Hi guys!

How goes your Memorial Day so far? Instead of going to my spinning class, Ryan and I decided to go running together.

Okay so maybe I was more excited about starting the holiday off by exercise than he was!

We actually make good running partners because we each have “injuries” (running hurts Ryan’s back and running hurts my shins) and have to go slow. Today we ran a slow, easy 2 miles and then walked for about another half mile or so. When we got back, I did the first circuit of Level 2 of the 30 Day Shred using…….soup cans!

It was interesting. I got hungry though so I stopped after the first circuit and Ryan made us post-workout recovery shakes!

To serve two we used: 1 frozen banana, 2 pieces curly kale, 1 scoop strawberry soy protein powder, 1 cup orange juice, a scoop of wheat germ and a few strawberries. I was pretty impressed…it was delicious!

However, I was hungry again pretty soon after and made an early lunch! I haven’t had almond butter in two days and that is two days too long in my book so today’s lunch revolved around the good stuff

I layered a heaping scoop of it on a toasted Kashi Go Lean waffle and then topped a Trader Joe’s dried banana on it for some chew (and since we are out of fresh bananas). On the other waffle, I smeared some raspberry preserves. Out of this world deliciousness, I tell you! I also had the remains of the Fage 2% (probably only 1/4 cup or so) topped with raw cacao nibs.

Look at gooey and delicious this waffle sammie was!

For dessert, I totally broke into one of the fantastic UK chocolate bars that Jo sent me!

Ryan just headed out fishing again (he’s hardcore I tell you!) but since I reached my fishing max with yesterday’s little adventure, I opted to stay home. We somehow seemed to have already eaten through a week’s worth of groceries over here so I need to hit up the store for some essentials. When Ryan gets home this evening we are having our own Memorial Day celebration by grilling out hot dogs. Well, Ryan is eating a hot dog and I’m going to eat a soy dog. I have a little bit of a complex with meat hot dogs. I’m sure some of you know what I mean. No details since its lunch time. I’m also going to get some veggies to throw on the grill…..maybe eggplants, peppers and onions? I love grilled veggies!

I hope whatever you all do you enjoy your day. Both Ryan and I have grandfathers that fought in World War Two and we are all so blessed to live in this great country!

© Jenna for Eat, Live, Run, 2009. | Permalink | 46 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 30 day shred, chocolate, Exercise, Lunch, running, smoothie, Snack

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Hi

I hope everyone’s Monday has been treating them well. I actually forgot today was Monday…that’s how lost I feel!

Around 4:00 I made a pre-yoga snack even though I really was not hungry…still full from that monster sandwich at lunch I guess! I knew I would never make it through yoga and until a late dinner though if I didn’t make something and sipping on a smoothie sounded like the best option.

• 1/2 banana
• 1 HUGE handful spinach
• a few frozen strawberries
• a few raspberries
• 1 cup vanilla coconut milk

So, this was definitely the ugliest combination I have EVER made (it looked like dirt!) but it tasted fantastic and was just the thing I needed to get me through. I have to train myself sort of to eat dinner later now because Ryan doesn’t get home from work until 8 or 8:30 and I don’t want to eat by myself every night. I figure I can go to a gym class or yoga class until 6:30 most nights and then start cooking after that so we can eat when he gets home. Unfortunately he commutes every day so there’s no hope of him being home at 6:00 ever.

My yoga class tonight was exactly what I needed and was my strongest practice since the accident. My favorite instructor was teaching it and I just love my studio. I’m actually a member of two yoga studios because I like to do Bikram at one and then power flow classes at the other. Tonight’s class was a flow and the stretches were so deep that my hamstrings really were talkin’ to me but it was a good type of hurt. Chay, my teacher, always infuses lavender essence during shivasana and its just so calming.

After my practice, Ryan was still at Sear’s Outlet looking at stoves (think we found a real deal!!!) so I headed over to my parent’s house to have a glass of red wine and chat. A WONDERFUL package from VeggieGirl arrived (thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!!) so I immediately broke into the raw rosemary quakers and hummus for an appetizer with my wine since I was getting pretty hungry and knew dinner wouldn’t be for at least another hour or so—-

This package brought a huge grin to my face….all my favorites! And more macaroons!! I froze these so I could keep ‘em for a long, long time whenever the craving strikes. And I can’t wait to try the “crispies” and “grawnola”! I seriously have the best friends a girl could ever ask for and I’m so blessed.

After visiting my parents, I headed back “home” (that feels weird to type!) to the condo. For dinner, Ryan grilled the fish he caught at the fishing tournament over the weekend and I prepared it in the typical fish taco way.

