Food success!

This was quite a successful food weekend, if I do say so myself. Thank you, Pinterest.

Even though I have a history of not likely beets, I thought I would try them again. My friend had some when I stayed with her this summer, and she LOVES them. I roasted them with some rosemary. Blech. What I did do was blend them up with plain yogurt and more rosemary and make Annie's Mac n' Cheese with the beet yogurt. (Inspired by this beet pasta recipe which I probably will not try now.) I took a picture after it had been in the fridge, mostly so you could see the color. It hid the beet taste for the most part!

Then I made buffalo cauliflower. This was a super-easy way to bread and oven cook something. Sadly, my blue cheese dressing is in the fridge at work.

I highly recommend the two breakfasts I made: Saturday I made pumpkin french toast. I also made breakfast for the week. Mini-frittatas with more of the roasted beets as mix-ins (also bacon, cheese curds, pepper from my porch, green onions, and cauliflower). I tried one and they are pretty good...except when you bite into a piece of beet.

Apparently I still do not like beets.

2 Weeks Ago...

2 weeks ago I finished another MS Challenge Walk. I think it was by far my most successful, as far as my legs go. I would link to old posts about walking and the Walk, but I am procrastinating on work right now as it is. You will have to trust me that this was my NINTH year. Next year will be my TENTH (that was some fast math). I have decided that my best secret to training is to freak out that I will not train enough and will be in pain, because that is how I trained this year. I was probably walking 3 to 4 times a week, and 5 to 9 miles each time. My Mom did not train as much as she did her first year she was a walker and did all 50 miles. This year I think she walked about 34 miles...at 2.5 miles an hour.

I walk for my Mom, who was diagnosed with MS something like 30 years ago. I would feel guilty about leaving her to walk alone, and frequently check myself if I get snippy when I do walk with her. The lady is getting severely crazy, like I think she would win the prize for the craziest "normal" mother. Luckily, it is mostly in a harmless way. She did kiss someone at the walk though, which made me really uncomfortable (not like kiss-kiss, but more like she should have just stuck with a hug kiss), and tends to overshare things that make people uncomfortable. All of this to say that she walks SLOW anyway. So on Day 2 of the walk, I told her I could not walk that pace after lunch. She was going to skip ahead to miss the hilly parts due to her knees and blisters. She skipped 6 or 7 miles, to walk the last 4 or 5, and I almost caught up to her. I was probably walking twice her speed. I did 3 miles in less than 45 minutes. I told her it was because I had warmed up for 4 hours that morning walking with her. Hahaha. Sadly, my sister has managed to hurt both of her feet in the past couple of months on the little league field and on a worm in her garage. She walked on the last day to get on the course a bit, and it was nice to have the Mom buffer.

My nephew will be old enough to walk next year, so we finally created a team because it helps with fundraising. When I was walking to meet up with my Mom and my sister, I thought our name should have 'numb' in it. We realized that one reason my Mom gets such bad blisters is because she has reduced feeling in her feet so they get bad before she realizes she has them. We decided our team name should, therefore, be 'Comfortably Numb'. It comes with its own theme song, which two of my favorite female artists have covered.

I do not take many pictures on the Walk anymore, but a couple I did take....

That yellow ribbon has been there long enough for the ivy to grow over it. It reminded me of when SO MANY PEOPLE put yellow ribbons up for the troops during, I think, the first Iraq war.

The road is sometimes quiet.

A noteworthy flower along the way. Mostly noteworthy because it is fall and past the season for a lot of flowers.

Long-stemmed roses CF sent that were waiting for me when I got back to lab after the walk.

Climbing...then crawling.

I have wasted the last hour of my life trying to make it bearable to walk on my left foot. No joke.

Dinner is finished in the crock pot & rice cooker.
Windows are open and need to be shut because it is cold out.
The cat wants attention.
I took my contacts out and do not know where my glasses are.
I cannot walk on my left foot.

A few weeks ago I tried (indoor) rock climbing for the first time and discovered, maybe not surprisingly, that my arms are ridiculously weak. There was a weekend visiting CF and walking 50 miles since then, all with no problems. The only thing I had after walking 50 miles was a hardly note-worthy blister on one toe.

