Guys, I've got a real treat for you today. My friend Sarah is a phenomenal cook. She loves to experiment in the kitchen and come up with new fun recipes, and over the years, she's made me countless dinners and birthday treats.


Me and Sarah at a Terps game

So when she told me she had a fun recipe that she thought you all might be interested in and asked if she could share it, I was all for it!

So Sarah, take it away!

---

So, just like 1/3 of Americans, I made a New Years Resolution to be healthier. It wasn't a "work out more" or "diet more" resolution but a "healthier" resolution.

One way that I'm working on being healthier is by paying attention to what I eat and incorporating more main dish salads...but I can only eat so many Chicken Caesar Salads!

So in an effort to think creatively, be healthy, and enjoy my time in the kitchen and what I eat I devised Main Salad Mondays (MSM). One thing that I really crave in my salads is obviously, good flavor, but also a variety of texture so that the meal remains interesting.

The first official attempt at MSM is a common riff off a regular on our table - tacos.



Here's what I put in my Taco Salad:

2c Lettuce
1/2 c Ground Turkey taco meat
1 Tbsp Black Olives
2 Tbsp Corn Salad
1 Tbsp Guacamole
Large pinch Mexican Cheese Blend
2 Tbsp Salsa Ranch
-------
Guacamole :


[Note from Jess: Sarah's guac is the best. A bowl of this stuff doesn't last long in front of me]

2 avocados, one mashed, one diced
1/2 red onion, small dice
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 lime, juiced
1/2c quartered cherry tomatoes
1/2 jalapeño, minced
1tsp salt

Combine all ingredients and let rest for at least an hour.
-------
Corn Salad:



1/2 shallot, diced
1 bell pepper (red or green or orange), large dice
1 can of no salt added whole kernel corn OR 2 fresh ears of corn, cut off the cob
1/2tsp salt
1/2 tsp cumin
Pepper to taste

Saute the first three ingredients in a pan over medium high heat for about 5 minutes or until the corn is cooked through.

Stir in the seasonings and cook an additional 2 minutes.

Add to the salad warm, room temp, or cold. Also a great side dish!
-------
Salsa Ranch Dressing
Combine 1/2c Ranch with 1/2c fresh salsa or until its a consistency/flavor you like.

---

So Sarah, my question for you is where was my invite for dinner? (Sike, I actually think she did invite me over this Monday, but I already had something going on. Sad face.)

Happy birthday to my beautiful momma, best friend and partner in crime at more races than I can count!



I'm sorry your birthday falls on Ash Wednesday this year. Doesn't really allow for much in the way of celebrating.


Baltimore Marathon 2006 (The race where it all started. Don't mind my closed eyes, I had just finished my very first marathon)


Baltimore Half in 2010


Rock n Roll Philly 2009 or 2010?


Baltimore half 2012


Nike Women's Half DC 2013

Hi friends!

Things got a little crazy at the end of last week with some work and school deadlines, and I kind of fell off the face of the Earth on the blogging front.

So I figured I'd do a quick catch up on my Presidents Day weekend shenanigans.

We've been in some horrible arctic freeze in DC lately, where the highs are in the single digits, and with wind chills the temps are in the negatives. It makes me want to pick up and move to Florida.

But the crappy weather has at least given me an excuse to spend time inside focusing on homework.



I knocked out two big assignments this weekend and for half a second felt caught up on life. It was a glorious feeling.

Given the crappy weather, I've also been doing all my running on the dreadmill.



I've done two three milers and a six miler so far. The six was the farthest I've run in an embarrassingly long time, and I was actually surprisingly sore the next day. Stringing three runs together over the course of four days is also the most consistent I've been with running in months.



It's all part of a plan of attack I've got for surviving the rest of this semester and not abandoning all my runs. I'm going to attempt to implement it this week, and I'll let you know how it goes.

In other long weekend highlights:

I treated myself to a massage yesterday to work out the stress in my upper back. It was 110 percent what the doctor ordered.



I spent Valentine's Day at the Sam Hunt concert with Emily, Ryan and Casey. He was a-mazing.



