Hungry Dancer: Goat Cheese and Arugula Pizza

I eat fresher and healthier by default during the warmer months. When it's sweltering hot, the last thing I want is to feel heavy and bloaty, so I bypass the fried foods for fresh fruits and veggies without much thought. I also want things that can be prepared quickly and that require turning on the stove or oven as little as possible. The temps haven't been too warm yet, but I'm already transitioning to wanting fresh and healthy grub.

I had a craving for goat cheese last Saturday night and my first thought was salad, but Boyfriend and I needed something with more sustenance. Why not goat cheese on pizza?

First I sauteed red onions in some olive oil, just enough so they began to turn translucent and their sweetness started to come out. I drizzled olive oil over two personal sized pre-cooked pizza crusts. I topped them with the onions, as well as tomato slices, walnuts and goat cheese. I drizzled a little more olive oil over the toppings and then popped them into a 450-degree oven for about 10-12 minutes. That's a rough estimate - I just watched them and decided they were done when they were hot. Out they came and I topped them with fresh arugula and balsamic vinegar and voila! Dinner was served.

(If we hadn't been so ravenous, I would have remembered to take pics of each step so y'all could see the process... Oops. Eating asap took precedence over photography. Next time!)

Oh! Can't forget the sangria I threw together. I tossed together sliced oranges, lemons, limes, pineapple chunks and fresh raspberries into a pitcher. I then poured a bottle of moscato over the fruit and chilled it. Served it with ice and chunks of the fruit. Yum!

Not to toot my own horn, y'all, but dinner was amazeballs. Fresh and healthy but satisfying and the wine was light and refreshing. And it was crazy easy and quick! Just the way I like it.

What kind of quick but healthy meals do you love?

Bon appetit!

xoxo

J

Introducing: Hungry Dancer

Happy Memorial Day Monday!

I hope you got to enjoy a long weekend filled with fun, friends and family. I worked, per usual - gotta love retail! Despite working today, though, I did enjoy some rockin' barbecue. Grilled food is a summer fave and if I could, I'd grill dinner out every night all summer long. I'll get Boyfriend to work on that... :)

In the meantime, and speaking of food, I'd like to introduce the latest and greatest regular feature on le blog: Hungry Dancer, a weekly food and recipe post (biweekly maybe? I haven't decided quite yet...).

I am a hungry dancer, y'all. Dancers are all about food but we strive to eat well for obvious reasons. Besides the need for legit fuel to push us through many hours of class, rehearsals and performances, there is the body-conscious thing, too. I mean, rocking the 'tard 'n tights or wearing shorty shorts on stage makes you very self-conscious very quickly. But I also feel strongly about finding balance. Good food is a pleasure I let myself enjoy. There is no way I'm going to turn down a salted caramel brownie; that's just sacrilege. But I am on a constant quest to eat in a way that fuels my body, maintains my dancer figure, AND satisfies the soul. I think I do well most of the time, so I'd like to contribute to the healthy eating conversation, sharing my perspective and experience as a dancer and athlete... and real-life person with real-life cravings :)

Enter Hungry Dancer! Posts will feature fresh and healthy recipes that I either concocted or borrowed, with naughty-but-good-for-the-soul recipes tossed in to spice things up, along with my opinions and a few pictures to make it pretty (please judge kindly, a photog I am not!).

A sneak peak of tomorrow...

Happy Monday!

xoxo

J

Five After 5: Summer Dreams

Time for another installment of Five After 5. Since I'm impatiently plugging away at my Ballet Pedagogy paper because I do not want this to turn into a summer-long project, today's theme is all about summer dreaming. Or more specifically, what I would do this summer if I had all the time and money in the world...

Read lots and lots of books. At the pool. Wearing lots of SPF.

Unlike my usual summer to-read list, I'm not interested in anything light 'n fluffy. Rather, I'm craving some literary meat and potatoes. I'm talking Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina, and Moby Dick. I want to don a huge floppy hat, some serious SPF (I'm pale and proud, y'all!) and a cute bikini while I delve into some serious lit. A copy of Don Quixote is sitting next to my bed right now, just waiting to be taken to the pool...

Juice.

Weird? I want to buy a juicer, stock up on produce and go to town with all kinds of good-for-me concoctions. Maybe I have some kind of vitamin deficiency as I can't get enough fruits or veggies lately, but I guess that's an improvement from my usual cravings (Five Guys burgers, for example). Oh, and! The other night I was perusing the mags at the grocery store while I waited for a prescription to be filled, and I read this: "Some 4,000 new food agents have entered our food supply since 1970" (Self magazine, June issue). Not food, y'all, food agents. Ew. I'm guilty of indulging in things like Doritos and Skittles, but that weirded me out and now I want a juicer.

