Things I Will Have at My Wedding

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This weekend one of my very closest friends from college got married in Philly. It was a gorgeous day and I had the most fun time ever at the wedding. I pretty much never stopped dancing except to eat, and boy did I take advantage of my last pre-gluten-free cocktail hour (and, of course, wedding cake). Pigs in a blanket? Oh yes. Mini BBQ pork buns? Give me all of them. Dumplings? O hai. But my very favorite treat was something that I’ll still be able to enjoy when I go gluten-free, and something I’ll most definitely be serving at my own wedding, assuming I am still gluten free then. (Then being quite possibly 15 years from now and not at all in the near future.)
Cake is the only thing that matters

MASHED POTATO BAR. Something I never would have dreamed of yet was so delicious and perfect. Filing this idea away for the future for sure. (I topped mine with cheddar, pesto, broccoli, chives, and, of course, bacon.)

Congratulations Molly and Chris, and thanks for feeding us so well!
cake is the only thing that matters

Going Gluten Free Looks a Lot Closer from This Side of May

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Suddenly, it’s May, and suddenly, I’ll be going gluten free in less than a month.

I’ve definitely been using this time to take advantage of foods I won’t be able to eat come June, like specific pizzas, cupcakes, and bagels from my favorite places. But now that GF-Day looms ever closer, I’ve realized I really need to buckle down and start preparing. There are a lot of products that I’ll need to find replacements for (more on that later this week or next!), but there are a few things I eat on a regular basis that I’ll need to find gluten-free replacements for. Some of the big ones:

CakeIsTheOnlyThingThatMatters.com
Whole wheat bread: Oh bread, my love. My go-to lunch to bring to work is a sandwich, and my go-to I-have-no-food dinner is a grilled cheese. While I’ll try to replace these with options like salads, a girl still needs a good loaf of bread.

CakeGranola bars: I depend on these for quick breakfasts and snacks when I’m short on time, or when I’m not feeling very hungry but know that I need to eat something. I especially like Luna Bars because they have a lot of extra nutrients and vitamins packed into them, but I’m not sure if GF granola bars get that fancy.

CakeIsTheOnlyThingThatMatters.comPasta: I have pasta once a week at the very bare minimum, but usually more frequently than that. So far I’ve been told to avoid rice pasta and try quinoa pasta for texture, but I’ll definitely have to try a bunch until I find one that most closely tastes and feels like my beloved semolina.

CakeIsTheOnlyThingThatMatters.comFlour: This is probably one of the most important things I’ll need to find that I truly love. I’m an avid baker and have a lot of recipes I’d like to adapt, but I’ll need just the right gluten-free flour blend to do so. I also use flour in lots of other recipes, like when breading chicken or making a roux for macaroni and cheese. I’d also like to be able to make things with it that I can freeze for quick use, since I won’t be able to buy them anymore, like pizza dough and pie crust. King Arthur, Cup for Cup, and Bob’s Red Mill are the brands I hear most often (after “make your own flour blend!” which is just not possible in my teeny kitchen). I’m planning to start with King Arthur, since that’s the brand I use and love now, and all their products tend to be quite good.

Do you have any gluten-free product recommendations? I’d love to hear them! (Bonus points if I can get them at Trader Joe’s or Fairway.)

I Ran a 5K! And It Was…Something

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So, I survived my first 5K!

Despite barely sleeping at all the night before, I was actually not too nervous before the race started (at 8am. At the Bronx Zoo. Which is fairly far into the Bronx).
CakeIsTheOnlyThingThatMatters.com
See? Cool as a cucumber with my even-cooler-cucumber friends, who had done this before.

For the most part, the race went really well. I didn’t have to walk at all until halfway through, and even then only for about two minutes. I did have to quickly walk twice more, up two giant hills where it smelled like animal poop and I felt sick. Obviously there was no way to prepare for the poop smell, but I do wish I had known to train a bit on inclines, because I was definitely not expecting the zoo to be quite so hilly.

I finished in 35:49, beyond my best time ever; before this, I hadn’t finished the distance in less than 40 minutes. However, according to all our running apps, the course was a bit shy of a full 5K (the mile markers were also waaaay off), so I would probably have finished in more like 37 minutes–still relatively awesome for me. My goal was to finish in less than 40 minutes and not be last, and I did both those things.

