Hello from the airport!

It’s really freaking early, but I’m getting ready to get on a plane that will (eventually, one stop) take me to St. Louis, and I’m pumped! I’m not checking a bag, which was a hard decision because it meant I don’t get to bring home STL beer. Which just means I need to enjoy plenty while I’m there! I’m crossing my fingers the thunderstorms hold off for the Giants-Cards game and for our 5k race! (Yes, I chose to visit at a time when the Giants were playing there.)

In my half-asleep state as I wait at my gate, let’s recap a few things maybe?

Work has been really, really hard the past couple of weeks. Going into Wednesday, I knew it was going to be a really difficult day. After a hard Tuesday, I felt like I needed to lift some heavy things on my own Wednesday morning. In lieu of going to Crossfit, I decided to smash legs in my own workout. I NEVER listen to music while I lift, but on that day I decided to put on a spin playlist and just grind. It was exactly what I needed, despite the early wake up. Squats, split squats, pistols, and abs. Ow.

Post-workout. I thought this might be the last food for 7 hours but it wasn’t!

Leftovers have been going strong for lunch. That soup is growing on me!

Wednesday after work, I breathed a huge sign of relief and treated myself to a little snack pre-dinner out with friends.

I went out with some college friends for dinner. No pictures of my beet goat cheese salad, but afterwards we went to a new liquid nitrogen ice cream place.

You can choose a base, add flavoring, and choose toppings. There are literally over 1000 flavor combos. I kept it simple and got sea salt caramel with fudge.

It was good, but not amazing. This is totally my spoiled ice cream snob self talking though. It had that amazingly smooth texture of nitrogen ice cream (it freezes so fast ice crystals don’t form), but the flavor was just okay.

And lastly, Thursday night’s dinner was a beet, honey goat cheese, dried cranberry, chicken salad, with a side of roasted carrots.

Flapjacked cookies for dessert.

Ok, I’m off!

Happy Wednesday! I’m hitting you with a rare work night post! Let’s dive in.

Thanks as always to our original host.

Pre-Workout: Probably my favorite cheerios, apple cinnamon.

Workout: Crossfit. Lots of push ups, deadlifts, and knees to elbow. Yeesh.

Breakfast: I decided I needed a little more in my smoothie so I threw in some extra Greek yogurt and frozen mango. Also featured: Naked mighty mango juice, frozen pineapple, and frozen mixed berries. Topped with KIND maple granola and honey.

Lunch 1: A smoothie with milk, flapjacked chocolate protein smoothie mix, frozen cherries, and a small handful of spinach.

Lunch 2: Leftover corn and bean chowder. I love this recipe; it’s creamy from blended corn, no dairy. Side of GF cheddar crackers and some ginger chews, original and apple ginger.

Snack: I had a feeling I would be need in a little more protein during the day after a hard workout, so I threw in a new to me protein bar. I ate about 2/3 of it. It was okay, but nothing special. Not a huge fan.

Dinner: I tried a new to me soup recipe that has been on my radar for months. Vegetable turmeric soup from Emilie Eats. We just used rice noodles instead of the weird low-calorie yam ones it called for. On the side, I had avocado toast with everything bagel seasoning.

Dessert: I have something fun for you! A recipe! I loved the oat flour in the Buzzfeed recipe for Lemon Poppyseed bread, and since have been dying to make a variation of it. This warm maple blueberry loaf is the perfect dessert on a chilly and foggy, typical SF day, or for a cozy breakfast! I recommend using a high quality maple syrup for optimal mapley goodness.

Maple Blueberry Bread

Ingredients:

2 cups oat flour

4 eggs

1 cup 2% Greek yogurt

2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons vanilla

3/4 cup maple syrup

1/2 cup blueberries

pinch of salt

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Whip together eggs, then stir in yogurt until creamy.
3. Add maple syrup and vanilla and stir well.
4. Then add in baking powder, salt, and oat flower.
5. Stir in blueberries, and pour into loaf pan.
6. Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes, or until done.

It’s been a hot minute since I posted up over here, but things have been pretty busy! Work has been absolutely crazy this week, and it feels like even my days off are gogogo.

I have a few fun things to share this week. I’m going to start with all the celebrating we have going on for my mom, and then catch up on some fun foods adventures.

Wednesday was my mom’s birthday! Unfortunately I didn’t get off work until 7:30 which sort of killed our original happy hour plans, but we managed to get the whole crew together at home for pizza.

