Mair’s First “Oh She Glows” Recipe! Read her review:

10 years ago • 4 Comments • Live Well, Recipes

On Christmas I gave away some cookbooks to readers who were interested in trying some healthy, whole foods, plant-based recipes! It was even more fun than I thought 🙂 In return, I asked for a picture of a recipe they decided to try from the cookbook and permission to post it on here for everyone to see. I’ve already gotten my first response!

Mair: I was truly thrilled when Mair e-mailed me on Christmas in response to my cookbook give-away. Mair has been a regular reader and commenter on my blog, and I’ve enjoyed connecting with her about running. Greg laughed on October 11th, because I knew Mair was running her half marathon, and I was excited all morning! Check out this amazing picture of her running the race below – how gorgeous is that?!

MairHalfMarathon — “Almost at the finish line of my first half marathon. After experiencing lackluster finishes in previous races, this time people are cheering and clapping, and I can’t stop smiling. I came in 25th place… out of 26 runners.” -Mair
“Small races typically attract hard-core runners, Mair would have had HUNDREDS of people behind her if she’d been running the race I chose for my first half!” – Kelly

Mair chose the “Oh She Glows” cookbook by Angela Liddon, and made the Cauliflower Mashed Potatoes with Easy Mushroom Gravy for her family.

Here’s what she said:

I am not vegan or vegetarian, but my family and I all want to eat healthier. So last night when my husband said he had a craving for takeout pizza, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to try a side dish from The Oh She Glows Cookbook because if it didn’t turn out well, we still had our pizza. I chose “Cauliflower Mashed Potatoes with Easy Mushroom Gravy” because the picture looked so delicious.

Although I’m a fairly good cook, I cannot make gravy. I have tried and tried and tried (and failed and failed and failed) and I’ve basically given up and buy canned/jarred gravy. “Easy Mushroom Gravy” is exactly that – easy.

The potatoes turned out light and fluffy and very flavorful. The gravy was absolute heaven.

I had to substitute a few gravy ingredients:

Kosher salt instead of fine-grain sea salt

Dried rosemary instead of fresh rosemary

Soy sauce instead of low-sodium tamari

Everyone loved it. This is a direct quote from my husband as he enjoyed his first taste, “Mmmm, wow!”

Can’t wait to try another recipe – maybe “life-affirming warm nacho dip”, or maybe “broccoli & cashew cheese-quinoa burritos”…

———————-

I can’t wait for her to try the nacho dip and broccoli and cashew cheese quinoa burritos either – because those are two of my favorite recipes from the Oh She Glows cookbook, and I bet her family will love them!

I can’t tell you how good it felt to get this email from Mair. What fun to share my favorite healthy cookbook with someone, and hear back that they’ve enjoyed it! Thanks to the amazing talent of Angela Liddon who wrote the cookbook, and to my enthusiasm for sharing good food, and to Mair’s willingness to try something new, her family ate cauliflower… and loved it 🙂 Not only that, but now Mair has a gravy recipe that is made from whole foods and is easy to make! We can all use a recipe like that in our repertoire 🙂

A big thanks to Mair for being enthusiastic about trying recipes from Oh She Glows! All of us can benefit from some whole foods, healthy recipes that don’t have meat or cheese in them, you don’t have to be a vegan or vegetarian to incorporate healthy plant-based meals into your routine.

I hope you all have a wonderful New Year’s Eve, and enjoy reflecting on the fun and happy times you had in 2014, as well as thinking about areas where you hope to continue to grow in 2015. I had a wonderful 2014, and anticipate 2015 will be even better!

Happy New Year 🙂

Thanks again, Mair! Happy New Year to you and your family 🙂

Merry Christmas to You!

10 years ago • 1 Comment • Live Well, Running

Merry Christmas!

Our family celebrates Christmas, and I love the traditions associated. Warm lights on the tree, photo cards of our friends and family making me smile each time I enter the kitchen, cooking special meals, and the excitement in my children’s eyes when they unwrap those special gifts they’ve been hoping for.

