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Three Things Thursday

September 2, 2010 by 8 Comments


1. Movie Review “Eat Pray Love”

Recently I saw the movie, but I was prepared to be underwhelmed because of reviews I heard of people leaving the theater. It would take a really boring or violent movie for me to leave, and EPL was none of that. I read the book when it came out, liked Elizabeth Gilbert’s story, (and last name), and was excited for Julia Roberts to play her. Here’s my opinion–

I think the movie was very similar to the book, and if people didn’t like it, they didn’t understand the book. The movie was most fun in Italy, but India and Indonesia were a bit boring. It was the same in the book, and that was the point of her journey too. There was less emphasis than the book of true introspection, but how many monologues could a viewer really take? I think those are best left for a book anyway.

Javier Bardem was lovely, the scenery of Bali was beautiful, and I thought Julia Roberts played Elizabeth Gilbert very well. I hope there is no sequel to her second book “Committed,” because that I would walk out of. That book was an F for showing her whiney indecisiveness. Movie: B+

2. Attention Houston: Free Cupcakes!

Remember when I blogged about how much I liked Crave Cupcakes over the competition in town? Well, Crave’s second Houston store opens on September 13 in the West University area, and they are giving away one dozen cupcakes every day on their Facebook page. Sign up to win, like them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter (@cravecupcakes), and read my review about why I choose Crave when making my Houston cupcake choice. What’s your favorite flavor? Mine is Strawberry. It’s to die for.

3. Why I Love Lululemon:

One thing I have not talked about on the blog is what I wear when I exercise. I am a big proponent of looking good to feel good, and definitely have my brand loyalties to athletic apparel lines. My original favorite is Nike, and I have an array of colors of Nike shorts. They are the best for all exercise in my opinion. However, when Lululemon first came to the United States, one of its first shops was a showroom in Dallas that was only open on Saturdays! I found out about it, and my first purchases were the Groove Crop and the original Power Y Tank. Well, Lululemon exploded and so did my wardrobe of exercise clothes.

Here’s what I love about Lululemon:

1. Most importantly, their clothes are fabulous. They fit perfectly, the luon material is magic (no chafing ever), and it’s so soft and comfortable. It is stylish like no other exercise clothes. I would wear some of the necklines as a party dress if they made them. I really love the necklines and back design that much. Is that weird?

2. The salespeople in the stores are so friendly. They are knowledgeable, help with styles and suggest things, and you can tell they enjoy working there. I like the Lululemon culture because they are all goal-oriented (they have “by when” goals) and fitness-loving people. You want to buy from people who really know their stuff, and embrace the culture too.

3. Their social media people are fun to follow too.

And here are my favorite pieces (note that these are from years of shopping, not all at once!):

The Scoop Neck Top is my current favorite. I have 3. Shh, don’t tell husband. I love everything about them.

I just bought the Push Your Limits Tank because I like the back, among the other reasons above of why I like Lulu.

The 50 Reps Bra is awesome. Stylish, and does what it’s supposed to. That’s all I have to say about that.

I also just bought the Dance Pant. This is unlike me, but I wanted a pant different than the Groove pants (because I have 3), but still good for travel and lounging but not exercise.

And the Groove pants, my all-time favorite pant. I don’t go on an airplane without wearing these.

So who are you wearing when you workout?

Filed Under: Books, Dessert, Houston, Product Reviews, Restaurants · Tagged With: , ,

Recent Eats and a Book Review

August 26, 2010 by 4 Comments

Last day to enter the tote bag giveaway!

**Giveaway Reminder** Please remember to enter my giveaway for the Envitote. It’s a reusable grocery tote that is more sturdy but still lightweight than other reusable bags. You have until this afternoon to leave a comment on the giveaway link to get you entered!

Book Review: Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner

I just finished Jennifer Weiner’s most recent book, Fly Away Home. I love her earliest books like Good In Bed, Certain Girls, and Goodnight Nobody, so I was eager to start a new one. I have actually read all her books because I love her writing style so much. Did not enjoy last summer’s Best Friends Forever.

Fly Away Home is about a politician who cheats on his wife and mirrors real life couples like the Spitzers, Sanfords, Edwards, and Clintons. (Gosh, why are there so many? And always men?!) The book tells the story from the wife’s point of view. She and her two grown daughters (one a doctor who is having her own affair, and one a recovering addict who is knocked up by a man) cope with his infidelity and move on with their lives in the public eye. The book was also similar to “The Good Wife” television show.

As always, I like Jennifer Weiner’s writing style and character development. The women were easy to like and relate with. Her jokes were funny, there weren’t too many characters to get confused. But to me, the plot didn’t go anywhere. It almost seemed amateur that the women were broken down and then came back together to heal at their vacation cottage. There wasn’t much surprise anywhere in the book. It was enjoyable and a quick read, but when it ended, I was ready to move along.

