It is what it is

Posted on February 9, 2011 by lowandbhold

I didn’t make it into work today. I tried to get out of my apartment parking lot, got stuck, and got pushed by some nice people into another parking spot. There is no hope for getting to the office without getting stuck. But, the sun is out and hopefully it will melt some of the snow so I can make it in on time tomorrow. Either way, it is what it is.

I came inside, tired and frustrated from shoveling in the below-zero degree temps and remembered something exciting. I had a leftover Coolgreens salad in the fridge, courtesy of the SIL. She took me out to dinner last night to celebrate getting through my briefing, but I wasn’t that hungry so I had some soup and got a salad to go.

It is what it is, and what it is happens to be a mixture of baby greens and arugula with sunflower seeds, artichokes, dried cranberries, Parmesan cheese and a basil vinaigrette. That basil dressing is the best dressing in the land. Seriously.

Thank you SIL for the great snow-day lunch! And speaking of thanking the SIL, look what else she got me:

A new yoga towel to go with the plush yoga mat she got me for my birthday. Yes, the SIL is single-handedly ensuring the future of my yoga practice. I’m a needy little sister-in-law, and I like it. It is what it is

I’ve taken to wearing yoga clothes anytime I’m home and keeping my mat rolled out just in case I ever feel like busting out a downward dog. It’s pretty awesome.

I’m currently working from home, while watching a bit of TV. Not the most productive way to do things, but to be honest, I’ll probably keep working until I go to bed so I don’t feel that guilty. I’ve gotten quite a bit done. Turns out TV is less distracting than overly chatty coworkers. It is what it is.

Do you ever work from home? Do you feel more or less productive than you do at the office?

20 Salads in December Challenge: Wrap-up

Posted on December 29, 2010 by lowandbhold

Good morning all! I’m feeling better today, thanks for all the well wishes yesterday. I’m still a bit congested, but I think I got off pretty easy with this one.

It must be all those salads I ate this month, eh?

Speaking of which, the 20 Salads in December Challenge has officially come to an end for this girl. I’m currently sitting pretty on salad #22 (one for lunch and dinner yesterday – both unpictured because I was sick) and I’ll probably have one for lunch today as well.

I think maybe I should have aimed for a higher number? Perhaps another time.

Anyhow, I really enjoyed this challenge. As easy as it was for me to complete, I know it helped me with my veggie intake for the month.

Like I said at the beginning, I have a hard time craving vegetables in the colder months. All I want is warm carbs and melty cheese. And chocolate. I ate plently of those things this month, but with all the salads I still got in lots of nutritiousness as well.

There were veggie-loaded salads.

There were take-out salads while I was away on business.

There were salads eaten in the comfort of my own home.

Many, many salads from Coolgreens.

And several others that evaded a camera lens.

Some were more delicious than others. Some were healthier than others. Some were big, some were small.

I thought that by the end of this I’d be done with salads for awhile, but to be honest I just keep craving them. Yay for veggies!

Q’s:

For those who participated, how’s it going? You still have three more days with three meals a piece so you have plenty of time

Besides salads, what is your favorite way to enjoy veggies? I love my brussels sprouts, roasted broccolini and asparagus and raw carrots to snack on just to name a few.

Salad #16: Almost there

Posted on December 22, 2010 by lowandbhold

The 20 Salads in December challenge continues! I am actually on salad #17 right now… but there are no pictures of that one. Let’s review.

Yesterday for lunch I finished off the rest of the roasted potatoes.

Along side it I had salad #16 – a chopped salad with spinach, red pepper, avocado and goat cheese. Mmmmm.

Between salad #13 and #16 I had two restaurant salads – one at Chili’s for a work lunch and one at TGIFridays. They reminded me of why I don’t particularly enjoy dining at chain restaurants. They were fine and all, but the veggie quality just isn’t that great.

Coolgreens however is a whole other ball game. I’ve said it a bazillion and one times, but that place forever has my heart.

Last night I had a delicious salad #17 there with the bf. It had arugula, red pepper (I’m on a red pepper kick), tomatoes, artichokes, parmesan and sunflower seeds. It was pretty amazing. It looked something like this.

Only three more salads to go and 9.5 days to do it in. I think I’m good to go!

In other news, I have gotten up at 5 a.m. the past two mornings to work out. This is unheard of! I just felt the need to share that.

Clearly I’m really excited about today being my last day at work before a FIVE DAY WEEKEND because this post is highly lame.

Many apologies!

What’s your favorite chain restaurant? Like I said above, I don’t prefer to eat at chains but when I have to I like BJ’s Brewhouse or Bravo! Italian.

CoolGreens to the rescue

Posted on November 11, 2010 by lowandbhold

Before today, I hadn’t had a single green vegetable since Saturday night.

Not a one.

This obviously needed to be remedied at some point.

So at lunch, I hit up my favorite restaurant in Oklahoma City – CoolGreens.

I got my usual – a Plaza Skinny salad (love the salad, hate the name) with beets instead of capers. This ain’t no puny salad either.

My delicious salad contained spinach, bean sprouts, beets, hearts of palm, sundried tomatoes, avocado, sunflower seeds and chicken.

