Ten Years of Operation Life

Ten years ago today, on April 26, 2010, I took the first steps on a journey – a journey toward improved health, improved energy levels, better fitness, and a whole host of other benefits that I hadn’t anticipated. This journey is called Operation Life.

The first stirrings of Operation Life can actually be traced to a few weeks before, on April 5, 2010, when I realized I wasn’t as healthy as I thought I was. I had found myself in a bit of a rut since graduating from college the year before, and I was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with certain aspects of life. That led to me being grouchy, perpetually tired, and generally lethargic – and I kind of tried to self-medicate with food. It didn’t work, and, in fact, it likely made things worse, contributing to my downward spiral.

But on April 5, the rubber hit the road and I realized I needed to change something about the way I was living. My family was planning an incredible trip to South Dakota that summer, and I knew I wanted to get in great shape so I could make the most of the experience – lots of hiking, climbing, exploring, you name it.

Three weeks later, I started taking tangible steps toward this goal as part of an effort dubbed Operation South Dakota. My mom decided to join me, and it was so helpful to have accountability. I started eating more fruits and veggies. I walked past the bags of chips on top of the fridge when I got home from work. I exercised more regularly and more intentionally. My first official workout to prepare for the South Dakota trip was a weightlifting session using dumbbells I already owned. I don’t remember what the routine was, but it was probably something weird I created on my own with no idea what I was doing (sorry, Dad).

As time progressed and the trip grew closer, I was loving how much better I felt – stronger, more rested, happier, more fit. Mom and I decided that Operation South Dakota should be renamed Operation Life, because we were not going to stop our efforts or scale them back once the trip was behind us. No, our new way of approaching life was going to stick with us.

The sis and yours truly exploring the Badlands

Family hike near Sylvan Lake

And it did. I loved working out and eating in ways that fueled my body to be its best.

As I ramped up my veggie intake, I expanded my horizons by discovering a world of strange but healthy recipes.

Some of them were surprisingly good. Take raw lasagna, for example. Completely vegan, right down to the “ricotta cheese” that was actually made from macadamia nuts and pine nuts. It was very tasty, but I only made it once because it was EXPENSIVE. Another surprise was a kale juice recipe; sounds gross but ended up being very tasty!

Then there were the recipes that were expectedly good: smoothies and three-ingredient cookies, for example. I haven’t made those cookies in a while. Maybe I will soon – perhaps today?

Tasty three-ingredient cookies!

And, of course, there were a few duds. Mom and I tried a recipe for “Sweet and Spicy Arugula Saute” that left our eyes watering. But my least-favorite was a dairy-free lemon cauliflower pudding. It was the most horrible thing, and I still laugh when I recall naive Krista thinking that this would somehow be good!

Outside of the kitchen, I focused on my fitness. I’m a firm believer that exercise shouldn’t be something you strongly dislike. If running isn’t your thing, for example, don’t make yourself run. Instead, do something you enjoy. And I can honestly say that I enjoyed my workouts, everything from lifting weights to riding the exercise bike to shooting baskets and incorporating some sprinting games.

Mom and I also did a lot of walking. We’d walk 2 miles from home to Lancaster Central Market, buy a bunch of produce, and carry it all home. Yes, sometimes this meant that we each were toting a melon of some sort. It was all just fun.

I didn’t set out to be a runner.

This goes back to my philosophy that people should enjoy exercise. And I did not enjoy running. At all. Whenever I saw a friend running at college, I’d be like, “Why?!” After college I watched a friend finish a half marathon and sincerely wondered what in the world would ever possess anyone to run that far. So I was strongly anti-running.

But after consistently taking walks for months, I started to think, What if I move faster? And after doing my sprinting games during my basketball workouts, I began to wonder, How many laps around this court is a mile? The answer was 20 – well, 20 laps was 1.1 miles. Before I knew it, I was starting each basketball session with 20 laps and then moving on to my regular workout. I timed myself, watching myself complete 1.1 miles in 12 minutes, then 11, then 10, then 9-something. EXCITING!

