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Lost In Translation

 My Monday is going great thanks to a great start 🙂

After breakfast, I headed to a rec center for a nutrition and excercise class for Spanish-speeking women. It’s a low-cost class that is part nutrition education part exercise (stability balls, zumba and strength training) and part weight-loss boot camp (they are weighed and have BMI, body fat and blood pressure monitored). It was a cool class!! I helped out with the weighing and body fat using a hand-held gadget.

The whole morning was in SPANISH! I had 4 years of Spanish, two in high school and two in college, but I was never that great at it and it’s been 9 years since my last class. However, I felt I did really well understanding, especially the nutrition lesson. I remember a good amount of vocab words and visuals helped a lot. Languages are cool.

[Did you know Matt read the entire Harry Potter series in Spanish before spending a summer in Mexico in college?]

I’m now back at my desk working on my whole food presentation all afternoon.

And munching!

Today’s lunchbox features a bright salad with romaine + spinach, carrot, broccoli (steamed slightly to take out that cigarette ashtray bite) and some hidden almonds. All topped with Curry Honey Hummus!

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Siggi’s!!! A new flavor! The company sent me a few coupons to try more flavors after seeing me try out the plain kind a few weeks ago.  I was expecting it to be fruit-on-the-bottom and was surprised that it wasn’t. I would have liked a bit of chewy pom or passion fruit seeds, but that’s what granola is for, right!? The flavor was great (akin to the passion fruits I ate in the back of a safari truck in Kenya!) and only 11 grams of sugar and 16 grams of protein met my approval with a thumbs up.

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With Nature’s Path Hemp Plus crunch. 

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SO – I have 2 packets of coupons to give away!!!! But here’s the problem: the blog giveaways are hard to manage in that I get 400+ emails in my inbox that day andddd my blog comments tend to get really backed up (this week they were missing for a few days until I had to call my host and have a kink fixed). So I’m hesitatnt to do a “leave a comment” giveaway. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I could manage entries?  

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Lastly, brown on brown on brown. A furry kiwi!

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Happy Monday Afternoon 

Reader Interactions

Comments

  3. Kath-
    I don’t know how you manage so many emails and comments in general, but I do have an idea for giveaways. You could create a separate gmail address for giveaways, i.e. [email protected]. Then you can have all giveaway-related emails directed to that inbox so your regular inbox and comment inboxes remain unclogged. Gmail will tell you how many emails you have unopened and then you’ll know how many contestants you have to set into the random integer generator (you’ll just have to delete or file them before the next giveaway). Good luck! P.S. I went to law school and got married in Cville and loved every minute – so jealous you are moving there!

    Reply

  5. Perhaps combine comments from a few different random posts and then use a random integer generator on them? I realized that excludes people but it’s a coupon giveaway not the presidential election, and that would provide a large enough sample to make it fair and random.

    Or I know Tina (carrotsncake) often does a scavenger hunt thing where you have to do more than just comment.

    Too many commentors is a good problem to have 🙂

    Reply

  6. I like the idea of creating a whole separate inbox, that seems like it would make sense. I wish I had taken Spanish in school! I took French, which of course I know very little of now and isn’t nearly as useful to me as Spanish would be.

    Reply

  7. ah siggi’s is so good. i think it is capable of single handedly reviving iceland’s economy (seriously, that stuff’s expensive)

    so cool about the spanish class. i imagine a lot of the technical nutritional terms must be similar to those in english

    ciao
    the paris food blague

    Reply

  10. What an awesome lunch! I’m currently in love with greek yogurt but I can’t find that brand! My Publix kind of blows…

    I took spanish from 4th grade to 11th grade and I sort of want to learn it fluently. I have such a great base but when it comes to real life talking I can’t understand that quickly. I pick 80% of the words and that seems enough to ‘get by’ but I want to be great at it! Has anyone here tried that Rosetta stone program?

    Reply

  11. i always find that i am very hesitant to get myself into those foreign language situations (except with french, not spanish because i don’t speak a lick of spanish), but once I’m there and get going with things (and not too wrapped up in mistakes i make), it’s all good!

    can you turn off email comment notification for a day through wordpress?

    Reply

  12. Everything looks delish and that Spanish-speaking program sounds really helpful. El Espanol no es tan dificil, echale ganas!

    Reply

  13. That’s crazy about Harry Potter. I have the first 2 books in Latin, but I’m still working the through the first one. I love those books!

    Reply

  14. Yeah, give them to the person whose blog name rhymes with angry plants. 😀

    If you want less entries make people be creative or exert effort – ie. write a poem devoted to yogurt.

