Healthy hotel dinner

On my weekdays here in Dallas I stay at a Residence Inn. I choose to stay here over much more luxurious accommodations because of one reason only: the kitchen. It's a humble kitchen - two stovetop burners, a microwave, a basic set of pots/pans/utensils, a sink, and a fridge - but it's trusty and it keeps me from stuffing my face with Chipotle every night.

Over the months I've been playing around with different recipes for dinner. But sooner or later I always come back to this one - it's definitely become my default and favorite meal. And if I can make it after a long day of work in my little kitchen, I bet you can too!

The players: egg, quinoa, chicken broth, kale, brussel sprouts, tilapia, s+p, evoo, sriracha, and sesame oil.

In an ideal world I'd get fresh veggies and fish every day, but frozen and bagged varieties are a bit more realistic for my schedule and also keep longer.

Start by thawing your tilapia - I leave mine in a bowl of cold water for about 15 minutes. Get the quinoa going in a saucepan. I use about 2 parts chicken broth and 1 part water for mine.

Now that your fish and your quinoa are heating up in their respective vessels, it's time to face the veggies. Chop up your sprouts and place them in a pan with some evoo. I like to have the bottoms of mine nice and crispy, so I arrange them "face" down. I give them about 5 minutes of alone time in the pan because they can take a while to cook through.

Next up: kale. The Cinderella of vegetables. Not really glamorous when left neglected and undressed. But give it some water, some sriracha, some fairy dust (ok, sesame oil) and throw it in the pan - and something magical happens: it becomes delicious.

At this point your fish should have de-thawed. Since both of my burners are occupied, I continue to use my veggie pan by making some space in the middle and placing my filet there.

Tilapia and her entourage of vegetables.

Some seasoning and nimble flipping and voila, a nicely cooked chunk of fish. By this time your quinoa should be looking pretty fluffy and ready for consumption too. At this point I plate the veggies, quinoa and fish, cover them, and rest the contraption on top of my steaming saucepan to keep it nice and warm while I tackle the last hurdle: one teeny egg. Time to whip out the teeny egg pan!

I should patent this strategy.

Hold me closer, teeny pans-a.

This thing is pretty awesome. I bought it on a whim at Kroger for $4.00 and it has revolutionized the way I cook eggs. Not only does it prevent them from running all over the place as they tend to in normal-sized pans, it also has a fabulously non-sticky coating, which means gone are the days when I'm the sucker left scraping egg remnants off my pans! I highly recommend getting one especially if you find yourself cooking foreveralone a lot of the time.

Let the pan do its heat-distribution magic while you give the egg some s+p love. Then, assemble it with the rest of your goodies, et voila. You are done my friend.

I love this meal because it's simple, filling, nutritious and offers plenty of opportunity to customize or change up the ingredients. The quinoa and veggies also keep well - I usually make extra to bring for lunch the next day or to repurpose for tomorrow's dinner, when I'll make the egg and fish anew.

So there you go - a classic recipe from ole Granny Rose's cookbook. I hope this post has sparked interest in trying this meal. Or at the very least made you want to get a teeny egg pan. Because if there's only one take away from this post, it's that you should invest in a teeny egg pan. Huzzah!

Attack the Mack(inac)!

Two weekends ago, I joined the boy and his family on a vacation to Mackinac Island, Michigan.

Fun facts about Mackinac Island:

• It is located between the northernmost point of Michigan's "hand" and the southernmost point of the Upper Peninsula (where the "yoopers" live)
• Spelling withstanding, it is actually pronounced "Mackinaw" island (though I found myself accidentally pronouncing the "c" ending a few times! It just felt so wrong otherwise.)
• On the main land nearby there is an actual Mackinaw City, pronounced the same way. Go figure.
• There are no cars on the island
• The island is famous for fudge
• There are a lot of horses on the island
• And subsequently, a lot of horse poop
• The horse poop is constantly being scooped/cleaned up from the street every night...
• ...and every morning fresh new batches of Mackinac's famous fudge appears in the sweets stores...

Just kidding - the horse poop is used for compost. Or so we were told.