I don’t think I would recommend the Bronx Zoo as a good first time 5K spot though. Between the poop and the hills, I felt like I was going to throw up a lot of the time. This is what I looked like when I finished:
CakeIsTheOnlyThingThatMatters.com

Despite the face of joy above, I am planning to run another 5K this fall–either Tunnel to Towers (through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to the World Trade Center, for 9/11) or the New York Aquarium’s Run for the Wild in October (for a TBD sea creature), assuming it’s still happening with the aquarium still partially closed from Hurricane Sandy. I’m not doing this because I particularly enjoyed the experience, but because if I don’t have a goal, I won’t keep running as hard as I have been. Plus, it’s nice to run with friends. We didn’t all stick together while running (slowpoke Sally over here), but it’s nice to have friendly support before and after the race. So my new goal is two parts: a) to be able to run the entire thing without walking, any potential hills be damned, and b) to be able to finish closer to 30 minutes.

I still feel kind of sick from lack of sleep, but overall I am really proud of myself. Seven weeks ago I struggled to run 60 seconds at a time without stopping and truly didn’t think being ready for this race was possible, and for a first-time runner, I kicked its ass. My goal for this year was to be a healthier person, and I’m sticking to it.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m only going running once this week.

Making Sure Shameless Self-Promotion Really Is Shameless

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Last week I did a piece for Buzzfeed about the 25 best fashion moments on Friends. Friends is my favorite show ever, and I love a good gif, so I had a great time working on the post–it barely felt like work at all. A few hours after the post went up, I got an email from Buzzfeed that they were putting the post on the homepage. I think even people not in web journalism know that this is a Big Deal. I was so excited and immediately took a screen shot to save the moment, and to send to my mom. I was incredibly proud of myself, and opened up Facebook to go post it there–but then I paused. Would this seem overly braggy? I didn’t want to look obnoxious, or like I thought I was so great. But I didn’t want to feel ashamed about this. Getting on any homepage, let alone the homepage of a well-read, well-known, and well-clicked website isn’t an everyday occurrence, especially when you’re an editor in your day job and mainly working behind the scenes. So I posted it.
buzzfeed homepage
Spoiler alert: no one called me braggy, it got a ton of likes, and a bunch of my friends even shared it on their own walls. So the moral of the story is: don’t be ashamed of your achievements! Obviously there’s such a thing as sharing too much, but I think we all need to be better about standing up and being publicly proud of our bigger successes. I know I need to be better about this, so this was a good start…especially since this week an article I wrote for GalTime about personal style in my 20s got picked up by the Huffington Post!

Maybe after this weekend I can write a post about how I won the 5K tomorrow. HAHAHhahaahAHahAHahA.

 

*This post is in no way brought to you by Lean In. Seriously.

 

Finding Joy in the Little Things

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I don’t really have any words to describe what happened at the Boston Marathon yesterday, as horrible doesn’t seem strong enough. This country has had a lot of senseless tragedies in the last 12 years (which there also aren’t words for), but this reminded me so strongly of September 11. I imagine Bostonites felt exactly as we New Yorkers felt in 2001: surprised, shocked, but mostly terrified because we didn’t know if more was coming. I’m thankful for social media in times like these–thanks to Facebook, I knew within a few short hours that all of my friends in Boston, many of whom I knew would be at the marathon, were safe. It’s a luxury we didn’t have on September 11; it took at least 12 hours before we knew that my pseudo-aunt, who worked on the 80-somethingth floor of the second tower, had made it out okay. (Though I’m sure time feels endless in these situations no matter what.)

Rather than dwelling on the upsetting, the aftermath of tragedies like this make for a really good time to appreciate the good things we have in life, and I’m lucky there are so many to pick from. Here are four:
It's finally spring Spring appears to be here to stay.
Dachshund with a bowtieThey make little bow ties and cuffs for dogs (the joys of being on Petco’s press list).
Yankees gameBaseball season is here, along with my future husband Robinson Cano.
TacosPotluck taco Tuesday (tacluck?) at work.

What are you thankful for?