My vegetable needs are now satiated. Let’s just hope I don’t go another five days before I eat them again…

Q: Top five favorite salad toppers… GO!

Restaurant Review: CoolGreens

Posted on July 17, 2010 by lowandbhold

Now that I have my new fancy schmancy restaurant review format, I just had to review my favorite Oklahoma City joint – CoolGreens. I think you know that the review is going to be good, but I still feel the need to lay it out there for you.

BATHROOMS – A+

I’ve only been to the bathroom at the Western location, but it is a winner. It’s clean, smells good and it has the coolest hand dryer thing ever. Seriously, if you go to CoolGreens make sure you go to the bathroom just to experience the cool hand dryer – then report back to me.

I just did some Google research on the dryer and it’s a Dyson Airblade, which is “the fastest hand dryer – and it’s hygienic, too, cleaning the air before blowing it onto hands. And because it uses up to 80% less energy than warm air dryers, it costs less to run and can help lower a business’s carbon footprint.”

Yes. I’m that into this hand dryer. I want one for my house.

THE SOMETHING EXTRA: A+

CoolGreens has so many great extra features. They are very environmentally-conscious and committed to sustainability. They use “reclaimed woods, environmentally friendly products, bio-degradable packaging and wind energy”.

Another great thing about CoolGreens is that they sell local, organic, french-pressed Elemental coffee.

They also serve froyo!

Their flavors rotate but they offer things like Green Tea, Blue Coconut, Tart, Lemon and many others with a variety of toppings. They also blend it into smoothies.

CLEANLINESS/AMBIENCE – A+

Yet again, CoolGreens hits it out of the park. Both locations have lots of windows yielding great natural light and a clean, crisp atmosphere. The tables and chairs are made from eco-friendly materials and are set beautifully, especially for a casual-dining establishment.

SERVICE – B

My gripe here isn’t really a big deal, I just felt like I needed to give them some sort of criticism. CoolGreens is an order-at-the-counter place, which I think if perfectly fine. However, most of their employees seem to be very young and aren’t always too knowledgeable about the product. I’ve ordered the same wrap/salad several times and gotten it different ways depending on who is working.

Like I said, small gripe.

FOOD – A+

Where do I even begin? The food is impeccable, especially because they use mostly organic, local products.

I have a few favorite menu items, but everything I’ve tried has been great.

This pizza – termed the “Skinny” for some reason or another – is probably my favorite thing on the CoolGreens menu. The whole grain, flatbread crust is crispy and delicious – especially when topped with grilled grapes, figs, pesto, walnuts and feta cheese.

Seriously, where else will you find such a creative and nutritious pizza? I do not know.

I also love their fresh salads, and the topping options are limited.

Tip: Try the basil vinaigrette, it’s to die for.

For the men out there who think it’s impossible to get full on a salad – order it in wrap form. The CoolGreens wraps are generous in size and with chicken or salmon as your protein they are more than enough to satisfy a big appetite.

I’ve not tried it, but I hear that the White Chicken Chili is excellent, and their Butternut Squash Vegetable soup is very tasty.

This is sure to be a favorite of mine when fall arrives.

Long story short, CoolGreens rocks my face off, but let me iterate that they do not pay me cash under the table to give them such glowing reviews (although frankly I think they should) and I said all these nice things all of my own accord.

If you live in Oklahoma City, I highly recommend you try CoolGreens.

OVERALL SCORE - A +

5 words to describe my weekend

Posted on May 17, 2010 by lowandbhold

This weekend was a lot of things. It was fun at times. It was unusual most of the time. It was exhausting (I probably got around 15 hours of sleep total from Friday through today). It was busy. It was scary.

So let us see how all of those things came to be.

BUSY:

Saturday morning I was in a rush. I had only gotten about 2 hours of sleep the night before and I felt super out of it. I want to explain the reason my Friday was so sleepless, but it’s not food related and it would probably be over-sharing, so I will refrain.

I stopped my Starbucks to caff’ up so I could make it through my shift at the part-time job. I also grabbed a mini Naked smoothie for some nutrients.

I worked from 9 to 5 yesterday at the running store, so I packed snacks to get me through. I had this White Macadamia Nut Clif bar at around 11.

This was my first time trying this Clif flavor and I really liked it. It tasted like a cookie!

I also had a delicious wrap from CoolGreens, but I can’t find the picture. I know I took one though… Anyways, it had beets, hearts of palm, avocado, chicken (yep, chicken), lettuce and a bunch of other veggies. It was off the chain.

After work I can home and had to tidy up the house for company. While cleaning I ate some lentil soup from a can.

FUN:

My friend Andrea came over shortly after that. We had intended to have a wine and girl-talk night, but that quickly changed to a hot tub night, which quickly changed into a jumping in the freezing cold pool night.

UNUSUAL:

Then, when we were soaking wet and looking less than spectacular, we decided to go meet up with a group of my friends and a group of her friends who just so happened to be at the same bar, which just so happened to be 5 minutes from my house.

We looked a little eccentric. This picture was taken pre-makeup so the final results were better.