Here’s all the ingredients (minus the fish, which R was grilling)—

Me, putting it all together—

We actually have been tenderizing the fish in coconut milk for the past two days before grilling it with mojo sauce, sea salt and pepper so it was really, really yummy. I wrapped my fish up in an Ezekiel tortilla with steamed zucchini, salsa, hot sauce, a tiny bit of cheese and about a fourth of a ripe avocado.

All wrapped up—

It was SO GOOD. Probably the best homemade fish taco I’ve ever had. Even though we ate late and I was super full, I had to end my day with some organic dark chocolate

I’m off to clean the kitchen, write for awhile and head to bed. See you in the morning!

© Jenna for Eat, Live, Run, 2009. | Permalink | 58 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: chocolate, dessert, Dinner, fish tacos, smoothie, yoga

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Hi!

I have been a hungry, hungry grasshopper all day long! My body is so crazy…the second I start upping my workouts, my appetite grows to that of a 200 lb man. Does this happen to anyone else?? hehe

Running was good today…I did a solid 5K in 27 minutes outside in the grass. I was going to go to that trail, but in the end I ended up staying around my house because I was by myself, not familiar with the trail routes over there yet, and my RoadID hasn’t come in the mail yet. I like to be safe! It was bright sunny and hot outside…thank God for my camel bak! As annoying as training in the heat can be, I do think a lot of it is mental. Note that I’m not saying go run a marathon when it is 95 degrees outside, but when you have hydrated yourself properly all day long, running in the heat (75-85 degrees) should be doable. Personally, I always force myself to pace slower than I usually do so I don’t get worn out quickly. Running too fast in the heat can lead to some major headaches!

When I got back, I immediately stretched and iced. And then about 30 minutes later, I made a blackberry recovery shake!

This was just 1 cup of frozen blackberries blended in the Vita Mix with a half scoop of vanilla protein and a half cup of Silk Light Vanilla. Simple and delicious! I also snacked on leftover raw veggies throughout the afternoon while I got caught up on emails and blog reading

Yummy bell pepper and jicama….my two favorites!

I was STARVING by the time dinnertime came along. And by dinnertime, I mean 4:00. Oh, my life. Sigh. Dinner was very simple tonight:

Hey, sometimes you just gotta have Annie’s Mac & Cheese, you know? Nothing like a big bowl of creamy hot carbs! I added a half cup of chickpeas to my Annie’s to add a little more bulk to my bowl and increase the protein. It actually was a pretty yummy combo and something I have never done before but will be repeating in the future!

I also had a monster sized salad with organic greens, sliced grape tomatoes, jicama, 1/2 of a red bell pepper and cucumber drizzled with Annie’s Balsamic dressing.

However, even after eating all this food I still was quite hungry!

So, I brought out the secret hunger weapon that works like a charm every time……..

No, I did not eat the whole jar with a spoon. Rather I cooked a packet of Nature’s Path instant oatmeal and topped my oatmeal generously with chocolate peanut butter goodness—

[sigh of contentment] The hungry, hungry caterpillar is FINALLY satisfied! =)

Since my dinner tonight was rather boring for blog purposes, here are my Valentine’s Day veggie plants!! For those of you that are new readers, Ryan bought me some zucchini and buttercup squash plants for Valentine’s Day…..he knows I would rather have something I could eat than just look at! Anyways, I planted them immediately in the huge clay pots that they came with and its been only a month, but they are huge already! The zucchini says that it takes 48 days to harvest so by this time next month maybe I’ll have a baby one!

Zucchini:

Buttercup Squash:

Crazy parsley:

Pretty flower:

Whew! Long post! Thursday tomorrow…one step closer to Friday!

Check out Dexter’s new bed…..my lunchbox.

© Jenna for Eat, Live, Run, 2009. | Permalink | 57 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Annie's, announcements, carb lovin', Exercise, oatmeal, peanut butter, running, smoothie, snacks, veggies

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Howdy guys! Happy Humpday!

I wish I was more uplifting right now but the truth is, this week is just KILLING me! I didn’t fall asleep last night until at least 10:00 and that puts me in at only getting about five hours of sleep. Since I was exhausted yesterday (and the day before) as well, this is sort of putting me over and edge and I’m super afraid of getting sick because my resistance is way down. I don’t know what happened last night….well actually I do! I was pretty upset about something going on right now, and that coupled with KILLER allergies (anyone want to tell me exactly how to use the “netti pot”?!) and an extreme headache from not hydrating enough yesterday completely killed me. I finally decided a snack would help and so around 9:00 I got up and fixed a tiny bowl of 1 weetabix biscuit with hemp milk (sorry no picture!). I think that actually did help a little and I felt better after I ate.

Regardless, the alarm went off way too quickly and my eyes were sunken in and bright red all day. However, I did have another really good morning snack!

