Product Review: a*pour toi

As part of the Oomea critic lunch last month, we received a gift box from a*pour toi to review. a*pour toi has a range of gift boxes from large and luxurious to small and sweet filled with goodies that are supposed to taste good and be on the healthier side. They even have gluten-free and lactose-free boxes. We received the amour chic and chocolate box.

I have a massive sweet tooth, but I’m also a health nut, so I was excited to crack open the box. I recruited Alex as a tester (tough life), and we dove in.

To start, the packaging is lovely. The box is sturdy and definitely reusable, as is the canvas bag inside the box. The design is simple and tasteful. According to the website, you can add your own photograph to the box as well, which makes a nice personalized touch to a gift.

 

 

Okay, so it looks cool, so what? How does everything taste?

 

There were a wide range of items. The box contained:

• Hazelnut spread
• Pate de fruits 
• Strawberry vanilla marshmallow
• Milk chocolate covered hazelnuts
• Chocolate pops
• Vanilla sea salt caramels
• Dark chocolate banana bars

My favorite item was probably the pate de fruits (shocking, since I’m usually obsessed with chocolate) and the hazelnut spread, which tasted simliar to Nutella but was heavier on the hazelnuts. The fruit candies were not-to-sweet and actually tasted like the fruit they were supposed to be, which is always a pleasant surprise!

Overall, everything tasted solidly good and I believe that this would make a great gift box, particularly for a corporate event of sorts. I can see gifting these to sponsors or speakers to thank them for their time and effort. The boxes are classy, the treats are tasty, and they mostly contain real and natural ingredients.

The items are far less processed than a Snickers or a Hershey’s bar, and definitely tasted better. The amour chic and chocolate box retails for $55, which signifies it to me as a luxury item and I will say that the treats in the box are not significantly different in quality or nutritional value than other expensive desserts I’ve enjoyed. Also, at the core, whether the ingredients are sugar in the raw or table sugar or agave, the fact is that the items in the amour chic and chocolate box still contain a sizable dose of sugar (especially if you are eating it all at once, like we were!). I love and regularly indulge in a good treat, so I definitely believe there is room in a balanced lifestyle for this, but I just mean to say that just because the ingredient list is shorter, doesn’t mean it’s automatically healthy.

On the whole, it’s great to see a whole box of items where the ingredient list is recognizable, with pretty sweet packaging to boot. Thank you again to Oomea and a*pour toi for giving me this box of goodies to try!

Please note: I received the a*pour toi chic and chocolate gift box for free. I was not compensated in any way by a*pour toi or Oomea for my opinions stated here. These are my personal views on the product.

March Goals: Building Momentum

This was supposed to go out last week and I found it in my drafts folder! So pretend for a minute it’s last Wednesday and read on!

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Whoa, March is pretty much over – can you believe it?! I posted 2-3 times per wek for the first two weeks and then last week slipped away from me. This is my first post this week too, so I better get on it!  The great part about writing more is that more ideas come to me – the power of momentum!

Momentum is so important in creating new habits. When I was in high school, I worked out regularly and played badminton (I got a varsity letter and everything). My first semester in college, I was having so much fun with new friends that working out and eating healthfully weren’t priorities and I gained the freshman 40 (in 3 months!). It was easy to just let the tide of staying up late, eating crap, and taking naps sweep me away.  I didn’t care so much about the weight gain, but I knew I could feel better physically and mentally. My second quarter, I started doing tae kwon do and hitting the gym again, and making more balanced food choices and felt so much better!

I think the story illustrates that momentum can take you in any direction and you have to intentionally build it towards the goal you want to achieve. And it’s not always foolproof. This morning Alex and I were supposed to get out for 10 mile training run and I am in my pajamas with a cat on my lap catching up on email and getting some work done instead. But hopefully our general training momentum will carry me through the run tomorrow, which will propel me on to the next one.

Building momentum toward a goal takes effort – it’s not easy! I have tried and failed many times to build momentum towards certain goals like learning German or keeping my house tidy or checking Facebook less. Momentum takes time, and sometimes I just don’t have the time or energy to put into a particular goal. Here’s a great article from Zen Habits on harnessing the power of momentum.