What I’ve been eating lately:

My meals have been really simple. When it’s just me I’m cooking for, I like to put things together with minimal ingredients or mess. That also means clean eating mostly, so no complaints here about my recent minimalist approach to meal preparation.

Breakfast:

One slice of Blueberry Cinnamon loaf, 2 hard boiled egg whites, unpictured extra blueberries. I cut the loaf when I made it and froze it in slices so I can eat them without any prep. Just defrost and enjoy. And I boiled the eggs over the weekend. Ready in seconds.

Lunch:

Big Salad with Tuna Fish. The salad part was lettuce, 1/2 tomato, 1/2 avocado, carrot sticks, two slices fresh bread left over from Sunday dinner.

Tuna was 1 4 oz pack tuna, 1 hard boiled egg white, pickles, salt, pepper, yellow mustard.

Snack:

4 oz Oikos Greek Vanilla yogurt with banana and ginger snap

Dinner:

Although not the prettiest, this is one of my favorite go-to dinners when I need some vegetables and basics. 1/2 sweet potato, 1/2 C baked beans, roasted brussels sprouts, snap peas, and yellow pepper. I roasted them at 350* for about 25 minutes with olive oil, salt, pepper, and cumin seed. I ate more vegetables than pictured.

I have the second half of the whole meal for the next night.

Quick doesn’t have to be boring. And it doesn’t have to be from the freezer aisle. These meals are flavorful, varied, and nutritious. Plenty of fruit, vegetables, protein, and fats.

What’s your go-to meal?

Filed Under: Books, Breakfast, Daily Update, Dinner, Lunch, Snacks · Tagged With: ,

Book and Restaurant Reviews

August 11, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Remember to enter my giveaway for a free one-year subscription to Everyday with Rachael Ray, the Rachael Ray magazine! Just enter a comment in Monday’s post before tomorrow for a chance to win!

Book Review: Final Exam, A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality

 My sister suggested this book to me over a year ago. She reads some different books than what I would usually pick up (and probably was attracted to this because she is getting her Master’s in Hospital Administration!), so it took me over a year to read it. I am slowly weening off of traditional chick lit and finding that I like books with a little more thought to them.

Dr. Pauline Chen wrote this book in the middle of her career as a liver surgeon who sees terminally ill patients daily. The book starts with her first days in medical school in the 1980s and tells stories of respecting her team’s cadaver and how working with cadavers impacted the way she practices medicine even today. She tells many patient stories throughout the pages and describes how she as the doctor dealt with death and treating dying patients. The stories were thoughtful and not gruesome, and the book was informative without being depressing.

I really enjoyed reading this quick read and would recommend it if you’re looking for a serious one.

 

Houston’s Latest Yogurt Shop (or one of the newer ones): Yogurtland 

 

I recently went to Yogurtland in the Briargrove area of Houston with 7 friends (boys included). I can’t find a website to link, but Yogurtland is our new favorite yogurt shop! It got 8 thumbs up. Here’s why we like it and how it compares to the others:

Yogurtland is SO CHEAP. I’m talking 30 cents per ounce. We filled our cup and paid under $2.

SO TASTY. Picture above is Vanilla bean yogurt flavor with cookie dough balls and Butterfinger. Other tasty flavors we tried were peanut butter, oreo, and the usual tart ones. For dessert, I like sweet.

Cute interior with fun spoons and tiles on the walls.

It is in a random strip center, but rumor has it that it’s coming inside the loop soon too. Can’t wait to go back!

 

The picture above is outside of La Vista restaurant, also in Houston’s Briargrove area. And this might have been Annie’s last prego shot. She had baby Samuel a week later! We also love La Vista because it’s BYOB, a fun outdoor-indoor atmosphere, and good, reasonably priced food. We had pizzas, salads, chicken, salmon, etc. and everyone was happy with what they ordered. Tasty bread to start too. Check out one of our favorite BYOBs but prepare to wait. No reservations unless you book the private room for parties.

 

California Pizza Kitchen is not new to town, but I love this salad–the Moroccan with Chicken.  It has dates, beets, squash, avocado, carrots, chicken, and lettuce. It’s delicious and a little surprising to find this at CPK. I love it everytime.

Filed Under: Books, Houston, Restaurants · Tagged With: , ,

August!

August 2, 2010 by 3 Comments

Welcome to August! I love August, but I didn’t used to. August used to mean no national holidays (the only month in the year without one!), going back to school, moving to a new dorm or apartment, and really hot and long days. But then in 2008, I got married in August! So now it means a happy time to celebrate, and looking forward to Fall. This will be the third August in a row that I have gone on a great vacation (honeymoon to Costa Rica, Vail, Cabo San Lucas), so that’s fun too! 

