Fiesta Friday

April 24, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

Friday dance time!!

Coming at ya again with another post since today is a little ~~overbooked~~ slow and I’ve decided to handle being in 3 places at once by ignoring my to do list and blogging instead. I make such great life choices. (looks very proud of self)

Anyways, since I am trying to post regularly and post on things like working out and cooking and such, here’s a recipe!

We had enchilada night last night and since I also happened to have the quintessential summer drink, Bud Light Lime, in hand, it turned into a full-on fiesta! This enchilada recipe is awesome and, wait for it, CHEAP! Perfect for grad students.

We had extra avocados so there was also guacamole and homemade chips involved because what else are you going to do with extra avocados and tortillas?

Enchiladas With Mole Sauce (adapted from this recipe)

Ingredients

SAUCE

2 Tbsp vegetable oil or any oil with a light flavor
2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp chili powder
2 cups water
3 oz. tomato paste
½ tsp cumin
½ tsp garlic powder
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp salt

ENCHILADAS

1/2 cup shredded cooked, chicken
1 (15 oz.) can seasoned black beans
1 medium avocado
1 small tomato
1-2 whole green onions
½ cup frozen corn kernels
handful fresh cilantro chopped
¼ tsp garlic powder
½ tsp salt
1 tsp lime juice
1/4 cup fresh grated cheese (oxaca, montery, or another soft melty cheese)
8 small tortillas (fajita size)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Then prepare the enchilada sauce. In a medium sauce pot combine the vegetable oil, flour, and chili powder. Heat the mixture over a medium flame until it begins to bubble. Whisk and cook the bubbling paste for 1-2 minutes. Slowly pour in the water while whisking. Add the tomato paste, cumin, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, cocoa powder, and salt. Whisk until smooth and continue to heat over a medium flame. Let the sauce come up to a gentle simmer, at which point the sauce will thicken. Once thickened, turn off the heat and set the sauce aside until you’re ready to use it.
Drain and rinse the can of beans, then add them to a large bowl with the shredded chicken. Cube the avocado, dice the tomato, slice the green onion, and pull a handful of cilantro leaves from their stems and roughly chop them. Add them all to the bowl, along with the frozen corn kernels and lime juice. Stir everything together. Season with a little salt and garlic powder (recommended amounts above, or use fresh minced garlic). Gently mix in the cheese so you don’t bruise the avocado.
Coat an 8×8 casserole dish with non-stick spray. Warm the tortillas briefly in the microwave to make them soft and pliable. Fill each tortilla with about ⅓ cup of filling and roll tightly. Place the filled tortillas in the casserole dish, seam side down. Once all of the filled enchiladas are in the dish, pour the enchilada sauce over top.
Bake the enchiladas in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes, or until they’re heated through and the sauce is bubbly along the edges.

If you want to add even more cheese on top of the enchiladas, I think that would be a fantastic idea. More cheese = awesome!

Guacamole

Ingredients

3 small avocados (honestly use what ya got)
2 T lime juice
1/4 white or sweet onion small diced
handful of fresh cilantro chopped
1/4 cup (approx) diced fresh tomato <–I used like 5 cherry tomatoes and chopped them up
1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp garlic powder
salt, pepper, and Sriracha to taste

Cube and mash the avocados with the lime juice. Mix in remaining ingredients. Add salt, pepper and Sriracha to taste <– I use one healthy squirt for a nice kick

We had some leftover tortillas from the enchilada recipe and a lack of tortilla chips in the house (I know). So, I cut up the remaining 3 tortillas into chip size and fried them in 1/2 in of sunflower oil (Don’t overheat your oil, 350-375 degrees is where you wanna be at) for 1-2 min per side.

And OMG I forgot how good fresh flour tortilla chips are! Especially with homemade guacamole. And Bud Light Lime. And hot enchiladas. And a nice spring evening.

Spring Cleaning

April 23, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

Hi everyone!

I would like to announce a huge moment in my life yesterday…

I managed to throw a giant Harry Potter (I think it was the 6th) book in the toilet from a room away!

Now before you get mad at me for purposefully throwing a perfectly good Harry Potter book in the toilet and ruining it, hear me out. It was baggage. Emotional baggage. From a previous relationship. My ex-boyfriend gifted me a paperback Harry Potter set one year and wrote love letters on the inside of each cover.