Thank you, readers! Thank you for your support and encouragement – I have been so lucky to discover running and healthier eating, and it’s been a continued pleasure to share my thoughts and discoveries with you, and hear back about your own journeys. For every e-mail, comment, and even the silent stat boosters that tell me someone’s reading, thank you 🙂

My gift to you: Christmas is a time for giving, reflecting, peace, and thanks. As part of this beautiful tradition of thanks and giving, I would like to give you, my readers, a gift! I’m giving away a cookbook to the first three readers who send me an e-mail saying they would like one. You pick between The Oh She Glows cookbook by Angela Liddon, or Afro-Vegan by Bryant Terry. They’re both packed with delicious, plant-based recipes that will help you achieve your New Year’s goals, and just in time for 2015! All I ask is that you send me a photo some time in the coming months of one of the recipes you make from the cookbook, with permission to share it on my blog 🙂

How it works: Be one of the first three people to send me an e-mail saying you’d like one of the cookbooks. Specify which cookbook you’d like, and I’ll e-mail you back to let you know if you were one of the first respondents! I’ll then get your address and send you a copy via Amazon prime, so you’ll have it before the New Year. (I promise not to use or distribute your mailing address in any way, if you can tell from my lack of advertisements, I do this because it’s an amazing creative outlet for me, not for profit!)

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, fun Winter Solace, and wishing you and your loved ones a peaceful and healthy 2015!

Update: I’ve received e-mails and sent out cookbooks to New Hampshire, Virginia and California! I hope you enjoy your cookbook as much as I have 🙂 And don’t forget to check out the Oh She Glows blog where you can find a lot of Angela’s amazing recipes right online!

Thug Kitchen Cookbook – Healthy & Delicious

10 years ago • 0 Comment • Live Well, Recipes

My sister bought me the Thug Kitchen Cookbook! It’s by the authors of the wildly popular Thug Kitchen blog, and filled with delicious plant-based recipes. Their approach is whole foods oriented, with lots of fresh produce leading to recipes that are as healthy as they are delicious.

A word of caution: as you might expect from a cookbook with the slogan “eat like you give a f*ck”, there’s a [more than healthy] dose of profanity on each page. The casual, no-nonsense vibe complements my mood at the end of a long day when I’d like to be swearing myself, but its appropriation of the word “thug” has been controversial. I worry that repeated exposure to the f-bomb is going to cause me to swear in front of my impressionable young children next time I drop something on my foot. I went through a rather pirate-esque phase in college, and would prefer not to have a relapse.

If you can’t handle having someone tell you to “puree the f*ck” out of the pumpkin or “pour it into a dish pan or some sh*t”, then the Thug Kitchen cookbook isn’t for you. Head on over to Oh She Glows where the sweet and talented Angela Liddon is creating recipes titled “Life-Affirming Warm Nacho Dip”. Her work is so delicious that I can almost say life-affirming with a straight face.

From a recipe standpoint, the Thug Kitchen cookbook is a welcome addition to my shelves because the recipes have a different feel to them than many of my other cookbooks. There’s a lot of diverse food like pad thai, pozole rojo, and roasted sriracha cauliflower bites with peanut dipping sauce. I like having more recipes with a mexican or asian flare to them, and the cookbook contains lots of food choices that would pair better with beer than with wine. If I were serving a bunch of college guys dinner, this cookbook would nail it. Since I like to eat like a college guy, I’m pretty in love with half these recipes already.

I will say that the flavor profiles aren’t as kid-friendly as some of my other cookbooks. Heaven forbid you try to feed your kid something spicy that actually has different textures in it and a complex flavor profile. That’s on them.

If you want healthy food with fantastic flavor and an urban feel to it, Thug Kitchen is a great option. Make yourself some cumin spiked pinto bean dip (pg 108), grab a cold beer, and wait for your pumpkin chili (pg 97) to cook while you pat yourself on the back for caring about what you’re eating.

A colorful plate of pad thai toppings allows everyone at the table to customize their noodle bowl. With an emphasis on fresh produce, these recipes are as good for your body as they are your taste buds.

You can put a lot of veggies in these, dip them in homemade thai peanut sauce, and feel down-right decadent.