Oh my goodness, I am just obsessed with these microwaved egg whites!!!!!! No seriously, they are rocking my world and I can’t wait to try more variations. This morning I just did two again for one minute and they turned out SO fluffy!!! I used to think egg whites were rather boring but these are pure fluff. And I love how big they get! I also had half of a fruit & grain bagel with almond butter and half of a sliced banana. It kept me going strong all morning even though I broke down at 4:30 and bought a grape kombucha. I usually save them for Fridays but NEEDED one this morning!

I broke around 8:00 for breakfast and dug into a monster sized breakfast cookie (3/4 cup oats, other half of banana, 1/2 scoop chocolate protein, 1 tbsp almond butter and splash of hempmilk)…this time with chocolate chips! The chocolate chips were perfect in it and will be a regular addition from now on. It was like eating a big ol’ chocolate chip oatmeal cookie for breakfast and I LOVED it

I honestly don’t know how I made it the rest of the morning. I was so tired and my boss even looked at me and asked me if I was okay…and then he sent me home 30 minutes early telling me to get some sleep! Gah! The only thing I wanted for lunch was a smoothie and so smoothie it was! This creation was totally Heather inspired because I’ve been loving all her amazing uses for avocado lately on her blog. Here’s what went in the ol’ Vita Mix this morning—

• 1/4 avocado
• 1 banana
• 1 cup silk light vanilla
• 1 tbsp ground flax
• 1 scoop chocolate protein
• few big squirts agave

It.was.the.best.smoothie.EVER!!!!!!!!!!!! The surprise avocado ingredient made it SO unbelievably creamy (thanks, Heather!), it was out of control. This is definitely my favorite smoothie combination to date and was very very filling to boot!

I was originally planning on doing yoga today but I’m just so worn out I might take a complete rest day and do some simple stretches on my own. Is it Friday yet??!

© Jenna for Eat, Live, Run, 2009. | Permalink | 58 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: breakfast cookie, morning snack, smoothie

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Happy Monday!

Woahhh am I a sleepy girl today! I feel like I woke up every 10 minutes last night….I HATE that. And the time change didn’t help too much either. I have got to fix my black out curtains asap. When the alarm went off at 3:00 my eyes were burning and I hobbled downstairs to brew some VERY strong coffee to take to work. It helped, but made me so jittery I couldn’t work the scale to weigh the dough out on! Eventually though, the jitters sort of wore off and we finished everything by 11:30 and decided to go home 40 minutes early….all three of us were hurting! I did have an AWESOME snack this morning though!

Odwalla people, can I just tell you that I love you??! Seriously, these bars are totally rocking my world and this one tasted just like a big soft and chewy oatmeal raisin cookie! I have one left (the berry one) and can’t wait to try it.

I broke early for breakfast this morning just because I was so tired, jittery and hungry. Here’s my yummy oatmeal made with 3/4 cup oats, water, 1/2 banana, 1/2 scoop protein powder, chocolate chips (!!) and almond butter

Look at those chocolate chips melt into deliciousness!!! I  need to start adding these babies to my morning bowl way more often. Chocolate is always appropriate at all hours of the day, obvi.

This breakfast was super filling this morning and all I was craving when I came home from work was a smoothie. Sometimes when I don’t get enough sleep, my tummy gets all funny and my ibs starts to flair up (does this happen to anyone else?!) and a smoothie was the perfect remedy. Here’s what went into the glorious vita-mix today:

One mango (they were on sale 5 for $5!), pineapple, 1 scoop vanilla protein powder, 1 tbsp ground flax and 1 cup unsweetened vanilla hempmilk. Great combo of tropical fruit, protein and omega 3s!

My mom is just as tired as I am because she’s been up since 4 am traveling home from a business trip. We both were raiding the kitchen for something sweet and ended up splitting a macaroon. It did the trick!

I’m going to pull myself together now and head out for a 40 minute bike ride. I think some sunshine will do me good!

See you for dinner!

© Jenna for Eat, Live, Run, 2009. | Permalink | 38 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: macaroons, oatmeal, odwalla bars, smoothie

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Well, 7 hours of yoga later, I am back.

Actually it wasn’t 7 hours—but my noon workshop class went waaaay overboard and lasted a solid 3 hours! Never have I done yoga for such a long period of time. It was great though! The class was focused on balancing vata, and it was one of those classes where you hold crescent moon and warrior one for, like, 10 minutes. The class was very slow but sometimes the slow classes are the ones that work you the hardest!

I had a veryyy early lunch at 10:30 of this:

With a half cup of cottage cheese (gotta keep eating soft foods!):

Yummy and it did a good job of holding me through such a long practice!