Today, I used the second climbing day from the Groupon deal. I actually made it to the top of the wall, then we tried other routes up and some bouldering before leaving. All seemed fine. Arms were expectedly tired; legs felt fine. Then a couple of hours ago I stretched my ankle and it started bothering me. I left it alone, but I think I may have over-stretched a small muscle just behind that ball on the outside of your ankle. AND HOLY HELL it hurts.

I grabbed some ice. No help.
I brought my work in from the porch so I could sit on the couch to try heat. Made it worse.
Put the ice back on and my bag sprung a leak.
I got up and popped two Aleve and a glass of water.
I tried wrapping it for compression, but had to take it right back off because it felt worse.
Laid on the floor to stretch my legs and elevate them.
That is when I had to actually crawl over to the kitchen to get the ice again, a couple of times feeling like I was nauseous or light headed.
I laid on the floor to stretch my legs over my head again.
I put the ice back on.
Crawled back over to the couch and am laying here with the ice waiting for that Aleve to do something.

I am sure you wanted to relive that with me. I cannot focus to do work right now, though, so I had to occupy myself somehow. I am seriously thinking of adding a tag to my blog: Pain. This will be the only post (hopefully).

Sometimes it is a pain in the ass to live alone.

Wish me luck. Hope my dinner tastes good.

Fingers crossed

I have all these *things* swimming around in my head. While I should be finishing up revisions of a research manuscript, I want to just write these down so I can let them go (for now). After the manuscript, it is on to job applications this weekend. That makes me think about life, and what I want out of it. If the job search goes well, I will be moving next summer. That is crazy and exciting.

A while back I was reflecting on why the holidays were difficult for me last year.  Those things are all still true. I spend a lot more time thinking about them than I should. The funny thing is, that every time one of my good friends has a baby, gets married, or gets engaged, I am not sad at all. I am excited. And happy. And wish I lived closer to them. In fact, after my trip back to Boston this summer, my friend/the grad student in the lab told me he thought I had gotten funnier. I think I just happened to be happier than I usually am after seeing so many people who I miss! Oddly, when people I am not close with, or with whom I was once closer, I get sad when any of these things happen. Give me a while, and I can let it go.

What I am having more difficult containing is hope. This sounds silly. Who tries to contain hope? When I think about getting my next job though, I hope that life will finally click. There are quite a few jobs that fit my area of research quite well. They range from small liberal arts colleges to larger universities. A couple of them are larger schools than I *think* I want, but you never know until you get a chance to visit them. Many (maybe I am up to 10 on the list) are from D.C. to Boston. This is prime friend and family land. 10 may not sound like many, but when I was watching the job listings last year, the ones to which I applied were not good research/interest fits. I think this is promising. My CV is better than last round, particularly if I get this paper submitted the end of the month. I have hope that one of these will work out.

I have basically decided that when I get a job, I will get a car. Mine is dying a slow death, but I have a hard time thinking about taking on a car loan right now. The engine seems great, it is all the other extras, like the air conditioning, that make me worried something else is going on. Much to my sister's chagrin, at the moment that ugly Prius is high on the list. I have hope that I can get a great hybrid car. If I get a job at some of these schools, I may need an AWD vehicle though.

I am reaching with the submission of this paper to a high impact journal. Nothing related to this aspect of my research topic has been published, so the story our data make is that much more exciting. The grad student's project that we have always planned to include is starting to work, and that will make this journal less of a reach. He works hard and has been working A LOT to get it done. I have hope that he can get it done, and this journal will like the story.

Maybe this weekend I will give y'all an update on what I have actually been *doing* if you are interested. Off to uncross my fingers and get those manuscript revisions done.

Fast and easy...in the kitchen...

...That's what she said.

Some people may be disappointed by the ACTUAL topic of this post: Food. Recipes.

