Yoga Morning

Good Morning! I set my alarm for 6:30 and 6:35 and eventually my eyes opened at 6:46 but I was just draggin my wagon. It took a lot of self convincing to actually get out of bed. By the time I was dressed in my workout clothes it was already 6 minutes to the start of my cycling class. I haven't been on time once so far and I felt like stressing out about it so early in the morning is not the way to go. Instead, I decided to do better next week and be perfectly on time and do something that I've been wanting to do for a while. iTunes Yoga Podcasts! Is it amazing to anyone else that there are zillions of freeeeee workout podcasts just waiting to be conquered? I chose a podcast called YOGAmazing by Chaz Rough titled "Yoga for College Students". I thought that was appropriate. It was pretty good, nice and light, and definitely relaxing. The only problem I was having is that I'm having some kind of allergies this morning. When I was in child's pose with my forehead on the ground it felt like little weights that had been floating around in my head were coming to settle behind my face.

I even busted out my snazzy yoga mat! Purple is my favorite color :D

Finally it was time to fill my grumbling stomach. In the mix:

• 1/2 cup soy milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 Large Fuji Apple
• 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats
• 1 tsp. light agave
• 1 Tbsp. milled flax seed
• 1/4 cup raisins
• scoop of peanut butter

And a mug o' green tea with a little soy milk. I'm beginning to learn that a little soy milk goes a long way. I'm pretty impressed with the Costco brand Kirkland. They seems to have quite a few quality products!

Ahh, apartment decor. I love it when you can see the steam coming off the food.

Well today is another looooong day:

1. Music 160B- 20th Century Analysis
2. Anthro 131- Native American Indians
3. Work at the Music Library (best job ever!)- 3 hr. shift
4. Meet with Greg about Music History Paper
5. Chamber Choir- 2 hr. rehearsal (which is better than 3. trust me!)

I won't be home again until after 7 so I'm going to try to plan a little better than yesterday and get a tasty lunch plus snacks packed up. But right now it's shower time! Gotta have my head on straight today, it's gunna be a busy one!

Crazy Rainy Day

Today was such a long day! I feel like it may as well have been two days. I decided against wearing rain boots despite the forecast and that was not the best decision. Not long after I arrived at work, it started raining like it meant it. Luckily I managed to stay in the music building nearly the entire day. Not that unusual for me actually. Anyways, I talked a good half hour into work with my boss Cathy who gave me some great new blogs to look into: The Pioneer Woman and Dooce. I already follow Carrots 'N' Cake, Eat Live Run, and Kath Eats Real Food. She also inspired me to try doing step by step photos of the things I cook which I did tonight! We discussed that it might be especially interesting since I cook vegan food to see just how I do it. I'm no chef but I do love to cook!

Bright red cherries like this can make The History of Medieval to Renaissance Music easier to sit through! I wanted to mention that there is a reason I wrap the cherries in a paper towel. One late night I was watching The Food Network and that crazy Alton Brown came on talking about how to make candied ginger which should happen in my near future if I'm lucky. He explained in his sciencey crazy way that plastic bags and containers actually promote rotting when fresh foods touch them and to always use paper towels as a barrier. Great advice Alton!
Demolished! My friend Greg helped me but he wouldn't let me get one little shot of him holding a cherry! Boo! At least I snuck in this one and got his knee. Ha!
So remember that workout date I had with Amanda after class? It still happened except that we waited till 4 to go because she had forgotten about the start of some new classes. Today was just full of surprises! Our workout was awesome. We did 25 minutes on the bikes and 20 minutes on the stairstepper. By then I needed to get out and hit the bank to take care of some biz that my mom has been getting at me to do for a while now. Mostly for a lack of better planning, by this point I was starving! Even though I ate my cherry yogurt and Peanut Butter Pretzel Mojo Clif Bar, I was running way low by the time I got to the bank. By the way, the peanut butter pretzel flavor is bomb. It's definitely on the saltier side but I liked that it wasn't crazy sweet. Since I was already in the area because I went to the bank I decided to go to the grocery store and pick a few things up. Talk about self control, man is it hard to shop smart when you're starving! I decided on this Naked Superfood juice which was perfect because it has veggies in it and they were 2 for $5!
Can you visualize the lunches to come?

I decided that because I bought that humongous back of broccoli that I would attempt to make a hearty, vegan cream of broccoli soup!
The ingredients were as follows:

• 4 lb. 5 oz broccoli florets
• 484 grams or two pre-sliced packages of mushrooms
• 1 1/2 cups frozen green beans, corn, and carrots
• 1 medium to large yellow onion or 2 cups, roughly chopped
• 1 Tbsp. vegan butter
• 3 cups vegetable broth
• 1 3/4 cups soy milk
• 1 head of garlic
• 1 tsp. fine sea salt
• 1 tsp. dried basil
• 1 tsp. dried oregano
• 1/2 tsp. white pepper
• 1 tsp dried rosemary
• cracked black pepper to taste, I probably did about 1/2 tsp or more
• 1 bay leaf

I started by first setting the oven to 400 degrees F and popping a head of garlic wrapped in tin foil in the oven. I set the timer for 35 minutes and got to work on the rest!

