Cherry Blossom, Take Two

I am ecstatic right now. Seriously. So ecstatic, in fact, that I feel like the number of exclamation points I would need to use to properly punctuate this emotion would be excessive and borderline obnoxious. So  the editor in me wants to refrain from that for now.

Tonight was my big sales management presentation, and I get my life back. No more 13-hour weekend spreadsheet sessions, no more 2 am note taking, no more presentation stress dreams. It was a rough two weeks leading up to all of this, but now it's done and I couldn't be prouder of my group.

But this, surprisingly enough, is not the reason I'm so happy right now.

The good news of the day, and my reward for making it out of that sales project with most of my sanity, I got a transfer into the Cherry Blossom Ten Mile Run! I should dedicate this wonderful mood I'm in to my fabulous running/blogging/grad school friend Christy; until this afternoon I didn't even know there was an opportunity to get into the race. I didn't make the randomized lottery entry system earlier this year and was really disappointed because it was such a great race last year. But every February they have a transfer process where you can buy/sell a race registration. So buy a registration I did! So now, Christy and I, along with 14,998 other people, will be running 10 miles on April 1.

A few things to consider here:

Last year I ran this race in just under two hours. I'd like to get a PR this year, but I know I'm not much faster than I was 12 months ago. This year I'll be more familiar with the course, the water stations, and how I'll fare over that distance.

The Cherry Blossom is exactly 15 days after my half marathon. So I'll either be in great shape for this race, or really sick of running. Right now it's looking like it could go either way.

Rumor has it that 9 out of 10 years it rains for this race. Last year was sunny and beautiful. Am I pushing my luck running it again? Lets hope not.

I'm actually looking forward to this race extending my long distance training. I really like the challenge of a long run, and even the crazy sore muscles later. It's a great sense of accomplishment.

So, other runners reading this...are you interested in running the 10 miler? It's not too late! Check out the message board to see if any more bib numbers are available for purchase. But hurry, the transfer window closes Wednesday at midnight.

Any tips on running important races within two weeks of each other? Just don't twist an ankle and I should be fine, right?

Happy Tuesday. Looking forward to a homework free evening tomorrow.

Mock Dream Bars

Remember how crazy busy I have been? Well tonight I managed to find some time to bake. 

My graduate school group and I have a little snacking tradition when we get together; in order to best function during an all day meeting we need chips and salsa, some sort of baked good, and mimosas. It just works for us. We've got a year and a half of amazing grades and some fantastic publishing ideas to prove it. 

So, despite my crazy schedule, I felt it was essential to this weekend's success to bake a little bit for my lovely group members. And what better recipe to try out than a mock up of our favorite Pot Belly's Dream Bar. (There's a Pot Belly's near campus, so needless to say we've been there a few time while working towards these master's degrees of ours.)

Ingredients

• Crust
  
  • 6 tbs softened butter
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup rolled oats
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • pinch of salt
    
• Topping
  
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1/2 cup plus 1 tbs flour
  • 1/2 cup oats
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 cup chocolate chips
    

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream together the butter and the brown sugar.  
3. When light and fluffy add the oats, flour and salt.  
4. Press the crust into a 9x13 pan.  I used a 8◊8 pan but the bars came out a little thick.  A 9x13 pan would make these come out perfect.
5. Place the crust in the preheated oven and cook for 10 minutes.
6. While the crust is blind baking, mix the eggs and brown sugar in a bowl.  Stir in 1tbs of flour and the vanilla.  Mix well.
7. When the crust is done baking remove it from the oven and let cool for a couple of minutes.  Make sure that it is cool to the touch, or else it will melt your chocolate chips.  Then pour half of the egg mixture over the crust.  Then cover the bars with the chocolate chips.
8. With the remaining half of the egg mixture in the bowl, add the 1/2 cup flour, oats and baking soda.  Mix to form a semi-soft cookie dough.
9. Using a spoon dollop the cookie dough over the top of the bars.
10. Place the bars in the preheated 350 degree oven and bake for 15 minutes.  Bake until the cookie dough looks set, but is not quite browned.

raw

baked

Notes:
The base layer isn't very thick. I should have doubled the whole recipe to get thicker bars. Just a little hard to spread that little amount of batter over a 9x13 pan. 

The cookie dough topping is really, really sticky and it was hard to spread evenly. Not sure how to remedy that. Maybe a little flour on the hands? Not sure. Just a heads up.

I baked them for 15 minutes, but another 3 probably wouldn't have hurt. Maybe they'll harden up overnight.

Not the greatest picture, but they ended up tasting really delicious!

