Reading machine

I am, that is. Here's some more books that I have currently started and am reading through all of them. (My brain likes having lots of books started).


The first one is a very dorky biography of (arguably) the most famous violin teacher ever. She taught at Julliard and 6 other universities and almost EVERY major violinist out there today has studied with here. Being a teacher of so many students, I'm REALLY enjoying this book and the ideas I'm learning from it.


I have somehow never read this, so I picked it up to read during some of my travels and it's quite good, even though I've only gotten through the first four chapters. Nothing quite like the "Ministry of Love". You'll know what I mean if you've read it.


This is an interesting comparison of religious traditions between the Orthodox Jewish and the Christian faiths. I identify with Christianity, while my grandparents are Jewish. So seeing the similarities is fascinating.


This is such a sad book. Jennifer is misunderstood by doctors for years of treatment and in a horrific case of anorexia, it ends up taking her life. This makes me hate ED that much more, for all the damage he has rampaged on beautiful, amazing young women!

Finally, this was my breakfast this morning. Kashi GoLean, strawberries and 0% Greek yogurt (from TJs). Plus coffee.

I didn't have any fat though, so I got hungry right away and I had a slice of ww bread with hummus and lf cheese.


I'm going to leave you with a video of my current song obsession. It's called "Erasers on Pencils" by Ceili Rain. They are an Irish band and this song speaks of forgiveness for imperfection. If you're religious it could be seen from the point of view as being forgiven for sins, but even if you're not, I think it's so helpful to see it as a reminder to forgive ourselves when we make mistakes. I know that I've wrestled with perfectionism for years (OK, to be honest, I still do, some days more than others!) and this song is so comforting. (The video is made in-studio but it's the best I could find.)



Have a lovely day! I'm off to get a deep tissue massage (being a violinist = chronically sore upper back/shoulders), then workout, then practice! And I have a FREE Friday night! No gigs, no rehearsals!! WOOHOO! But I have no idea what to do with myself! It will be enjoyed though! I'm interested in seeing Food, Inc. Have any of you seen it? What were your thoughts on it?

And so the hiatus ends...

Hi everyone!

I am so sorry for being gone SOOOO long! It's been over a month since my last blog! Wow, talk about negligent. What have I been up to? Well, I've played 3 weddings and prepared for 5 more coming up in August, played 8 shows, taught more lessons that I can count (~50, maybe?), moved to another house and mostly unpacked all my stuff, went camping with my boyfriend and his parents, finished three books, and started some others. There's been some other stuff of course, but that's most of it.

I'm mostly going to catch you up on a few blog-worthy meals that I've had on my camera for a while now.

Cold Uncle Sam's cereal with strawberries and raisins. So good!



I also had several amazing bowls of oatmeal. Here's a popular one:

-oats
-one chopped fig
-raisins
-cottage cheese
-P B (you can't see it, but I always have some kind of nut butter with most meals. I'm discovering how much better I feel consistently with a fairly high fat diet. Who knew?!)

***

Some sort of ww pasta, zucchini combo topped with feta cheese. I make wonderful "bachelorette style" meals...aka, throw together a bunch of healthy ingredients that I like and I'll probably like the finished product! :)


With an apple.

One of my more favorite snacks. :)


Tuna and spinach salad. Kind of plain, but delicious. I mixed the tuna with light Italian dressing.


And had these on the side. They are SOOO good; quite addictive actually. They are a new product and come in many different varieties including almond, cashew, mixed nut, and the honey roasted peanut shown below. Sorry about the blurry picture. I REALLY wish they were slightly less expensive because even on sale they're $2.50 a bag and the bags are small (I.e. no where near 5 servings that it says it has!)


As a self-proclaimed chocoholic, I had to try this when I found it at an out-of-town market.


It was quite good, and yes, I ate the whole bar.

I went to the Warped Tour, mostly to check it out (and my ticket is tax-deductible because I'm a full-time musician (job perks!) I unfortunately missed actually seeing Flogging Molly perform (the reason I went!) but I snapped a few pictures afterwards at their autograph table. They are an Irish punk rock band and I love them! They are one of my favorite bands ever and their music has powered me through more workouts that I can count.