Another shot of all those ingredients. P.S. I love my food scale!
I heated the pan on a medium high heat (or tried to. My stove sort of fails at life but I make it work). I Added the butter and let it melt a little.
Then I added the chopped onions for a little sauté action.
Next up: Mushrooms! At this point when I heard it really start to hiss I added a little splash of veggie broth to make sure nothing burned.
Once the mushrooms started to look a little darker and took on that shiny glaze that says please Claire, eat me, I smothered them with 4 pounds of broccoli muhahaha! And drowned them with three cups of vegetable broth muahahaha!
After giving the whole thing a stir I covered the pot and let it sit while I retrieved my roasting garlic which looked like this: an oversized hunchback of Notre Dame Hershey's Kiss.
Voila! The step I forgot however, was to remove as much of the paper outside as possible before putting it in the oven....oh well. I just let that sucker cool down a bit before opening him up.
I used the garlic masher which is way to much fun and delightfully messy to smash what I can only guess was about ten cloves. You know me, once I start playing with food I sort of loose track of the main purpose lol.
Then I added my garlicy mush, the frozen veggies, the spices, and the soy milk to my concoction.
I gave it a stir and let it simmer for about ten minutes. The finished product, yay! Honestly this was a bigger success than I predicted. I got the inspiration for the soup and looked up a few recipes online to get some guidelines but I just made most of it up. Even my non-vegan room mate Savannah and her boyfriend Matt like it! And that's saying something cause Matt is a straight up carnivore haha.

I served myself half a pita bread cut into cute little wedges so that I could dip them every which way and of course a bucket o' hummus!!

Look at that steam! Piping hot soup ahhhh. I enjoyed my lovely little dinner while watching Dexter online. It had been at least two days since I'd had a fix and I was really itching for one. I'm an addict, I'm telling you.

Suddenly the stupid MegaVideo player said that I used up my time limit which made me turn green like the Hulk! But I soothed myself by deciding to write my dinner post with a bowl of this amazing cereal. This is from Costco (big surprise) and it is fabulous. The dried blueberries float my boat.

I've decided to try eating cereal out of a mug in an attempt to eat less of it. It was basically successful until the internet decided to suck and I had to restart the wireless spaceship looking thingy before I could upload all of my glorious food pictures. That's about the time I had another mug.... eating out of frustration is a pretty bad excuse. But I will say that I've done pretty well today as far as making healthy choices when I could have made convenient crappy ones. It was a gray, rainy day that ended with an awesome workout and an awesome soup. I guess I'm okay with that :)

Tomorrow morning is another 7am cycling class and I'm going to stay afterwards and to some arms and abs. Can't wait! Time for me to hit the hay and it's only 10:36! Not gunna lie... I love going do bed early. Man I just get this feeling I'm not a typical college student, or twenty year old for that matter.

See you in the AM!

College Lifestyle and Fitness, a Gray Morning

Good Morning Blog World! ...Whoever's out there. I've been thinking a lot about my new blog and I'm really proud of myself for finally just doing it. It's something I've been thinking about and wanting for a while now. But I was only coming up with reasons why I wouldn't be able to keep up with a blog until now: I intend to prove myself wrong! But... I've also been thinking "what makes my blog unique?" "why would anyone want to read my blog?"

Well one pretty good reason is that I am a college student with a college student schedule, budget, lifestyle, and I'm college student age. The things I am interested in and have questions or struggles with could very well be the interests, questions, and struggles of a lot of other people! I don't intend to limit my audience (if I ever get one...) to only college students because I won't be one forever, but it makes sense that one of the biggest impacts on my everyday life should be a prominent topic here.

So my question today is, how do college students make health and fitness a part of their lives? We're all under a lot of pressure to achieve well in classes, (to go to class in the first place for that matter), to make our own money or live by a budget, to take care of ourselves, and in large, to be successful human beings. How do you or did you make fitness fit in with your college lifestyle?

I set my alarm for 7 this morning but I woke up at 6:30 thinking I had for sure slept through my alarm. I think it's a good thing my internal alarm clock is getting earlier. I like being up early in the morning. Does that make me an old woman??? Breakfast this morning was another bowl of cinnamon apple oats except this time I did 1/2 cup soy milk and 1/2 cup water instead of a full cup of milk, and I added a Tbsp of milled flax seed. Plus a piping hot mug of green tea.

I'm pretty darn excited today because after my music history class my friend Amanda and I are going to hit the gym together! I never get to work out with anyone any more so this little gym date is getting me pretty excited. I have class again at 2 so I packed this little veggie-less snack. It's very cherrilicious but there are no veggies in sight! A big lunch salad is in my future. By the way for any fellow vegans out there, I think WholeSoy & Co. is great! Of all the soy yogurts I've tried I just like this one the best. It doesn't taste planty like soy sometimes can. A report to come soon on the Peanut Butter Pretzel Mojo Clif bar.

Last night my roomie told me that it was going to rain tomorrow and I was in denial until this morning. It hasn't started raining yet and the sun is trying it's best to come out...