Some quotes for you from a wide range of folks today:

Sometimes thinking too much can destroy your momentum.

- Tom Watson, pro golfer

 

Success requires first expending ten units of effort to produce one unit of results. Your momentum will then produce ten units of results with each unit of effort.

- Charles J. Givens, author

 

Enthusiasm is the energy and force that builds literal momentum of the human soul and mind.

Bryant H. McGill, author/speaker/activist 

 

Most of life is routine – dull and grubby, but routine is the momentum that keeps a man going. If you wait for inspiration you’ll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street.

- Ben Nicholas, Australian Actor

 

The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.

Frances E. Willard, women’s suffragist 

March Goals, Week 3: Community

It’s week three of our March goal challenge, and the first day of spring! And I could talk about renewal and new growth and all that. But really, I’m feeling fresh out of motivational mojo today, so I’m keeping it short.

I created my goal setting group, and I blog here, to be in community with other writers and people that love food and exercise and living well.  I’ve recently read a rash of blog posts on the value of blogging (so meta), and I commented on one that we choose to blog rather than journal for a reason. We hope that someone will read our words and have a “hey, me too!” moment or say “actually, I feel differently, and let me tell you why.”

We hope that our reflections will spark something in others – whether it be motivation to get in the kitchen or hit the pavement, or sit down and start a blog of their own. I am here because of so many great bloggers out there that share not only recipes and workout routines but peeks into their lives. 

Showing up for each other is powerful stuff. Not everyone does it. Certainly not online, but also not in the real world. It can be easy to isolate ourselves and feel like we don’t want or need help. But I fully believe that to achieve all that we want to as individuals and as a society, we’re going to need to do it together. There are many ways to do it, and blogging is just one way of sharing stories and relating to one another. 

I guess that didn’t end up being that short so I’ll wrap it up with some quotes about community:

 

“Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.” 
― Ruth Reichl

 

“Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to.” 
― Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

 

“A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members – among them the need to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy.
(pg. 63, “Racism and the Economy”)” 
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

 

“Everybody is a story. When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their stories. We don’t do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way the wisdom gets passed along. The stuff that helps us to live a life worth remembering.” 
― Rachel Naomi Remen

 

“[Neighbor is] not he whom I find in my path, but rather he in whose path I place myself, he whom I approach and actively seek.” 
― Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation

Your Tips for Self Care During Training

Happy St. Patty’s Day everyone! Instead of getting out to the bars at  7 am, we slept in and went out for a run instead. I didn’t even have any green to wear, but I’m making up for it now by wearing green pajama pants and a green tank top. The cats are mighty impressed with my Irish spirit (right).

We ran about 13 miles. It ended up being 12.5 miles because the very end included some of the steepest hills in San Francisco, so we decided that counted for extra miles (or something). The turnaround point for our run included a high ten at Hopper’s Hands.

Ken Hopper was a Golden Gate Bridge iron worker turned suicide rescue volunteer that noticed runners slapping the fence as they turned around at the dead end; so he asked to have a high ten put up so runners would have a goal. For more information, check out this SF Examiner article.

At the end of our run, we visited the new Bi-Rite Market on Divisadero to pick up lunch. The market just opened last Wednesday, and it’s lovely. We picked up sandwiches and some other snacks, and I couldn’t help sneaking a few other photos. 

We took our goodies up to Alamo Square for an impromptu picnic lunch.

A lunch of green things for St. Patty’s Day!

Sweaty but happy!

Such a clear and beautiful day.  I feel so lucky that we’re able to run in San Francisco where we can set off at 10:30 am for our long run. I know I follow bloggers who live in Florida who have to head out super early, or those that live on the East Coast where they are kept inside by snow for at least a few months of the year.

All in all, it was a great run and a great day, but I definitely didn’t want to do much other than hang out on the couch for the rest of the afternoon. I have noticed that as we ramp up our mileage, I’m experiencing more fatigue during the week. I traveled a lot during my last marathon training season a few years ago and felt like I was tired all the time for a lot of reasons.

