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The definitive list of the 5 worst foods ever.

| cheriarmour

So, in addition to having a horribly irritable stomach, which I’ve shared with you time and again, some may say that I’m a picky eater.

I don’t consider myself a picky eater, especially since I eat a wide variety of weirdly healthy things, but since I was a kid, there are some foods I find absolutely reprehensible, and today, I share these foods with you.

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5.  Cauliflower.

Cauliflower
image via wikipedia.org

There is literally NOTHING that I find okay with cauliflower.  For one, it is a strange color, and for another thing, it looks exactly like the wart on the back of my hand after the dermatologist tried to burn it off.  Why would I want to eat that?  Fun fact:  the only thing fun about cauliflower is nothing.

4.   Broccoli.

800px-Broccoli_and_cross_section_edit
image via wikipedia.org

The green, less-disgusting (but still disgusting) cousin to cauliflower, I hate this more than you could ever know.  The absolute worst way that it’s cooked, is when you’re at a cafeteria-type place, and they cook it by simply boiling it until it’s so floppy that you can’y even get it to stand up straight on your fork.  ADDITIONALLY, when you eat it, it completely tears your stomach into 16 pieces. No thanks.  The only way broccoli is delicious?  No way.

3.  Mealy tomatoes.

800px-Bright_red_tomato_and_cross_section02
image via wikipedia.org

The only time I ever feel like no one cares about me is when I’m eating a salad, there’re tomatoes on it, and the tomatoes are mealy.  It sorta tastes like someone sat on the tomato and then left it out for a day or so before chopping it up and putting in on your salad.

2. The gourds.

image via wikipedia.org
image via wikipedia.org

Now I don’t mind any of the gourds in a bread.  And pumpkin, zucchini, or squash do just fine when you just throw them in a crockpot, and by the time all is said and done everything in there is the same texture.  But when the gourds are only slightly sauteed, and their mushy gushy seeds kind of just hang off of your fork?  Consider my entire meal ruined.

1. Mushrooms.

image via wikipedia.org
image via wikipedia.org

I cannot stress to you enough how badly my life is ruined once a mushroom is introduced into the mix of anything I’m eating.  You know what mushrooms taste like?  Exactly what they look like.  Which is a grey blob from deep in the pits of hell.  The worst part is, that since I’m a vegetarian, everyone assumes I must love mushrooms, and they punish me by offering me a giant mushroom on a hamburger bun. Literally that portabello mushroom sandwich you just offered me?  Just cost you our friendship.

**Honorable mention**

>>I wanna give a shoutout to yellow mustard and to effing pickles even when you didn’t want pickles or mustard on your sandwich for ruining every sandwich the two come in contact with.

>>Another extra special shoutout goes to fruit in my chococlate, without which none of this would have been possible.

>>And finally, I want to thank citrus flavored desserts for making dessert taste like the 409 that you’d use to clean your stove. Sick me out.

Come on, let’s hear ’em!  Comment with the list of foods you hate. 🙂 

Wedding Wednesday: What do we register for?

| cheriarmour

First off, I want to thank you guys for allowing me a day, and not completely abandoning yesterday.  Yesterday was one of those days when I was completely overwhelmed between my laundry piling up, and paperwork piling up at my job.

So before we get into all the wedding stuff, look at these cool shots that were taken a few weeks ago at that fashion show!  I kinda love when I do stuff like this because you sort of forget that you took the shots, and then they come out a few weeks later and you’re like “oh yeah!”

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Fun, right?

Okay, so instead of me talking at you for a million years, I need to ask you all a questions, especially all of you who’ve done the whole married/wedding thing in the past.

As I go through the checklist of things that I need to do for the wedding, I kinda am starting to realize that I have NO clue what it is we need to register for, because it seems like we need virtually everything.

We met while we were in graduate school, so neither of us has quite has “real” stuff.

Between the two of us, we possess a hodgepodge of things – an old rice cooker (that still works, but is certainly not pretty), a rickety old George Foreman, and some pans that my grandmother ordered off of HSN before she passed last year.  But it’s not enough,

We have no microwave.

We have a set of knives that are embarrassingly starting to rust when I leave them in the dishwasher for a second too long.

And my utensils bend if I shove them too emphatically into whatever it is I’m eating.

So there are definitely things we’re going to need as we start to live our life as a married couple.

But I have no idea where to start!

And this is where you guys come in.

I need help – if any of you have links, lists, or your own personal lists of things you pulled for from your registry, that would be really awesome.  Please email me, comment below, or send up a smoke signal, cause for this wedding Wednesday, I need your help!

Day off.

| cheriarmour

I love you guys so much, so I’m taking a day off from blogland to catch up on some things around the house.

While you’re here, please poke around, explore, and leave me comments, cause I swear, your comments, and my interactions keep me going!

