This weekend I started – and finished – reading Marie Kondo‘s book “the life-changing magic of tidying up“, which I highly recommend to anyone who feels like they need a little bit more order and organization at home. The book is full of practical advice, and simple, clear instruction. It’s another great success of the current Ten Speed Press lineup – one of my favorite publishing houses.
Hello! I should be heading to sleep – I’m running Yulefest tomorrow! – but HGTV is on in the background, and it’s always so hard to shut off the calming voices of Canadians talking about open concept living spaces and income properties.
I wish that I could say that this week was relatively uneventful, but it was a difficult one for me. My grandmother Sterra lost her dear best friend of 81 years, and hearing her give Betty’s eulogy was so terribly, deeply sad. Think about that for a second. 81 years of friendship – longer than many people live in a lifetime. My heart is broken for her.
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Week of December 13th
After getting my new Paderno spiralizer in the mail this week, I’ve had vegetable noodles on the mind! It was a serious upgrade from noodles made with my Mouli by Moulinex (which is still one of the most useful tools in my kitchen) – these noodles are really quite pasta-like.
Things to use up in my kitchen: cabbage, zucchini, mushrooms, a sweet potato, 1/2 jar of Rao’s, shredded carrot, celery.
Saturday: zucchini noodles, leftover Rao’s tomato basil sauce, Italian chicken sausage. To my surprise, zucchini noodles this week were a huge hit. So much so that they were requested not two days later, and who am I to turn down a request for zoodles?
Sunday: coconut milk shrimp (from Sunset) over sweet potato noodles. I bookmarked this recipe the second I opened the new Sunset. (I’m still grieving that Time just sold off the Sunset gardens and HQ. This is another terribly sad week for food magazines.
Monday: Turkish kapuska – cabbage and meat stew. I’ll make this on Sunday, as it always tastes better day two. Here’s a recipe, similar to the one I use (which I’ll get around to writing up one day soon.)
Tuesday: spiced Indian beef over carrot noodles. A riff on Jamie Oliver’s Indian Carrot Salad that’s always a hit in the house.
Wednesday: Devon’s office holiday party. Hopefully I’ll have a real meal at some point, but it’s likely going to be grabbing something on the way over.
Thursday: Turkish tomato eggs (menemen) – using this recipe from my blog.
Friday: out!
What are you eating this week?
–– Sam
We’ve had a long few days of rainy weather, which is starting to seem like a perpetual state around here. It also happened to be raining last Tuesday when I headed over to the Blog & Tweet Boston Blogger Holiday Swap at CambridgeSide Galleria, but I was rewarded with a really great time, and that mall is warm and cozy during the holidays, so I was much less predisposed to complain. Today I’m just cranky. (The carbon monoxide alarm beeping – every 30 seconds from 12:50 in the middle of the night when we had a power outage to 3 in the afternoon on my work from home day – may have something to do with it. I’m only now getting over my headache.)
I’ve been trying to get out more – hanging around the city of Boston before heading home on the days that I can. There’s so much to see and do here, but it’s easy for me to get caught up in the cycle of work/workout/eat/sleep – sometimes you have to actually *see* other people. Most of the time I’m a hermit, but the promise of good food and good fun is always welcome. Also, the promise of a Yankee Swap, the game where you each pick a gift, and then can trade with any of the previous gifts opened, and one person gets to be kind of a jerk and make out like gangbusters at the very end, and choose from whatever gifts they want – well I’m a sucker for those too.
The stores at CambridgeSide Galleria were generous enough to provide some great (non-gag) gifts for the swap, and all we had to do was come ready for the action. During the event, I got to hang out at an excellent table with Elizabeth of On Tap for Today – whose Frenchie, Clark, is another one of my favorite internet pups – and made new friends with:
Alexandra of Alexandra-Elizabeth: A Single Mom’s Journey, Molly of Pop.bop.Shop, and Rebecca of her eponymous blog Rebecca Brianne.
It’s always a little overwhelming for me to meet new people at these events, but I could not have asked for a better table – we had ourselves a *very* good time, made even better by some special paper calendars, and these women made me laugh (the best medicine for social anxiety).
I managed to win a pretty sweet Fitbit Flex, but given that we have all the devices at the RunKeeper office, I ended up switching for a Starbucks tumbler that provides me free coffee every day in January. I have no idea what I was thinking though, because a Flex is a way better gift, and I could have probably purchased three times the amount of coffee for the value of the Flex, and provided one of my friends with an awesome holiday gift. Alas. I blame it on my current caffeine addiction. I’m trying to be good, I’m trying. I also kind of want the Fitbit Charge – which I’m hoping to win from my entry here.
After the swap, we snacked.
These salted caramel pudding cups from CPK were really all the rage – not too sweet. I probably could have eaten five of them.
Instead, I got to spend time with two of my very favorite fitness bloggers – Dani of Weight Off My Shoulders (who is slated to run her 52nd race of the year at Yulefest this weekend!!) and Liana, of Run to Munch (who ran back to back BQ marathons one weekend this fall, and has me lusting after a 2015 50k trail race…) This was my first time meeting Liana in real life, and after listening to me babble for a few minutes about how awesome I thought she was, she proved to be extra awesome by participating in my selfie. Also, I <3 when bloggers are just as nice in real life as you think they’ll be.
Special thanks to CambridgeSide Galleria and Blog & Tweet Boston for putting on a great event. (This was not a sponsored post, but I did get a free Starbucks mug and swag bag by showing up.) All opinions are my own.