But it's mostly just a gray day :(

Well, time to get ready for work and my workout date! I would love to hear your answers about college lifestyle and fitness but it's cool... I know I am mostly writing to the ether lol.

Iron Packed Dinner

In an attempt to avoid a lunch-dinner duplicate I decided to make some wild rice with pinto beans and bust out the humongous back of broccoli. I cooked the brussel sprouts and the broccoli together with some roasted garlic, which turned pink for some reason, and it was delish!

A glob of hummus is standard of course but I was mostly trying to get a shot of that wild rice!

There it is! I have a feeling this will come in handy sometime this week...

Now I'm off to schmooze with some of the wonderful girls I met this weekend at Shabbat. We're meeting near the coffee shop and I know I'll be tempted to get something sinful so I'm bringing along my own, homemade hot stuff. Green tea with soy milk and a squirt of agave.

I'm actually running late, ahhh gotta run! Here's to hoping my cereal addiction doesn't kick in when I get back!

Germaphobia Day

I was so distracted with my exciting new blog that I didn't get any reading done, lost track of time, and had to rush off to choir!

Luckily I had the presence of mind at least to grab one of these new Clif Mojo bars that I got from Costco for a choir break snack. This is the Mountain Mix flavor and it was sooo good! I highly recommend these. It was chalked full of peanuts, raisins, pretzels, chocolate chips, cashews, sunflower seeds and it wasn't too sweet. Actually it was just the right amount of salty. And it's only 180 calories beeyah!

I've always been a mild germaphobe but today was different. Usually if I'm thinking about things I've touched that are obviously dirty like my bike lock or public areas I know I need to wash my hands before I touch my face or food. But today it was like I couldn't do anything until I washed my hands! It all started when I accidentally touched the underside of the mini desk in my Anthropology lecture and it was sticky... I was just so grossed out. I think that's part of the reason I raced home after class! Weird.

First post EVER!

My mom always said that if I were an Indian my name would be: Girl who plays with food. Please excuse the political incorrectness of that, just know that that statement says a lot about me. I admit, I do play with my food on occasion but truthfully I think food should be fun! Though I’ve graduated from my days of hiding the gravy inside the potatoes and calling it "Mashed Potato Suprise", my attitude towards food is basically the same. Keep it fun, enjoy every bite, and repeat. Since coming to college I began to explore my freedom in more ways than one. Luckily, this journey has lead me to the realization that I am the boss of what goes into my mouth and my body is a beautiful machine that knows exactly what it's doing. It's my job therefore to do the best I can to allow for optimum system function. I began exercising and basically became obsessed with nutrition and fitness. Since my junior year of high school I had stopped eating red meat and in my sophomore year of college I went vegan...dun dun dun! A lot of people think vegan is extreme and well, it is! But it's not hard if it's something you want and you choose to make it convenient for yourself. I like to think of myself like a scientist. I believe what I know until better, more accurate facts come along and when that happens, I need to be prepared to shift my thinking. Going vegan just seemed right to me and I haven't looked back since. Lucky for me, there has yet to be a vegetable I won't eat, I didn't eat much meat to begin with, and I love to cook!

I am currently a third year Bachelor of Music in Voice at the University of California Santa Barbara. I am twenty years old and am a California native. Obviously, music is a big passion of mine ( I sing opera for my major!). I also speak German and love almost all things German. I am Jewish and have recently begun to discover more about this part of myself I've never met before. I am a recovering cheese addict, I am still addicted to TV shows that have to do with crime (my top two are Dexter and Criminal Minds), and my guilty pleasure band is Say Anything.

My goal with this blog is to keep myself on track with staying healthy and motivated. I owe my inspiration to Tina Haupert and her blog Carrots 'N' Cake. Her optimistic, fun-loving attitude about having a healthy, balanced lifestyle is a priceless lesson that I hope to cherish for my entire life. Thank you Tina! Also, I've decided to join Tina in her "Lose The Dough for the Big 3-0" challenge. It started on the 19th so that makes today one week exactly. I've been doing alright so far. I scheduled in workout times and am making an effort to watch what I eat (hence the new bloggizzle).

Breakfast this morning after my 7am cycling class was a tasty bowl of cinnamon apple oats and green tea.

My cinnamon apple oats were:

• 1 cup vanilla almond milk
• 3/4 one large Fuji apple
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats (Quaker)
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 1 tsp light agave
• and of course a heaping scoop of peanut butter!

Normally I'm an almond butter type of girl but I went to Costco yesterday... I couldn't help myself. I've decided to switch to peanut butter and I have to say, the salty contrast was quite nice.

There was an extra slice that I just had to eat obviously!

After rushing home from class I whipped out the left overs from dinner last night as quickly as I could! Vegan creamed spinach, roasted brussel sprouts, roasted butternut squash, Hummus (my sustinance) 8 sundried tomato basil Wheat Thins, and some beautiful mango slices.

For a little afternoon dessert, the last piece of the lemon cake with lemon sauce. It needed to go, it was not going to last much longer.

And now I am feeling fuller than I want to...maybe a glass of green tea to calm the bubble belly and I guess now I don't have any more good excuses to avoid my reading :(

Be back at dinner time!!