Butternut Roasting & Girls Night Out

This has been a crazy week full of loooong days, I think I’m still catching up after a hectic weekend. After the half marathon Sunday, I was pretty useless and lazy for the rest of the day and am still a little sore today. I want to run again tonight, but still debating if I need to rest since my legs and hip are still a little sore. Yesterday was a crazy day that started at 5 AM in the gym and didn’t end until I got home at 10 PM. After work, I met my mom and sisters for a ladies health event, Care Begins With You. Overall I was excited about the event, but not the idea of trying to eat dinner there. For a vegan this was about as good as it gets:

For a health event, the food was anything but healthy! Aside from some fresh fruit and leafy green garnish, it was void of anything I’d usually eat. Instead the offerings were non-vegan sushi, fish skewers, some of the greasiest spring rolls I have ever seen, odd looking fried cheese balls and mushroom stuffed pastries.  Luckily I didn’t go for the food!

While we awkwardly juggled little plates and drinks in our lap, the first keynote speaker came on – Emily Griffin and I really enjoyed her speech about overcoming challenges and accomplishing goals.

But at the same time had trouble relating to her because not a lot of people have the support and resources to complete law school, change their minds and go live in London for a year to try writing. Awesome that she did, don’t get me wrong, but that takes more than just cojones. If money was not an object for me, I’d be able to overcome a lot more challenges as well! But, as someone who enjoys dabbling in fictional writing, I appreciated her detailing how she gets into her characters and researches each story as a monumental project. Her more important and hard hitting point was to never waste time comparing yourself and accomplishments with others and never let a few failures get in the way of your dreams. Sounds great to me, I know I struggle with defeat more than I should.

After the keynote, everyone broke away for the first of 3 half hour sessions for the night, but I opted to skip the first session for a free massage since none of the available topics really applied to me. The massage was weak and fast, but I can’t argue with the price. :-P I did head to an interesting topic in the 2nd session called Keep Moving. In under 30 minutes, I filled an entire sheet with chicken scratched notes with lots of great info on joint health, but the key points were:

• Flax oil, fish oil, Glucosamine, chondroiton, methylsufarmethane, and turmeric are important supplements for joint health. No fish oil for me, but I get plenty of flax oil usually by dumping a spoonful of flax seeds into breakfast smoothies.
• Nothing can rebuild cartilage once it’s lost, but you can protect what you have with regular exercise and movement.
• The doctors hammered over and over again that excess body weight adds a considerable about of stress to bones and joints – duh. :-) But they quoted that 1 lb. of added body weight adds 4 times that in stress on joints.
• Choose diet over supplements and medication when possible, get as much of your nutrients from natural food sources when possible.
• Maintain regular activity always, not exercising for even just a few weeks can be terrible for bones and cartilage. Regular physical activity is what triggers our bodies to rebuild bones. That was a good thing to hear, now I don’t feels so obsessive for hitting the gym even when on vacation. :-)
• For runners, the doctors mentioned that they see fewer injuries for runners than for other sports because runners are usually running regularly while other sports tend to go through less active seasons, then more intense training. And they again hammered how maintaining regular activity was key to bone, joint and cartilage maintenance. Good stuff.

After I moved on to Put Your Best Foot Forward to learn about foot problems where the first part was a series of slides detailing many foot problems with images that were a little too graphical. :-P Truthfully I wasn’t too interested in all that, what I was interested in was shoe recommendation, running considerations, etc. But there wasn’t too much info there except that shoes should be roomy and cushioned and this doctor apparently hates the barefoot running movement due to the lack of research.

Overall a fun event and I actually won a raffle for a basket loaded with bath goodies – score! But I was wiped when I got home around 10 PM.

There hasn’t been too much excitement in the kitchen over the last week with everything else, a lot of reliable favorites I can whip up fast. Between mine and my dad’s gardens, I’m flooded with spaghetti and butternut squashes and that’s not a bad thing. I tried something new with a butternut squash this week, slicing it in half and oven roasting like an acorn squash.

It’s wonderful with a little cinnamon and stevia, very filling and perfect for fall. I’ve always used butternut squash in more elaborate recipes, but peeling, seeding and chopping them is no small task. It was nice enjoying it without all the work this time.

And today I pampered myself with a Whole Foods lunch taking the opportunity to load a salad with veggies I haven’t eaten in awhile and try another flavor of Bragg Vinegar drink.

Thumbs up for grape flavor also, kind of took me back to my childhood years of drinking grape juice, only minus all the sugar and calories. :-) Just not sure how I can translate that flavor into homemade kefir water, hmmmm…