Last night, we had a farewell happy hour for one of my very good friends who is moving to Japan for two years for a new job. While I'm super excited for Scott's cool new opportunity, I wish Japan was not half a world away.



And that's all I've got. Government buildings are closed today because of the snow so I get to work from home. If you need me, this is where you'll find me:

We're going to start this post with a fun little story. (And by this I mean fun for you and probably embarrassing for me).

Nerd alert: When I was a kid, I would come home from school every day and immediately want to get my homework out of the way. I'd sit down at the kitchen table and try to finish it as fast as possible.

School always came pretty easily to me as a kid (did I mention I was a nerd?), so this was never really a problem.


Here's my high school AP English class. We were cool.

Except when it came to math.

Now you would think, growing up the child of a mechanical engineer and a financial analyst, I'd be all left-brain dominate and rock at math. You'd be so, so wrong.

Some math I totally got. Basic algebra, I'm looking at you. I could solve for X all day long. But other math, I couldn't figure out to save my life.

So my parents, being the kind and loving people they are, would try to help me with the concepts and problems I didn't get. My dad especially spent a lot of time helping me figure things out. Except...the problem was, he had a different approach than what I'd learned in school, and this led me to have repeat meltdowns.

This largely happened in middle school, so here's an awkward middle school field trip photo to break up all this text.


Field trip to Baltimore (7th grade I think.)

I remember knockdown drag out screaming fits (I was a brat), where I told my dad everything he showed me was wrong, even his right answer was wrong because he got there in the wrong way. I'd be in hysterical tears sobbing about how I was stupid and going to fail at school and life and never go to a good college (not overly dramatic at all...).

My major meltdowns were apparently the only way as a kid I knew how to express the extreme frustration I was feeling at not understanding the material. It's a good thing my dad loves me because I don't know how he didn't disown me after moments like that.

If you've been reading for a while, you might have picked up on the fact that I'm a bit of a high-stress, Type A perfectionistic person. Heck if you've talked to me for more than five minutes you've probably noticed this too.

Apparently these traits are something I've carried with me since I was an overly high-strung child.

Now that I've outgrown the meltdowns and mainly function like a normal human being, I find the Type-Aness kind of awesome. It helps me kick butt at work and at life in general.

But it also sometimes leads me to put moderately unrealistic OK, who are we kidding, ridiculously unrealistic expectations on myself.

Take grad school for example. When I started my MBA program in the fall, I was giving myself this pep talk on how I've got a lot going on in life and I'm doing this part time and really, I will be happy with a solid 3.0 and B's in my classes. (Yes I was pep talking myself to accept averageness).


MBA life

Start of class day one, my laid back approach to school is completely thrown out the window, and I'm all about a 4.0. Because I'm a crazy person.

Last semester, with a normal amount of work and a large amount of flashcards, I made this happen pretty comfortably -- earning high As in both of my classes.


This is a normal amount of flashcards right?

This semester rolls around and I'm not even kidding, I had one of those childhood math meltdowns again within the first week of classes. Granted, it was in my apartment by myself. I wasn't screaming at anyone. I was just reading and re-reading an assignment for one of my accounting classes and not understanding a word.


Cost accounting is evil.

I didn't know where to start. I didn't know what the professor was asking for. I didn't understand the math, and I just felt a million levels of frustration, and the next thing I know, I can't even see my computer any more because I'm crying.

I will say in the 15+ years since my kiddo meltdowns, I've learned a little bit more about handling frustration and stress. This time around, I let the tears fall for a few minutes to get out the emotion and then came up with a plan of attack.

I still feel like I'm on fairly shaky ground in the class and that my beautiful 4.0 may be in jeopardy, which obviously doesn't sit well with me, but I have a plan, and few things make me feel more comfortable than a good solid plan.


Straight As...are they so much to ask for?

I didn't start business school to have another chance to get good grades. I started it to learn and advance in my career and pick up new skills. That means sometimes things are going to be hard or I'm not going to understand them right away, and that's OK. And I'm learning to let myself be OK with that, which is something I'm so, so not used to.