This was very sweet and touching at the time, but now, 3 years later, it’s just emotional baggage that I can’t sell at a garage sale <—let’s be honest, who would buy the Harry Potter series with sappy love letters on each inside cover.

Steve and I are getting ready to move into a smaller apartment (YAY less cleaning) so I’ve been going through my things and trying to downsize. While I was going through my things the other night and loudly singing along to my Broadway Hits Pandora station, I came across a bunch of cards, pictures, and things from that relationship. If you’re thinking how weird it is that I kept these things for so long well….it’s one of those things where the last time I moved, I was still hung up on everything and not ready to let go. Sooooo all that stuff got put up in a box on a shelf and forgotten about until now.

And I cried. A lot.

It’s easy to remember why you break up with someone. You can blame them and make them the “bad guy” for whatever reason. It’s a lot harder to find memories of the happy times. Especially when they catch you by surprise. You’re flooded with all the happy memories and start to wonder what happened to ruin the life you set yourself up for years ago.

Luckily, I’m dating this pretty rad guy –>Steve<– who sat down with me and talked it out. We talked about getting rid of that baggage that you don’t realize is still there (aka Harry Potter books). I was originally going to burn the books as a way of therapeutic release, but I’m also extremely impatient and didn’t want to try to build a fire.

So, Steve and I sat on our bed across from the bathroom and read each letter one last time. At the end of each letter, I tried to throw the book in the toilet. 5/6 books missed. But one made it and it was so satisfying that I cried again (from release this time).

On a separate note, I also signed the application for my first utility patent yesterday! Now I can put that annoying “Patent-pending” thing on everything I do (evil laugh)

Also Indy has been having a rough few days 😦

She ran into a tree and hurt her shoulder

Most pathetic look ever! It was hilarious how sassy she got when we tried to ice her shoulder.

She’s also been having some stomach issues and has let us know by lying dramatically on the bed….

We have plans to traumatize her with some time at the lake and a beer festival this weekend so I hope she feels better soon!

Perspective

April 17, 2015April 17, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

With all the stress, depression, busyness, and chaos that is grad school, you may be wondering why anyone would subject themselves to such a life. We all have a reason for staying. You have to have these reasons to keep you going when times get hard. And believe me, they will get hard.

A PhD isn’t something you go after when you can’t get a job and have nothing else to do. If that is the case, you’ll either fall in love with research and stay, or drop out after a Masters (which is still effing awesome and nothing to be ashamed of btw).

I had a bit of a wake up call in therapy last week when I was talking about how I felt that grad school had ‘robbed’ me of my life and things that make me happy. My psychiatrist looked at me and asked me why I came to grad school. He pointed out that some people are in grad school against their will (for whatever reason: ambitious parents, degree requirements, etc). He then asked if I was forced to come to grad school. I wasn’t. I came of my own free will. So he asked again, why?

I was forced to sit and think about why I came to grad school. Sure, there are the reasons I joke about, love dat college lyfe, didn’t wanna get a job, yada yada yada. But those aren’t reasons to go to grad school and spend the better part of 3 years debating about staying vs. leaving (spoiler alert, I decided to stay).

The real reason I came to grad school is because I am unsatisfied. I am unsatisfied with the amount of knowledge I currently have. I am not satisfied knowing x + y = z. I am not satisfied knowing that your computer saves files to a hard drive or that rubber bands are stretchy because they are a polymer.

There is a real need to know the very fundamentals of how the world works. I need to know that rubber bands are a polymer, which means they have a certain crystal structure and the atoms are joined by a certain type of bond in a certain way that allows for enough potential energy to be stored before breaking that they are considered ‘stretchy’. I need to know that a computer reads binary using switches that differentiate between 1 and 0. I need to break a concept down to its most basic parts. This, inevitably, also ends up being the most complicated.

In undergrad, they show you equations, a black box of assumptions and the answer. I need to pick apart that black box and understand it’s role in providing the answers. Where do the assumptions come from? Why make these assumptions and not those?

Only when I grasp this am I able to “scale out” to the big picture. It’s why I’m good at designing systems. I need to know how each part works so I can optimize the entire system as a whole. A PhD is based on learning a subject to it’s most fundamental laws of existence. You have to break something down to be innovative.

