Tag Archives: random

Liebster Blog Award

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Lee | 8 Comments

Liebster blog award

Kristen from The Concrete Runner tagged me with the Liebster Award. The Liebster award is is given to bloggers who have less than 200 followers by another blogger who sees them as a blogger who is “up-and-coming.” (Thanks, Kristen!)

So, this is how it works, I’m supposed to:

1. List 11 random facts about myself
2. Answer the 11 questions that Kristen wrote for me
3. Nominate 11 other bloggers
4. Create 11 questions for the bloggers I’ve nominated
5. Display the Liebster badge

So, I’ve done these random things about me posts before and I tend to always give the same random facts (my hair was straight until I hit puberty, I played rugby in college etc), so instead, I thought I’d go with 11 random pictures that I have on my phone.

Airboat

Clouds

Dmb

Flaming lips

Henderson park

Jason

Menchies

Murph sleeping

Murphy licking

Sunset

You look nice

1. An airboat tour in Florida
2. Clouds outside of my office
3. Dave Matthews Band
4. The Flaming Lips
5. With Murphy at a local park last summer
6. Jason
7. Froyo
8. Sleepy puppy
9. Licky puppy
10. Sunset at Six Feet Under
11. A nice sign in a bathroom

Here are Kristen’s questions:

1. What do you want to be when you “grow up”?

I’m still trying to figure that one out. Professional napper probably doesn’t pay the bills, does it?

2. What is your favorite sport to play or watch?

Despite the whole running thing, I’m not a very athletic person and I’m not good at most sports. Really that means that I’m not good at throwing a ball. I’m not really into watching sports either, though I enjoy going to a baseball game sometimes.

3. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

I would like to travel the world first before I make that decision. Though I’ve been to a lot of places, I don’t feel like I’ve been somewhere (yet) that I feel like I could totally pick up and move there.

4. What is your favorite pair of shoes?

Probably my teva flip flops. They are so comfortable.

5. What bones have you broken and how did you break them?

None! Unless you count when I was in 7th grade and had a stress fracture in my foot and had to wear a cast. I don’t really know what caused that, actually.

6. What is your favorite book or movie of all time?

The Art of Racing in the Rain is up there for the books. Up for the movie. Did I mention that I like dogs?

7. Are you introverted or extroverted?

I’m kind of both. I’m shy, but I like being around other people and don’t like being alone. I can definitely be very quiet if I don’t know anyone and I’m not particularly good at small talk.

8. Besides blogging, what other hobbies do you have?

Well, it’s mostly stuff that I blog about – running, working out, cooking healthy food, photography, reading, napping.

9. Do you have any hidden talents?

I have very good navigational skillz. I know how to get anywhere.

10. How far do you live from your childhood home?

About 600 miles. I live in Atlanta, GA and grew up in Rockville, MD.

11. What’s your favorite dessert?

See picture number 7.

And…. I’m too lazy to do the rest. Do I get my award taken away for not following the rules? Tell me if you’re an introvert or an extrovert (or an introverted extrovert like me).

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Posted in Random

Tagged random

How to Be Happier

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Lee | 13 Comments

I’m kind of feeling some frustration in some areas of my life lately. So what did I do? I went on to Pinterest and found some pretty words of inspiration to make me feel better. How 2013 of me, right?

And now I can’t figure out how to embed a pin into my post. I swear I’ve done this before. So, you don’t get the pretty images, I guess, but you can still see some of my favorite quotes that I found about five minutes ago. I just didn’t know they were my favorites until then.

“She stood in the storm and when the wind did not blow her way, she adjusted the sails.” - Elizabeth Edwards

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.” - Leo Buscaglia

I promise there’s nothing going on, I’m just being weird. But I have been thinking about how I need to do more things that make me happy and what those things are. Maybe re-reading The Happiness Project should be one of them, actually.

• Keeping the house cleaner. This is a huge, huge struggle for me. I’m messy by nature and Jason’s worse than I am and even though we actually sprung for a monthly cleaning service, our house is still oftentimes a wreck and it really, really stresses me out.

• Read more. When I was a kid and teenager, you know, before I spent all my time online, I used to be a pretty big reader. I really enjoy reading, I just need to do it more.

• Support the local farmers market. I often complain about the suburb that I live in. It’s not walkable, it’s not trendy, there’s nothing here, etc. But last year we got a pretty decent farmers market on Thursday evenings which is exactly the type of thing that I want for my community, so I was thinking that I really needed to show my support.

• Cook more. I think I’m pretty good about this, actually. I would like to get into a better weekend prep routine though, so I don’t find myself scrambling for frozen meals when it comes to taking lunch to work, or find myself starving by the time I get home from dinner. But I do cook and there was proof on my camera.