Here are a few of the books that I've read or I am reading:


Purple Cow is an EXCELLENT book on marketing one's self especially in today's economy where a traditional advertising approach doesn't work. The premise is that if you're driving along and you see a cow by the side of the road, that's kind of cool. But if you keep driving they just start to get boring or even annoying. But if you suddenly, in the midst of the brown cows, saw a purple cow, well that would be remarkable. Even though I don't have a traditional job, it made me look at my profession in a different light and to try and brainstorm ways to be different and more exciting than all the other violinists out there.


I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone under 30 or 40, especially if you don't have a great knowledge of all things financial. I really don't know much at all, and it's been so helpful to me! It's written in plain, down-to-earth English, with helpful and easy-to-understand definitions and graphs. I've only gotten to the first 3 chapters, but I'm excited to read more.


And Complications was so interesting! I loved it! Told from a surgeon's point of view, it describes the learning experience, the medical mysteries that still remain, and most importantly, it treats all of the patients' stories with an element of humanity and compassion. It's also really easy reading (no heavy medical terminology) and I really enjoyed it!

More book reviews to come in future blog postings.

Lastly, I got to go through the lovely experience of a finger staph infection. It hurt quite a bit! It got infected on a Friday, and by Monday and Tuesday it hurt so much and was so swollen that I had to call the doctor. It started oozing pus while still at home and when I got into the office they lanced it (to keep getting the pus out) and gave me a 10 day antibiotic. Warning, gross pictures below!



I PROMISE that I will update this MUCH MORE frequently than this past month! PLEASE don't give up on me just yet! :)

Two book reviews

So this blog, although mostly a food blog (because I find food fun and exciting!) will also include bits of and about my life. Mainly music, as that is how I spend a huge amount of my time, but also hobbies including gymnastics (there hasn't yet been, but will be a ton about gymnastics, my ALL-TIME favorite sport to watch and to do--I am obsessed with gymnastics!), work outs, and reading. I want to start doing regular book reviews, as I tend to read about 4 books per month. So without further ado, I give you reviews of the two books I finished yesterday in bed. (I always have 2-4 books started at any given time, usually a combination of music, psychology, Christianity, memoirs, and some fiction. Many of the books I read combine two or three of these categories.)

First book review:


Stradivarius by Donald P. Ladev

This is a cute general fiction book about an old, precious violin that is passed through many hands in many generations. (Sort of like the premise of The Red Violin, which totally made me think of KathEats, as she just watched that movie! :) A young boy is born in rural West Virginia (close-ish to me, and I've driven through those parts of the state) and he acquires a cheap violin at first. He practices hard and is basically a prodigy, thus making exceptional progress. Eventually of course, he acquires the Stradivarius and falls in love with another musician at Julliard. It's a very predictable book, but it's still cute. :)

Second book review:


Carly Patterson: Olympic Idol by Susan Valentine

(I don't know why the picture is turned sideways. I couldn't get it to rotate! Sorry!)
I LOVE Carly Patterson (she's my all-time favorite gymnast!! You WILL be seeing more of her on this blog! :) but this was disappointing. Probably because it was quite sloppily written, with many errors in the information presented. Therefore, it was disappointing, and it was also a little too short, as it was written for kids (but I had to read it anyway. :)

Breakfast was a lovely bowl of strawberry oats plus half a grapefruit. (You've seen very similar bowls of oats in the past. But I finished the strawberries, so I'll have to do something more exciting tomorrow.


Up close:



I had a bunch of random snacks yesterday afternoon, which was good because all I had in between a 2 hour rehearsal and a 2 hour concert was about 3/4 of a PB sandwich (there was NO eating time! I didn't have any breaks because I played all 6 of the pieces).