Three Things Thursday: Good, Bad, and a Few Weeks of Chaos

Ok. It's been a rough couple of weeks. Forgive me for being so absent. This goes for the lack of blog posts, the missed phone dates, the unreplied to text messages, and to Maxwell, the orange striped cat whose constant weaving between my feet clearly communicates that I'm not at home enough lately. Grad school, my new job, and half marathon training are sort of consuming my life right now.

And because I owe you a Three from last week...tonight, you get two lists:

Three Things That Make Me Sad Today

My long run this week has to happen on a treadmill. 

via

I came to this grim decision earlier today after I did some math. Saturday morning, I have a grad school sales project group meeting at 10 am. I need to run 10 miles this week. That should take me about 2 hours. Plus travel time to and from Rock Creek Park, and stretching after my run, 2 hours 45 minutes. Shower, eat, rest, stretch, hydrate, another hour or so. This all means I'd have to leave my house at 6:15 am.  Eat breakfast by 5:45. And wake up by 5:30. And I have to make sure I keep a strong pace so my run doesn't take too long. I don't foresee this all happening. Or at least not with me in any sort of working condition to participate in an eight hour group meeting afterwards. Hence, the treadmill. I plan on running between 7 and 9 tomorrow night, and I'll do it in intervals so I don't get too bored. I may also download a movie to my iPod. Anything to pass the time. It's not the best solution, but it's the only one I've got at the moment. I'd feel worse skipping the run, so treadmill it is.

Sprint sucks. All of the sudden, my cell phone basically doesn't work in my apartment and they won't offer me any real solutions to get the problem solved. I'm quite fed up. Counting down the days until I get to switch cell phone providers...t-minus 6. Not soon enough.

I have been at my new job exactly two weeks, and I have had exactly four stress dreams about it. Everything is going really well in real life; but in dream life everything is chaotic and I screw up projects. I wake up feeling like I haven't slept at all. Not my favorite feeling. I'd like to get a decent night's sleep sometime soon.

Three Things That Make Me Happy Today

Ryan Braun is free!!!! 

via

I could fill the screen with exclamation points and it still wouldn't express how trilled I am about this. For you non-baseball people out there, Ryan Braun is the reigning National League MVP and the left fielder for my beloved Milwaukee Brewers. In November he was charged with using illegal performance enhancing drugs, and was suspended for the first 50 games of the upcoming season. Braun claimed his innocence. The Brewers stood behind him. They fought the charge, and today it was overturned. The first time an MLB player has successfully overturned a drug charge. Now, baseball season can officially begin. It's like Christmas morning, except better; because it's the start of baseball season, and Ryan Braun is back!

My best friend is having a boy! This isn't news from today (last Saturday actually), but it still make me very happy. (I had predicted all along that it'd be a boy, and I was right!) I would have, of course, been thrilled with a little girl as well (she'd fit right in at our BYM girls nights!), but there's just something about a mini version of Maggie's hubby runnin around that I think is adorable. Yay Mags! You're having a boy!


In six days from now, I will be done with this f*ckin sales management project and I will have my life back. My brain can slow down, mile pace can pick up, and hopefully I'll stop having crazy stress dreams. Six days. Not that far away. And that makes me happy.

My apologies in advance if I don't have time to write in the next seven days. The real countdown, the countdown to the end of grad school and beginning of free time, begins now. I'm ready.

Happy Thursday.

Noodles and Free Time

Oh hello, blogosphere. I haven't forgotten about you, but I've been a little busy. Ya know...graduate school, a new job, and half marathon training. I even missed a Three Things Thursday. 

That's how busy I have been. 

And this weekend isn't offering any more free time than usual. On top of a 10K tomorrow morning and a full weekend of work on my Sales Management project, my mom is in town! Not lots of free time to catch up on blogging, but you know what I do have lots of...

 ...homemade chicken noodle soup. Does it get any better than that?

 I came home from work today and she had this delicious kettle of soup all cooked up.

She even came fully prepared with the world's greatest noodles. Yes, that's right. She brought noodles with her all the way from Wisconsin. That's love.

So, happy weekend, dear readers. I hope to catch up about my new job and other daily musings soon.

Let's talk about my half marathon...

...because, holy shit, it's like four weeks away.

Good news though- they finally posted the course map!

The half is the purple route.

Ran a solid 9 miles last weekend. 

A nice, hopefully quick, 10K this weekend. 

And shooting for just over 10 next weekend.

I feel ready now, hopefully I feel ready 32 days from now.

Hey runners - any advice for my first half marathon?

Anything you wish you'd known before crossing the starting line?

Three Things Thursday: New Job

I started a new job today. This week's Three:

I am exhausted. 

via

I am happy.

And I am excited to go back tomorrow. 

More on the job later. Far, far too tired to get into the details right now.