Roasted green beans mushrooms

This recipe for Green Beans with Mushrooms, Balsamic and Parmesan was absolutely wonderful. So simple but yet so tasty. It serves six and yet I had to refrain myself from eating the entire thing. A repeat side-dish for sure.

Balsamic tomatoes mozzarella

If it would ever stay warm here, this would be a really good summer salad. I know that some of you north of me are probably rolling your eyes, but the high is only supposed to be 57 on Saturday. So, this was basically this Candied Balsamic Tomatoes and Mozzarella dish, only I didn’t use any sugar, so they weren’t candied. And apparently I’m having a love affair with balsamic vinegar lately.

Quiona stuffed pepper

This was Pizza-Style Tomato Basil Quinoa Stuffed Peppers. While I really like the stuffing (which I was able to make in my rice cooker, score!), I went overboard and used a whole pepper and wished that I had only used half, like the recipe called for. Or really that I didn’t stuff it at all and just ate the quinoa. I don’t like whole roasted peppers.

Miso grilled veggies

Here we are getting to the end of the week where I got lazy. I intended to make these Miso Roasted Veggie Tacos but didn’t have any tortillas, so I just ended up scrapping the rice altogether and making Miso Roasted Veggies. I had this idea that if it put them on a flatbread, they’d be like a pizza, but it was like roasted veggies on a flatbread. Still, the veggies were good. Next time I’ll taco-fy them. (Omg, taco-fy is a word? It’s not underlining it!)

Massage kale egg

This was something that I came up with. I probably saw it somewhere at some point, so if I stole your recipe, you can yell at me.

Massaged Kale Salad with Tomatoes and Fried Egg
Serves 2-3

1 bag chopped kale
1 avocado
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
salt to taste
eggs (however many you’d like)

1. Put the kale in a large bowl and chop up the avocado into small pieces.
2. With your hands (that hopefully you washed), massage the avocado into the kale for about a minute.
3. Add nutritional yeast, red pepper and salt and massage for another minute.
4. Add tomatoes.
5. Refrigerate overnight. (I’m not sure if this makes a difference, but I did it and I think maybe it’d make the kale more mild tasting.)
6. Top with fried egg. I wanted a runny egg ideally, but my yolk broke in the pan and it cooked.

I did find out that my new boss drinks smoothies with kale in them, so that’s always a good thing and has nothing to do with anything except that I posted a kale recipe.

/random post

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Posted in Cooking, Random, Recipe

Tagged random, recipe

Wednesday Randomness

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Lee | 11 Comments

I’m not sure why I felt compelled to share the clothes that I didn’t like and ended up returning rather than the clothes that I did like. This is why I’ll never be a fashion blogger. Well, that and the fact that I can barely dress myself. So, yeah, the winners:

Loft shirt

Slightly concerned that this makes me look like a convict, but I guess they wear orange these days, huh? I do own a lot of orange shirts too, now that I think of it. Is prison chic a thing?

Old navy dress

Old navy maxi dress

Those two dresses are the same except for the length. The only thing is that they are much lower cut than they appear on the model and I’m going to have to wear a tank-top underneath to be appropriate.

So yeah, sometimes online shopping does work out for me. And impulse Publix purchases, yeah, they work out sometimes too. Specifically that Vita-pizza that I bought yesterday.

I’d never seen it before, but like I said, I found it at Publix and it was $3.99. Not too bad considering it’s healthy and all that jazz. They had a tomato and cheese version and a meatless pepperoni version which is what I purchased.

Vita pizza1

As you can see, there is not a lot of cheese on this at all. And if you can’t tell, here you go:

Vita pizza2

I found it sort of odd that they called this meatless pepperoni since it much more closely resembled meatless sausage. That said, it tasted fine and it was only 5 Weight Watchers points as opposed to the 8 to 9 points that your typical personal light pizza (like lean cuisine or whatever) is. I wasn’t completely wowed, but I’d probably buy it again for a quick meal.

In other news, I finally perfected the ancient art of cooking kale chips. Seriously, I’ve made these about a million times and I always burn them or they’re too soggy or they’re just not right. But I think I figured it out.

Kale chips

Here’s what I did:

I ripped up some organic kale (the Kroger by me always has organic kale, oddly enough) into chip-sized pieces and spread them out on a tin-foiled covered cookie sheet that I’d sprayed with cooking spray. I tried to make sure the chips weren’t overlapping and then I sprayed them with cooking spray themselves. Then I put nutritional yeast, salt and red pepper flakes on them and baked them in a 270 degree oven for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, I took out the crispy ones and let the ones that were still a bit soggy cook for another 5-6 minutes or so. This is important. If some of your kale is crispy and you leave it in the oven too long while the other pieces are still crisping, you get a lot of burnt kale. You’d think this would be obvious but I’ve done it about half a million times. The other half million, I learned.