Author: Marie
My name is Marie and I am a 20-something blogger, social media marketer and dancer. I spend my free time doing what I love - dancing, working out, spending time with my family and friends, cooking just like my Italian family taught me, and baking like chocolate is going out of style. Oh, and drinking really good wine.
For Your Thursday…
A Thought to Take Up the Mountain…
For when you need a Pick-Me-Up…
Sometimes life gets away from us. One minute things are completely calm and the next, you feel like you are spiraling out of control. Nothing seems right, your heart hurts, and your stress level is sending your tear ducts into overdrive.
When my life gets like this, I usually turn to tried-and-true “me things” to make myself feel better. Working out is one of them, dancing is another, baking rounds out the trifecta.
I’ve been feeling pretty down the past couple of days and today wasn’t any better. So I broke out the list. I got up early and got in a (very sweaty) workout at the gym and I have 2 hours of dance later tonight so the one thing missing from my “pick-me-up” list was baking…and only one thing came to mind.
Cookies have always been a comfort food of mine. I’ve made these and these and even these but the recipe today is one that Stephen and I have used over and over again and we’re never disappointed. We have the recipe printed out and we’ve used it so many times, it’s got molasses and dough smears all over it. That’s how you know it’s a good recipe. I wasn’t a huge fan of ginger snaps until he and I made them together – now, they are one of my favorites too.
Ginger snaps are one of those cookies that you probably always have the ingredients for in the house. They have a deep, warm flavor and a melt-in-your-mouth texture… one of those “can’t have just one” type of cookies. And they are easy to make. It’s especially fun to take extra flour and put it all over your special someone’s face – they’ll really enjoy that, I promise. These are perfect to give as a gift or to show that special someone how much you love them. Or you can just come over now and have one while they are still hot… seriously… It’s worth it.
Our Favorite Ginger Snaps
Courtesy of AllRecipes.com
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 TB ground ginger
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup shortening
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup dark molasses
Cinnamon-sugar (for coating)
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Sift flour, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon and salt into a large bowl. Stir to blend.
3. Place shortening in a mixing bowl and mix until smooth. Slowly add the white sugar while the machine is on. Beat in the egg and then the molasses until it is all combined.
4. In batches, slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet until a soft dough forms.
5. Pinch off small pieces of dough and roll into 1-inch balls. Coat the dough balls in the cinnamon-sugar mixture and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.
6. Bake in preheated oven until the tops are rounded, about 10 minutes. Let cool or invite that someone special over while the cookies are still hot!
A Not-So-Normal Wednesday
If you haven’t heard by now, yesterday was Super Tuesday. This is how I spent my day:
– 6:00am: Wake up. Shower. Try to look decent.
– 7:30am: Drive to Vermont
– 9:30am: Keep driving to Vermont.
– 10:00am: Arrive in Brattleboro, Vermont. Scope out election scene at the high school, drive around Smalltown, USA. Shoot lots of video. Buy a shot glass and a stick of maple syrup.
– 10:45am: Ask some guy if we can shoot from his back porch. Guy agrees. We get great footage with minimal tree intrusion.
– 11:00am: Head back to the high school, shoot more video, interview people, do a standup, freeze bum off
– 12:30pm: Get amazing lunch at random, hole-in-the-wall pub.
– 1:30pm: Start driving home.
– 2:00pm: Stop for gas before we run out.
-4:00pm: Arrive at school, return camera equipment, start editing, writing, recording.
-9:00pm: Finish package, figure out chyrons, write other stuff, tweet, tweet, tweet.
– 9:45pm: Go into newsroom. Send texts so people will watch the show. Get on the phone with Skype crew.
– 10:00pm: Live Super Tuesday show. A little rocky, but successful. Vermont package airs. I get 3423 text messages from family and friends telling me they loved it.
– 11:00pm: Go to bar and drink beer with classmates (and prof) on the dean’s tab.
– 11:45pm: Train home. Almost miss stop. Set morning alarm for 5:45 and 6:15.
-12:21 am: Sleep.
– 5:45am: Alarm goes off. Almost throw phone across the room.
It was a long day. Thankfully today, we don’t have class because we had it last night instead. But that doesn’t mean I got to sleep in. Quite the opposite.
