I won granola!!

I'm so excited--I just found out that I won Jenna's MixMyGranola giveaway! I wanted to try the granola for so long but I knew it was out of my price range! But now I get to enjoy its deliciousness! I'll give you all a full report, of course.

The LifeLoveViolin mix was:

-organic muesli base
-dried strawberries
-dried raspberries
-cashews
-hemp seeds (I've wanted to try these for a long time!)
-chia seeds (also wanted to try these!)
-chocolate covered espresso beans (Ya'll know how much I love my coffee!)

I CAN'T WAIT FOR IT TO ARRIVE!! :)

For food reports I'm going to start with breakfast today and work backwards.

I made another omelet but it sort of fell apart. Oh well, it was still good. I sauteed:

1/4 purple onion
1 1/2 big swiss chard leaves
1 tsp (?) garlic

Then mixed it into 1 egg and 1/4 C egg whites, with a little curry powder, garlic salt (very little) and garam masala.


It was OK, but for some reason I just wasn't enjoying it much today. Hmm, don't know why. I ate it anyway for the nutrition, and I topped it with some hot sauce (NOT that hot!) and salsa (also not that hot--I'm not THAT bad ass!)


Meh-I had a banana with it for something sweet. Enjoyed it a bit more.



So yesterday I had a nice busy day. I had a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast with:

-1/2 C oats
(I MISS HAVING PUMPKIN--I will buy some at member day at my local food co-op on Sunday!)
-2 tsp remaining trail mix (mostly sunflower seeds)
-1/3 Gnu Foods PB bar


I added a banana, ff cottage cheese and a spoon of PB. With a side of coffee. :)


But I decided to slice the banana into the oatmeal, which I liked.


I was baby-sitting all day yesterday and it went well. Part of the good thing about watching two growing little boys is that there is meal or snack time every two to three hours. :-D Mid-morning we all had a stick of part-skim mozzarella cheese. And a couple of jelly beans. Then for lunch we made PB and jelly (they had "real" [i.e. natural] PB and jelly without HFCS!) with frozen veggies that I microwaved. Yes, the kids eat their veggies! And milk to drink. A pretty balanced meal, if you ask me. For snack time we had another string cheese stick and I sliced up an orange. It was slightly overripe, making it one of the most delicious oranges I've ever eaten! :)

I left there at 4pm and I wasn't really hungry, but I know I was running right through the afternoon to a performance that wouldn't end till late so I had this protein bar in my car. Rhyme not intended.


The show was AWESOME!! It was really refreshing as I've been feeling a little burnt out with the violin recently. Now, don't get me wrong: there's NO WAY I'm going to quit, and obviously I've had periods of frustration growing up with the violin. I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression here. I know that I'm not going to enjoy every minute of it, and I know that I still love the violin and can't imagine my life without it. But I've been so frustrated lately with a couple of things that I had started considering alternate careers. I am very young (22 years, and yes that's with my master's degree because I started college when I was 16) and I could definitely do something else a little more stable. I've always wanted to do something in the medical field and I wonder if I could at least look into a nursing degree, or maybe becoming a nutritionist/RD. I think I'm going to start looking for one or two classes over the summer at my community college to take; they'd be fun and it would be a start. Kind of just to get my feet wet and see if I like it.

Anyway, now that I've taken a huge tangent and gotten completely off the topic that I had been on, I should get back to that...which was the show yesterday. It was fulfilling to play and I actually enjoyed it, which was honestly the first time in a while. Part of this blog (and a reason for remaining relatively anonymous) is for me to be able to write about stuff that I'm going through/thinking about/having a hard time with and to be able to have your support without too much worrying about what colleagues in the music field would think. For example, I really can't tell anyone in the music field yet that I'm considering alternative careers. It would be too damaging to my reputation, because they'd think I'm not a "serious" musician or whatever! So thanks for letting me post honestly on here.

At the event yesterday, I had a small plate of goodies including some Terra chips, some sort of unidentified cracker (probably healthy, since it was sponsored by the local food co-op here in town--yes the one that is mentioned is having their member day on Sunday and which I am a member of!), some trail mix, and a Light Yuengling beer. (Bottle said 99 calories). Just to give you an idea of what a light weight I can SOMETIMES be, I was definitely feeling it about 3/4 of the way into the beer. Yes, that was WITH Food and it was a light beer. Haha, I'm an anomaly because then there are other days when I can drink 3 beers (or 3 martinis, like last weekend) and be fine. I don't really understand it. Does anyone know why this is? Does it have something to do with how much sleep you've gotten? How much exercise? Metabolism? Anything ideas?

I came home late (tried to go to my gym but it was closed!) and made a real meal of spinach, barley, 2 slices of ff cheese, and salsa. I mixed everything together and it looks kind of gross (apologies!) but it tasted good and was healthy.


I was craving some mad chocolate yesterday night so I had this:

(recycled picture, sorry)

And then I decided that I needed some REAL chocolate so I had some Sirius Icelandic 70% cacao chocolate (available from Whole Foods and really cheap in comparison to their other chocolate).

Plus, my roommate brought me home some Godiva chocolate to say thank you for feeding her pet while she was out of town. She totally didn't have to do that, but it was so sweet of her!!


Here were my two portions of chocolate that I ate.


Yes, that's my phone in the background. I was sitting on my bedroom floor, changing the strings on my back up violin (it's not a great instrument, but I play my traveling shows on it!) Haha, don't follow my example of eating chocolate while working on your instrument!!!

Alright, I don't think I have time to get to the gym! Augh, again! I really need to go, but I also need to practice and I think that's going to win out! I'm going to meet a friend to play a violin/guitar classical duet from 2-3:30, then teach from 4-5, then come home and meet another friend to go to a museum and a concert at a university here in town. So once again, no gym time. I MISS WORKING OUT and think tomorrow I'll actually be able to go!

For now enjoy this video of Nadia Comaneci. It's not the very first perfect 10 she scored, but it was at the same competition. (First one was on the bars!) I know the quality isn't great, but it was 1976, so what do you expect? ;-) I might start posting a series of routines that were all scored at a perfect 10, because I think we can all admire perfection in motion.



Practice time. Then a long, fun day! So see you all tomorrow!