More Kitchen Adventures

The star of this morning's breakfast was strawberries from the ann arbor farmers market. (seriously, nothing beats farmers market berries).

Also my peanut butter drizzling skills are unmatched.
(don't worry I added another glob of peanut butter prior to eating, but for aesthetics, it was added post-paparazzi)

These oats were just your run of the mill old-fashioned variety cooked in water, but I think next time I need to do some sort of milk. Oatmeal is best when creamy.

Yesterday was my mom's birthday, so I, of course, baked for her. She requested carrot cake, and I found some great recipes before realizing that any sort of baking dish that i owned (i.e., 9x13 dish, 9x9 dish) had been sent home already. Luckily, among the recipes I found was one from the Gourmet Today cookbook for carrot cupcakes. Sold.

Getting recipes from fancy cookbooks and fancy bloggers has lead to a bit more work than just mixing up a batter and popping it in the oven. This one called for toasted walnuts as well as toasted coconut.

The walnut toasting went great - in the oven for ten minutes on 350. perfection.
Coconut? Not so much. The coconut browned much more quickly than expected, and my tiny kitchen didnt leave me a ton of room to let it hang out and cool, so I attempted to immediately pour into the batter bowl.

DISASTER. the 350* baking sheet was heavier than expected and I walked away with 3 burns, and lots of toasted coconut on the floor. frick.

Yay battle wounds.

Regardless, the cupcakes turned out fantastic.

pre-frosting

 I went against the recommended cream cheese molasses frosting and just stuck with the tried and true cream cheese frosting. so delicious.

 This was my first foray into frosting using a simple plastic bag and not my fancy pampered chef icing gun (obviously not the real name).

I think I did okay. 

delicious.

My tuesday night kitchen adventures also included a pretty awesome casserole.

While at work, I realized I had all the ingredients necessary for Iowa Girl Eats' Cheesy Chicken & Broccoli Casserole (found through the always lovely kate.) Again, sold.

This has been the only thing I have wanted to eat lately.

My alterations? Horizon organic shredded cheddar for the sauce, TJ's shredded pepperjack on top, and no green onions, just because I didn't have any.

Baking

So the baking.

The biggest baking successes of the weekend were the two things I made on Saturday, totally randomly.

The first is Joy the Baker's browned butter blueberry muffins.

I was at the farmers market Saturday morning and came across fresh blueberries and just knew it was blueberry muffin time.

Now since Joy is a fancypants baker, this recipe required browning butter. I was feeling very apprehensive about this, but browned the butter anyway and while I'm not sure how much it contributed to the deliciousness of the muffins, they were delicious, so I'm not changing anything.



beautiful blueberries

pre-baking

so much potential

Since I followed the recipe pretty exactly (minus 1% milk for the whole milk), I'll just link you to Joy.

yum

yum

and yum

My other great success (please say like Borat) was Gina's Coconut Chocolate Chip Crispies.

I just completely randomly had all the ingredients and it sounded fantastic, so I made it.

SO GLAD THAT I DID. this is going to be my go to make-in-ten snack from now on.

Gina's recipe is pretty flexible, so my variations were: sunflower seed butter as the nut butter, and white chocolate chips in addition to regular chocolate chips.

On Friday I made Bethenny's oatmeal raisin cookies, and they were just not great. I didn't feel like they had a ton of flavor, and I didn't really enjoy them.

I also made banana chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, which were good.

This was Tina's Recipe.

So baking baking all day. I can't complain.

Also, any suggestions on the blog title are VERY appreciated!

Preview of the Baking Extravaganza

I've been thinking of moving away from the name as a blog title and moving towards something of what this blog is evolving into.

Since last night and all morning have been a baking extravaganza in the almost empty apartment (lease ends July 10!), I was thinking something combining baking and running, my currently sidelined love.

The first and simplest thing that came to mind was Bake and Run, which I tested out on the blogspot platform and what do I find but:

1. A blog with the same background as mine (I really need to lose the book thing. duly noted and on the to-do list)
2. A blog just started in April
3. A blog written by a girl named LAURA

So the next simple variation is baking and running, which is available, but I'm a little unsure how I feel about the gerunds.

