What I’m Loving Wednesday

1. Would you cork your wine bottles with a pickle? I would. Check out this pickle-shaped wine stopper.

This baby can be yours for a mere $7.49 at Gadgets and Gear.

2. Just days after I was secretly wishing that my coworkers would hush their mouths about March Madness, I found myself filling out two brackets. First, I had a chance to win $1,000 from Mellow Mushroom.  The second bracket was to support Ben’s fundraising for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. That fool champion is participating in the NYC triathlon in July. Interested in donating? Do it here!

Blackbaud fully supports the madness. The screens in the cafeteria now show ESPN all day. Nice.

3. Spotted at Target: Cookies & Cream Goldfish! Ahhhhhhhh.

4. On St. Patrick’s Day, Rick’s Chick-fil-A had GREEN lemonade. My favorite drink in my favorite color. I swear, it tasted better.

5. This spring weather! Is March the new May or what? Pool Day #1, CHECK.

Lynn’s pool has these awesome cabanas. Perfect for snuggling 3 deep when a storm passes by. Yup, we cabana snuggled with Easter candy and magazines.

6. Later that evening on our way to dinner, Eric and I caught a gorgeous sunset over the bridge.

7. How many times a day can I listen to this song?

Weekend Update Part II: A Tourist In My Own City

In case you missed it, you can catch up on Weekend Update Part I! Please don’t miss out on my awesome dance moves in that video…

Sunday: Sunday morning, my friend Melissa and I went over to Sandpiper Nursing Home to volunteer. Volunteering twice in one weekend? YES! So fulfilling. Every Sunday, Melissa and 2 of her family members visit the home to do Sunday School with the residents. We listened to her grandmother speak, sang songs, and chatted with some of the residents. They were so cute, and I had to laugh because half of them were either asleep or falling asleep!

A bit later, Rachel and I took advantage of the sunny weather for a bridge run/walk. It was in the low 50s but beautiful out. We walked the majority of the bridge and down the pier at Mt. Pleasant Memorial Waterfront Park for a total of 4.62 miles.

Unfortunately my knee started acting up on the incline of the bridge. I must have done something nasty to it during my 10-miler last week. I told Boding about the pain, and he came right over to the rescue! With him he brought “something to heal the pain, something to dull the pain, and something to forget about the pain.” In other words, he brought over glucosamine pills, wine, and a movie. He truly is my brother from a Chinese mother.

Monday: Rachel and I decided it was imperative that we take advantage of our day off and be tourists in our own city. To start off our day, we walked from her apartment to Gaulart & Maliclet French Café, otherwise known as Fast & French. This quaint little restaurant on Broad Street is one of my new favorites. Its menu has everything from breakfast, brunch, lunch, snacks, dinner, wine, coffee and more!

I had the Croq’ Baguette: ham, Dijon, Swiss & mozzarella. There was so much cheese on this warm, crusty bread. I really wish I had ordered the tomato vegetable soup to dip it in. It was perfect. Even better, my sandwich with tax was around $6. Score.

Rachel’s lunch was just as delicious. She ordered the Sandwich Provencal: black olive tapenade with tomato, basil, and goat cheese on a baguette. If you like olives, you must try this.

We agreed that we have to come back for some wine and cheese…oh, and brunch and dinner too.

Our next stop was Goat. Sheep. Cow. to pick up what we both consider “the best piece of chocolate we’ve ever had in our life.” Remember when I blogged about Sweeteeth Chocolate? Yep, their “Sea is for Caramel” bar is incredible. It was the perfect post-lunch treat.

But dessert didn’t stop there. As we walked from Church Street down East Bay Street, popping in stores here and there, we landed at Charleston Candy Kitchen where snagged a piece of chocolate praline.

We then moseyed down to Market Street Sweets and picked up another praline sample! As if our teeth weren’t already hurting, our final dessert stop was at Godiva where we both got a Crème Brulee truffle. I promise that we both saved this piece for later, as our teeth were at risk of falling out of our heads.

On our walk back Rachel’s, I found my dream house. I’m not in love with the structure, but look at those colors! Hot damn. Purple and lime green are my favorite, but on a house? Yikes.

We covered 4.3 miles and felt like accomplished tourists. My poor knee hates me, but the company and fun was well worth it!

On the way back to my house, I snapped a pretty picture of the sun setting from the Cooper River Bridge.

Oh Charleston, how I love thee.

The Best Workout Motivator Is A Friend!

Monday afternoon, feeling more sluggish than ever after a fun-filled weekend, Mariah and I decided that this week we had to get serious about our workouts. As much as we both enjoy exercising, we felt like we have been slacking off recently and needed some motivation. What’s better than a friend to motivate you?