That’s why I’ve stayed in grad school.

After explaining this to my psych, he gave me some desperately needed tough love. Not gonna lie, I kinda resented him at the time for it, but I am glad he was up front with me. Basically, I can’t whine and complain about how grad school ‘robbed’ me of my happiness. There was nothing to ‘rob’. This is part of it. A PhD takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of sacrifice. I can still compete in races, but that’s not my job. It’s my hobby. It’s what I do in my spare time. And I can’t blame grad school for requiring a lot of time. That’s what you sign up for. It’s not saying that you can’t achieve everything you ever wanted in life, but prioritizing is so important in grad school. And grad school should be your top priority. If you can train for an Ironman while in grad school and not drive yourself crazy then great! But you can’t expect to be the top student in your class and finish first in the race at the same time.

For right now, I need to focus on being the best grad student I can be not on having my fastest marathon or Ironman. I can focus on that later. I’ve been feeling pretty guilty about skipping a lot of my workouts and training because I have to dedicate more time to grad school. And I’ve been beating myself up over the fact that I may or may not beat my time from last year. If you haven’t noticed, it’s made me a little miserable the last couple of weeks.

Could I finish Raleigh 70.3 tomorrow? Yes. I have enough training to successfully complete 70.3 miles of swimming, biking, and running. Would I PR it? Nope. And that’s ok. I need to work on being happy with the fact that I am a grad student who can actually complete that distance. Which is a hellavua accomplishment in and of itself.

13.1, Run and Done!

April 14, 2015 / thievinsteven / Leave a comment

Well, the Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon is over. I finished my first ever half marathon and Amanda got a new personal best time on her run! We went to the expo on Friday and bought some new running gear. The only picture we got was me getting a little overly friendly with balloon running man. I don’t think he minded though.

On race day we got up at 4 in the morning. That’s right.. 4. in. the. morning. It wasn’t so bad really, but it made us pretty silly for a while. The adrenaline of race anticipation coupled with a short night’s sleep made us pretty looney.

We were also very cold! It was pretty windy and we were dressed for running in the sun, not standing around for two hours in the dark so we hopped into a hotel lobby to warm up and wait for the race to start.

I had planned to take it pretty slow at the start, like 11 or 12 minute miles until I warmed up and could tell how I was going to feel for the run but instead I was amped up and excited and feeling good so I took off at around 10 minute miles which is more my typical pace for short runs. I was able to keep that pace going for quite a few miles so I was feeling good about hitting my target time.

A lot of the race is a blur. I was mostly focusing on good running form since I was still worried about my ankle and concentrating on breathing good and maintaining a steady pace so half the time I didn’t really know what street I was on but I do remember the music. The first band was playing Last Dance with Mary Jane. A short while later the marching band blared their horns down at the runners from a bridge over the street. Scattered cheerleaders and other bands and a really cool drum group later in the race.

One thing I wasn’t prepared for is how much the spectators cheering affected me. I remember the girl at the water station in mile 6 who said “I see you Steve! Keep it up!” She was the first one who called me by name and at first I was all paranoid like who are you? how do you know my name? Then I realized it was printed on my bib and felt kinda silly.

A little after mile 10 my foot started hurting. I had run the whole thing so far so I wasn’t about to stop. As I kept pushing on the pain in my foot got worse. To make matters worse, spectators were pretty sparse near the end until you got real close to the finish. I was nearly reduced to power walking status about half a mile from the finish when I heard Amanda yell “Go Steve!” She came out to run with me for a minute and cheered me on and yelled to the spectators “This is Steve!” so then they all started cheering for me and I got a fresh burst of energy that carried me to the finish. I couldn’t stop smiling and in most of the pictures I’m sportin a big delirious smile and look something like this:

If I end up buying the pictures maybe I’ll post one, but maybe not since I look kinda like a doofus 🙂

In the end I finished in 2 hours and 25 minutes when my target time was 2 hours and 30 minutes so I’m pretty happy about that. I never knew Michelob Ultra could taste as sweet as it did. Here we are enjoying our finisher beers! I felt super accomplished and proud to have finished and to have run the whole thing!

Remember to hydrate kids!