This time, the only change is an increase in running and I’m wondering if there are any long distance runners lurking out there that can offer advice on what has worked for them to stay happy and healthy. I got really sick last time during training and would really like to avoid that this time. I’m definitely trying to get more sleep and not run around quite so much, but if you’re out there and have the magic formula, do share in the comments!

 

March Goals, Week 2

I hope everyone has recovered from the DST shift. I’m still mourning the loss of my morning sunlight and have resigned myself to running in the dark for a bit. But on the other hand, we went for a walk to pick up our CSA this week and it was a lovely evening, so I guess that’s the trade off!

 

When it comes to goals, sometimes it seems like there are trade offs as well, whether it’s time or money or another commitment or social interactions. As much as I wish I could, I can’t write a blog post while cooking dinner and talking to Alex at the same time. Writing requires me to sit down and focus, at least for a little while. I imagine it’s the same for many other goals – learning a language, eating healthier, exercising, etc. They all require us to take something (usually time) from one aspect of our lives and direct it a different way.

 

And, at least for me, that’s not always easy. There are so many things I want to do and how will I ever get them all done?! The truth is, I won’t, and I want the things I do get done to be quality. I don’t want to dash off a three sentence blog post because I’m doing five other things at the same time (it’s happened!) 

 

But then there are the payoffs of that focus. For me, it’s getting  a well thought post up on the blog and knowing that even if people don’t read it, at least it was thoughtful (which hopefully means more people will enjoy it!). Or when it comes to marathon training, it’s finishing a long run and feeling good because I’ve been training consistently. Maybe I had to go to bed at 9 pm on Friday night and get up to run on Saturday morning, but then my body and mind feel great at the end of the run. 

 

The “too long, didn’t read” version of this post  is that sometimes we have to accept that there are going to be tradeoffs because it’s impossible to put all of our time into everything all at once. But that while we’re giving up something, we’re likely gaining something too, which might be even better than the thing we’re giving up. 

 

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus. 

Alexander Graham Bell 

 

Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.

Tony Robbins 

 

Do whatever you do intensely.

Robert Henri

 

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, that is way great spiritual giants are produced. Swami Vivekananda 

 

Have a great weekend!

My First Ever Blogger Lunch at Delarosa

Happy Monday Wednesday everyone. I meant to get this post up on Monday, but it just didn’t happen. I’ve been a little little sluggish this week; I’m not sure if it was staying out until 11 pm on Friday night (I know, party animal!), running 12 miles on Saturday, or the time change, but I moved as slow as the blackstrap molasses that I put in the barbecue sauce I made this morning. (The recipe is from Ashley at edible perspective, and it’s divine.)

Or perhaps I’m still climbing out of the food coma that I went into on Sunday after dining at Delarosa with the group of critics that write for Oomea.com, a newly launched restaurant review platform. I applied to be a critic for Oomea about six weeks ago, and have been writing reviews for them since. If you live in the Bay Area, or are planning to travel here soon, check out the site to find reviews written by a cultivated group of bloggers (including yours truly). I don’t plan to write very many restaurant reviews here unless it’s a very special or unique meal, but please check out the site if you’re interested on what I have to say about the SF food scene!

In all honesty, I was nervous about this lunch. Though I’ve been writing here for a few years, I haven’t claimed to be a blogger. I have been a student, a fellow, an employee but I never bring up this little place I come a few times a week. I have a lot of thoughts on what it means to step up and own my thoughts here in a more public way, and the responsibility and privilege that entails, and I plan to share them here later this week.

But today I wanted to just share a few shots of the wonderful food at Delarosa that I was invited to partake in. Thank you so much to Oomea for hosting such a wonderful lunch for all of us to connect! It’s a funny thing to be at a lunch with all bloggers – I didn’t have to surreptitiously pull out my camera to snap a photo. Of course, I forgot my actual camera, so I had to make do with my phone.

We started with a pea bruschetta and burrata bruschetta with honey and hazelnuts. The pea bruschetta was so colorful and appropriate for spring (or maybe Christmas). The burrata was creamy and indulgent.

