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She Says: Selection Sunday
Is there anything better in sports than March Madness? I tend to think not. I would say the Olympics comes close, but still that doesn’t have the same innocence and excitement of March Madness. I love watching the players and fans get truly excited. The fact that I do not have ESPN is killing me right now!
Anyway, please excuse me while I become obsessed with college basketball over the next few weeks. I’ll try not to let it affect my blogging.
Villanova is a 3 seed and they get to play in Philly! So fun.
Are you March Madness obsessed like me? Will you be filling out a bracket?
I was Running
Today’s plan was 8 miles, but of course the treadmills at my gym cannot be used for more than 60 minutes, so I broke it up into 2 miles and then 6 miles. I wore my new Polar F4 HRM that I got on Ebay. I had some difficulty getting the strap to stay on, so I don’t have official stats for the first 2 miles, but this is what I got for the second 6 miles:
- Time: 53:20
- Miles: 6
- Average HR: 170
- Max HR: 203
I also know that the first 2 miles was in 17:50 so the total for the 8 miles was 71:10.
The whole run was horrible. I had some water and then had a side cramp for about 4 miles and I felt horribly slow and yucka. It’s runs like these that discourage me and make me feel like I am not improving at all. Also, when I got done with this run I thought I was going to faint. I felt dizzy and had to sit down. I’ve never had this happen and I have no idea what was up. It was a little scary though.
I don’t blame my dizziness on the HRM, but I do have a theory. After the strap slid down I was peeved. When I reattached it, I was worried the whole time that it was going to fall off again, so I kind of puffed out my ribs to make myself bigger and probably didn’t breathe as fully in and out as I normally do. I know much smaller people have these things, so maybe I just need a smaller size strap? Basically, I hiked it up so high to place it at the widest part of me without going across my chest and I am fairly certain that is wrong. The little cuts I’ve heard HRMs give me are on the bottom of my um chest area. Sorry for TMI, but I need help!
So, where does that strap go anyway? And how tight is the strap supposed to be?
And Eating Nuts
Normally, I am not hungry until about 20-30 minutes after a run, but today I’ve been kind of nauseas and never got hungry. So, instead of a post-run snack, I drank water and went to the market. When I got home I had some apricots and nuts.
Not sure if this sale is still going on, but I got these Archer Farm’s Apricots for 15% off at Target Friday. When I went all Archer Farm’s products were 15% off.
I also made some homemade almond butter. I’ve tried a couple different times with raw cashew and almonds, but now that the Raw Challenge is over (more on that in an upcoming post), I roasted ‘em up so I could achieve the creaminess that Heather and Courtney taunt me with.
I used 3 cups of raw almonds that I roasted at 300* for 20 minutes. I put them in my mini food processor in two batches. It just takes patience. I knew they would get creamy eventually, so I kept them in there for probably 20 minutes. I just stopped every few minutes to scrape down the edges and mix it up a little bit.
I immediately had some and honestly see no need to ever buy almond butter again.
It produced the most delicious, creamy almond butter. Because the almonds were straight from the oven, the butter was warm and almost like a fluffy mousse at first! I just used it to make something v. interesting involving beans, but you will have to wait for that until tomorrow.
So, the almond butter is wonderful. Except … 
Except? Yes. Except, I am not sure this is cheaper than commercial almond butter. The bag of almonds cost $6.99 and it produced less than a full jar of almond butter. I nibbled on a few almonds and had some on my sandwich, but didn’t have enough to account for 1/3 of a jar.
To make a full 16 oz. jar I would need to $9.32 worth of almonds. Here are some prices for other almond butters:
- My Almond Butter - $9.32/ 16 oz. (no shipping though!)
- Maranatha – $19.99/ 16 oz.
- Barney Butter – $7.99/16 oz.
- Justin’s Almond Butter – $9.53/16 oz.
- Zinke Orchards – $7.95/16 oz.
I know you have to pay to ship some those, but Trader Joe’s also has pretty cheap almond butter. Maybe I just got some really expensive almonds?
Mark is still in Austin at South by Southwest. Public displays of mush are not my style, so I will just say that I miss my boy and his crazy juicer ways! Don’t forger to enter the Lexen Juicer Giveaway.
I’ve definitely been wondering about the almond butter and whether or not it makes as much as a jar. Thank you for pointing this out – although I have to say, the warm, creaminess of your freshly made butta looks excellent!
your almond goodness is making me drool
i was wondering about the price… tj’s for 4.99 is tough to beat!
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[...] been seeing some of my favorite bloggers make their own nut butters and decided to give it a try myself. The process is really [...]