Insight? Opinions?

Oh and how about some sneak peaks into what I've been baking:

blueberry muffins

banana chocolate chip oatmeal cookies

chocolate chip coconut crispies

The Foot Situation

So things have been a little rough over here lately.

Running has always been a release for me - its what has kept me sane over some difficult months. And a foot fracture immediately after an accomplishment like a half marathon, plus some recent things that have been a little difficult to deal with has left me feeling a little helpless.

I went to the orthopedic doctor last week on Wednesday (first appointment of the morning, 7AM. super fun). Things were initially looking pretty bad. Right before my doctor left the room to allow me to go get new x-rays, he mentioned "and maybe marathons are just not for you," and I swear my heart broke in half.

X-rays #2 were taken (after assurance that I was indeed not pregnant), and then I came back to the exam room and talked to the doctor further.

This is my X-ray:

very broken foot.

Lovely right? Not even a stress fracture.
It probably began as a stress fracture, but then I ran 13.1 miles and broke broke broke it. COOL.

Doctor man and I talked a little more - he asked how invested I was in running, and I pretty much said that I feel in love with it, and he reevaluated my situation. He assured me it was not likely my shoes - he had read Born to Run and was aware of all the shoe-hype, which was nice to hear. and I think it's pretty badass that he had read Born to Run.

So luckily, they don't cast or put you on crutches for fractures like this, and only recommend using hard soled shoes that don't bend. Which are suprisingly toms?

He told me that I could swim or bike - probably not elliptical because you push off with your forefoot. Unfortunately, at this point I can't really do yoga either. Just downward dog hurts my foot.

I go back for another x-ray in a month and we'll see how its healing and how I can proceed back into running.

It sucks. A LOT. I see all these runners, get my runner's world emails and magazines, read all your lovely blogs, and I am so jealous.

But I'm trying to keep my head up.

I'll keep you all updated about how it goes.

Back to the Food

So since I won't be running any time soon, I've been thinking about what this blog will focus on. The past few months have been HALF HALF HALF obsessed, and now that I'm not training, or even running, I'm kind of back to square one with "what will my blog focus on?"

Well luckily, I've had plenty of time lately to make delicious eats.

Yesterday was particularly good.

I started out the day with a trip to whole foods for raspberries so I could make babycakes raspberry scones. Despite intending to only buy raspberries and coconut oil, I instead walked out spending $55. WHOOPS. In my defense, I did buy natural sunscreen because it was on sale and that is an expensive item.  And kombucha was on sale, so I had to stock up (may be going back again later this week for more, haha. obsession).

The raspberry scone recipe was so simple and easy. Just a few basic ingredients, baked for 14 minutes and tada deliciousness.

ingredients! so few! i love it!

batter

ready to bake

YUM!

These were more muffin-like than scone-like, but I still loved them.

Lucky for you all, the recipe is online here.

My day of delicious food further continued with this lunch:

This was a grilled cheese, made with WF australian cheddar (so good!), fuji apple, and tj's honey apple butter.

Step by step now:

one

two

three

and grill on the g. foreman. and tada! 

could not be more delicious

Stress Fracture x2

Good Morning Bloggies.

So after a whole afternoon spent at the doctors and imaging center, we have a diagnosis on my foot.

Stres fracture x2.

I haven't seen the x-rays yet, and I haven't really talked to my doctor about it (thanks to a really stupid situation with the imaging center- while I was still at the imaging center waiting on results, my doctor called my house and told my mom the results), but I'm heading to a specialist sometime next week.

Updates will come when I know more.

To put it lightly, I'm pretty devastated. I thought I was smart about training. I worked up gradually, I hit my long runs, scaled back on distance certain weeks. I eat well, my blood results from last week came back with perfectly in range calcium levels (although I need to chat with ms. nutrition bff about the significance of blood calcium levels), I'm definitely not starving myself, or eating super unhealthy.

