger one on the left) for Ian with sausage.

I debating making salad or a vegetable to have on the side but honestly the bubble up pizza was enough. It was also incredibly delicious, who wouldn’t love biscuit pizza?

It was nice outside and I’m always down for a walk so we headed to Kingoberry & Potbelly so I could indulge my froyo craving and Ian could enjoy a shake.

I had chocolate with coconut, blueberries, strawberries, and one of Ian’s shake adornments. I swear kingo’s chocolate flavor tastes like a Wendy’s Frosty!

I was so far removed from productivity at that point that I gave up even trying to do homework and we finished watching The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and called it a night. I ended up liking the movie more than I thought I would but I definitely recommend reading the books first!

On Wednesday I headed out for a run first thing. While I enjoyed the run it was HARD. My legs were sore and achey and my mind, body, and legs were not in agreement about the pace. Luckily I eventually loosened up (around mile 6) and felt more normal after. It’s hard to say whether my legs are sore from re-introducing running, not taking a rest day for almost 2 weeks, or a mixture of both but my legs are sure getting a wake-up call. I also want to note that if I wasn’t running a marathon in three weeks I’d be easing into running more slowly but unfortunately Boston is coming up fast!

I took advantage of being home all day to prepare some food for meals this week/weekend. I roasted brussels sprouts, made quinoa, and cooked some peas. I was obviously getting quite a lot of school work done ;)

Lunch was a mix of all of the above with nutritional yeast and barbeque sauce. Yum!

I managed to squeak out a bit of productivity mid-afternoon and then took a break to make some pumpkin walnut muffins.

They’re made with almond flour so they’re gluten free and they smelled amazing baking in the oven.

By dinner, I had burned out on being in the kitchen so I kept it super simple and made tuna salad by mixing two cans of tuna, tzatiki sauce, relish, and peas. Ian had his as a tuna melt and I had mine over spinach.

Dessert was one of the new Ben & Jerry’s Greek Froyo Flavors, Strawberry Shortcake, with a mini brownie. I definitely wanted more!

When I woke up this morning and my legs were still stiff and sore, I knew that today needed to be an easy day. I completed 45 minutes on the elliptical at a slow pace to shake out my legs and it seems to have helped so far. Unfortunately, I won’t be going to the evening cycle class that I had planned but my legs need a break!

For breakfast I had a cottage cheese parfait with fig jam, banana, crumbled cream cheese muffin, sunflower seed butter, and gluten free granola.

It definitely hit the spot :)

I’m off to start my busy Thursday, have a good one!

Pita Heaven

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Happy Friday, we finally made it :)

I spent most of yesterday working on my capstone. I broke for lunch around noon and made a chili black bean, avocado, and corn salsa salad.

I ended up having a ton of black beans left and as I wasn’t feeling quite full, I threw the last of the beans and some more salsa in a tortilla.

This lunch kept me full for hours! I never even had the inclination to make an afternoon snack. I also think my mexican food craving has been quenched for quite some time ;) .

Around 5:30 I got ready for cycling. I didn’t really feel like going but I kept trying to remind myself how good I would feel after. And I was right, when I left the gym a sweaty mess I remembered that I never regret a good workout :) .

Our dinner options were slim and making anything at home would have taken a lot of creativity that I just didn’t have so Ian and I walked over to a nearby Mediterranean restaurant, Pita Heaven. The restaurant is right on one of my running routes and when it opened last year it immediately caught my eye. However, until a few months ago, Ian just wasn’t that into Mediterranean food so we had never checked out. I was actually completely shocked when Ian suggested we go last night.

I still wasn’t all that hungry for dinner which is surprising considering I didn’t have an afternoon snack and I cycled. I ordered the mediterranean salad that came with mixed greens, avocado (handed over to Ian), cherry tomatoes, dates, almonds, peppers, goat cheese, and honey mustard vinaigrette.

Holy salad! I love it when places know how to serve a salad, i.e. a large portion with delicious pita bread ;) . The best bites were the ones with a pepper and dates. So good! I will definitely go back to Pita Heaven again and hopefully next time I’ll have a larger appetite.

We stopped at Baskin Robbins on the walk home and Ian grabbed a cookie dough cone. I was too full from dinner and not in the mood for ice cream so I passed on it. Who am I again?

This morning I woke up nice and early and headed down to the gym only to find that it wasn’t open yet! I guess the guy who normally opens the gym at 5:30 was running late and they had to call someone else to fill in. I felt really bad for the girl who showed up, it wasn’t her fault the gym opened late, but almost everyone was rude to her. Still, it was frustrating to see the guy who normally opens the gym walk in at around 6:45, really cool man, really cool. Anyway, I ended up only having time to elliptical for 50 minutes but it could have been worse.

I had a cottage cheese parfait for breakfast that was layered with fig jam, banana, walnuts, and homemade coconut granola.

I also may have overdone it with the sunflower butter on top, whoops :P

Time to get to work!

What are your weekend plans? Anything exciting?I’m looking ahead at a long day of work followed by my mom’s arrival (yay!)