I hope you enjoy some guest posts this week while I am gone. Check back for great info about Sarah’s journey to appreciate strength training, Neely’s understanding of how her body works, and Stacy’s start with triathlons. These are really interesting posts!

A special post for Change the Way You See,  Not the Way You Look

In anticipation of Caitlin’s first book, “Operation Beautiful,” where she promotes happy, healthy lifestyles while getting rid of “fat talk, “she asked fellow bloggers to write a post about their own body image stories. I admire Caitlin’s efforts at encouraging positive thoughts about ourselves and others. This is a great book for any young woman.

One summer in college, I lived in Los Angeles and worked at a department store in Beverly Hills. Glamourous people were everywhere! Fancy clothes, beautiful skin, people with legs the size of a bird’s. But I don’t know if they were happy. Like really happy–with a family to go home to and a mom that calls them 4 times a day and a doggy to lick their face. Maybe they still thought their bodies weren’t perfect. I bought into the glitz–I fawned over them too. But when I would think about their real lives, and what happened when they went home, I realized that I had a great life in my much bigger than size 0 clothing.

You have to be in charge of your own image–the way you see yourself, and the way that people see you. People on television aren’t worth comparing to–they have stylists to dress them, their hair isn’t subject to Houston humidity, chefs to feed them and count their calories,  and airbrushing equipment to make their wrinkles go away. I know you tell yourselves that they aren’t “stars just like us” when the tabloids tell us they are, but still, we want to look like them.

Well, stop with the envy–appeciate what you’ve got. Stand tall, smile big, dress the best for your body, and your aura will shine. When I decided to stop comparing and start setting personal goals, I started to tune out the outsiders and focus on me. And it works. I will never ever be a size 0, or 2, or 4 probably, and the scale doesn’t mean anything. Set your definition of happiness and make a goal to get there. It’s not a light switch, it’s a way of thinking. Choose happiness, tune out the outside until you can appreciate yourself.

 

This concludes “Clean out the Fridge and Pantry before Vacation” Week. Here is one more recipe until I return!

Peanut Butter Overnight Oats in a Jar

Doesn’t it look pretty? Check out that swirl. So delish. This is a favorite breakfast.

1/3 C oats

~1 T peanut butter at bottom of jar

1/2 C Plain Oikos Yogurt

1 big pinch chia seeds

shake cinnamon

sprinkle of Galaxy Granola in morning

Filed Under: Books, Breakfast, Thoughts · Tagged With: , ,

Book Review and Turkey Loaf

July 20, 2010 by Leave a Comment

I recently got a Kindle, and I share an account with my sister. For some reason, Amazon hasn’t figured out that people can share books. So I can read books that she has downloaded on her own Kindle without paying on my end.

Anyway, I’m having a good time reading some books that I would normally not pick up, like “The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University” by Kevin Roose.

This book is a true story about Kevin’s “semester abroad” during his sophomore year at Brown University to Liberty University, an evangelical school founded by Jerry Falwell. Kevin was only 19 years old when he started writing this book undercover at Liberty. He took basic religion classes, lived in dorms with people who had very different views than his own, and had curfew, prayer circles, and spent his Spring Break in Florida trying to “save” people.

I really enjoyed the first and last quarters of the book, which was the setup of his experiment and the end results of what he learned. There were lessons of kindness and charity that stuck with him even though he may not have expected them to.The most fascinating part of the book was how the University coped with Falwell’s sudden death at the end of his semester and the way he documented it from the inside. The middle part of the book was similar to the middle of a semester–just drags on. Overall, an interesting a fairly quick read about a religion and school of thought that I would otherwise know nothing about.

Classic Turkey Meatloaf


This recipe is from Cooking Light and recommended by a friend. You might notice that my recipes have short ingredient lists, and usually require buying few new items at the grocery. This turkey loaf uses oats instead of bread crumbs, and mostly dry herbs, all which I already own.

Makes 6 servings

Ingredients: 2 lbs. ground turkey breast

1 C quick cooking oats

1/2 C ketchup (I subbed 4 oz tomato sauce)

1/4 C chopped fresh parsley (I used dried)

1/4 C grated fresh Parmesan cheese

1 T dried oregano

3 T Worcestershire sauce

2 T low-sodium soy sauce

2 tsp basil (I used fresh)

1 tsp garlic powder

another 1/4 C ketchup (I used the rest of the can of tomato sauce)

Preheat oven to 400*. Combine all ingredients except last ketchup in bowl. Get in there with your hands! Pam a 9 x 5 loaf pan. Place turkey in loaf and bake for 1 hr, 15 minutes. Let stand for 10 minutes before slicing.

The loaf was very flavorful and dense. Ours made far more than 6 servings! The oats were non-existent in the finished product, so don’t worry if that sounds strange. I think you could use BBQ sauce instead of ketchup or tomato sauce for a thicker sauce.