They even convinced me to try my hand at rice wrappers. I felt like a culinary genius.

Biscuits made with coconut oil as the fat – delicious and healthier than other oil options! Page 17 of the Thug Kitchen cookbook.

Vegetable pad thai with dry fried tofu. (pg 153)

My New Natalie Therėse Handbag

10 years ago • 0 Comment • Live Well

I have a new purse! Several months ago, I decided to take my leather coach bags that I’d had for several years and sell them through a local consignment shop. The best part is finding plant-based replacements, like this gorgeous eco-friendly bag handmade from sustainable cork. I met Natalie Therése at a local artisan show, and fell in love with the soft feel of the cork. I wanted a silver clasp instead of the gold she had displayed, so she took a special order and for the same price I received a bag made specially for me with exactly the hardware I wanted 🙂

It’s gorgeous, green, and hand-made by an artist I’ve actually met. I’m in love!

Check out her bags for yourself at http://www.nathalietherese.com.

What I think about the Degree Women’s #domore ads.

10 years ago • 3 Comments • Live Well

Degree for Women (@DegreeWomen) has a whole line of advertisements out for their antiperspirants that show women doing ballet, yoga, running, and other active workouts. They use the hashtag #domore to promote ads of women in sleeveless tops, sweat free, stretching, weight lifting, etc.

Their advertising targets active women with gems like:

“When every muscle is moving, you need protection that works as hard as you. #DOMORE”

“You release tension, motionsense releases bursts of freshness with every move. #DOMORE”

Maybe some of that tension is from crazy advertisements implying that women should be worried about their sweat while they’re working out. Maybe we don’t need ANY protection when we’re working out, because… get this, WE’RE GOING TO SHOWER AFTERWARDS.

Here’s what I’m thinking: NO.

We don’t need to wear antiperspirant when we’re working out. WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE SWEATING. It’s our body’s natural cooling system, and even though it’s not as amazing a toxin remover as sauna builders would have you believe, it’s definitely healthy.

To be clear, I don’t think it’s necessarily dangerous to wear antiperspirant at the gym. I wouldn’t wash it off if I was heading out to run and already had some on. Our bodies have tons of sweat glands, and don’t rely specifically on our underarms as their only source of cooling. Fine.

But I do resent advertising that implies that women should be worried about how much they’re sweating during their workouts, and be using products to avoid it.

Save your money and spend it on a post-workout snack, instead. Go ahead and sweat. If you’re at the gym, running with a group, or in a fitness class, everyone else is going to be sweaty too. Shower before you’re around other non-sweaty people, and presto – problem solved. There’s ZERO reason to be buying a product to keep you from sweating during a workout! And these are antiperspirants they’re advertising, which reduce sweat, not just a product to mask the odor. Another thing I would not worry about, by the way, because you’re around other sweaty people either in a gym that no spray can fix or outdoors where the fresh air is on your side.

What about makeup? While I’m at it, I’m not a big fan of makeup during workouts either. If you have some on because you’re working out later in the day, you can wash it off if you’re worried it’s going to clog your pores or smear everywhere, or you can leave it. I don’t worry about removing my mascara if I head out for a mid-afternoon run and happen to be wearing some. But I don’t put it on for race-day, either. Yes, there will be race photos. Yes, I will see people I know. No, I’m not going to look for sweat-proof eyeliner and mascara.

If you want to, if it makes you feel confident, and you like how you look, fine. But if you’re just wearing it because you’re afraid of being seen without your makeup…. take a deep breath, look around at all the sweaty people in spandex at mile 5, and realize that none of them can even process the fact that you look well-rested thanks to your under-eye concealer. Also, you’re with a bunch of sweaty people wearing spandex. This is worth reiterating. People are spitting on the sidewalk. There’s no need to wear makeup to these events.

Degree for Women – You’ve missed the mark with this ad campaign. I want to sweat while I’m working out. It shows me I’m working hard. It’s a badge of my accomplishment. It’s healthy, it’s human, and everyone around me is sweating, too. The only thing I need is a post-run shower.

Antiperspirant is for when you’re going out. Not when you’re working out.

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Here’s what I’m thinking: NO.