I also started running with friends here and there. I woke up early to run at the beach on vacation. Mom and I signed up for our first 5K (Sept. 17, 2011), and I won third in my age category. Inspired, I kept signing up for 5Ks.

First 5K!

After a few months of that, my friend Candace asked me if I’d be interested in running the 2012 Pittsburgh Half Marathon with her. In my head, I immediately thought, NO WAY! But then I thought about it a little more and was like, “Hey, why not?”

In a very short amount of time, I went from being appalled that anyone would want to run 13.1 miles to realizing why they do. After the Pittsburgh Half, I was hooked.

I blame Candace for getting me hooked on half marathons. Yes, definitely Candace’s fault.

I ran four half marathons before I decided to tackle an even bigger challenge, one I had promised myself I’d never do: a full marathon. (Haha, I accidentally typed “fun” instead of “full” just now. And “fun” it was NOT!) My first marathon was in 2015, and it was without a doubt the toughest thing I’ve ever done. It didn’t go as planned, but I learned a lot and returned the following year to try again, with more success.

2015 (left), where I walked a lot, vs. 2016 (right), where I ran the whole thing!

I’ve even completed a handful of obstacle races, from national ones like Warrior Dash (may it rest in peace) to local ones like the Acre Breaker. Now those actually are fun. Not fun to clean up after, but hey, cross that bridge when you come to it.

Summoning my inner Air Jordan, 2014

I love this shot of my sis and me at our first Warrior Dash! (This was the coldest late-August day EVER, I’m pretty sure.)

And, of course, there’s hiking. I’ve been on many backpacking and camping trips. I’ve hiked Pikes Peak. I’ve summited Mount Washington (twice), along with numerous other peaks in New Hampshire and the Adirondacks, as part of yearly winter mountaineering adventures. I never would have dreamed of doing these things, but the path of Operation Life led me to a place where they were and are possible.

Mountaineering crew on Franconia Ridge (I’m on the far right in the green jacket)

Ten years after Operation Life began, it’s fun to look back at it all. This is such a far cry from where the journey started! From sporadic weightlifting, basketball, and walking to half marathons, marathons, obstacle races, and mountaineering?!

All this reminiscing has challenged me too, because I’ve noticed myself coming full circle lately…and not necessarily in a good way. You see, I’m not as healthy or fit as I’d like to be at the moment. I’ve slipped into some not-so-great food habits, due to convenience or general disappointment with things, and I need to snap out of it! I’ve also scaled back on my exercise because I sometimes feel (or think I feel) too tired at the end of the workday. Sound familiar? Sounds like me a decade ago!

What better time to start getting back on track with renewed focus and intention than on the 10-year anniversary of the launch of Operation Life? Let’s do this.

I had no idea where Operation Life would take me, but I’m so grateful for this journey. And I’m so grateful for wherever it leads me next.

Adventures in Making a Dairy-Free Pudding

I love weird recipes. You know, ones that call for uncommon uses of food items, like concocting a raw, vegan “ricotta cheese” out of macadamia nuts and pine nuts, for example (maybe I’ll blog about that one sometime).

So when I stumbled upon a recipe for dairy-free lemon pudding with a unique thickening ingredient as its base (I’ll reveal its identity later), I was pretty excited…and also a little nervous because it sounded SO bizarre. Since I’ve been on a serious lemon kick lately, I figured I’d give it a try. I found the recipe at www.skinnytaste.com, which has a good track record, since that’s the source of the recipe for the three-ingredient cookies I blogged about a while ago.

Besides, the pudding didn’t look THAT expensive to make; I can’t make that claim about my “ricotta cheese” mixture. The pudding only required one cup of unsweetened almond milk (or other dairy-free milk), two tablespoons of sugar, two teaspoons of pure vanilla extract, zest from one large lemon, 1/4 cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice, and three cups (350 grams) of the mystery thickening ingredient: cauliflower.

