I could never pick a favorite dessert (even the thought of doing so gets me lost down a rabbit hole of amazing desserts that I must eat my way out of), but as a group, pie ranks pretty high. And while I love a well-rounded pie with a tasty filling, the crust is by far the best part – buttery, flaky, lightly sweet. A good crust can make or break a pie.

I’m known (and made fun of) for eating the filling and the crust separately. If the pie has a lattice crust (by far superior to all other types of pies for the additional crust and crunchy sugar), I carefully peel it off in one piece, eat the filling, and then enjoy the crust with whipped cream when available.

Even though I am fairly obsessed with pies (I don’t think I could pin another hand pie or pie in a mason jar), I haven’t made one on my own. I’m afraid to ruin the dough and the thought of having to make two separate pieces seems exhausting.

To get over my fear, my mom and I decided to take a pie making class. The part that sold me was that you get to eat what you make – Sign me up! 

The pies we made were adorable. We got to try our hand at making a nectarine-cherry pie with a lattice crust and a key lime pie with a graham cracker crust. For obvious reasons I loved the nectarine-cherry pie, and ours turned out charmingly ugly but delicious. We used six inch pie tins, which for some reason made them even more appealing.

After the pies came out of the oven the French pasty chef who was teaching us whipped up some cream quickly for us and we dug into our steamy pies. The amount of pie they encouraged us to eat was outrageous, but it sure was amazing.

With a few leftover ingredients our teacher also showed us how to quickly make a galette, which fits my baking style a lot more than an intricately put together, time consuming constructed pie. The best part, all the crust and flavor of a pie without the fuss.

Top Pie Tips:

1. Always use extremely cold butter when making your crust to make sure the butter stays together to make flaky pockets
2. Don’t overwork the dough. Only mix it until it just begins to come together.
3. The food processor is your friend. It makes it easy to combine the dough without over mixing or heating it with your hands.
4. Pie dough has to be constantly cold. The colder it is the easier it is to work with and the better it holds up to shaping and baking. Always refrigerate or freeze your dough between mixing it together and rolling it out and don’t forget to cool it again once it is in the pan before baking or full of filling.
5. Sweet pies are always better with a touch of powdered in the dough.
6. You can never have too much pie.

In the last few months of college my roommate and I took to exploring the local hiking trails. But once we packed up and (temporarily) split up, we stopped. With some extra time and the excuse of good weather before winter really sets in we decided to hike the hills of my home town.

Despite living walking distance away for most of my life, it’s been years since I have hiked Montara Mountain. It’s one of those hikes that on paper seems like a great idea, but in the midst of it you question your sanity and your ability to make it home. The unmarked trails at the summit make it easy to accidentally end up on the wrong side of the mountain leaving you cold and stranded near Montara Beach (a few miles from Half Moon Bay).

I was even more hesitant to do the trail because I have in fact gotten lost and ended up on the wrong side (in my defense I was 5 or 6 and with my mom and brother, so not really my fault). Because I only had a 50 percent success rate for this particular hike I decided to grab a map from the information center before we hit the trail. I flipped it open, saw the name of the trail we were going to do and shoved it into my backpack.

For the first half of the trail I went by memory and a single sign to keep us on track. The trail winds its way up the mountain, so there were a few times where I wasn’t quite sure we were on the right path. When we reached the summit there is a fire road that runs along the top of the mountain. I remembered this from when I did the hike two years ago, and I knew the next trail we needed to grab branched off of it to our right.

We got to a break in the foliage and I stood looking at what I was pretty sure was where we needed to go. I just had that feeling that I had been there before and questioned this very spot, but took the trail and ended up where I needed to be. I was fairly certain I was right until I opened the map and realized that the trail we were on disappears off the map a mile or two before the point we were at. On top of that, an intense looking runner came by and asked if we needed help (not only did we look slightly pathetic, but I was holding up the map and loudly saying “Let me orient myself” and lining up the edges with the coastline like an insane person). He convinced me that we had passed the path I was looking for and sent us back up the fire road .3 miles. But when we got to the point he was talking about we realized that he was referring to the path we came from, not the one we were hoping to catch.

Despite being tired and hungry, we laughed and turned around to head back to the spot we were at before. My ever faithful roommate put her trust in me (and my insane ramblings about why this had to be the right path) and we set off on one of the craziest, desolate trails we have journeyed together.

There were parts of the trail that had completely washed out. Despite being made fun of constantly for being short (let the record show I am in fact of average height), even I had to hunker down to avoid the low-hanging foliage. We climbed, crawled, arm-flailed and slid our way down the mountain. In about 45 minutes we only saw two people and a dog who were climbing up the mountain (the humans carrying their mountain bikes). It was slightly eerie in a “we could easily die here and it would months before we were found” kind of way and also exhilarating. At one point while climbing down another massively washed out portion of the trail my roommate proclaimed “I feel like Katniss.”

After a few more “I swear it’s this way”s, we stepped out of the eucalyptus trees back into civilization after four hours of fending for ourselves and finding our own way.

