Dana Burland

Dealing with food in the morning comes with dangers. Once, in a groggy state, I went a little too liberal adding crushed red pepper to my peanut chicken and rice lunch; I’ve definitely mixed up a slightly too vinegary dressing for mid-day salads; and one morning while preparing a slow cooker Dr. Pepper pulled pork recipe, I opened the 2-liter just to have it explode all over me. Joyful mornings! I love looking forward to a tasty lunch, but sometimes I struggle to make it happen in the morning. If we’re being honest here, I always struggle to make anything happen in the morning. Here’s what I’ve been chowing down on lately; everything is tasty, relatively healthy and fairly simple to put together in a half-asleep state—just mind adding herbs and spices. Chickpea, Tomato and Mozzarella Salad Salad with Maple Mustard Vinaigrette This salad dressing would be equally slurpable on chicken, coating roasted veggies or in a glass with a straw and a tiny umbrella. I’ve munched through...

If I were to be a reporter for Grand Rapids Magazine (which I’m not) my beat would be bloggers and farmers markets. I took on freelance writing work for the magazine (which is owned by the company I work for) soon after starting here last fall. As a blogger and farmers market fan mahself, I’m totally down with covering both—especially since my last interview included talk about local handmade honey caramels, drooool. Here’s what I’ve written for this month’s issue. Blogger Profile: weatherman Bill Steffen’s blog  (p.16) Feelin’ lonely? Call Bill. The man can chat about anything under the sun, seriously, because he’s a meteorologist!—can I get a ba-doom-ching ? We talked mostly about his blog , but also about potholes, meteor crashes in Russia and ArtPrize . For the weather buff, his blog is a must-read. He goes beyond the daily forecast and gets analytic about weather trends and who else is suffering with [insert ridiculous Michigan weather here] like we are. 10 Reasons to...

Book club (noun): a common misnomer, as members of this group congregate mostly for beer and chit-chat, using paperbacks as coasters. I kid, I kid! Mostly… The pretty faces above are members of my newish professional book club. The five of us run in the same career and Twitter circle, maintaining social media accounts on behalf of various local companies; writing and editing; and handling other various web related business. After a few months of tweeting at these pretty strangers, I put my feelers out there—want to start a book club and meet IRL? Since then we’ve met a handful of times to review marketing books a few chapters at a time, and to grab post-work beers while swapping stories of work challenges. I gotta say, the conversation; camaraderie and company sure makes it hard to advocate not meeting strangers off the Internet.

So I'm outside to shoot a quick photo of my CSA loot like the weirdo that I am , and I feel someone watching me. Oh, hello there buddy. If that isn't a face deserving of a piece of bread, I don't know what is. I yelled to Ben who came to the door wall with a slice in hand. There ya go little fella, now on with the photo session. This is kohlrabi, the unfamiliar star of my CSA basket this week. The CSA lady says... wait a second, what's that in the background? Dang. You give a squirrel some bread and he photobombs you. It's a good thing I have a strange, unjustifiable love for these guys. #youknowyoureasquirrelladywhen Anyway, the kohlrabi. The CSA lady said it was a veggie with a broccoli/cabbage taste. The Internet says it's cousins with kale. Oh,  I dig kale . You can slice it and eat it raw, boil it and mash it like potatoes or roast it like carrots. For trial sake, I sliced it thin and lightly salted it per CSA lady's suggestio...

I was over at Ben's apartment during our Pennsylvania days when his roommate, Joe, proposed we play a board game. Board games. No thanks. They always take too long and I never play strategically enough to win—ever. This game? There were two sets of cards, a thousand tiny game pieces and too many 'wellll, you can't do that in this instance' nuances. Gimmie a box of Rummikub over that hubbub any day. Then somehow I got hooked. The multiple strategies, the changing game set up; this is good variation Dana, accept it. After that, Ben, Joe and I played like little board game addicts (though, still, I almost never won). Months later Andrew, a high school friend, came to visit Ben and Joe. The three of us geeked out over the thought of an additional player. Soon the night of in-town bar hopping was forfeited for hours of play. The next night all Andrew wanted to do was play again. Board game over beer, people. That's big. When Ben and I moved to our apartment in Mich...

Ouch! : Saturday morning Ben was feeling particularly restless—and as it turns out, extra trusting. I took him over to the local track and put the both of us through a nice high intensity circuit workout. Boy was it nice to avoid the Chuck Taylor wearin’, weight droppin’, so-muscular-they-can’t-hold-babies, ultra-dudes at the gym. 30-minute full-body circuit Run 1 lap around the track (pick it up the last quarter) 10 squats 10 lunges (on each foot) 10 burpees 20 iso-crunches (forcing the small of your back to the ground) 10 pushups (20 if you’re Ben) Repeat! Travels : Sunday we spent the afternoon in the charming little town of Saugatuck. After lunch, exploring, shopping (and, oops, gelato) adventures I spotted an uber eclectic antique shop. Now, I’m not really in the market for more stuff, but I dig finding treasures that have meaning to me. For that reason it felt especially great to snag these vintage license plates. They scream for the state I love, and bring a little c...

I’d been geeking out all last week over the start of my CSA pick-ups , then the farmers market lady handed me my basket. Kale, lettuce, scallions, Swiss chard and bok choy. *Record scratch* Bok choy? Remember when you were taking your high school American Sign Language final and Mrs. Dees’ hands fluttered so fast you missed the question and, instead of asking her to repeat it, all you could think to do was respond with a thumbs up? No? Just me? Ok. Why get clarification when you can get marked down on your exam or arrive home with no idea what to do with a mystery leafy ingredient? CSA lesson #1: everything in your basket—however yummy, gross or confusing—is yours for the consuming. It’s not that I don’t like bok choy, I just had no idea what to do with it. And, if we’re being honest here, no certainty which one of the basket greens it was. Good thing Google did. Since most recipes suggested to stir-fry it—and since I felt the toddler-esque need to slightly camouflage it to ...

Womp, womp. Turns out that leg pain before my 10K was no joke. I done jacked up my sciatic nerve and now have a radiating pain in the butt, literally and figuratively. I’ve been trying to rehab it for a few weeks with several methods, not excluding sitting on a tennis ball while at my desk. Applying pressure helps to release the knotted up tendons and offers just a little bit of pain relief which I could really use right now. Still, it feels a bit wonky to pull a fluorescent yellow tennis ball out from underneath me while conducting a phone interview. As if my standing work station isn’t enough to weird my coworkers out.