Nope, that’s not a typo.

Everything you need to make dairy-free lemon pudding

With all ingredients rounded up, I got to work. I added to a saucepan the almond milk, sugar, vanilla extract, lemon zest, and the cauliflower (which needed to be roughly chopped and which measured three cups). Because the recipe said “three cups (350 grams),” I figured the weight of my three cups of cauliflower was close enough, so I didn’t bother to weigh it.

Roughly chopped cauliflower

Adding the almond milk

Looks interesting, doesn’t it?

In goes the lemon zest

I brought it to a boil at medium-high heat. Once it was bubbling away, I let it simmer uncovered for seven or so minutes to make sure the cauliflower was nice and tender (the recipe lists five to seven minutes as the target).

Excited – and nervous – about the pudding attempt

Then I removed the mixture from the stove and prepared my food processor for the next part: blending it all together. I added the freshly squeezed lemon juice to the saucepan; conveniently, I had just enough juice from the zested lemon.

Getting the lemon juice ready

I dumped all the contents into the food processor. The website recommends using a high-powered blender such as Vitamix, but a regular food processor worked fine for me and gave the mixture a nice consistency.

Taking the next step to becoming a pudding

According to the recipe, the mixture needs to be blended for at least a minute, but I let it go longer than that to make sure the consistency wasn’t too grainy. When I was satisfied with it, I poured it into a bowl and popped it in the fridge for 18 hours, as the recipe suggested, to allow the dominant lemon flavors to mellow out.

There’s nothing like a food processor!

Problem: The recipe claimed that there would be no obvious evidence of cauliflower, but when I poured the mixture from the food processor into the bowl for refrigeration, I caught an overwhelming whiff of the vegetable. Plus, the pudding looked like pea soup.

Does this look lemony to you?

OK, let’s fast-forward 18+ hours to when I pulled the concoction out of the fridge. Of all the weird recipes I’ve tried to make, I was most nervous about trying this one.

Hello, nerves!

And then I took a bite.

And it was absolutely foul.

I steadied myself and went back for a second bite, thinking that my taste buds had been somewhat mistaken. How wrong I was. It tasted like acid cauliflower. Still, I was (eventually) able to choke down the rest of my helping of pudding (that’s called a miracle, folks).

I don’t know where I went wrong! I’m sure that this less-than-pleasant flavor combination was due to something I didn’t execute properly. If the recipe author’s version had turned out like mine did, there is absolutely no way she would have posted it, so I know for a fact that something went awry in my procedure. If I had to guess, I would say it had to do with the amount of cauliflower. Looking back, I should have measured it. I read recently that three cups of cauliflower can REALLY vary in weight.

Whoops.

OK, so my attempt at this recipe failed. Will I ever try it again, incorporating my new-found knowledge about cauliflower weight? Maybe, but probably not for a long time. My taste buds are still in full-on recovery mode, after which they will probably have to go to counseling.

What I learned:
-Blended cauliflower will make an excellent thickening agent in a “creamy” soup, where it won’t matter so much if any cauliflower flavor remains.
-The process of weighing cauliflower should not be overlooked. (!!!!)
-My taste buds can survive anything.

Seriously, though, I think this recipe is worth a try. I really botched it, but you, readers, can learn from my mistake and avoid making such an error! If you try this, let me know how it goes!

Adventures in Raw Food: Raw Brownies

So I think we’ve established that I like to exercise.

Now it’s time to begin establishing that I do, on occasion, like to experiment in the kitchen, too. Keep in mind that I have had some serious kitchen disasters involving pretty simple food like frozen pizza, egg sandwiches, brownies, etc. Naturally, I figured I should see if I can be more successful with difficult recipes. Recipes that use random, obscure, expensive ingredients with names that are nearly impossible to pronounce.

Here’s the most recent deal: I had a great “to do” list for Saturday, stuff that really needed to be done. Then I got up in the morning and, thanks to my unofficial “begin the day with random internet time” tradition, I found a recipe for raw brownies here.