I know I’m not the only one who hates changing the clocks, but it’s especially irritating for after-work runners such as myself. Now by the time I get home and change, it looks like it’s midnight outside. And while I feel safe running by myself in broad daylight, being out all alone at night seems like a terrible idea. Instead of trying to beg someone to run with me (so far miserably unsuccessful) or try to cram in a run at lunch, I decided to take advantage of the extra morning light (the light I would rather have in the evenings, for the record) and go for a run.

When my alarm went off at 5:30 this morning I was kicking myself. I was losing an hour of sleep to run in the cold? What a terrible idea. But my attitude quickly changed when I got on the road and it was nearly empty. All week my commute to and from work had been especially terrible (I’m convinced my iPhone has been sending an alert to everyone in a five mile radius of me telling them I’m about to leave and so should they. Siri can be quite conniving). Instead of taking me an hour and a half, I was at work in 45 minutes. That alone made me like getting up early that much better. By the time I got to work, it was bright enough for a comfortable run.

Usually I shake my head in disdain at the poor souls who get up in the morning and go for a run. But this morning I realized why they do it. Everything is quiet. Streets aren’t busy. The traffic that blows by me any other time would stop and let me go. And being with the other runners felt like we all knew something everyone else didn’t.

This whole holiday season is already a blur for me. Working in magazine publishing means that the entire month of October was all about Christmas thanks to finalizing the December issue and sending it to the printer. It put my whole mind into a weird twilight zone where the weather had yet to fully cool and I was prepping for Christmas trees, cookies, and resolutions. By the time it was Halloween we were well into January and I felt like the holidays were over and it was time to prep for spring.

To make things even more confusing to my already muddled mind, my family celebrated Thanksgiving two days after Halloween. Because many of my family members were invited to multiple holiday dinners, we decided to do this years feast a bit early. It turned out that the only day in November that we could all make it was Saturday, so we had a very early celebration.

We kicked off the weekend with a beautiful dinner overlooking the ocean before diving into our traditional meal on Saturday. My brother and I did our own Turkey Trot in the morning to substitute for our previous plans to run a real race. The weather was great (another bonus of having three less weeks on fall’s side) and we had a blast making jokes about what everyone else was doing on “Thanksgiving.” We withheld from running in full out costumes (or any themed attire), but I think if we should repeat the experience next year we should go all out.

For dinner we had our usual spread: salad, mashed potatoes, gravy, turkey, stuffing, and vegetables. I am not a big fan of Thanksgiving foods (mashed potatoes don’t interest me, I avoid gravy and turkey like the plague, and while I love stuffing, it makes me feel horrible). I was mostly interested in one of my favorite salads and the classic pumpkin pie, but the meat eaters were pleased that yes, you can get a turkey outside of the last week of November.

Despite being three weeks early, it was a lot of fun. There were no lines at the grocery store, no intense holiday traffic, and no painfully scripted Thanksgiving television in days preceding. It was by far the most relaxed holiday we have had.

I hate to admit it, but by this time last year I had nearly finished off a huge bag of candy from a bulk store by myself. To say I have a sweet tooth is a serious understatement. My freshman year of high school I had a bag of skittles almost every day after lunch. I love dessert, and I don’t think I have ever uttered the words “too sweet” in my life.

With that said, I have not had a single piece of Halloween candy this entire month, and I’m not going to have any. As people bring in bags of candy to work, the candy bowl sits by the door of my house, and millions of children load up on the sweet stuff, I’m going to say no.

It’s not that I don’t like Halloween, but rather I have worked so hard to finally cut back on my sugar intake and I’m not willing to let a single “fun size” package of candy blow my entire 33 grams.

But my “just say no” policy will continue throughout the year because:

1. Candy is not healthy or natural
2. Between the packaging and the incredible amounts of processing, it is incredibly unsustainable and wasteful. Think of all of the small wrappers that will be thrown out in the 48 hours surrounding Halloween alone.
3. Many chocolates are made with child or slave labor in poor working conditions.
4. The food dyes and other additives are chemicals that have been linked to health problems and behavioral issues, not to mention their carcinogenic chemicals.
5. There is no benefit. I may love the taste and enjoy the sugar rush, but heavily concentrated sugar does nothing but damage.

I have always been a tea person. The only time I ever drank coffee was when my great grandmother would make me “coffee” with a few tablespoons of coffee and a full cup of milk when I was a kid. Once my parents got a small espresso machine, it started to grow on me.

For people who spend $20 on coffee each week (or the average American who spends $1,092 on coffee each year), having an espresso machine at home saves money, but does it save resources as well? For people who get a disposable cup, lid, and stirrer every time they go to the coffee shop, it’s quite possible that over the lifetime of the machine (years if treated properly) could save carbon emissions and paper/plastic waste.

While I’m not saying that every home in America should have an espresso machine (although many already do have a coffee pot), I sure do enjoy having one I can use at work. And let’s face it, foaming milk is fun.