Much of our first day was spent in transit to actually get to the island. To do so, we parked our car, took a ferry to the island, and then hailed a "taxi" (horse-drawn carriage) to our condo. The taxi ride felt magical. I spend so much time in rapid, stressful transit - cars, planes, trains - that it was wonderfully absurd to find myself being pulled along at a whopping four miles per hour through winding trails in the woods. The horses' slow, steady clip-clopping was a relief from the sounds of engines revving, their languid gait a welcome respite from rage-inducing inter-city commuting.

A typical taxi.

The boy, his brother and I were the last to arrive; upon doing so, we received our vacation t-shirts (an annual tradition). This year's featured a nippled, lazy-eyed, big-of-belly horse licking an ice cream cone in front of the Mackinaw bridge, all mapped upon lush blue cotton, courtesy of Ann Arbor Tshirt Company. A triumphant piece that will stay in style for many seasons to come.

Once we'd settled in and finished exploring our (very cool) condo, we headed outside to play before the sun set while a tasty salmon filet sizzled on the grill.

We approve of the condo!

Blue-shirted volleyball

Oberon and salmon, a very Michigan meal indeed.

After dinner, we celebrated the boy's 27th birthday by opening up presents and singing Sto Lat! Does 27 make him too old to be called the boy on this blog?

Happy birthday, cutie.

Mustache glass complimentary of yours truly.

The next day we slept in, had breakfast, and set out for kayaking. It should be noted that almost all of our commuting here on out was on foot as our condo was two miles away from the downtown area. I really enjoyed walking; not only did it provide an opportune time for conversation, we also enjoyed some beautiful homes and views throughout our languid strolls to and fro.

A quirky back yard we passed by on our way downtown.

$10M lakefront mansions.

Goofing around in front of the West Bluffs viewpoint.

Entourage.

We went kayaking along the coast of the island, which offered some stupendous views of the water and shores. Perhaps more stupendous though was the arm workout I got.

In the afternoon we spent some time in the downtown area, which was very touristy (think fudge shops, ice cream and souvenir stores that sell t-shirts with jokes on them). We also popped by the one and only grocery store to grab ingredients for dinner, which was a grand affair of a guacamole brushetta starter, shrimp pasta, summer vegetables, and fresh berries for dessert. And champagne, of course.

We also pulled out one of the boy's new presents, Bocce Ball, and gave it a whirl in the yard:

Bocce ball was only a warm-up though for the real competition that was before us: the J family games! We competed in a series of mini challenges, including see which duo could throw/catch an unboiled egg the farthest distance, who could toss a frisbee into a designated area, who could mark the most of our 48 continental states on an empty map of the US, and who could score the most in a very random game of trivia.

Despite not getting any frisbees in the landing zone (no motor skills ever), I managed to win the egg toss with the boy as my partner in crime, tie his brother in naming 41 of the 48 states correctly  (my strategy for the ones that stumped me in the midwest was to label them all as Kansas), and win the trivia game, culminating in me becoming the ultimate champion of this year's 2013 J family vacation games and recipient of a highly-envied Starbucks gift card - huzzah!

Though I think we should've celebrated my championship with Cristal and EDM blasting into the wee hours of the morning, we hit the hay early that night as the next day required an early start. On our agenda were parasailing, lunch at the illustrious Grand Hotel, bike riding, and dinner at The Woods, an aptly-named restaurant just a few minutes from the condo.

I'd never gone parasailing before, so I took my camera and recorded some footage, most of which was comprised of me waving my piggies in the air whilst singing Justin Bieber.

Seeing the other members of the J family parasail was quite the photo opportunity. A big, colorful billowing kite with two tiny people attached to it against the big blue-and-grey sky.

Parasailing turned out to be a really fun and surprisingly relaxing activity - I'd definitely do it again. It's the closest sensation to flying that I've felt to date.

All of our airborne excitement had worked up some pretty grand appetites, so it was only fitting that we lunched at the historic Grand Hotel. The Grand is well known for its old-school grandeur and for its impressive suite of political and historical visitors. It was beautifully decorated and the service was immaculate. The lunch buffet was good, but not anything to write home (or in a blog) about.