Cooking is a good sign of my mental state, I think. It means I spend some time being creative in the kitchen (again, purely in a preparing-food-sort of way). It means I do not feel pressure of trying to get something done. When I feel pressure to get something done, I usually procrastinate by cleaning/laundry (as can be seen in this previous check list). But thanks to finishing a draft of my manuscript, I can spend some time in the kitchen!

Without further ado, I bring you 'Fast AND Easy' first.

This was brilliantly inspired for by my sister. Even though her kids will DEVOUR sushi and raw shell fish, they are surprisingly picky about every-day food. This, they were happy to eat.

Ramen makes a good base for dinner. In college, I would add in some broccoli when the Ramen was cooking, then add the flavor packet and cooked chicken to the drained noodles & broccoli. I can tell you that this suped-up version is way better than that.

Fast and Easy Ramen - 10 minutes, From the kitchen of Jenski's sister
(Scale up as needed)
Ingredients: Eggs, Ramen, premade coleslaw (or broccoli slaw!) mix
Whisk an egg
Cook Ramen per package instructions
After noodles cook 3 minutes, coax them aside and stir continuously as you add egg(s).
Add a handful of coleslaw mix from the grocery store and as much of the flavor packet as you would like.
Vary as needed/desired.
Serve up your egg noodle soup!

I had a red pepper that needs to be eaten, so I added some of that. I used half a flavor packet and added a couple spoonfuls of curry sauce, and only an egg white because I had eggs for breakfast. When my sister and her kids were here, we also added some sriracha to spice it up. The permutations are endless and easy!

                                               
Second, I bring you 'Easy'. I could add 'Healthy' to that too. The reasons I made this were three-fold:
1.) I have searched out tomatoes in a jar to no avail where I live. Sure, tomatoes come in a can. You know what else comes in canned tomatoes? BPA*. I am happy to have my own source of tomatoes with less BPA.
2.) My town has a pathetic excuse for a farmer's market. The man who tries to get vendors has a smoothie truck there every week. They FINALLY have other food and products, but he is the one manning the veggies for the farmers still! Because I had commented a couple of weeks in a row on the FB page, I felt I needed to go. Well I did. And then bought organic tomatoes for $12/pound. I appreciate fewer chemicals. I do not have an income that allows for costly tomatoes, no matter how delicious or chemical free. Therefore, the tomatoes must go to GOOOOOOOD use.
3.) Ridiculously easy tomato sauce in your crockpot.

Before

 After

My variations on Bean's recipe were few.

Crockpot tomato sauce
Chopped onions
Chopped tomatoes
Pressed garlic
Dried oregano (~1 tsp)
Dried basil (~1 tsp)
Dried thyme (~1/2 tsp)
Salt
Pepper
Sugar (~1 Tbsp, or I added agave syrup)
And I added some chopped carrot and olive oil too.

Mix. Cook on low in crock pot for 8 to 12 hours. I then blended it (which you probably would not need to do if you peeled the tomatoes). Blending it would probably let you hide other veggies in the sauce too though (more carrots than I added, pepper, a little squash...).

Made me wish I had a submersion blender. Then I put the sauce in glass jars with space at the top and stuck them in the freezer. If my sister-in-law and I lived closer together, I would have recruited her canning expertise.

FYI, SIL, At some point I envision a massive canning experience:
Make something in the crock pot overnight. Can in the morning. Set up the crock pot with something else. Can stuff like pickles throughout the day. Can the crock pot recipe #2 at night.

What else did I do between the end of work yesterday and lounging on my couch tonight? Walked 5.5 miles two times, tried indoor rock climbing for the first time, read a National Geographic, made the above recipes, ran some errands, and photographed the sunset. Again.

* If you have not heard of BPA, it is something used in plastics. It is also in those white cavity fillings and receipts. I could write a whole bunch about BPA. I did research on it before I started grad school, and can tell you that prenatal exposure affects mammary gland and neuro-endocrine development (otherwise known as boobs and brains). YOUR exposure to BPA can affect you, your children, and your grandchildren. I figure if I can minimize my exposure, might as well!

Pumpkin donut holes

These pumpkin donut holes were a serious pinterest success. I did not do the butter dip and roll in cinnamon sugar. If I were making them for others, I probably would.