Get certified.

I still have not taken my group fitness instructor certification exam and this greatly irritates me. Frankly the only thing holding me back is the $250 exam fee. I miss teaching cardio kickboxing. I also have ideas for creating new class formats, fusing dance with cardio and strength training... Because in my humble opinion, dancers have top-tier fitness and physiques. Want to be strong and bendy and fit? Get thee to a dance class.

Overhaul the wardrobe.

I have been drooling over some new fashions a la Nike and H&M. There is zero wiggle room in my budget right now, but if I did have some extra cash, I'd acquire more pairs of my go-to Eclipse kicks and pretty much the entire collection of H&M's gorgeous new blues. 

Attend a summer dance intensive.

It kind of kills me that I neither have the time nor the money to attend an intensive this summer.  If you were with me a few summers ago (check out the July 2009 archives), you know I ventured off to Chicago for a month to dance and learn with Deeply Rooted Dance Theater. That adventure was epic. Not only did it technically and physically kick my butt, but it it taught me so much about myself as a person... Most significantly that I am beautiful, that I do have a voice that deserves to be shared, and that I am much stronger and more capable than I ever give myself credit for. (And you know what? So are YOU.)

LE SIGH.

xoxo

J

I passed!

Well ladies and gents, I passed the oral performance half of my Ballet Pedagogy certification exam!

As soon as I finish the written portion of the exam, I will hold the certificate in hand and be qualified to teach the First Year Vaganova (Russian) Syllabus. The paper is in progress, but the scarier half of the exam is done and I am so relieved.

I can't get too distracted (I'd prefer not turn the paper into a summer project!), but at least now I feel free to get back to the gym, back to planning the move to Pittsburgh and very important things like working on my summer wardrobe (umm, H&M's latest in-stores-now is killing me...) :)

Other than that, there is nothing else to report at the moment... Happy weekend everyone!

xoxo

J

Be back soon!

I miss the gym, cooking and eating a real meal, and kickin' it here in Blogland, but my pedagogy oral presentation exam is top o' the list right now. Next Wednesday is the day. Wish me luck, say a prayer, light a candle, do a little dance - any and all are appreciated.

Via Pinterest

I'll be back next week... hopefully with good, "I passed!" news ;)

xoxo

J

Aaaaand, we're back! Five After 5!

Some Five After 5 goodness comin' at ya... Today's Five After 5 is all about the random.

I chopped my hair off.

Why: just because. I wanted to see if I could really pull off short hair... and because Boyfriend looooves short hair. I also wanted retro flare to my hair. This is the result:

Kinda 1930s, no? I don't have a better one at the moment, but you get the idea. You like?? Boyfriend gives it an A+. Yay!

It's crunch time.

While I didn't enroll in classes this semester, I am doing a ballet pedagogy (teaching) certification with the ballet professor at CSU. I've completed all my teaching rotations and now I'm working on the written and oral exams. I'm stressed. I'm trying not to panic but I have two weeks to write and prepare and there is a lot to this. It took a friend of mine over 2 hours to present her oral exam. Holy whoa...

Nike pointe shoes?!

Have you seen these?? (See this link.)

I haven't read much about them yet, but from what I can tell from my quick glance is that they're just a concept at this point. Aesthetically, I love them. And they're Nike, which you know is my fave label. But I have very little pointe experience myself, so I hesitate to form an opinion from a dance perspective quite yet. I'm very curious to know my ballet prof's thoughts, of course, as well as other dancers out there...?

Name change: yay or nay??

As I make changes around here, I'm tossing around the idea of changing my blog's name, too... Is this a really bad idea?? The reason I'm considering this is because the focus of my blog is evolving a bit. When I started writing, I had a focus and the name of my blog reflected that. As my life evolved, so did le blog and it's focused widened - it kind of became a jane-of-all-trades lifestyle blog where I talked about whatever tickled my fancy in the moment (case in point: this post). But my life is evolving yet again and as it does, I want my blog to return to a specific focus. As I process and work through changes to le blog, a name change is beginning to seem necessary. But you tell me: will that throw you off? Annoy you? Do share and please be honest. I don't want to charge ahead without thinking of you, my dear readers!

Focus Jessi!

Like I said, time to focus back in. I have yet to figure out a neat 'n catchy little description, but... dance, fitness, health, nutrition, all from a dancer's perspective and experience. Ya dig?