And then redehydrate! We went out to celebrate at Cowfish for burgushi and cocktails. We had a sushi foll with rare filet mignon on top that was really delicious. Amanda had a refreshing citrusy vodka drink.

But I had a bourbon drink. It also had some citrus undertones but the show stealer was the candied bacon. As you took a bite you first tasted bourbon dripping from the bacon, then a sweet candy flavor and finally finished off with bacony goodness. I highly recommend it if you have an opportunity 😀

My foot is still hurting unfortunately. I did get it checked out and hopefully it will be better in a few more days but as of now walking more than very short distances is a bit tough. Next race will be easier though 🙂

Rock n Roll Raleigh (now with llamas!)

April 13, 2015 / Amanda / Leave a comment

Hi friends!

We had a fantastic race yesterday where we both PR’d! Which is a slightly bigger deal for me than Steve since this was his first so any finishing time is going to be your best finishing time.

I have always enjoyed reading race recaps from other people so here is my shot at a race recap 😀

We woke up at 4:30am (OMG) because the streets started closing at 5:30am and we needed to get to the parking decks. Yes this early morning wake up is as awful as it sounds. No they don’t get easier with more races.

The race didn’t start until 7:00 am so we had an hour and a half to chill and freeze in the wind. We hopped into a nearby hotel lobby with a bunch of other runners. This was glorious because hotel lobby = toilets that flush! And we were able to wake up a bit before it was time to get corralled!

There were almost 6000 runners doing the Rock n Roll Raleigh Half Marathon this year so they did a wave start to help prevent congestion at the start (thank god!!). I was in corral 4, so I wished Steve good luck and left him to find corral 13.

And then we were off!

Crazy right?!?

I was shooting for 1:50 (8:20 min/mile) so I hung out with the pace group for a while. I also hung out with them because we had the same shoes on and therefore they were cool peeps ya know. The course was mostly downtown Raleigh which has some small rolling hills. Here’s an overview of the course with the elevation profile below it.

The first ~~downhill~~ part was AWESOME. Was nice and relaxed and didn’t have my music on and had a great time! Then around mile 6 we started going uphill. FOR. 3. MILES. It wasn’t all steep. But it was all uphill. This was where I lost the pace group. Which really only happened because I walked through the aid station at 7.2 miles and grabbed a GU (the only fuel I took for the entire race). It was also where I decided that a little extra motivation was needed and I started up the iPod which was a miracle-worker for my morale!

I got my legs back around mile 10 and then promptly lost them on that last steep hill you see at the end of the elevation profile. Ugh. I walked a bit. Not gonna lie.

The finish was right around the corner though! So I picked up the pace for the last 1.5 miles and had some sub-8 min miles there at the end and finished strong at my new PR of 1:50:12!!!

Steve was still on the course so I speed walked through the finisher’s area and grabbed everything that was handed towards me (water, Gatorade, chocolate milk, pretzels, a sandwich, a banana, and a protein bar) and made a beeline for the gear check so I could grab my phone and try to get pictures of Steve.

I think I was a little out of it at this part because I saw a llama chillin on main street! I was like….OMG is that a white llama?!? Why would someone bring a llama to a race?!? Who has a llama in Raleigh?!?….wait…..that’s not a llama….that’s a dog. WTF Amanda…..

Anywho. I was able to catch Steve on his home stretch and ran with him for a bit before I realized that that was stupid cause I just finished a half-marathon and was tired and my feet hurt.

See him in the orange!! Note: we both wore orange for this race. It was embarrassing.

On my way to catch him at the finish line, I ~~hobbled~~ walked past a new patisserie and stopped in to grab some celebratory macarons! (They were incredible and dreamy) If you are ever in the Raleigh area, check out Lucettegrace for some seriously delicious treats.

I’ll let Steve tell you about the race, but we both had a blast!

Race pros:

Plenty of aid stations. I actually skipped 2 (which I rarely ever do).
Awesome spectators!
Great and challenging course
Very organized
Weather was perfect for running (slightly cool and breezy)

Race cons:

So many hills
The finisher area was pretty spread out (I had to walk a while to get to the med tent/gear bag area and to the beer garden)
Streets closed suuuuuper early

See ya later!

PhDeviants

Misadventures in grad school, running, and life