We ordered Blue Line, and I got my own personal little gluten free pizza with spinach, ricotta, onions, mushrooms, and garlic. Yum!

We got some kind of interesting ice cream cookie cake from Baskin Robbins. Jamocha almond fudge ice cream atop a chocolate chip cookie.

It was well enjoyed! Since I’m allergic to multiple aspects of this cake, I happily scooped myself a bowl of chocolate ice cream with fudge sauce.

We’re going to fast forward right to Mother’s Day!

I was up early for a quick 2 mile hilly run around the neighborhood, before stopping at the store for breakfast ingredients and flowers. (The grocery store appeared to be 90% full of dads.)

For breakfast, I made a scramble with mushrooms, shredded carrots (don’t knock it til you try it), and garlic and herb alouette soft cheese. It came out really well! I also picked out some fresh berries.

My sister, a gelato extraordinaire, made “breakfast gelato,” lavender earl grey gelato, which was amazing.

We happened to have a pair of Giants tickets on Mother’s Day, which made for the perfect activity. Since parking at the ballpark has been really difficult for weekend games, we decided to leave an hour early and visit The Yard, a new pop-up bar area outside the ballpark.

Anchor, a true San Francisco brewery, had a beer garden there so we picked out a couple of beers to share: Mango Wheat and Porter.

We happened to run into some family friends there, and spent some time watching their little toddlers run around and get ready for their first Giants game!

Finally, it was time to go in! I’ve been to several games already and have already had my typical ballpark foods. This time, I just wanted vegetables and something I could smother in ketchup. I Southwest salad and garlic fries fit the bill perfectly!

I mostly skipped the Chipotle dressing and ate the salad with tons of ketchup and BBQ sauce!

The game was off to a great start right in the first inning, something rare given the way our season had been going.

We scored 7 runs in the first 2 innings. What??

It was the perfect day too—single jacket weather!

Of course this had to happen:

It was delicious, but I feel like this year the sundaes have been lacking in fudge. It looks like a lot, but the other side has 0 fudge. Boo.

It was a great game, but we left a little early to get back to the pets.

I wasn’t expecting to find Charlie on my bed, and I was pretty delighted to see he was actually sleeping on the correct colors: orange and white! Normally he gets his orange and white fur all over my black clothes!

Ok. Let’s back up to some other food types of highlights, shall we?

I think the name of the game this past week was avocado. The CSA avocado lasted me well into the week.

I made what was seriously the best wrap. Laughing cow, turkey, wilted spinach with lemon thyme salt, fresh avocado, and, this is key: garlic powder. OMG yum.

Another dinner: dairy free corn chowder with pink beans. Side of roasted potatoes (I always forget how much I love roasted potatoes).

On my mom’s birthday, I picked up some flowers on the way home from Crossfit. How nice of me to bring Lilly something to chew on…

She is absolutely crazy for flowers, and these had to live outside on the patio.

I’ve slightly altered by typical smoothie bowl recipe and it is 100x better. Before, I was using milk as my liquid, but I felt like the fruity flavor was getting a little washed out. We had a Naked Mighty Mango drink in the fridge, so I figured I would give that a try. I prefer to not use fruit juice because it’s basically just sugar (and a few vitamins), but I literally only use 1/4 cup (thick smoothies for life!) of liquid, so I figured it was not that serious. Into the smoothie went 1/4 cup of mango juice, 1/4 container of plain yogurt, 1/2 cup frozen mixed berries, and 1/4 cup frozen pineapple. YUM. Topped with granola and honey.

Another avocado meal: I wanted to recreate the wrap but the turkey was sketchy so I just substituted egg whites. Not as good, but got the job done!

After work on Thursday, we whipped ups quick dinner of grilled chicken an dear salad, with honey goat cheese.

Friday was a fun day. I met my college roommate in San Jose for a few hours of exploring food+coffee downtown. We met at Foragers, a cool coffeeshop+soon to be art gallery. It was a neat space, with a hipster feel.

It had been far, far too long since I’d had good coffee!

Around lunchtime, we started poking around yelp for places nearby for lunch. I saw there was a Hawaiian Poke place nearby, and we were both interesting in trying poke. When we got there, we realized we had stumbled into a really cool and trendy food court type of place.

Because we’re the same person, we’re both equally suspicious of large chunks of raw fish, so we both went with tofu, half brown rice half greens.