    Reply

  18. Two shockers:
    1) you get 400 emails a day
    2) 16g protein in one yogurt!! The most I’ve ever seen here is 9g per 100g…and I thought that was impressive!
    Crikey.
    Lucky you knowing Spanish,it’s such a beautiful sounding language 🙂

    Reply

  22. That’s awesome that you were able to follow the presentation even though it was in Spanish! I feel like that is one of the biggest weaknesses of the American education system – we do not start teaching children foreign languages early enough. For people in the rest of the world, speaking multiple languages is a given…I wish it were that way here in the U.S. too!

    Reply

  26. I like the 2nd email idea, as well as making it a bit more difficult to enter. I have a separate email address JUST for comments to go to, so if it gets clogged up, its not a big deal.

    As a Spanish teacher, i LOVE that you could follow the presentation AND that Matt read all the HPs in Spanish! I’ve read 1-4, but haven’t gotten 5-7 yet…

    Reply

  27. That and the acai Siggi’s are my favourites 🙂 And am sorry to say I have no diea about the giveaway… I don’t have to deal with the astronomical numbers of comments you get, on my blog! 😛

    Reply

  29. I just so happen to be reading the first HP in Spanish right now! I’ve been living in Madrid for the past 9 months working as an au pair 🙂 really wish I could say I was perfectly fluent…or even just *good*… it’s a longer process than I was anticipating!!

    Reply

  30. I think the idea of a seperate Google account sounds good. That way people have to take an extra step to enter and it keeps your comments from getting too large. And then just clear your inbox at the end of every contest. But keep the contests! I love the idea of winning something! Thanks Kath!

    Reply

  31. I would turn off comment notification all together or at least create a separate email address in your wordpress dashboard for comments to route to. I also agree with making it harder to enter if you the number you get is hard to manage.

    Reply

  33. Maybe pick a number before looking at your emails, and say #137 will be the winner. (This would work best with a separate email account) Tell people to just send blank emails, as you won’t be reading them.

    I love Siggi’s – the price keeps me away unless they are on sale, but the protein number is amazing, and they are tasty!

    Reply

  34. You have all of your comments set to email you? That must be overwhelming! I like the idea of having a separate email for contests and having people send an email to that account rather than leave a comment. That would keep your comments from flooding and you’d be able to quickly see a number and put it in a generator.

    Reply

  35. That class sounds so wonderful. I’m so glad there are resources like that out there. Healthy living is so frequently in the media, but it’s almost regarded as a luxury. People ignore the fact that lower income groups need information about nutrition and fitness as well! It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity!

    Reply

  36. I sooooo want to try Siggi’s but the price tag is holding me back! You’re making me crave the hummus! I don’t have any good ideas really for your giveaway problem….=( I hope you can figure something out for that though!

    Reply

  37. Thanks for the suggestions!!

    I really like the new email address idea, but the problem is many of the companies want to see comments about their product. And with an email address they would be hidden.

    I dont’ want to turn off comments-by-email because that’s how I manage all of my *real* comments and then some would fall through the cracks. If I could figure out a way to turn off comments-by-email on a single post that would solve the problem.

    The Twitter hashtag sounds like the perfect solution, but not everyone uses Twitter! Would that be fair?

    Reply

  39. Since you’re such a big Google fan, you might try a Google form in Google docs. I’ve seen it on at least one blog I read. It puts a little form in your blog, people input their answers (name, email, etc), and then (I’m guessing) it imports it all into a google spreadsheet. And you can even fill it out from Google Reader. People can’t see that their entry was included so you might have to check for double-entries.

    Reply

  41. Love your lunch!!
    I tried that flavor of siggs and it was my very favorite one!! I am from Brazil and we loooove passion fruit in that country, and the Siggs Pomegranate and Passion Fruit yogurt really has the passion fruit flavor right, tangy and delicious!! I would have liked my yogurt a tad bit sweeter, but I am with you, adding some granola (or another crunch factor) to it makes the whole thing perfect!!
    Ana

    Reply

  42. Kath, you could just give them to me and you won’t have to worry about keeping up with entries! HAHA! JK! =] I have no idea how to regulate your entries. I agree with Lauren that you could do a separate e-mail and have us each e-mail you an entry and then you could use random interger thingy.

    Reply

  44. Hi KERF,
    Found you through j3nn.net, your blog is very enjoyable. I’m also wondering what you meant about the “ashtray bite” comment regarding your steamed broccoli? Is this a term you use often and perhaps since I’m a new reader, I don’t know what it means!!!!

    Reply

  49. I love languages, but I’ve never been good at learning them. I took French for about 3 years and loved it, but barely remember it. I can make out some words, but I’m sure I wouldn’t get by with a whole morning of it! I also took German in university but only because it was a beginner’s class and I figured it would be easy (which it wasn’t!).