Happy Tuesday, y'all! 

 xoxo
J

Diagnosis: RA

Ummm, Jessi, where are all the changes you promised?? I know, this place still looks the hum-drum same. I finally took care of the lingering housecleaning in #3 , as well as dealing with what I'm talking about below, but now I'm fully free to move forward full speed ahead. Concrete ideas, planning and steps are underway, so have no fear, I wasn't blowing smoke up your tutus!

Several posts ago, I talked about some serious aches and pains I started experiencing in January. After several doctor visits, blood tests, x-rays and more doctor visits, I finally have an answer.

On Wednesday morning I learned the final verdict, and that is I have rheumatoid arthritis. Now, this sounds much, much worse than it is. I mean yes, RA really can be terrible for some people, but I'm in the very early stages of development. I don't have any joint deformity and my pain can be managed by slightly increased, but still safe, doses of ibuprofen. Now I will start specific drug therapy which will kick it into remission.

But isn't arthritis something that just happens to old people? No. First of all, rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease, unlike osteoarthritis which is something that just happens with aging and most of us will develop this to some degree when we're old fogies. Yay for aging, huh? Second of all, someone can develop RA at any age since it's autoimmune and related to genetics. My dad has RA, as did my grandmother (his mom), so the stars were aligned for me. Thanks Dad! ;)

So, while this isn't ideal and obviously I would not choose to be "a rheumatoid" (the label the doc used for us RA folks, lol) if I had a say in the matter, it's nothing to get in a tizzy over. My life isn't over and it isn't terminal news. My impatience with feeling crappy and demanding to be fixed now (I don't have time for this, I got shiz to do!) helped catch it early. Drug therapy will prevent progression of the disease which is what causes joint deformities. No Quasimodo hands and feet for me.

At last I know what's been goin' down in my bod for the last three months so I can deal with it and get on with taking care of business. AND a huge concern has been quelled: I can still do my dance thang and the other active shenanigans that I love. Big sigh of relief. As I told the doc, giving up my active life would be death to my soul. He smiled and reassured me that that doesn't have to happen.

Happy weekend y'all! Get outside, get your booty to the gym, go play with the dog or kiddos... doesn't matter, just do.

xoxo
J

Five After 5

Hold on to your iPads because tonight's Five After 5 is a bit on the epic side. There have been some significant shifts in the Jessi Universe recently...

#1
I quit a job today.

"A" job, because of course I have (had) more than one. This decision was inspired by an epiphany about a week and a half ago that I am unhappy and unsatisfied because I have allowed myself to be distracted {yet again} from doing what I should be doing. Today I took a leap of faith so I can get back on track.

#2
Le blog is getting a makeover

Related to #1, things are going to start be a little different around here, from looks, to feel, to focus. Stay tuned and please pardon the mess.

#3
No, thank you

I suffer from a bad disease called Guilt-Induced Yesitis. After some solid reflection, I realized that many of my commitments were for others and not myself, so some serious housekeeping has ensued. This is still in-process and some conversations have yet to take place, but so far so good. "No, thank you" is quite healing.

#4
I will not be graduating this May

I did not return to school this semester. I only have a few classes to go, but for now it's on hold. I'm not stressed about this. If it's supposed to happen, it will. And my path to a dance career is not dead-ended, it's just detoured down a different route.

#5
I'm moving across the country!!!

In t-minus 5 months, I will be packing up and heading east to Pittsburgh, PA! Boyfriend received acceptance with full-funding (a very big deal!) to Carnegie Mellon University for a PhD program, and I will be accompanying him to Pitt. This is huge. I've lived in Colorado my entire life. Despite the big change, though, I am very excited for this adventure and new zip code!

Happy Monday!

xoxo
J

Five After 5

Nowruz mubarak!
Happy {Persian} New Year!

The Persian calendar is different than ours and so their new year celebration is now! Last night I joined Boyfriend and other Iranians for a night of delicious food, dancing and great company to ring in their New Year. I'm absolutely exhausted today, but it was worth staying up for. What a fun night! Here are five shots I snapped during the festivities...

Items with specific significance to the holiday

Persian "Santa"

Because they swim over and around each other in cyclical patterns, the fish symbolize how life comes full circle. Consequently fish is the traditional food served on Nowruz, such as salmon... Sorry we ate your cousins, little buddies!

Someone was gettin' down so fierce I couldn't catch 'em on camera

Boyfriend's bromance dance

Nowruz mubarak everyone!
("no-rooz moo-bar-ack")

xoxo
J

Kiss me, I'm really Irish!

Looking forward to my annual fish 'n chips (I don't dig on corned beef, vom) and Guinness tomorrow...

Last year's St. Pat's (before going back to brunette... eek, look at those roots!)

Everyone have a safe and happy and fun St. Patties Day!!

Erin go braugh!

xoxo

J