There were also two salads, a “beet Carpaccio” with truffle oil and arugula and a kale Caesar (unpictured as I couldn’t partake due to the anchovy dressing).

The next course was a smoked mozzarella and eggplant pasta dish. Although it was a touch oily, the smoky flavor of the mozzarella was bold without being overwhelming, and the eggplant was silky smooth.

My absolute favorite dish was the fried Brussels sprouts. It came with a caper aioli, but they didn’t need it. They were perfectly crunchy and had the perfect amount of bitter bite. I could eat them all day! I mean, I know fried is fried, but they’re probably healthier than chips, right? RIGHT?!

We also had two beautiful thin crust pizzas. One had a variety of mushrooms which I enjoyed, but the cheese overwhelmed the mushroom flavor and it felt greasy overall to me. But the burrata margherita was divine. I don’t eat cheese that often, but when I do, I like it to be good. The burrata was creamy and mellow, a perfect complement to the fresh basil and tangy tomato sauce. The crust has a nice crunch and didn’t get too soggy at the tip. (I’m also looking at their menu now and realizing that they have a pizza with no cheese and vegan cheese as an option as well, so it’s good to know it’s vegan friendly!)

And last but not least, we had some amazing desserts. A molten chocolate cake, a creamy vanilla gelato with olive oil and salt, and the famous de la rosa donuts with three dipping sauces. I restrained myself to a few bites of each one so that everyone could have a taste, but it was tough!

The whole day was so much fun; Oomea also needed new headshots for the website, so a photographer came out and did a photo shoot at the Palace of Fine Arts. I walked around a bit beforehand and snapped a few of my own. I hadn’t actually walked the whole lagoon before! My best headshot is now on my updated “About” page, so please go check it out. Many thanks to Quan Pham for making me look way less awkward than I felt!

Please note: The lunch provided by Delarosa was paid for by Oomea. All opinions about the food are my own. 

Marathon Training Confessions

We are two weeks back into marathon training after my three week break from running. My hip is doing fine, and the only pain I’m feeling are the spots where I expect it, so I continue to indulge my love hate relationship with my foam roller. I introduced Alex to the foam roller this weekend; he said it looked painful. I didn’t correct him.

Other training thoughts:

• I love Clif energy gels. As crunchy-granola-hippie as I am, I really really love these packets of sweet, gooey, energy. Do I know dates are also pure glucose and infinitely more natural than a packet of sugar, without the waste? Yes, I do. But they don’t taste like frosting, they don’t have caffeine, and I have to chew them. Maybe next training cycle I’ll switch to dates, but this time, I’m sticking to what I know works. (Plus I bought two boxes of energy gels already!)

• Learning to blow a snot rockets during runs changed my life. I say this not to gross anyone out, but to encourage runners everywhere to snot out instead of snuffling in. Bonus – your shirt sleeve does not get soggy and gross with mucus.

• Coffee and toast are officially our post-long run tradition. Sorry to anyone at The Mill yesterday morning who had to sit within a few feet of us as we noshed on the thick, delicious slices of bread and re-energized with a latte. I’m sure looking at our sweaty faces was not your idea of a relaxing Saturday morning. It was nice to have partner in crime back this week!

• I can’t decide if it’s better or worse that I know what I’m getting myself into with this race. I know better when to push and when to rest, but I also know the feeling of “OH MY GOD, HOW WILL I EVER RUN 6.2 MORE MILES?” after a 20 mile training run. Sorry for the excessive use of caps, but the voice inside my head is definitely yelling when she says it.

• Running is still hard. People sometimes think I have some super human capacity for running because I’m marathon training, but I still struggle through 4 mile runs sometimes. I humbly submit that training for a marathon is more about your mind than your body. I used to not be able to run a mile. Some people hate running, totally cool. Some people run and don’t race, also cool. As I was trying to talk my friend Allie into running a 5k with me, she said, “I’m just not interested in doing that.” It was a good reminder for me that we all run for different reasons. My point is though that I started off huffing and puffing through walk/running a mile and short of any major health issues, I believe most people can run a marathon, should they be interested in doing so.

Have a happy Sunday!