I didn’t actually end up rolling out of bed this morning until closer to 6:30. I had to meet the rest of the Unyted Stylz crew at the New England Aquarium at 7:30 for a show. I was nervous that I’d totally miss our call time so I left my apartment just after 6:45 to take the Green Line to Government Center and switch to the Blue. I met up with another crew member waiting for the blue line train and was happy that I wouldn’t get lost the rest of the way.
At the Aquarium, the host of the event was beyond thrilled to see us. When it was time for us to perform, I was pretty nervous since it was my first show with the crew since joining last month. Surprisingly, though, I wasn’t as Oh-My-God-I’m-Gunna-Throw-Up nervous as I normally am before performing. Either way, it was great and the crowd really liked us. And I looked pretty decent in the video we watched after so WIN.
When I got back to my apartment, I made some breakfast, watched Jenna Marbles (anyone else obsessed with this girl? Fun fact: She got her Master’s at BU like me) and tried to make myself look decent for the second time today before heading off to Cambridge to meet up with Alaina for the first time in person!
I’ve been reading Alaina’s blog for a while now and when we figured out we live super close to each other, we decided a blogger meet up/coffee date would be the way to go. Unfortunately, we are both incredibly busy so it’s actually taken months to finally take the time to do it!
We met up at 1369 Coffee House in Central Square, Cambridge just off the red line. I had never been there before and was excited to try it. I ordered a blood cider instead of coffee (who am I?) and it was delicious. Locally produced piping hot apple cider with a deeply aromatic tea steeped in. I also tried the cranberry-walnut muffin which was delicious. Alaina and I talked about anything and everything you could think of: our blogs, running, working out, living in Boston, school… It was great to get to know someone in person that you feel like you have known from reading their blog.
The rest of my day looked like this:
– YouTube videos.
– Nap.
– Oversleep from nap; frantically get ready; train to school.
– Anchor BU’s “Inside Boston”.
– Fro Yo (aka dinner) with a treat-obsessed dance friend.
– Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube.
And now I think I’ll sleep because I have an live guest coming tomorrow to interview on our class news magazine show and I should probably wash my hair and put make-up on in the morning.
How did you spend your Wednesday? Do you have to set three to five alarms to ensure you’ll wake up on time?
Friday Things… and why I can’t feel my legs right now.
I’ve come to a point in my grad school life where I don’t particularly enjoy any day of the week ever. Not even weekends… not even Mondays when I don’t have class. I’m either shooting, editing, making myself look pretty to be on camera, getting yelled at for doing something wrong, working my ass off and only getting B’s, etc.
I know I’m being whiny and annoying. I just hate school.
Okay, I’ll try to stop being annoying now.
If you read the title of this post, you’re probably wondering why my legs are numb at the moment. Well, it’s because yesterday, despite the nasty weather, I decided to get my sweat on in the form of a gym workout (including a treadmill/speed work run) and 3 hours of dance to follow it.
I had 3 miles on my agenda yesterday and after reading Hilary’s “HIIT to FIT” treadmill workouts, I decided to give it a try. I modified it, of course, because that girl can run at a 7:07 pace and that just doesn’t seem conceivable for me since I usually run between 9:50 and 11:00 per mile. Cool.
Here’s my version of Hil’s HIIT to FIT:
3 minutes warm-up, walking at 4.0.
90 seconds running at 6.7 (9:50), 30 seconds running at 5.7 (10:31) –> repeat 4 times.
3 minute recovery, walking at 4.0.
45 seconds running at 7.2 (8:45), 15 seconds running at 5.7 (10:31) –> repeat 4 times.
1 minute recovery, walking at 4.0.
60 seconds running at 7.7 (7:47), 60 seconds running at 6.7 (8:45) –> repeat 2 times.
Walk at 4.0 to round out 30-32 minutes.
Did you keep up with all of that? Well, I was drenched in sweat and my legs were trembling by the end of it. 7:47? Seriously? I was pretty proud of that.
I chased my run with some ab work and a few arm exercises before hopping on the train to go to an hour of ballet.
The second I tried to move when I got to the studio, I knew it was going to be a rough night. My legs felt like lead and even the simplest “failli assemble” seemed too advanced for my sweaty self. Rehearsal was fun as always, but after the hour was up, I headed to a much different rehearsal, knowing I was in for a good ass-kicking.