I served with homemade mashed potatoes and green beans. A delicious and well-rounded dinner!

Filed Under: Books, Dinner, Recipes · Tagged With:

Better Veggie Burger and Book Review–House Rules

July 1, 2010 by 1 Comment

First up–an article about why women should do Crossfit:

“Lift Like a Girl–Reasons Women Need Crossfit”

By Amy Sullivan on June 28.

Next–The Veggie Burger Trials

I gave the veggie burger another try, as I like having something on hand to add protein to dinners. This time, from blog comments, I bought the Morningstar Garden Veggie Patties. One patty has 110 calories, 3 g fiber, and 10 g protein.

The package says it contains “A yummy, hearty blend of mushrooms, water chestnuts, onion, carrots, green and red bell peppers, black olives, brown rice, and rolled oats. It’s no wonder this well-rounded veggie burger is a ChefsBest® Award winner.”

I liked this patty so much better than Boca Veggie Burgers. It smelled great out of the microwave, and really had whole water chestnuts. Didn’t notice the other vegetables listed above as much, but the taste was much better. My dinner was very orange and green, with a side of spinach, orange peppers, snap peas, and pickles and topped with 1/4 avocado. Side small sweet potato too. Very tasty dinner!

Book Review: House Rules by Jodi Picoult

Over a year ago, a friend and I started a book club. Yes, I am in a poker club and book club and I am only 26 years old. Don’t judge. In the summertime, I read a lot more than the rest of the year–vacations, more trips, no new TV shows, etc.

At the same time that I started the book club, I discovered Jodi Picoult’s books. They are some of the longest books I have ever read outside of high school books that put me to sleep, but they are the most fascinating and educational books too! For instance, did you know that a person who receives bone marrow from someone else has identical DNA to the marrow donor (Perfect Match)? And I learned about diseases like osteogenesis imperfecta (Handle With Care), thought about medical ethics–would you want the heart of a death row inmate who killed your sister to save your own life? (Change of Heart), and learned more about trial law than I could from quizzing my lawyer husband.

The most recent book of hers that I read was House Rules. Another long one topping 500 pages in hardback, this book taught  me about Asperger’s Syndrome, murder cases, and more trial law. The description of the disorder that Picoult describes is so detailed and full of fact, that I think that I could explain, or at least sound knowledgeable, in conversation. The book is about a teenage boy with Asperger’s who has a fascination with crime scenes. He and his quirks become the focus of a murder investigation, and over half the book explores his role in the crime.

Having read many of Picoult’s books, this was not my favorite (try Nineteen Minutes or My Sister’s Keeper for those), but I was still drawn in, found it hard to put down, and liked the way that the chapters rotated character points of view. The plot was very simple, there weren’t many characters, but it took a very long time to come to the conclusion, which wasn’t as surprising as some of her other books. If you are interested in learning about Asperger’s and enjoy a book that makes you part of trying to solve a crime, go ahead and read on.

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Summer Reading List

May 18, 2010 by 2 Comments

 

Summer reading used to be such a drag, and now I’m making a list of books I can’t wait to tackle. Things change! Here are my favorite books I’ve read over the last year, and a few I plan to read in the next few months. If you’ve read some and have a review, post it in the comments!

Recent Books I’ve Read and Love:

 

1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett

  • Great book for any Southern girl. Kathryn Stockett did an amazing job writing the dialect of the white women, black women, southern men, and showing the fears of living in Mississippi in the 1960s. Only complaint is that she did not show more of the good that was done from white women for their black help.

2. A very long list of Jodi Picoult books: Handle With Care, Change of Heart, Nineteen Minutes, My Sister’s Keeper, The Pact, Perfect Match.

  • I started with My Sister’s Keeper, and devoured book after book of hers. Jodi Picoult is my favorite author. She is so knowledgeable of legal and medical facts that I actually learn useful information from her story lines. Her books are long, but I get so into them and want them to keep going. No hurry to finish these…in a good way.

3. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

  • Great book for any dog lover or dog owner. Garth Stein goes into his dog’s head and tells the reader what the dog is thinking that goes along with the plot of the story. A little long near the end, but worth it to get more time of Enzo’s thoughts. You’ll want to go hug your pup.

4. Are You There Vodka? It’s Me Chelsea by Chelsea Handler

  • This book was for my book club last summer, and I thought it would be dumb and too Hollywoodish, but Chelsea Handler is hilarious, and so is her life story. The book is a series of short stories about different events. Just too funny.

Books on my “To Read” List:

 

1. House Rules by Jodi Picoult

2. Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang by Chelsea Handler

3. Heart of the Matter by Emily Giffin

4. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

What are you reading this summer?

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