Given my issue with cooking anything, I’m always excited to find new raw recipes (www.goneraw.com is a great place to look, too, if you’re interested). Since the raw brownies recipe called for five ingredients, most of which I actually had in my possession, I decided to go for it!

I collected my ingredients:
2 cups whole walnuts
1 cup raw cacao
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 1/2 cups Medjool dates, pitted <–remember this part (Medjool dates are larger and sweeter than regular dates, making them a great natural sweetener in raw foods!)
1 cup raw, unsalted almonds (roughly chopped)

Ingredients assembled, I pulled the handy food processor out from the cupboard. I wreaked havoc on that poor cupboard, accidentally knocking over a bunch of kitchen-related devices. The clumsy start was a sign of things to come, but I was blissfully ignorant of that.

After grinding the walnuts to a pretty fine powder in the food processor, I added the sea salt and cacao:

I admit that I was a little worried about the cacao. I know it’s a superfood (chock full of all sorts of nutrients that improve physical and mental wellness), but I’d tried a tiny portion by itself, and it, uhh, wasn’t my favorite. Because it’s good for me, though, I decided I’d give it another go in the form of this brownie.

Once the walnuts, cacao, and sea salt were combined in the food processor, I moved to the next step: adding the dates one by one. Things were going along well until the food processor started running a bit rough and making a strange noise. At one point, it even shut off. I stirred the ingredients around with a spoon, and thought, “It all seems OK in there to me!”

Thankfully, the machine turned back on when I flipped the switch, and I added another date. The strange noise started again, and I frustratedly opened the lid again. This time, my search yielded a small, hard object. “Probably just a random part of the date,” I thought before throwing the offending object into the trash. “All’s well now!” (I told you I’m not great in the kitchen yet.)

I started up the food processor, and the machine started acting up again! This time, I found that one of the “small, hard objects” was wedged between the side of the food processor and the blade. I unwedged it and realized: it was the pit of one of the dates. Duh. The recipe had said to pit the dates, and I…well, I didn’t even think about it. (See…I told you I’m not great in the kitchen yet!)

I removed the rest of the pits from the mixture and pitted the remainder of the dates (the best ideas I’d had all day!):

Part of the purpose of the dates is to add moisture: not too much, but enough that the whole mixture will press together. I’d added most of the dates, and the texture seemed OK to me (although I had no idea). Still, I figured I’d just add the few remaining ones:

You know that feeling you get when you’re pretty sure you just made a huge mistake that can’t be corrected? You get light-headed, sweaty, and clammy, and your heart starts beating like a bass drum in the fastest song of the century. Yeah, well…that’s how I felt when I saw my pricey cacao, walnut, and sea salt mixture swimming in the residue of the expensive Medjool dates.

All I could think to do was try to drain the liquid. So…

Go on; laugh. I call the above contraption “improv,” and I’m not always good at it.

Sufficiently rattled, I realized I still had to chop the almonds roughly. Since this called for using a sharp knife, and since I was having a rough time of it, I knew that any slight mental error could mean an unplanned trip to the ER. So I made sure to be extra careful, and I didn’t cut myself at all! I did, however, cut a bunch of almonds:

With all ingredients prepared (albeit a bit more moist than the recipe called for), I mixed the chopped almonds with the cacao/sea salt/walnut/too-many-Medjool-dates mix and put it in a container:

Sorry about the horrendous food photography. I was too worn out to care!

The recipe suggested putting the brownies in the fridge/freezer for a while to help them set. Once they were ready (and once I was ready to put a smile back on my face), my mom and I gave them a try:

OK, so my smile looks forced. But at least it’s there!

Anyway, the brownies were delicious! I’ll definitely be making them again, once my wallet recovers from the expense. They’re totally worth it, though…and they’re healthy. Mmm. Next time: not as many dates!

Mmmmm. OK, the leftover brownies are calling my name now. Later, y’all.