I recently joined a hip-hop crew in Boston called Unyted Stylz. They are amazing. I promise to explain more about them later but just know that by the end of the 2 hours I spent with them, I was completely drenched, bright red and along with my legs being shot, my right big toe was not doing so well. I think I sprained it…
When I got back to my apartment, I took the hottest shower of my life, microwaved some dinner and passed out with my computer on my lap. Today is a “good hurt, but I’ll take it easy at the gym later” kind of a day.
Tell me: Was your Thursday incredibly sweaty like mine? How do you do your speed work? What do you think about the treadmill… great training tool or way too boring? Do you like microwave dinners? Smart Ones are my fave.
My 10K Goals/This Year’s Lenten Promises
So now that my 10K training has officially kicked off, I have a little less than 5 weeks to prepare for this race. I’ve been hearing a lot of great advice for running my first 6.2 mile road race and one of the most important lessons I need to learn is not to go out too fast.
Funny thing is.. I’m not a fast runner. I chug along anywhere between a 9:45 and an 11:00 minute per mile pace and I’m fine with that. My training mainly focuses around just getting through the distance, but somehow I always manage to clock 8:45’s or less within the first half mile and before long, I’m gasping for air, wondering how I’m going to run the rest of the way.
So in true Chocolate & Wine fashion, I’ve comprised a list of goals for my first 10K.
1. Stick to the plan. It’s posted on my wall, written in pretty colors. It’s not too intense and my cross-training takes the form of long hours of dance. I’ll do strength and abs either in the gym or my apartment. Sweat central.
2. Clean up my diet. I don’t necessarily eat “bad” but I could eat better. I want to consume way more water than I have been and keep other beverages to a minimum. I have also decided to give up Diet Coke for Lent which should be a different goal entirely. In the end, I know it’ll be good for my system and for my running. More salads don’t hurt either.
3. Sleep more. This one should be a no-brainer but we’ll see. Sometimes I like to watch old episodes of “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” on YouTube for hours. I’ve also been on a Disney Channel Original Movie kick. This is what happens when one does not have cable. I need to put the laptop and cell phone down no later than 11pm for the next 5 weeks.
4. Be mindful of pain and injury. I’m a dancer so being sore comes with the territory. But I know the difference between a pulled muscle and something more serious. I don’t exactly like to baby my body or take it easy if I have gloriously sweaty plans but I know during this cycle of training, especially when I have so many dance obligations as well, that I need to keep myself healthy and as injury-free as possible – even if it means taking a rest day and changing around my schedule if need be.
5. Stress less. I could not hate this semester more than I do right now. Hopefully all of these natural endorphins from running and dancing will mellow me out. It’s either that, or I’m going to need a Xanax prescription.
6. Finish the race. I suppose this is important. I have a goal time in mind but I want to see how training goes before I tell the world. Either way, this is my first 10K distance so I get an automatic PR! That’s just as good as a medal.
I think that’s a pretty solid list to go off of. Obviously “sweat a lot” and “avoid puking at the finish line” go without saying, right?
And how about a quick Lenten promise list as well?
1. No soda. Wahhhh! I love Diet Coke but it’s better for my body and my training if I left it out for a while. Plus, giving up soda for good like I did a few years back would be ideal. I’ll work on it.
2. Sleep more. Didn’t we just hear this? Well, it applies for the 40 days of Lent too.
3. No “beverages” during the week. Sure, a glass of wine before bed is great, but I’d like to keep it to just the weekends and make this a regular habit.
Sounds good to me. Fasting begins at midnight. I may be a little cranky tomorrow.
TELL ME!! What are your biggest race goals right now? What are your favorite types of cross-training to do? What do you do to stay injury-free? Are you giving up anything for Lent or making a promise to better yourself and others?
That time I signed up for a 10K
So remember that time I was going to run a 10K and then totally chickened out? Then there was that other time when I accidentally registered for a 5-miler instead of a 5K, but got through it without dying? Well, my friends, two nights ago I clicked a pretty little PAY NOW button and officially registered for my first-ever 10K road race.
Holy. Crap.
The race: The 9th Annual Malden Rotary Road Race 10K
Where: Malden, Massachusetts
When: Saturday, March 24th… a mere 5 and a half weeks away.