After lunch, we strolled around the Grand's balcony and enjoyed the sunshine before walking back and grabbing some bikes to get a tour of the island.

Biking gave me a whole new perspective on Mackinac. Gone were the fudge and the cacophony of tourism; in their place, just empty, smooth trails, perfect for our bikes. I loved seeing the beautiful shorelines sprinkled with cairns. And I got a leg workout that rivaled the arm one I'd gotten earlier that day.

After a two-hour ride, we returned the bikes near the condo, happy and exhausted. The evening ended with dinner at The Woods, a restaurant located in its namesake. The dark ambience and rustic, old-school hunting theme reminded me of my experience at Next's "The Hunt" menu.

After scarfing down our thoroughly delicious meals, we walked back to the condo, settled into the comfy couches, and put on Somewhere in Time, an old Christopher Reeve film that was shot in the Grand Hotel. It was eerily familiar to see the scenes on the balcony and in the dining rooms where we had just been hours before. And in a classic Rose move, I fell asleep about fifteen minutes in the movie - I even beat the boy's brother, a sleep-deprived surgeon, to snoozeland!

As the saying goes, all good things have to come to an end. The next morning we packed up all our things, got on the ferry, and bid adieu to Mackinac. I think three days was the perfect amount of time to spend on the island. We got real lucky with the gorgeous weather, the wonderful condo, and the fact that everyone could be together to spend some time in this beautiful place. While I think I'd go crazy and grow startlingly obese if I lived on the island full-time, I'd definitely go back for another getaway (getaway).

Existence updates + 100 mile challenge

The past couple of months have been pretty hectic for ole Granny Rose, but in good ways. Among other things, I have been involved in Away Day 2013 both as a planner and a talent show contestant, transitioning from a Business Analyst role to a Project Manager/Iteration Manager position on my project, embarking on a series of mini-vacation/adventures every other weekend, and moving into the boy's condo - all while still traveling every week and nursing a broken hand, yowza!

The bad news is that my itty corner of the internetz got a bit neglected in all of this excitement. The good news is that much of the dust has settled and I feel mostly normal/inspired to blog again. Away Day is over (thank jebus), my hand is mostly healed, and both moving and role transitioning are going fairly smoothly.

Here's some fun footage from the Away Day talent show. Fast forward to the five minute mark to check out the act that I'm in, "Matrix Ping Pong."

In essence, my "talent" was to go up on stage in front of 500 of my colleagues in a full-body skin suit, crouch down with my face four inches away from somebody's butt, and half-blindly execute a complex series of movements, all while trying not to be seen, heard, or to pass out from the lack of oxygen. Huzzah!

As for the various vacations I've been on... well, they really deserve their own posts, and at least the most recent trip, Mackinac, will get one. So look for that in the near future.

Now that I'm splint-free, I've been really eager to get back into running. So much so that I've been pursuing something called the 100 mile challenge. It's very simple - the challenge is to run 100 miles in a month or any other 31-day time span, which averages out to roughly a 5k every day. What I like about it is that this challenge requires diligence and consistency, two qualities I want to improve in as a runner. 

I'm currently on day two and have exactly seven miles under my belt - so far so good! Both days' runs have been on the hotel treadmill and therefore logged manually on Endomodo. While I prefer running outside, it's just not really feasible here in Dallas in July when the feel temperature easily reaches 100+ F (37+ C) and there's a heat advisory almost every day. 

At the end of the challenge I hope to see some improvement in my 5k time. My best time ever was in the Austin Gorilla run (go figure) with a 23:01 5k, or a 7.5 minute mile average. Right now I'm easing into the routine with a pace around an 8.5 to 9 minute mile. But my goal will be to gradually increase that speed through some interval training and hopefully beat my personal best - and then some (I've got my eye on you, sub-20 5k!). But really in the grand scheme of things, even if I don't go super duper fast, just getting through all 100 miles without breaking any more bones will be something I'll be proud to say I did. 

Oh, and in anticipation of/as a reward for me completing the challenge, the boy has made reservations for two at The Girl and the Goat for the end of August. If that isn't enough motivation to get my ass on at treadmill, then I don't know what is!