This afternoon was absolutely gorgeous – 85* and sunny in Mt. Pleasant. We both agreed that being stuck in the gym sounded miserable. It was a must that we exercise outside to not only switch up our routine but get some fresh air! The best place to exercise outside, in my opinion, is the Arthur Ravenel bridge.

Here are my requirements for running the bridge:

• my cell phone/ipod for Pandora
• water
• a good friend
• good weather

Another option for running is something to track your activity. I have run with Amanda, who uses a Garmin to track her runs and loved being able to see the mileage, average pace, etc. Mariah told me about IMapMyFitness+, a cell phone app that is very similar to using a Garmin. I totally forgot that I had downloaded this app a couple weeks ago, and today I got to use it for the first time.

The The bicycle and pedestrian lane on the bridge is 2.7 miles long with a maximum slope of 4.1%. In the past, I have walked the inclines and run the declines. Today, for a more challenging workout, we decided to do 2-minute intervals of running and walking to ensure that we could run and walk both the incline and decline.

While Mariah ran with the Camelbak, I kept track of our time. I warned her every minute that went by so we knew how much more we had to push ourselves while running. We continued these intervals until about 75% over each side and then continued running the rest of the decline.

After we completed both sides of the bridge, we reviewed our workout results.

We were pretty happy, given the incline, the heat, and that we walked a good bit of it. The winds were strong at the top, too, but it felt really nice. Once we stopped running, we realized how darn hot it was and sweat was suddenly pouring into my eyes!

To cool down, we continued down the bridge into Mt. Pleasant Memorial Waterfront Park and down the pier. It was so pretty out!

There are several of these signs around the park.

I have never seen a coyote, but I surely wouldn’t want to walk a dog around there!

If you have a smart phone, I highly recommend using the (free!) app, IMapMyFitness+. It tracks:

• total distance
• total time
• average page
• current pace
• average speed
• current speed

Using the “voice feedback,” you can be updated any of the previous information in intervals from every  minute to every 20 minutes. You can email yourself the results or post to Facebook or Twitter. You can also save your workouts, create routes, add friends who are also using the app, and enter nutritional information! It’s definitely worth checking out.

Do you use a Garmin or other GPS-enabled device to track your fitness activities?

Do you prefer tracking your runs or just running to run?

Ipod, Pandora, or no music at all?

Peanut Butter Banana Bread with Peanut Butter Glaze

The last week that I was a pneumoniac, I skipped the gym and baked up a storm instead. Saturday morning I made a variation of Cooking Light’s Peanut Banana Bread with a Peanut Butter Glaze. This was unbelievably good. It was light, moist, and rich all at the same time. And then the glaze. Oh, the glaze. On a scale of 1 to Titanic, this bread is Titanic.

Ingredients

Bread:

• 1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana
• 1/3 cup plain Greek yogurt (Fage! Fage! Fage!)
• 1/3 cup peanut butter (I used PB&Co. White Chocolate Dreams)
• 3 tbsp. butter, melted
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 6 3/4 ounces all-purpose flour (about 1 1/2 cups)
• 1/4 cup ground flax meal
• 3/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup Reese’s peanut butter baking chips (my special touch!)
• Cooking spray

Glaze:

• 1/3 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tbsp. light vanilla soy milk
• 1 tbsp. creamy peanut butter

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350°.

2. To prepare bread, combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed. Add granulated and brown sugars; beat until blended.

3. Weigh or lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour and next 5 ingredients (through cinnamon) in a small bowl. Add flour mixture to banana mixture; beat just until blended. Stir in peanut butter chips. Pour batter into a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 1 hour and or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove from oven; cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack. Remove bread from pan; cool.

4. To prepare glaze, combine powdered sugar, milk, and 1 tablespoon peanut butter in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk. Drizzle glaze over bread.

I dare you to make this bread and not want to eat the whole thing.

While the bread cooled, I convinced Justin to walk the Cooper River Bridge with me. He had never gone before and it was the perfect weather to be outside: 85* and sunny. We walked the entire bridge – roughly 5.4 miles. At the end I found some gymnastics equipment.

The next day, I gave half of the banana bread to my friend Luke. Apparently during exam time, law school students live in the library and don’t eat. This hurts my heart, so I gave some bread to the needy. Earlier this evening I got a picture message from the library.

True Life Charleston Law: Full throttle, ear plugs, my banana bread.

Who eats banana bread with Full throttle?!?!

“No skim milk in here :(“

G-R-O-S-S.