Enthusiasm

Chicago is full of enthusiasts. Whether you’re talking about sports fans, symphony goers, El riders, beach dwellers, street shoppers, or parade fanatics, they’re all here. En mass. It seems as though if there is something going on in downtown Chicago, everyone is there. While it is fun to get excited about fun things in the summer, it is sometimes exhausting and I just want to get away from the crowd of sweaty people.

Example #1, good crowd: When Obama was elected as president in 2008, we were some of the lucky 60,000 people who actually got tickets into Grant Park along with the millions and millions of people that extended the park and went onto the streets. That was one of the best nights ever! Having so many people downtown all getting excited for one thing (well one HUGE thing) was incredible.



Example #2, not so good crowd: When the Chicago Blackhaws one the Stanley cup this June, the mayor decided to have a parade for them. But, not just any parade… Chicagoans have massive parades where everyone takes the day off work, and everyone goes to the parade. There were 3 million people flooding the downtown streets on a 95 degree day just to see the Blackhawks hockey players ride around in a bus, then stand on a stage and wave! This was not a good trip home on my roller blades!



Another downfall to having so many enthusiasts in a condensed area is that if there is a craze, everyone wants in. My husband and I had an impromptu date night on Saturday when he got off from work super early. We went out for sushi (we found an amazing new place nearby) and then wanted to go see Inception. Since we live downtown and know it’s busy here, we planned to get to the theater early. But even by then all the showings were sold out until the latest one which we were too tired to stay up for. We decided that we could walk to the next nearest theater, 4 blocks away, and try to get tickets there. Nope. It was sold out just like the first one! So much for just wanting to see a movie! Too many enthusiasts once again, Chicago.

I must say, it was still a great date night. We went home and watched a movie and ate ice cream, for free :)

Dimitri

Approximately four weeks ago, we got a new kitten!!! He is a Siberian and is hypoallergenic because my husband is allergic to cats. Good news: he hasn't had the slightest reaction to the new kitten, so I guess it's true that he really is hypoallergenic.



We decided, after a long debate, to give him a Russian name (since he's Siberian) and settled on Dimitri. We think it suits him well :) The breeder did a really good job raising him for 10 weeks. She started calling him Dimitri so he already knew his name by the time we got him. She did a great job of socializing him as well. He is so curious and playful!





He is also very cute and cuddly!





He also sleeps a lot. As a new kitten, he is expected to sleep around 16 hours a day. He's also quite cute when he's sleeping.





My husband claimed to hate cats prior to getting Dimitri. I think that is mostly because he was allergic to all other cats. So, the best part is that my husband absolutely LOVES Dimitri. He continues to make us laugh with his playfulness and love him more every day with his cuddles.

Soccer - My Sport of Choice

It's interesting to see how many people become instant soccer fans when the World Cup is going on. Me, I used to eat, sleep, breathe, and dream soccer like it was my life for the majority of my life. Ever since I was able to walk, I had a soccer ball between my feet. Soccer has helped define who I am. My competitiveness, eagerness, self motivation, and desire to live a healthy lifestyle all stem from my soccer playing lifestyle. I made some of the greatest friends, traveled all over the country and internationally, learned some life lessons, and I miss playing more than I thought I would.

I can vividly remember being on the field and playing the game like it was yesterday. I remember the feel of my cleats on my feet and the ground pounding beneath them. The smell of the freshly cut grass. The sensation of running so hard for so long that you feel like your legs are going to fall off. Slide tackling on wet grass that carried out the slide much more than you thought was possible. The natural feeling of striking the ball at my feet. I loved creating plays and the incredible moments when I could watch the ball sneak past the goalie's dive. Most of all, I love to remember my teammates who played beside me. Those girls helped me get through some tough years more than they will ever know.

During the summer season, when we were out of school, we'd often have two-a-day practices. This photo reminds me of our early morning practices when the grass was still wet from dew. We had some intense training sessions that we ... learned to appreciate.