It makes me doubt my love for my fivefingers so much as well, which is equally devastating.

At the same time, I know I didn't follow the training plan as closely as I should have. I didnt get in as many 5 milers as I was supposed to, I slacked on cross-training, and strength training was sporadic at best. If I was going to doing physical activity, I just wanted to run. Clearly that doesn't work out so well.

I'm not sure whether the half caused, contributed, or exasperated the stress fracture, but I guess I could just go with I ran 13.1 miles on a broken foot? Although that kind of makes me look like an idiot. I could tell the x-ray tech thought I was an idiot when I explained that I had some pain before the half, and that I ran it anyway.

ALSO, what is it about health care people thinking a marathon and half-marathon are the same thing? I've had to correct people tons of time. I guess it probably means little to them, but there is a HUGE difference. All my medical records I'm sure say 'after marathon.' Nope, haven't done one of those.

So I don't know how long this puts me out for. I guess we'll see on Monday.
Monday I should also get back my x-rays, which I of course will share with you all, because thats the beauty of the blogging community.

I just want to run so badly though. I see all these people running in this gorgeous weather, and I hear about great runs, and I am just so envious. One of my first questions for the specialist next week will be what can I do while I'm not running?

I have found one silver lining:

Pre-race I got to carb load, in the form of breads, pastas, and pizza.
Post-stress fracture I get to calcium load, in the form of ice cream, chocolate milk, cheese, and pizza.

FIRST HALF - DEXTER-ANN ARBOR RUN

So I did it!

I ran 13.1 miles, and completed my very first half marathon.

Of course it was not without its struggles, but I'll definitely be doing another one.

Okay, from the beginning.

Yesterday at packet pick up I was so happy with my number! My favorite numbers are 11 and 22, so 122 was the PERFECT bib number. I was feeling optimistic about the run if only for this reason.

This morning I woke up around 7 to be ready to leave the house by 7:45. I made myself a banana, pb english muffin for pre-run fuel and then gathered my things and headed off.

I barely made it to the start on time. Traffic was a little crazy getting to the start, but I did make it with a little bit of time to spare, and the race began.

I started out too fast, big surprise. It just felt good, and I was hanging with all the super fast people and I was like oh yeah, I can do this. Mile one was super speedy: 8:13.

Mile 2 was a little more reasonable: 8:46.

I took gatorade at mile 2, and that was probably a poor choice. too much sugar for me on a run (says the girl obsessed with shot bloks)

It was probably cool enough for the first few miles, but there were big stretches where we were in the sun that I hated.

Oh and the biggest thing of all? My foot hurt the entire time. I could feel that I was running on it weird, but I wasn't going to stop. I was going to get through it.

Mile 3: 8:56
Mile 4: 8:54
Mile 5: 9:04
Mile 6: 8:51

Around mile 6 I somehow completely effed up my garmin. I turned it off for a few stretches, because I'm used to turning it off when I walk, and then somehow forgot to turn it back on. Idk what happened, but there's a stretch of .68 miles completely missing from my garmin stats. Whoops.

It was still useful to have for pacing purposes, but that was about it.

I walked a lot more than I would have liked, but the whole foot situation was kind of a game changer. So I walked at miles 6, 9 and 11, and then kind of sucked it up for the rest of the run.

Those balloons were the most misleading things ever. you'd think that was the end right? ABSOLUTELY NOT. just keep running!

Final time? 2:03.17

Did it beat my under 2 goal? No, it didn't. Did I run on a completely damaged foot? Yes I did. So I'm okay with it. I already have a list of things I will do differently for half marathon #2.

I was one lucky lady to have a bunch of family + the bff there for the race festivities.

chugging water

me & mom!

putting the shoe back on the super injured foot

cancer kickers shirt! way better than the actual race tee's

Now I am attempting to cure this foot. I'm not feeling very optimistic, but I'm icing and elevating like a champ. i have my bag of ice, and my mountain of pillows, so i'm good to go.

one of these things is not like the other one...