FUN:

It was a fun night. I got a little tipsy and took to the dance floor. I love to dance to older music, and this was one of those bars. I’m a particularly adept at dancing to funk. I worked up a good sweat breakin’ it down

Exhausting:

After we were all danced out went back to my apartment and crashed – at about 3 a.m.

Sunday morning there were thunderstorms when I awoke, and I finally had the opportunity to roll back over and sleep through them. It was glorious. That was probably the most sleep I had gotten all weekend.

When I finally forced myself out of bed, it was almost time to go to work again, so I had some blueberry oat bran to sustain me.

SCARY:

I went to work and had a few good hours of selling shoes and talking about running. Then Oklahoma’s crazy weather decided it wanted to come out and play yet again. We were supposed to be getting close to softball size hail at my store, so my managers let me off and I drove away from the big ominous clouds.

But I guess I didn’t drive far enough. I ended up having to pull over and wait it out. It was really scary! The hail around me wasn’t too big, but from what I can tell it was pretty crazy over by my apartment! I didn’t get home until around an hour after the storm and it still looked like it had snowed!

UNUSUAL:

Exhausting:

So that was fun. I can tell that my exhaustion was in full effect when I was uploading my pictures into this post last night, because I’m missing several. Irks me.

The rest of last night was spent eating tomato soup, taking a bath and finishing my book, watching TV and then getting into bed and finding myself unable to sleep even though I was exhausted. I see much caffeination in my future.

What five words describe your weekend?

Incoming search terms:

Looking forward to it

Posted on April 3, 2010 by lowandbhold

Hey guys! Have a good Saturday? Mine was great! I was up and at ‘em at 5:20 this morning. I wasn’t certain that time existed on Saturdays, but I guess it does! I slurped down a cup of coffee and headed to the store. We headed down to the training run, which was at the start line of the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon (the half marathon I’ll be running later this month).

It was really inspiring, and the weather was perfect. I wanted to take off running with them!

We set up and tore down six different water stops for them, and it was a blast cheering them on as they ran. I think I may join the club next year if I decide to run the full marathon. (Wow, just typing that was surreal).

Through the course of the first half of the day, I had a Coconut Cream Pie Larabar and a Mixed Nut Trail Mix Mojo bar. No pictures were taken because I basically crammed them into my face when time allowed.

At around 12:30 I got a break so I headed over to Starbucks for a much needed caffeine boost.

But that wasn’t quite enough to sustain me, so I had a wrap from Coolgreens also – the Caprese wrap.

This was delicious, although I didn’t detect any mozzarella in there, which kind of makes the Caprese. But oh well, I was hangry and it was yummy.

After I inhaled that (lots of fast eating today) I picked up my packet for the Redbud Classic 10K next weekend. I love race packets!

Then, back to work. I got off a bit early and I used the time to buy some new shoes. I got the Brooks Trance, and so far I’m digging them! I ran 3 miles in them right after work. I figured that if I went home, no running was going to happen. It was warm outside, almost 80 degrees, but it was still a pretty good run.

I came home and refueled with some Honey Greek Yogurt and a little bit of POM.

Speaking of POM, I received a lovely package of it this week from Kristin at POM Wonderful.

Can you believe I’ve never actually had POM juice before. I don’t know why I waited so long, it’s delicious!

For the rest of the day, I watched some tube, did laundry and made a pasta salad for Easter dinner with my family tomorrow. I used some of the leftover pasta to throw together a quick dinner.

I just combined the whole wheat pasta with two laughing cow cheese wedges and some chopped asparagus and red pepper. It was yummy.

I’m waking up early tomorrow to run 8 miles before I head home for the Easter festivities. I had originally planned to wait until I got home, but I know I’ll be too tired by the time I get back.

To make sure I actually wake up to do it, I decided to run to my brother’s house and have them drive me back to apartment. I told them to expect me by a certain time, so if I don’t wake up and do it they’ll know I flaked on the run. I’m not above tricking myself if it will get the job done. And now I just told all of you so I really can’t back out.

Running 8 miles is a huge deal for me. Huge. Huuuuge. But watching all those people out running this morning was exactly the motivation I needed, and I’m ready to tackle the challenge.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately of the direction I want my fitness life to go. I know I want to keep running, because it’s one thing that really teaches me about myself. It teaches me patience. It teaches me to not underestimate myself. It teaches me that I can achieve things I never thought I could.

But… in accordance with my New Year’s Resolution, I want to make sure I don’t become a one trick pony. I want to learn to cycle. Maybe take swim lessons. Perhaps go rock climbing. Do more yoga. I want being active to be something I love doing, something that constantly evolves.

I used to be a “gym rat”, and I still really do enjoy working out at a gym on occasion. But I think I’m getting to a point in my life where workouts that require really stepping out of my comfort zone are the ones I look forward to the most.

So here’s to looking forward to it!

Coming up next week:

1. My Recap of Project Glow

2. New Goal for April

3. Review my new shoes

Now that’s really something to look forward to right?! I kid…

I hope you all have an absolutely wonderful Easter if you observe it. And enjoy the rest of your weekend!!

What kind of workouts to you look forward to?

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