Yesterday I ran the Love the Run You're with 5K with a bunch of my friends.


Debbie, Emily, Meghan, me and Megan post-race

I did this race a few years ago and it was about 8 degrees with the windchill. Luckily this year the weather was much more agreeable.


Megan, Emily and me freezing our butts off in 2012

For a few seconds I even considered wearing half tights.


Flat Jess wanted half tights

But then I made a race morning decision to opt for long ones, which I think was the right call.



It was in the high 30s or low 40s at the start, and I was glad to have gone with the full length tights.


Pre-race Snaps obviously!

This is one of my favorite races that Pacers puts on. (Ok, I think I say that about every Pacers race I run. In general, I'm obsessed with Pacers races and if you live in the DMV I can't recommend them enough. They are well organized and a ton of fun.)


Hanging out with Pres. Woodrow Wilson before the start.

One of the things that makes this 5K fun is that you register for your bib based on your relationship status: Stupid Cupid, It's Complicated or Co-Dependent.


Co-Dependent Debbie (formerly known a BFF Debbie from Megan's old blog), It's Complicated Megan and Stupid Cupid Jess. You can't see my bib in this picture, but it's green.

The swag is also a cozy fleece blanket instead of yet another t-shirt.



The race course itself is pretty basic. It's an out and back that starts with a nice steep uphill climb and then rolls a bit until the turn around point.

Then you get to do some more rolling hills and finish on a fast downhill to the finish line.

Out and backs are fun though because you can look for your friends and cheer for them along the way! I saw Megan and Debbie both fly past looking good. Then I hit the turn around and missed Meghan, but saw Emily and my coworker Warren cruising along.

I hadn't gone into this race well trained so I didn't have any time goals, but as I hit the last downhill, I saw my watch hovering around 26:30. I was pretty confident I could make it under 28 if I turned up the speed another notch. So I flew down the hill, hit the last turn and kicked it into high gear.


Forgot to stop Garmin

I managed to cross the finish line at 27:59 officially. Whoop! This is certainly no PR, but for having run all of four times in the month of January, it wasn't a bad showing.

Once we all finished, we met up inside the sponsor bar and took advantage of our drink tickets for some free mimosas. I won't lie, I was glad these were pretty much all OJ with about zero champagne. My stomach can usually not handle booze after running.


Cheers to a fun race!

We hung out for a little bit and caught some of the post-race karaoke (yes that's a thing after this race. There is also a DJ spinning sweet jams in the bar before the race starts), before I headed home for an afternoon of homework.

I'm in the process of trying to persuade my friends to run another Pacers race in March for St. Patty's Day. And since we all had fun yesterday, I think I've mostly got them convinced it's a great idea!

The last few weeks have been hard. I've struggled to find a balance between work and school and workouts and life.


Starbucks and my planner...how I survive my days

One of my classes this semester is really tough and very time-consuming. At work, I'm in the middle of a couple of high-priority, tight-deadline projects.



My stress levels are up to the point where I can feel knots growing on knots in my back and my workout time has been diminishing to make time for class and homework.

I was talking to my friend Zac about it the other day. He also works a high stress, highly demanding job, but if you spend time with him, you'd hardly know it. So I asked him what his secret was.


Zac's the one in the hat, looking all happy and not stressed

He told me part of it was having a good poker face. The other part was his daily gym session.

And then he offered a good piece of advice. He told me that when I felt like I was reaching the point of a stress meltdown to just stop what I was doing, put on my running shoes and immediately head out the door. Even if it was just for 10 minutes.

I'd come back and be able to tackle the problem in a more calm frame of mind.

Turns out my friends are smart people.

So today, when I felt like I was beating my head against a wall on a project, I stopped. Ran into my room, grabbed my shoes and put them on.



Then I downloaded some Taylor Swift to my phone, synced my new fancy Red Fox wireless headphones and headed out the door for a run rocking out to T.Swift.

