July 2013 / WHAT JEN DOES

Turning 30: Building Your Team

7.25.2013

I think one of the best things about getting older is that you know more about what you need and where to get it from. I like to refer to this as "building a team".

I've been building my team for 30 years now but not really realized it until quite recently. I know now what to try to do myself versus what to go to my team for. For example, I've recently added "James" to my team. James works at this clinical massage place in Back Bay and we've been on 3 "dates" in one week. He's super patient and quite literally put my body back in place after my back was terrible last week. When you are picking team members, you pick people that care about you. I can tell James cares about what he does ... in part because he told me my body was stubborn and spent extra time trying to "balance my hips". I insanely walked extra carefully home because I didn't want to ruin all his hard work.

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Turning 30: Independence

7.22.2013

Turning 30 is different things for different people.

I'll be honest and say that I haven't always had the easiest time adjusting to the impending threshold. Initially, it made me feel like I should have more accomplished. Five years ago, I would have expected that by 30 I would be married and probably have a baby. There would most likely even be a mortgage involved and I would have been thinking about what type of stroller would be better for city living. I would channel my love of bulk purchases into Diapers.com.

My life isn't like that... pretty much at all. I'm single. I have a cat, not a baby. My socks never match (and its obvious because they after often neon). But, it's so fulfilling in ways that I didn't anticipate.

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Quinoa Cakes with Grilled Asparagus & Goat Cheese

7.09.2013

Like I said last week, I haven't really been cooking. I've even been habitually buying lunch - which is just really not me. After all, I did eat crockpot pomegranate chicken for like 9 work days last summer. I'm dedicated to the cause of saving a few bucks each day.

But tonight, I felt a smidge inspired and had a flashback to these quinoa cakes I made last year. They were so refreshing and just screamed light, tasty, and summer. Over the weekend, I had stumbled upon this quinoa salad from Kitchn that I attempted to make for some workday lunches. So with the quinoa already made in my fridge, I had limited excuses.

I didn't even bother to look up the original attempt for guidance, I just figured it would either work out... or it wouldn't. If it didn't, I happened to have a dozen english muffins in the freezer for backup. I didn't have parsley or feta in my stockroom, so I went with some fresh basil from my fire escape for the cakes and creamy goat cheese. Thankfully, my basil had come back to life after the heatwave last week and it only took some water, a dose of miracle grow, and weather that was less than 93 degrees and steamy.

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Life Lately

7.04.2013

Not many things have seemed worthy of a whole post... but the cumulative effort of the last month or so has been pretty great... in an uneventful way. Which is just fine by me.

It's a lot of prosciutto eating, skyline gawking, and rolling on the floor/lawn with a new family puppy.

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