    Lunch looks great! I still have to make that hummus. 🙂

    K

    Reply

  51. Wow, that Icelandic yogurt sounds really good! Unfortunately it’s not available anywhere near me (in Alaska). Heck, we just recently got Greek yogurt available on a regular basis!

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  52. So funny that you enjoyed that flavor. I just bought it and was too surprised that there was no fruit on the bottom but it was SO sour I couldn’t get through it and ended up throwing half of it away!

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  53. I really like the Google docs idea, but I’m not sure how secure that is (that is, entries could accidentally get erased, and also, not sure if more than one person might try to be in the file at the same time). My vote is for Twitter!

    Reply

  54. I have found that I get a lot less entries when I make people work for them. However, I also really like the idea someone above suggested of having all entries emailed to a different email address.

    OH! And I took an entire intro to politics class in Italian. THAT was interesting. It was difficult to ponder all of these worldly things in Italian, but I credit that class to bringing me up to the level of fluent and not just almost fluent!

    Reply

  55. You could make a form in Google Docs. Then embed that form into a blog post, people complete the form and it saves right into a spreadsheet in your Google Docs account and you could randomly generate a number from that pool of entries to get your winner.

    Reply

  56. I think the US should emphasize foreign language instruction more, I think it’s kind of embarrasing that most of the US can only speak one language as opposed to many other countries where elementary school children are bilingual.

    I’m minoring in Spanish and nowhere near fluent right now but I hope to be eventually!

    I also agree that making a separate email would be best for the giveaway, I wish that yogurt wasn’t so expensive!

    Reply

  59. I just wanted to start out by saying that I love reading your blog every day! It’s provided some great meal ideas and is always a fun read.

    Also, for the giveaway entries not all of us tweet so I feel that email or another method would be a better option.

    Reply

  60. You could use Mr. Linky and ask that everyone leave their comment/blog address via that instead of comments. It embeds nicely into your post.

    Reply

  61. I LOVE Siggi’s!!! It’s my absolute favorite yogurt! I love greek yogurt becuase of how thick and tangy it is, not to mention its protein content… but I like this Siggi’s yogurt more! Their flavors are so good too! I really like the orange ginger kind – it has little pieces of crystallized ginger in it! I just wish it wasn’t so expensive – hope you can do a giveaway!

    Reply

  63. Ha loved that you blanched the broccoli to get the cigarette ashtray taste out! That was funny! Some foods are so good, but can have that weird taste to them. I had to throw out (and I never throw any food away) a papaya because it made my mouth taste like I smoked a pack of cigarettes! Too gross. Anyway, sounds like a great class! Glad you are having a good day!

    Reply

  64. that looks like a great salad!!! i totally understand the need to kinda blanch the broccoli…it’s such a great veggie but raw is kind of hard to handle sometimes! i think having a separate email address for giveaways would be a fun way to take care of the issue 🙂

    Reply

  69. Maybe do a separate giveaway page? That way the comments won’t be mixed in with your “regular” ones.

    Reply

  70. Re. Broccoli: It’s like I can taste iron in it or something! It tastes like a cigarette smells to me when it’s raw – even after I swallow it I can taste it on my breath. But when it’s cooked it’s fine!

    Reply

  71. I was a spanish teacher prior to being a pastor and loved reading regular books I could read in english in spanish. We just had some Harry potter in spanish donated to our church and I’m going to read them now.

    Reply

  72. My husband read the entire Harry Potter series in German when he wanted to get back into reading in German. He liked how they progressed in difficulty as he got back into fluency.

    Reply

  73. What a great opportunity to attend a Spanish exercise and nutrition class!

    That hummus sounds wonderful! I’m looking into that!

    No idea on the giveaway — I fear giveaways, too. My Blackberry was slow for a week after my Larabar giveaway!

    Reply

  76. I don’t know if you solved your giveaway problem yet, but I suggest choosing from the previous day, since those are likely your most “faithful” readers and posters. Then people aren’t just leaving comments to get a prize; rather, they get a prize since they faithfully leave comments.
    Just a suggestion.

    FYI, I craved kale today – baked sprinkled with old white cheddar and chili pepper. Yummy chip-like variation! 🙂

    Reply

  78. I don’t know what happened, but the comment I made yesterday never showed up. Odd.

    Anyway, what about setting up a separate blogs for giveaways, like Swistle does (though hers is actually for reviews, but she does giveaways on it). Then you could either disable comment notifications for that entire blog, or you could have them sent to a different email address.

    Reply

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