Love you tons, and I will see you bright and early tomorrow morning ❤

My version of clean eating and how it worked for me.

| cheriarmour

Last weekend, I ate like an animal.

I listed some of the things I ate here, but in case you forgot, they were not limited to:

>>Cheesecake flavored frozen yogurt

>>A plate full of 2 different types of mac + cheese

>>An incredible cheesecake made by a supervisor of mine.  It was one of those dense, heavy numbers that made you feel like you might have a heart attack, but it was really delicious at the same time.

>>Baked beans, the really sweet kind.

>>Deviled eggs (god bless those, how are they so good?)

>>10,000+ pounds of chips + guacamole.

So needless to say, by the time Monday rolled around, the clean eating idea that I’d been bouncing around in my head was really starting to sound like a good idea, and I just went for my version of clean eating.

My version of clean eating goes a little something like this…

>>No booze

>>No coffee

>>Nothing that comes prepackaged.  For me, that means a lot of stuff that I shouldn’t be eating anyways, like my oatmeal bars that are packed with sugar, or my Fiber 1 bars that are the same, had to go.

>>Focus on things that come from the ground, not from a can or something.

So my meals looked a lot like this…

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And this to combat my diet soda bubbly cravings….

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And this to make sure I didn’t grab a frozen burrito or a Fiber 1 bar on my way out the door on the way to work.

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Now listen, I didn’t get overly creative with my meals, but you really can get insane with this stuff.  There are Pinterest universe’s dedicated to the art of clean eating.

My verdict?

Well first, let me disclaim this by telling you that I’m not your doctor, so don’t go doing anything stupid to your diet just because I said so.  Do what WORKS for you, okay?

>>It’s a little time consuming because it involves a decent amount of prep and planning.  But your food should be time consuming.  Your meals should not be as easy as tearing open a package or flipping the top to a can.  So yes, it’s time-consuming, but in the best possible way!

>>Though it’s time consuming say, the night before, your meals can be pretty grab-n-go the following morning.  Once I did things like prep my fulls day’s worth of meals before, like oats and salads, they were really fast to grab the next morning, and usually only required a little bit of heating.

>>Even though I’m usually good about my water intake, it definitely increased since I wasn’t doing coffee or drinks with a lot of artificial crap in them!  I had a lot of fun with it, and infused water with fruits, and took mason jars full of water with me to work that I could sip on.  I also sipped on Kombucha and club soda whenever I got a hankering for something bubbly.

>>When I got the urge to eat something sweet, I reached for fruit, and it seemed to do the trick.

>>Toward the end of last week, my stomach was really very upset because of the sheer volume of fiber that I was unknowingly consuming.  That was one of the bigger downsides – my body wasn’t really down with absorbing those levels of fiber, so I was very uncomfortable toward the end of the week.  I should have laid off of the leafy greens for a day or two between big salads!

Overall, I loved it, and even though I said I was only gonna do it for like a week, I’m interested to see if I can try for another week!

What sort of eating plan do you try to follow?  

Weekend happenings…

| cheriarmour

So this weekend.

I did not get as much done as I would have liked, but I got a good bit of things done one the list.

I wasn’t feeling well at all on Friday at ALL, and when  client went off on me and told me in no uncertain terms that I could go do something to myself which I’m pretty sure is illegal in this state, I took that as my cue to leave early and lie down for about 30 minutes.

I could only do 30 minutes because I had to demo my Zumba class for the woman at Rapid Fitness who was going to sign off on me being a Body Pump instructor.

Well, I showed up to the gym ready to demo the class, and I had a creepy feeling that I’d made a mistake.  YEP.  I showed up to the WRONG RAPID FITNESS.  So after pretending to cry to myself for a second, I got into the car, and pulled a speed racer all the way to the right gym, where Renee was waiting on me.

And I nailed. That. Demo.

I’m actually a pretty decent teacher because the woman who taught me was amazing, as both a teacher, and a human being, so I soaked up as much as I could from her.

I then proceeded to go to sleep until my Zumba class the following morning at the Y, and then I talked to a group of teacher hopefuls about being a teacher blah blah blah.

Saturday afternoon….

Saturday afternoon….

Where do I begin.

So, a good friend, Devin, called me and Michael over and just told us to come over. No itinerary, no agenda, no nothing.

So a few vodkas later, we crashed a crawfish boil.

And a few more later?

photo 1 (10)

So, I had a pretty good weekend, I’d say.

How was your weekend!  What’s one random thing that you did? 

I’m a Sweat Pink Ambassador!

| cheriarmour

You might have noticed a little button pop up on my blog…

Sweat-Pink-ambassador-badge-SMALL

 

There on the left side.  So I wanted to let you guys know, that I am a Sweat Pink Ambassador!

That might mean nothing to some of you, so let me explain.