Even though I have convenient access to espresso machines, I still hardly drink coffee. Because the coffee itself is resource intensive to produce and ship around the world (not to mention the poor living conditions for many of the farmers or people who live near commercialized coffee farms), it’s something I try to save as a treat instead of a daily necessity.

I thought running 13.1 miles was impossible, and if it was accomplished, it was surely horrible. But the smile I had on my face for most of those miles (mile 12 the real exception) proves otherwise.

I chose the Nike Women’s SF half for my first because I knew it would be a full experience. Nike builds an entire community around the race. It was great to have a Facebook page where people asked all of the questions I had and to see some of the faces I would be lining up with. I also knew that if I was going to attempt the impossible, I was going to need a lot of support and distraction. Plus, 30,000 other women and men suffering the same fate (or worse, twice my fate) was plenty of misery loving company for me.

Over the entire weekend thousands of women descended on Union Square, and even though I live nearby, it still felt like we were all on some sort of weird girls weekend away. Everyone I met was friendly and excited to be doing the race. Even when we were all crowded around Nike’s San Francisco store trying to find our names on the window, people waited patiently in line and helped each other find their names.

When looking for my name I was incredibly thankful that 1. few Mandys decided to join me on this particular adventure,  2. my name was not a popular choice for expecting parents in the past 50 years or so, and 3. Nike was kind enough to keep the few of us where I could get a good picture.

Having never done a big race before I didn’t know what to expect at the start line. I definitely didn’t think it would be fun. My friend and I got to our corral about 30 minutes before the race was set to start at 6:30 a.m., and it took us 40 minutes after the official start to make it to the start line. But the entire wait was entertaining. People in the apartments on the streets we were on would hang out their windows and cheer us on (one guy actually made his dog dance for us and although it was funny, it severely embarrassed the dog). People crowded onto their fire escapes to watch us. And despite being in a HUGE crowd of people all waiting for the same thing, no one around me got impatient and the faint music we could hear from the starting line was all people needed to dance and keep warm.

Because of injuries and time constraints, my friend and I did not train like we had planned to and we really didn’t expect much out of ourselves. Our longest training run was a bit of a flop and we ended up walking about 50 percent of it. I think we both expected the race to follow a similar pattern, but when we were still running strong at mile 4, I think we both started to realize that we were going to make it and do way better than we expected.

The first few miles were by far my favorite. The race started in Union Square and went along the Embarcadero through Fisherman’s Wharf and the Presidio. The people along this portion were fun and kept the energy high. Two guys had signs about zombies and just kept screaming “THEY’RE BEHIND YOU!” which made mile 2 a lot more fun (they showed up again around mile 10 with a different sign and I couldn’t help myself from yelling “zombies!” at them).

By mile 8 we had only walked a few times up large hills and we were getting close to where my family was supposed to be waiting. After going up fairly continuous hills since mile 6, we were so happy to go downhill for a while. (I may have shouted “I love gravity!” when we finally crested the hill and got a few confused looks).

After the Presidio the race continued along the Great Highway for a while before breaking off into Golden Gate Park for a couple miles. This was by far the hardest part of the race for me. We could see the finish line when they made us cut over into the park. My knees were killing me from the last mile of downhill and all I wanted was to get some food and sit down. But the promise of free chocolate another mile away kept us moving through the park. Finally at mile 11.5 my friend and I gave in. Our knees and feet were on fire and we had to walk for a bit. We walked for a little less than a mile before exiting Golden Gate Park and making a dash for the finish line.

I was so tired by the time we got to the finish line that I didn’t pull out my phone and take any pictures of the madness, but it was insane. There were so many people crowded at the finish, and most of them wanted pictures with the firemen dressed in tuxedos that were handing out our finisher’s necklaces. Someone started the trend of asking the firemen to pick them up, and it turned into some weird “look at how big this fish I caught is” type photos with the firemen holding the women sideways, upside down, on their shoulders, etc. Their tuxedos must of been disgusting after holding sweaty women all day.

For those who don’t know, the finisher’s necklace for the Nike Women’s Series are serious. People will sell them on eBay for exorbitant amounts of money. Instead of getting a metal that you will hang on your wall, forget you have, or even lose on the way to the car, Nike partners with Tiffany & Co. to make a special necklace for everyone who finishes (I’m sure the guys who ran it loved it). This year’s looks pretty cool, and it’s something I will actually wear. Although personally I think next year they should just write “badass” on it and be done.

The first time I went for a run outside without a coach forcing me too was in 7th grade. My brother was coming off his senior year track season and convinced me to go for a “short run.” I made it two blocks, not even a half mile, before I said forget it, and walked home.

That girl would not believe that I ran (and walked) 12 miles on Sunday. This not only marks my longest run, my furthest run, and my most painful run, but also my last long run before I yet again go further than ever before and finish 13.1 on race day. With all of my training, this run almost got me to 50 miles in a month, another first.