Chocolate Chip Extravaganza

I went a little baking crazy last night. When I finished fixing my broken coffee table and doing my taxes (oh it was a rockin saturday, let me tell you), I set off to bake some chocolate chip cookies from my sister's infamous recipe. I am just short of legally obligated to mention that it's my sister's recipe or she'll send some transatlantic verbal harassment my way, in a manner that only a little sister can.

Anyways, so the baking commenced. And 88 little, delicious, chewy chocolate chip cookies later I decided that it wasn't going to be enough. I had to split the batch three ways: tomorrow is a friend's birthday, I'm going to a Super Bowl party tonight, and I may have promised cookies to people at work. And let me tell you, my office could polish off all 88 on their own before lunch; so I was going to need a back up. 

I haven't been doing much baking lately (since my Packers' related superstitious baking ended when their season did) so I was down to the bare necessities in the pantry. Luckily, flour, sugar, and eggs can get you a long way. Enter: chocolate chip blondies.

via*

Ingredients
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 & 1/2 cups unpacked brown sugar
6 tbsp butter
2 large egg whites
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cups chocolate chips (I used about 1/2 a bag because it's what I had left)
1/3 cup water

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350F.
In a small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.
In a large bowl, beat brown sugar and butter until fluffy.
Add egg whites and vanilla.
Gradually beat in flour mixture, alternating with water.
Stir in chips.

Original recipe here.

From here I deviated from the original recipe. I don't have a great 9x13 pan, so I made half of mine into cupcakes and the other half in a small loaf pan. The cupcakes were perfect because they'll be portable for the party I'm going to today. And the extra loaf, well that's just going to stay right in my kitchen.

Baking time will vary on oven consistency (mine is not very consistent in heating, a fine quality for an oven) and on the form in which you bake it. The cupcakes took about 8 minutes, and the loaf pan took about 10 minutes. Make sure to take them out of the oven while the tops still look a little raw. Don't wait until the tops are golden, because by then the bottoms are going to be charred.

These turned out to be fluffier version of the cookies I had made earlier. Not complaining at all, because chocolate chip in all forms are delicious. I'd definitely recommend this quick and delicious recipe. Full review to be added after I share my wealth of baked goods at the party this afternoon.

Happy Sunday morning!

*That's not actually a picture of what I made, but it's one I found on the internet and it's pretty darn close. I was lazy last night and want to dig around for my camera while I was covered in batter. 

Three Things Thursday: Real food and its accessories

I didn't make New Year's Resolutions for 2012; instead I've decided to just roll with the punches, deal with challenges as they arise, come up with new goals as my situation changes, and a few other cliched phrases for good measure.

When my latest semester of graduate school began, I set out to try get back to cooking real food; I wanted to try and buy less Potbelly's sandwiches between class and work, and stop eating cereal for dinner on my non-class days. I used to cook all the time, I used to cook delicious things all the time. But then between my fall class schedule and the busy season at work, the holidays, the vacations, etc., all good habits fell by the wayside.

I'm now four weeks into my semester and I'm getting used to cooking again. Things to consider when making a switch from cereal for dinner to real food: real food takes time to prepare and cook, you can't keep buying the same groceries and hope that they magically turn into dinner, you actually have to buy ingredients and menu plan. These are not considerations I took in the beginning, so it was rough goings for a while. But now I've gotten the hang of it.

This week's Three are things I'm finding would be pretty handy to have in my kitchen for food prep and cooking.

OXO Slicer Mandolin - $40 - via Sur la table

1) Mandolin Slicer - While I am absolutely terrified of slicing off a finger pad with this or any other kitchen knife, I think I can get over that in exchange for evenly sliced veggies. I make a lot of sweet potatoes and they're kind of difficult to cut evenly with my big kitchen knife, this gadget would do just fine.

OXO Stainless Steel Kitchen Scale - $50 - via Sur la table

2) Food Scale - I've been trying a lot of new recipes that call for exact measurements, and I'm terrible with converting things from cups to grams and back again, etc. And if my attempts at baking have taught me anything, it's that exact measurements count.

La Cruset Indigo Cast Iron Skillet 10" - $99.95 - via Sur la table

3) Cast iron skillet - What couldn't you cook in this? I mean it's practically perfect. Although I will admit, this one looks way too clean. In my head I have an image of a cast iron skillet like the one that's always been in my Dad's kitchen. I'm pretty sure it's older than I am, has never been run through a dishwasher, and cooks everything, from potatoes to poultry, perfectly. I'd of course need mine in Brewer blue to match the rest of my kitchen.

Anybody out there in the blogosphere have any of these gadgets? I'd love some recommendations on brands and styles.

Any other kitchen gadgets you're in need of lately?

Happy Thursday!