First post

Hi, my name is Emma and I'm here to document my love for cooking and physical activity. In the next few months, I hope to share the making of countless meals, both healthy and 'unhealthy' and perhaps also to track reaching my goal of doing a triathlon at the end of the summer. Welcome along! Here it goes:

Today started pretty early: At 6:30 I had two nice slices of cinnamon challah! bread with peanut butter and extra cinnamon. It was delicious, but sadly, unpictured. Maybe next time!

Then I went for a 30 minute swim (I figure about 800 meters). I alternated between front stroke, back stroke and the breast stroke. I'm sort of a beginner... I mean I know how to swim the strokes and stay afloat, but I am looking to build up some major endurance. I was able to get to 3 lengths of the pool (front stroke) without stopping and I was able to do 5 lengths of the breaststroke without stopping. This was my second day of swimming, so I was pretty happy with how I did this morning!

After swimming and getting cleaned up, I went to work. At about 11am I was ravenous, so I feasted on maybe a cup of red curried vegetables with about a cup of white rice (I know, I know, white rice.... I made do with what I had..). It satisfied me for the time being.

At about 2:00pm, I had a half of a sweet potato with jazzed up broccoli (1c) and 1-1.5 oz of feta cheese. It was really good!

I got out of work at 4pm and quickly went home to snack on a frozen chocolate covered banana:

Ok, I know this may look kinda weird, maybe a little gross, but I swear it was tasty. I froze a banana, then melted some ~1T dark chocolate chips with some coconut milk. Then I covered the banana with the melted chocolate mixture. In hindsight, I would definitely recommend a skewer of some sort!

A little while later, I cooked up some red fried rice based off of a Moosewood cookbook recipe:

1.5 c. white rice

1/3 cup sun dried tomatoes

red onion

red bell pepper

olive oil

pinch of red pepper flakes

a few shakes of Frank's red hot

3 garlic cloves

2T grated minced ginger

a couple pinches of salt

2 T red cooking wine

2T soy sauce

I boiled some white rice (1.5 cups). While that was cooking, I oiled the pan and threw in the red pepper flakes and hot sauce. After that came the red onion, ginger and garlic, which I cooked until the red onion was nice and tender. After that I threw in the red bell pepper, the "steamed" and chopped sun dried tomatoes and salt. I let that sit for a few minutes. After that, I threw in the rice, wine and soy sauce.

There were some other things in the original that I didn't have (fresh basil) or didn't really like (scallions), so I just left them out. I'm sure they would have added some extra something, but I still really liked how it turned out!

I after dinner I cleaned up a little bit, sat down for a few minutes, then decided to go for a bike ride (about 35 mins).

That's it for tonight! See you in the morning!