But the concert went well yesterday. I don't think any of us played our best (we were probably tired from the too-long rehearsal!) but it went OK. Our conductor was having an off day (I like him, don't get me wrong!) but it was a little rough in some places. Regardless, we had a lot of positive feedback and the audience seemed to like it. So I'll consider it a sucessful concert. :)

The only random snacks I took pictures of were:

Bowl of broccoli and edamame:


BBQ tofu:


And this tea that was on sale:


There were several spoons of PB eaten because for some reason I always play better having consumed a large amount of (healthy) fat. I don't know why, but it works. *shrugs* Anyone know why this is? Like my fingers just seem to be more responsive. I Don't Know.

OK, the plan for today is to hit the post office, the bank and Whole Foods quickly, then go to the gym, and teach from 4-6:30, then play a church service from 6:30-8pm, then play racquetball from 9-10pm.

Have a great day!

Stuff White People Like!

The first blog I read was www.KathEats.com and I still follow many food blogs. (Shout out to Gliding Calm, Heather Eats Almond Butter, Eat Live Run, For the Love of Peanut Butter, and many others!) But I didn't want to start an exclusive food blog because I might get obsessive about it. I have spent enough time in my life obsessing over food as I had and then recovered from an eating disorder in my teenage years; there will definitely be more posts about this in the future. I have so many other wonderful things in my life that are just as exciting. However, I still am really interested in food and nutrition, so I'll probably mention a lot of my meals and maybe even sometimes count calories. I definitely don't count obsessively and I have recovered completely from the ED to the point where MANY times I won't count at all. I am extremely thankful that I have recovered as I don't ever have any "food fears" (although I did for YEARS after ED treatment and even after gaining to a healthy weight. I maintain my weight on roughly 1800-2200 calories a day, which is a minor miracle considering how badly I screwed up my body and my metabolism for a while. But more on that later....) Back to my point of my delicious breakfast:

1/3 cracked wheat cereal (used up the box)

3/4 scoop vanilla whey protein powder (I really like this stuff-I feel mch better on higher protein levels, due to an ongoing battle with keeping my blood sugar high enough. I've had major problems with hypoglycemia after being anorexic; at one point after a glucose tolerance test it dropped to 31!! As I recovered, the hypoglycemia has gotten a bit better, but I still eat pretty frequently and can always tell when my blood sugar is dropping. It's NOT a pleasant feeling!)

2 TB PB (I accidentally bought the "natural" stuff with palm oil and sugar...NOT my first choice, but again--so much progress from my ED when I would've just thrown the whole thing out and I wouldn't have grabbed it so quickly without spending copious amounts of my life energy to figure out the 'best' peanut butter. I DEFINITELY prefer stuff that is just "peanuts and salt". Like many other "true" food bloggers, I am IN LOVE with Peanut Butter, Almond Butter, Cashew Butter and to a lesser extent Sunflower Seed butter and Soynut Butter. They are one of my favorite foods (although I have A LOT of favorite foods! :) )

Handful of grapes (my color scheme is appropriate!)

1 chopped fig (the white kind, says it has 60 calories per fig on the Whole Foods bulk bin where it's from)

Some baby carrots (which used some of the PB)

= 570ish.

And my blood sugar is threatening to drop which means I'll need to grab a couple bites of cottage cheese or something.

Anyway, I'm going to hit the gym today. I actually don't have anything on my agenda, but I can still be productive. There might also be some reading involved. I'm always reading through at least 2 or 3 books at a time. Last years I read 29 books, which doesn't even seem like that many considering it's only February and I'm already through almost 6. I want to read at least 30 and maybe more. We'll see. My latest FAVORITE BOOK is:

"Stuff White People Like" by Christian Lander. He started a blog about it too: www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com and the whole thing is BRILLIANT!

I found that I related to so many entries. I figure if I can laugh at myself for holding so many white stereotypes, everyone should be able to. Seriously, I can't encourage you enough to read this book. In addition to calling us out on all accounts (he is white too, which makes it even funnier), he points out pretty accurate ways that you can use this information for your own gain around white people. If I had to rate it, I would definitely give it 5 stars! By the way, I love reading and I always have at least 2 or 3 books started and I plan on reviewing others as I finish them.

Alright, I need to continue on with my day, so I'll see you all tonight. I hope your day is EXCELLENT!