Nanaville

Author: Anna Quindlen

Another Anna Quindlen book! Just like the previous one, this one too was a pleasure to read! This book is about her journey as a grandparent. The challenges, the fun, the learning, the love - she talks about every aspect of being a grandparent and what makes it so enjoyable is the fact that she's so honest about everything. How there are times when she would like to advice something for her grandchild to his parents but thinks that it is not her place to do so; or when she couldn't control herself and did actually give the advice. How she hired somebody and took formal lessons in the foreign language of her grandchild so that she could converse with them in whatever language they understood. Even though she's a first time grandmother it is amazing how much thought she gives to everything. I love her sense of humor. For example, the time when her grandchild was a baby and crying in the middle of the night. She wanted to go pick him up and cuddle him and put him to sleep but knew that his parents were "sleep training" him and would not like it. Many a times reading her feelings/reactions also reminded me of my mom. I could see her having the same feelings/reactions.

Being a parent myself, I wanted to read this book to understand the world from the eyes of a grandparent. How they feel, what they would like, their predicaments. This was just the perfect book for it.

Homemade energy gel

This year I ran my second half-marathon. If you've read about long distance running then you would have heard about energy gels/chews which keep you fueled up for your runs. When I was preparing for my first half marathon, I tried a few different chews. I didn't try any of the energy gels. Of the ones I tried, I liked Honey Stinger ones. What I didn't like was the trash that I generated in every run. I searched online and surprise, surprise I was not the only one. There were many people who shared my sentiment and hence there were already solutions to my problem. I need to make my own energy gel and then one of the reusable energy gel containers.

This year before I started my training, I thought of getting my energy gel ready. Guess what? The link that I had saved for the recipe was no longer working :(. And if you're like me then you don't want to "guess" the recipe for your running fuel! After some search I found a recipe that I liked and after trying it out on my runs I felt it was even better than last year. Of course, that is just what I "felt". Anywho, after my experience last year I decided I'm going to save the recipe on my blog in case the link stops working in the future.

I wanted to have a photo of the gel here but completely forgot about it; and turns out the quantity of the gel was (almost) just right. I hardly have any left after my final run.

Recipe:

•  4 dried, pitted dates
• 1/2 cup maple syrup or honey
• Grated zest from 1 lemon and 1 lime
• Juice from 1 lemon or 1 lime
• 1 pinch salt
• 2 teaspoons chia seeds.

I used maple syrup; the dates were medjool dates and I didn't have any chia seeds on hand so skipped that. Next time I'll try those because apparently they are supposed to be "superfood" for runners! I put all the ingredients in a blender and blended them together!

This year during my half-marathon I generated zero trash and I was so proud of it especially when I saw all the paper cups littered along the way!