A side note about the headphones: Red Fox sent me these bad boys to test out and review and after a few runs I'm pretty obsessed with them. They're wireless which means no stupid headphone cord to get tangled in on runs. They sync via Bluetooth to your phone and they have little controls on the sides that let you adjust the volume or switch songs without having to mess with your phone during the run.



At first I was a little worried they would be too big and bop up and down on my head, but they don't at all. They stay in place really nicely, and did I mention how nice that whole lack of a tangled cord is?


Look no cord!

Now I just need to update the music on my phone so I have some better tunes to jam to.

The run was on the shorter side, but it was just what I needed. Plus Taylor reminding me to Shake it Off was blasting loud and clear through the headphones. I came home feeling a little bit calmer and was able to tackle a few items on the ol' to-do list with a bit more focus.

I still need to work on finding a better balance between everything and making sure I carve out time for my runs. Because as I've learned the past few weeks, when they just get dropped from my schedule it benefits absolutely no one.

I always say I'm going to be better about tracking my workouts and the books that I read, and I've made feeble attempts in the past but never really stuck with it. Amber does these fun recaps every month that I love reading, and I'm hoping maybe I'll love writing them just as much as I love reading hers.

We'll try, and see how it goes.

SPORTS

The winter is definitely the off-season for me in terms of my rec league sports, but I am playing in a volleyball league this winter. Sadly I missed the first week with the stomach flu, so more on that to come later.

Also, the Terps opened Big Ten play this month.



We started out really strong, but lately we've been in a bit of a slump. Earlier this month we were as high as 9 in the coaches' poll. This week though we've dropped to 16 in the coaches' poll and 17 in the AP. Ick. We're still 18-4 and second place in the Big Ten, but I really hope we can put the brakes on this backslide.


Some of the game day crew

MILES

I was sick for a lot of January, so there wasn't a whole lot going on on the workout front.



I think I ran four times total all month and maybe did one spin class. Even though there weren't many of them, all my runs were with my running group, which was fun. I really like all the people in my running group, and it's an extra bit of motivation for the cold, dark, snowy winter nights.



BOOKS

I absolutely crushed it on the books front this month. I pretty much did nothing but read the first few weeks of the month before my classes started for the semester. I definitely slowed down by the end of the month, but still got through six books. Here's what I read and my brief reviews from Goodreads.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? - Mindy Kaling
Loved this book. Love Mindy. Better than Bossypants and Yes Please. Such a good, fun read.

The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Fast read, and a good, though slightly predictable, storyline. Well-written and captivating characters. Also it will make you cry.

IF I Stay - Gayle Forman
I mainly picked this book up because I thought the movie trailer looked interesting. The book itself was OK. It was a quick and easy read, but not anything super fantastic.

The Unimaginable - Dina Silver
I've read one other book by Dina Silver and I really enjoyed it, and this book was no different. I thought the characters were likeable and relatable. Overall, another quick read that I couldn't really put down.

The Matchmaker - Elin Hilderbrand
I first discovered Elin Hilderbrand last summer on vacation at the beach and sort of fell in love with the stories she tells. The ending of this one was little bit predictable but I love these books because of the setting. Life in a small town sometimes seems kind of fun.

Eleanor and Park - Rainbow Rowell
So many people have recommended Rainbow Rowell books to me, and this was the first one I read. Couldn't put this book down. Fell in love with the characters and as a result was really bummed by the way the book ended.

LOOKS

So since sickness was obviously the theme of January, I spent a lot of the month curled up in sweatpants. But when I wasn't sick, I wore a bunch of dresses.



I originally bought this dress for a friend's wedding, but I've worn it a bunch since (and apparently twice in January). Once on NYE and again at my uncle's wedding on Saturday.



Sweater dress, tights and boots. Pretty much my go-to work outfit during the winter months.



Another sweater dress, tights, boots outfit. Wore this for a friend's baby shower a few weeks ago.

ADDED BONUS

I realized I had a ton of pictures of the baby cousins on my phone, so I thought I'd share.


They're scary good with an iPhone


Heather just being cute


Me and Cameron at Heather's baptism


Our little Terps fans