This photo reminds me of our late night games. The feeling of stepping out onto the soccer field at night with the lights all lit up is incredibly energizing! Night matches were always so fun during the summer when it would still be in the 80's long after the sun went down.



Soccer is full of beautiful plays:



And some hilarious mishaps:



That must be what a concussion looks like. I got a concussion once, where I went one on one with the goalie in an indoor game. Somehow we ended up colliding at full speed and I flipped over her and my forehead broke my fall on the indoor track field turf. I wonder if that's what I looked like smashing into the floor for a split second. Well, all I know is that I had the floor pattern indented in my forehead for a good week and had to wear a neck brace, and I'm not posting a picture of that!

Sunday was an awesome food day!

My husband is studying for the national board exams for medical school, and I am in the midst of taking a semester length course condensed into 4 weeks, while maintaining my full time work schedule. Needless to say, we are quite busy right now, and it is not very fun. The good news is that there is light at the end of the tunnel and we’ll both be done less than 2 weeks.

I love cooking, and usually have a lot of time on my hands to find great recipes. However, with our crazy schedules right now, we just don’t have much extra time to cook. But with the long holiday weekend, I finally had some quality kitchen time apart from my busy life. I was recently intrigued by a new recipe I saw on a friend's blog for Vanilla Yogurt Pancakes and really wanted to make them. I had never made pancakes from scratch before, but was so excited by the recommendation, I just had to try out the recipe. They turned out to be the best pancakes I’ve ever had! They were thick, light, and absolutely delicious. Next time, I think I’ll add wild blueberries to the batter! Yum! The pancakes went very well with my special smoothies made from vanilla yogurt, frozen berries of all sorts, soy milk, honey, and sliced almonds. The almonds give the smoothie a light nutty flavor, a slight crunch, and added protein! My favorite addition to a Sunday brunch! I tried to take pictures of this delicious spread, but they just didn't do the food justice. Next time.

After a relaxing afternoon at the beach enjoying the upper 80’s, clear blue skies, and getting some quality people watching time in, I was so ready to make my recently discovered favorite dish. If you like pasta, you’ll love Fettuccine with Peas, Asparagus, and Pancetta. Before trying this dish for the first time a couple of months ago, I had never cooked with pancetta before, but I’m so glad I tried it because it’s awesome! I love bacon and any dish that includes it, and pancetta is like fancy bacon! Plus, the asparagus, green onions, and light sauce make this a great spring/summer dish! Another great aspect of this recipe is that it makes so much food! It’s enough for my large appetite, my husband’s three sizeable helpings, with enough for leftovers! Give it a try when you’re feeling creative! I got a semi-successful picture of this dish:



Yup, Sunday was an awesome food day.

Fearless

I grew up in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where my backyard was a forest. I lived in a neighborhood, but the houses were separated by huge yards, interesting landscapes, and lots of trees. When I was young, summer nights were spent grilling out with the family and then getting together with all the neighborhood kids and playing night games.

I also remember being a pretty active kid. I got my first pair of roller blades when I was around 7 or 8. We had a gravel driveway, so I would have to run across the driveway in them, roll on the grass for a while to get to the paved road. This road, which also happened to be the road that I learned how to drive on in the winter, is super long and very steep at times, with "S" curves all through it and stretches for miles up the small mountain that I lived on. This is also the road that I learned to roller blade on. Since it was not the traditional flat pavement, I got to be pretty good pretty fast, having to maneuver the curves and watch out for pine cones and other forest debris. My neighbor friends and I would also use the pine cones as training tools. We would start at the bottom of a hill and, using the pine cones as markers, we would gradually work our way to the top measuring how far up we could start and go straight down the whole stretch without using our breaks. That was a rush!