I didn’t get home until 3:15 and had to be back at the studio for a lecture at 4, so needless to say there was no time for blogging, let alone a shower! I did manage to throw together a quick smoothie though—

This is a combo of a 2% fage, a whole mango (minus the pit of course) and a big squirt of agave. After all that asana, I needed a major boost!

Smoothie in hand, I rushed back to the studio for Kishan’s three hour lecture. Now, he is actually a philosophy and Indian studies teacher at UCLA (as well as in training to be an Ayurvedic physician) so listening to him was actually just like being in college again! He spoke for almost 4 hours on Ayurveda and he had me the entire time.

Here are some notes I took during the lecture. Now please keep in mind that you can agree or disagree with what he says. Its definitely very “out of the box” for us westerners to hear and its good to be open to what different people have to say. I’ve been interested in Ayurveda for awhile actually and after hearing him talk, I think I’m going to see an Ayurvedic doctor for my migraines since clearly traditional medicine doesn’t work for me!

Ayurveda is the science of life, way of being, looking into the body, mind and spirit—a holistic system of living and medicine

• Primary goal is to keep the healthy “healthy”—- Food IS medicine
• You are what you eat.
• Keeps the healthy healthy by helping us maintain balance with diet and lifestyle
• Like increases like. We need to balance everything.
• Some people aren’t meant to be vegetarians. We are meant to eat to our body type and keep it in balance. In Ayurveda, meat is sometimes even used as medicine. Depends on our activity level and our metabolic rate. ANYTHING can be medicine. Depends on your body.
• Shift your diet and lifestyle toward your imbalance
• Prakrati and Vikruti—–our states of health
• Prakrati is our current state of health. Vikruti is where we want to be!
• Prakrati often depends on our parents and their imbalances when we were born. Looks at internal state of the mother’s womb even as well as seasonal factors, food we’ve been eating, ect. Ideal setting would be for both parents to get really balanced and then conceive so that the child is born Vikruti instead of in a Prakrati state.

• The Universe is made up of 5 elements—-space, air, fire, water, earth. If there is a decrease in one, we need to pull another one to balance it off.
• From these 5 elements, the doshas (intelligence in the body) hails. When they are in a place of balance, they are invisible. When there is a weakened tissue in the body, they have the ability to manifest in the body in some sort of form

Your pulse is really the only way to tell what dosha type you are. Quizzes are sort of bogus. Only a certified Ayurvedic doctor can tell what you truly are.

• Ayurveda says allergies do not exist. Something is imbalanced. We need to look at the root of the problem. Western medicine covers up the problem yet does not heal it from the inside out. Stop bandaiding your symptoms. Find the root cause.

• all disease processes come from low digestive fire (agni)

• NO COLD DRINKS —-causes the stomach to contract and shiver
• ice water shocks the stomach and creates toxicity in it. Food cannot digest properly when the system gets shocked by cold. All drinks should be room temperature to hot.
• Ice cream at night is “the worst thing ever”.
• Also only warm foods at breakfast and no fruit because fruit is heavy and more difficult to digest in the morning. Cold milk and banana is NOT the right way to start your day in balance!

He went on to further elaborate on the different doshas and creating balance so we have zero health problems. I always thought of myself as a Vata but after talking to him and the Ayurvedic physician there, I think I have more of a Pitta imbalance. Very interesting. It lasted almost 4 hours! Afterwards he led us through some seated meditation and chanting.

I was STARVING by the end of the lecture (it didn’t end until about 7:30). Ryan was still in St.Pete and all this yoga made me really crave Indian food so I stopped at this tiny hole in the wall place only about a mile away from the studio that one of the girls in the workshop told me about. Turns out I wasn’t the only one with the same craving—I ran into Stacey, a girl I met in yoga, there!

I ordered channa masala with naan:

Ahhhhhhhhh it was amazing!!!!!!!! I was so hungry and even though I’m not supposed to eat bread for a week because of my mouth (bleh), I demolished the entire thing in about five minutes flat (well except for the veggie salad thingy…..no crunchy things right now!). Don’t worry. I was careful and chewed the bread slowly on the opposite side of my mouth. It was freakin’ amazing. The best naan I have ever had. Hot and buttery and chewy.……….so good. The channa masala was great too. I asked for a little bit spicier (you can get it mild, slightly spicy or HOT) and it was perfect. I’m so glad I found this little place and will definitely be back in the very near future!

Ryan just got home and we are relaxing on the couch. I actually cannot even move after so much yoga but tomorrow is the final day of the workshop and class goes from 11-1:30. Phew! I wish yall could be here and do this with me—its so interesting!

Have a wonderful evening and I’ll see you for breakfast! =)

ps—Kishan recommended this website if you interested in learning more!

© Jenna for Eat, Live, Run, 2009. | Permalink | 37 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Amy's, Indian take-out, mango, smoothie, yoga detox weekend, yogurt

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