Fit Approach is a community of girls like me.  We like to sweat, we like to eat well, and best of all, as an ambassador, I love to bring what we know to wonderful people like you guys, who read.  As an ambassador, I can bring literally any question about blogging, about code, or most importantly, about sweating to these women, and someone will usually have an answer for me.  Please, if you’re a lady looking for some resources, go to Fit Approach and poke around.

I was so excited to get the email that I was part of this family, and once again, I’m so grateful for this blog and the opportunities it’s given me.  I’ve met people, had folks tell me how much they love my blog, and it feels so good.  Thank you guys for reading, and I’m SO pumped to be an ambassador of fitness for you!

The Vibram thing.

| cheriarmour

There’s a saying in Haiti, and it translates loosely to this. “You eat the meat, and spit out the bones.”

What it means?

Take what you want or need from every situation, and “spit out” what you don’t need. This logic should have applied in the case of Vibrams. Vibram, which is under the umbrella of New Balance (fun fact!) advertised these zero-drop minimalist shoe, and claimed, among other things, that the shoes would alleviate knee pain, blah blah blah.  I need you guys to understand that any shoe that across-the-board, promises to alleviate knee pain, is probably bs because of the sheer fact that shoes are subjective.  Everyone cannot wear every shoe.  Because every body is different.

I digress however.

vibram.jpg

I started running in Vibrams like 3 years ago.

It was fine, until my achilles tendon on my right side started bothering me.  So I stuck to the shoes mainly for things like weightlifting, and left the long runs to shoes with more cushion.  I love cushioning, and minimalist running just wasn’t for me.  Didn’t mean it sucked.  But certainly didn’t mean it ruled either.

So back to my original point, Vibram just lost a class action lawsuit for making claims such as the one I mentioned above, with the knee thing.  Folks were getting the shoes on, running like 8 miles in them their first day, and experiencing some serious issues.  Which is obviously Vibram’s fault.  <-that was sarcasm.

So yes, perhaps claiming that Vibrams would magically cure the common cold was a stretch, but where does consumer common sense rule in making decisions about running shoes?

I cannot tell you how many time folks would walk into the store, state they had just had surgery to fix a ruptured achilles tendon, and then ask to see all minimal shoes, despite our suggestions toward something with a little more structure.

Here’s the lesson you should take from this Vibrams thing.

USE YOUR BRAIN WHEN SHOPPING FOR SHOES.  If you’ve been injured before, it’s really not the time to try some crazy shoe with zero support.  If something hurts, stop it and consider a different shoe.  And for the love of God, investigate all wacky claims for yourself.

Have a ever run “barefoot”?  What did you think?

-I did for a short time, like I said, before my achilles started bothering me, so I stopped.  After that, I ran in the Saucony Kinvara for a while, which seemed to agree with me a little bit more.  Austin actually lifts daily in his Vibrams, but he is relatively injury-free and has no problem with it, but he saves his long runs for a more traditional running shoes.

 

Wedding Wednesday: Almost 3 months away!

| cheriarmour

I say this every week, and I will continue to say this – I don’t know where the weeks are going.  I’m in love with the fact that the time is flying by, and that after the harsh winter from hell that we’re already having 90-degree days in Raleigh, but as far as wedding planning goes, this time rocketing by thing is a little scary.  Nevertheless, taking the time out to make a few lists and holding myself accountable by telling you guys about what I’ve been up to has been so helpful.

So first things first.

I had another stress dream last night, this one involving my wedding dress.

My dress has long been ordered, and it’s to die for.  It’s sexy, and still classy, and perfect for the barn bash we’re throwing in August.  But in my dream last night, it was anything but the things I just described.

When I looked in the mirror, the dress contained this like, pink piping around the shoulders.  “This isn’t what we ordered,” I said to myself, and I ripped the silky piping off, to reveal a wedding dress that looked like a golden suit of armor underneath.  Then I woke up sobbing late for work.

Stress dreams aside, things are great!  Save-the-dates are out, like I said last week, and there were only a few people who asked about theirs, one of whom gave me his address incorrectly (my sister did that too 😦 ).  We are meeting the DJ tonight, and I’ve pretty solidly nailed down the costs for him, and for the rehearsal dinner, which came in a hefty amount less than I thought it was going to be for about 20 folks!  I love saving money!

The crafting part has been really fun too.  Over the past few weeks, I have been trolling the Craiglist for mason jars + jelly jars for favors, and at first, I couldn’t find anything, and then the heavens exploded with jars.  I have a friend getting married this weekend, and she has over 50 jars.  I have so many jars that I’ve either purchased for cheap or gotten for free.  And now, it’s just a matter of painting/decorating them/filling them with pretty things.

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Alsoooooo, I finally got to see my younger sister in person, who’s also engaged too.  I’m getting married in 3 months, and she’s thinking a December wedding.

Bahhh this is so fun!

My brides, how are you hanging in there?