One day, my neighbor friend and I were just having fun rollerblading around her way cool driveway. Unlike mine, it was paved, with a loop around it, on a steep hill with curves on the straight part. We decided that it would be really cool to have a ramp to go off of, so she went into her dad's work shed, grabbed some scrap wood, nails and a hammer, and built a sizable ramp. And it worked! We loved propelling ourselves off that thing. We situated it so that we could land in the grass in the middle of the driveway loop in case we missed the landing and fell. The grass was much nicer to fall on than the concrete. With a little practice, we got to be pretty good at going off this ramp, and we decided that we should create some new tricks. Then, after the other neighborhood kids saw our cool ramp, they all came over to try it out. We were all having a great time and decided that we should create a game in which we use the ramp. The game would be similar to tag and kick-the-can where one person was "It" and had to try to tag the other people. Once you were tagged, you had to go wait by the ramp and could be release only by a person who wasn't tagged who did a successful trick off the ramp. We called this game Ramp Round-Off, and it was so much fun. We played it almost every day all summer long. We played that game for many summers, and each year there were more rules and variations to keep it interesting. Sometimes the ramp broke and we would build a newer, better one. The game just kept evolving! It was so great.

Ever since living in Chicago, I've wanted to get a pair of roller blades. There is a paved pathway that runs along the entire lake shore that is perfect for long roller blades. Then, when one of my friends was planning a visit, she asked if I had any roller blades so that we could explore the lake shore. I got so excited that I promptly went out the next day and bought some!

Now that I'm living in an area of the city where I can pretty much walk wherever I need to go, I usually end up using my roller blades to get from A to B because it is so much faster. However, rollerblading in downtown Chicago is a little bit different than in the Black Hills. The roads and sidewalks are so crappy here that I really need to be careful and watch out for the large cracks that are everywhere along with the huge dips and bumps. Also, there are people every where, which makes it interesting. It was pretty scary at first, when I would blade at unfortunate rush hour times. The intersections get pretty crazy. Also, there are not a lot of other roller bladers in Chicago and I get a lot of funny looks as well as some crazy comments. All I'm thinking is that instead of walking for a half an hour or more like everyone else, I'm blading for 7 minutes or less! There are a few people who appreciate the blades. In fact, my super-nerdy Stats professor gave me a huge thumbs up and a "Niiice!" comment the other day after class when I was gearing up to go back to work on my blades.

After getting used to blading in the city, I now feel pretty comfortable and have gotten used to the many obstacles. My training in the hill has really payed off! The other day, when I was on my way to class, I was coming up to a major intersection, and was going to continue across, since the light was green and the pedestrian light was white. I made sure there were no walkers coming around the corner that I would run into. I saw a cyclist who was about to block the depression in the sidewalk that meets the road, we made eye contact, and being a fellow non-driving-commuter, he saw that I was going to go ahead and he stopped. However, while I was taking the 1.5 seconds to make sure the situation would be okay for me to cross, I did not notice that the sidewalk was uneven in front of me where the first chunk was depressed a few inches and the next chunk was elevated a few inches between the break in the sidewalk. My left blade ran straight into the raised part of the cement and was stopped on contact while the rest of my body was propelled forward, carried by my the momentum of my heavy backpack that flew over my body. My left knee slammed into the cement to stop my fall, and skidded across the pavement to halt my forward movement. I stopped in front of the cyclist whose mouth had dropped open. I got up, saw my bleeding knee through my ripped pants, and decided I was okay to keep going. I proceeded through the intersection and made it to class safely. But, I did have to sit there for 3.5 hours with a bleeding knee and ripped pants.

When you fall as a kid, on the grass, it's all fun and games. When you fall as an adult, near a busy intersection in front of strangers, you just look like an idiot. Luckily, I'll never see those people again!

Coffee: French Press

I love lazy Saturday mornings after a long work week. I sit at my laptop with my bottomless cup of coffee and catch up on emails and what's going on in the world, and let the caffeine take me to a state of relaxed alertness. We have at our disposal a plethora of ways to make coffee, and this morning I chose French press. It's so simple: add boiling water to freshly ground coffee; let it sit for five minutes; press, and voila, you have just made fancy coffee.