But at a $10 student race fee, I couldn’t turn it down. Plus, the prospect of some sweet race swag had me giving them those ten dollars even faster.
I can’t say no to free stuff, especially when it has to do with running (or dance.) The awesome bright green gloves I got from that 5-miler say “Shamrock Running Club” on them and I won’t lie – I love wearing them. I feel like a runner or something.
So where does that leave me training-wise? Well, I’ve got the 5-miler and a few 5Ks under my belt so I already know I can complete the extra 1.2 miles without dying. Will I enjoy it? Probably not at the time, but I’ll do it. Since I kept putting off registering, I now find myself with only 5 weeks to formally train along with a full course schedule, TA-ing and 12 hours a week of dance (oh, did I mention that even after dropping Wednesday night at DanceWorks, I somehow managed to add an additional 4 hours of dance a week? I didn’t mention that? More about that in a different post….), it leaves little wiggle room for hours of running.
So I found a plan that fits just right.
So obviously this plan does not come complete with almost 12 hours of extra cross training per week but as is the life of a dancer/wannabe runner. I’ll be running various mileage 3-4 times a week, totaling from 14-17 miles per week. This is by farther most miles/week I’ve ever done and I’m super excited to start! I’m not going for speed, just endurance and a strong finish (aka don’t collapse at the finish line.)
But let’s be real here… I need some advice.
I want to know…. what advice do you have for me as I train for my first 10k? What works best for you when you train? What should I wear (keep in mind, the race is at the end of March). Share your 10K stories! Any and all advice is appreciated!
February Restaurant Review: The Landing at 7 Central
Happy Valentine’s Day all!! Welcome to my February edition of Chocolate & Wine’s Restaurant Review.
This month, I wanted to find something completely different than anywhere Stephen and I have been. Plus, being Valentine’s Day, we decided to go out on Friday for a nice, quiet evening instead of fighting the crowds today.
I’ve gotten lots of restaurant recommendations (Thanks! Keep ’em coming!) but this is a place I found via Google. I wanted something in the “hidden gem” category and that’s exactly what I found: The Landing at 7 Central in Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA.
I made a reservation for two at 8pm (ya know.. just in case) and we found it pretty easily. It was elegantly lit and very inviting. The hostess sat us right away, directly across from a cozy fireplace.
Our waitress, who’s name escapes me, was friendly and attentive. She took our drink orders and returned quickly with ice waters, freshly baked rolls that were still hot and the most delicious olive oil I have ever tasted. A few minutes later, my Argentinian Malbec and Stephen’s Sam Adams-something-or-other-beer was in front of us. It was efficient service without the feeling of being too rushed.
The menu itself was ridiculous. There were so many options and everything sounded incredible. Things like “Chicken Jessica” and “Pan Roasted Salmon” jumped out at me but in the end, I settled on what I really wanted but rarely get: Seafood Risotto. Stephen got the Prime Rib special.
My risotto was flawless. It had muscles, tender scallops, perfectly cooked shrimp, mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes, all wrapped in a not-overly-cheesy bed of puffed up rice. I had to stop myself from eating too much of it, knowing that I could devour the whole bowl if given the opportunity. (Not that it made it until the next day anyway due to a midnight snack craving but that’s besides the point..) Stephen’s prime rib was perfectly medium rare, accompanied by a blue cheese butter (amazing) asparagus and thick, garlicky mashed pototoes – comfort food for a chilly night.
Tip: Always ask what the special is!
There was only one thing that threw me about The Landing. The tables were set with white linen tablecloths with a blue overlay, lovely cutlery and a single candle. And then, resting on the dinner roll plate, under said cutlery was… a paper napkin? Wait, come again? A beautiful restaurant with paper napkins? Again, it’s small. Tiny even compared to the wonderful time we had but I think a place like that should reconsider the paper and switch to cloth. Just my two cents.
Overall Rating: 9 out of 10.
Just like January, we had another terrific restaurant experience. Wonderful, friendly service, gourmet food, good prices and the perfect atmosphere for any romantic date night out. Be aware that for young adults and students on a budget, it may be a little pricier for you, but still 100% worth it.
But please Landing friends, lose the paper napkins…
I want to know: Do you have a restaurant you’d like me to review? Been to The Landing and have a difference experience than I did? Let me know!
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