These were delicious. The tofu was seasoned with sesame oil, so it wasn’t just boring steamed tofu!

In the little food court was a little ice cream bar stand that I recognized from a list of most instagrammable food in the Bay Area, so you KNOW we had to try it out.

You choose your base ice cream bar flavor, then choose dark, milk, or white chocolate drizzle, and then choose your toppings! I am concerned the chocolate had coconut oil, but sometimes you have to be blissfully ignorant and live your life (my allergy is annoying, not life threatening thankfully). It’s day 3, and so far no reaction, so that’s good! It normally happens 5 days after eating something so we shall see!

I chose a taro ice cream base and topped it with milk chocolate, chocolate chips, and rainbow sprinkles.

And both of ours together:

Both of ours together!

Do it for the ‘gram my friends.

We walked around downtown a little bit before I had to head back, and it was funny to see the Christmas in the Park area without the trees! I’ve been there 4x for the Santa Run, but never any other time! (Also: I found out with my school schedule I should be able to do the Santa Run again this year! Yay!)

Here’s a little truth behind the ‘gram though. As pretty as my lunch was, it actually flared my stomach pretty decently, which happens so rarely (thankfully) these days. I knew as soon as I tasted sesame oil, it would be a bad combination. I usually eat pretty low fat out of necessity, and I felt pretty rough for the afternoon as a result. At this point though, I knew my body pretty well and was able to stave anything too bad off with sparkling water, ginger, and a mild dinner.

And a few more meals coming up, I promise!

Another smoothie bowl.

Happy hour post-work Saturday. I gave my mom a beer flight for her birthday, so we had to try it out!

For dinner, we had one of my favorite meals: grilled romaine salad with corn and avocado. We also added grilled chicken. This salad is amazing. The dressing has miso, garlic, and maple syrup, and the grilled romaine takes it to the next level.

And that’s it for today!

Hi friends. I am blogging after work and my brain is 100% ready for bed, but here we are!

I wanted back it up to share some fun eats lately (specifically Monday+a few from today).

Pre-Workout: The typical Cheerios.

Workout: Crossfit. We did squats for strength. We had to do a max reps at 85% for back squat, and I shocked myself by getting 9 reps. Honestly, any of the last 4 reps I thought I could have failed because they came up SO slowly.

The WOD was exciting because 1. it had been almost a week since I’d done Crossfit due to scheduling issues so I was craving some cardio and 2. I did box jumps for the first time since my Achilles tendonitis flared up. I used a shorter box, but the WOD included 150 wall balls and 150 box jumps. As I guessed, my Achilles was fine jumping up but stepping off was a little bit of a problem. It didn’t bother me too much, but definitely tightened up later in the day.

Breakfast: Loving the smoothie bowls. Yogurt, milk, mixed berries, mango, topped with KIND maple granola and honey.

Because I don’t work Mondays, of course I had to take Chloe for a walk on a beautiful day! It had been I think a week since I’d walked her!

Lunch: We got the most perfect avocado in our CSA box last week (accidentally because I forgot to fill our box, so it filled automatically), so I based my lunch around that. I made an open faced turkey sandwich with spicy mustard and mayo, lettuce, nice cheese, and of course avocado! On the side I had some carrots with cheddar seasoning.

I also had a Zevia Cream Soda. I’m not sure how I feel about these but they’re a good occasional treat. I think the cream soda is one of the best flavors because it plays into the natural flavor of stevia (which I don’t normally like).

Snack: The usual.

Plus a few crackers an hour later, before teaching spin.

I used a playlist that was nearly 2 years old, and it was amazing how different the music was! I think music has changed a lot in the past few years (at least what’s popular); it seems like EDM and drops are much more popular, which I’ve embraced for spin. It was nice to change it up though!

Dinner: My parents came with me to hit up Sweetgreen post-class, and i got the Hummus salad with hummus, falafel, feta, and veggies in a yogurt dressing.

Dessert: We had to stop at the best froyo place on the way home. Obviously. I accidentally got a massive amount, but had no problem polishing it off. Chocolate, birthday cake, and chocolate mint, with chocolate syrup.

Post-dinner: I pulled half a piece of lemon poppyseed bread from the freezer and it was amazing. Again. Obsessed.

I apologize if this post was a little curt. I just had a few bites of non-GF donut and my brain has decided to suddenly be half asleep so thinking isn’t really happening right now!

Have a good one!