Isn't it funny how everyone has their own story about how they started drinking coffee? Nobody really likes it at first, but eventually, it grows on them or they become addicted. I always thought it smelled good, even when I was a little kid, but I never liked the bitter taste. It took me a long time to like coffee. I even started out on the sugary processed creations that you get at major coffee chains. Then, while living in Minneapolis, I discovered Kopplin's Coffee. They make the best latte I've ever had and their espresso is amazing! I thought it was even better than the coffee I had while in Europe. It was while spending many hours studying here that I learned that I do, in fact, like coffee. But apparently, I only like high end good quality coffee. Expensive taste has and always will be my intrinsic weakness.

Luckily my husband, who drinks way more coffee than me on a daily basis, prefers good quality coffee as well. Because of him I will always have many options to make my own fancy coffee and it will always be a bottomless cup of goodness. After drinking coffee all morning and early afternoon, what's next? A late afternoon shot of espresso. Yum!

Chicago

I’m from Rapid City, SD – a small town with a population of about 100,000. Currently, I live in downtown Chicago – a city of about 3 million people in the city and about 10 million people in Chicagoland (which is just a fancy name for the whole city including the suburbs). It’s a pretty big contrast. Good thing I learned how to parallel park in college. Nope, they don’t require that skill in SD. Traffic is awful in Chicago and I have had to experience a little too much of that! Now that I live downtown, my driving stress level has decreased to almost nothing since I can walk practically everywhere I need to go. Now that I’m used to living in a large city, I have found that I quite enjoy the city life. There is always something going on, friends to hang out with, fun things to do, new restaurants to try, and new adventures around every corner.

I’ve taken up running as a new hobby. It feels so great to be in shape again! Well… getting in shape at least. I run downtown, on Wacker drive, by the river, and north and south along the lake shore. It’s fun and interesting to explore the city on foot! Here is the general area where I run:










Cooking is my other recent hobby. I love creating new dishes with fresh ingredients. I’ve recently been introduced to some great food blogs where I think I’ll be spending a lot of my time. I love most anything about food in general. I am an amateur coffee snob, and a recreational wine-o.

Spinach

I love spinach. I could eat it multiple times a day, every day. I usually add it to most meals in some way. There are so many ways to prepare it. You can eat it fresh, plain, as the base of a salad, on your sandwich, in your soup, in your eggs, in your pasta dish, as a side dish, or mixed in with your main dish. You can sauté it, blanch it, steam it, or chop it multiple ways. You can buy it fresh, or you can buy it frozen. It’s usually cheap/affordable depending on how or where you buy it. It’s low in calories, fat and cholesterol. It’s high in protein, iron, fiber and calcium.
All good things, right? Yep, mostly. Spinach is also a mild diuretic and a mild laxative. Sometimes I eat so much spinach my poop turns green. Still, I love it and I will always eat a lot of it.

A runner and a foodie? Okay...

While my newly self proclaimed title of a runner foodie may be an accurate generalization, these two entities are not equal parts of me, but together help me have a healthy lifestyle. In fact, I will probably end up writing more about food than running. While I do like running, I love being athletic and active in order to stay healthy. This is where food comes into the picture.

I value a healthy lifestyle and healthy eating is a huge part of that. I grew up eating very healthy foods and learning why they were healthy. When I was young, I was taught that there were certain foods I could eat at certain times of the day, depending on the schedule of my soccer practice or game that day. Certain foods are digested more easily or faster than others. Certain foods were good for quick energy and others would give me long term energy. Other foods were not good for me if I were to eat too much, but were just fine in moderation. As early as I can remember being able to eat, I was taught to eat with a purpose. I learned all of these eating habits early in life and have always eaten healthily because it is what I knew. I might also add that I have a sweet tooth. I love junk food and I love bacon, and I think it is okay to eat things that are not “healthy” as long as you are smart about it. That is where running comes into the picture. Well, not just running, but being active in general. Being healthy is about living an active lifestyle and eating healthily, which are my life long aspirations. I like being unhealthy too, and that's why this blog is about anything and everything related to being a runner and a foodie.