I hope everyone had an awesome holiday! Do you all have Friday off too? Today’s not really an off-day for me, since I have to go into the lab, but I don’t really mind it. I suppose I should go over my day yesterday, right? 

I had the early shift at the kitten nursery. Every week I am astonished at how fast they’re growing up! The tiny kittens who we had to hand-feed a few weeks ago have now moved to the main nursery and are rambunctious and mischievous.

After my shift, I drove to the trail by the bay, where my parents met me with my bike. I got in a nice 10 mile bike ride while they walked the dog. Yesterday was (more or less) a rest day for me, and a much needed one at that. My legs were pretty much done. 

After my ride, my best friend came over to bake brownies for a barbecue with all of our friends from high school. We wanted to do something a little more interesting, so we made S’mores brownies, but we did it the lazy way. If you do it “right”, it looks like this (I made these last year):

For these, you make a graham cracker crust and bake it, then bake the brownies on top of it, and then top that with marshmallows and brown them in the oven for like a minute. We took the lazy way out and just crushed graham crackers at the bottom and mixed marshmallows into the brownie batter. 



Do you see any marshmallows here? Yeah, me neither. They kind of evaporated (ok, dissolved). I didn’t really think that one through…They were still delicious though, and had some extra chewy parts. Plus, they were a hit at the BBQ. 

The BBQ was fun. It was so nice to catch up with people I basically haven’t seen in a year. 

After that, I came home and shortly after began prepping for my family’s holiday dinner. While my dad grilled, I whipped up the blueberry crisp to go in the oven. I used this recipe-so simple, yet so delicious. I used whole wheat pastry flour for the white flour. 

Pre-oven. 

While this was baking up, I had a delicious salad with grilled peaches, chicken, and goat cheese. I promise I’ll post the recipe tomorrow, I’m not sure what the dressing recipe was at this point in time. 

Let me just say that this combo is ridiculously good. 

We also roasted up yams (most of which were from the farmer’s market). I think in theory they were supposed to be made into fries, but we didn’t exactly plan it that well, so I was kind of lost when they came out of the oven. I cut them into disks, added salt and pepper, and could not stop eating the whiter ones! I was surprised by how SWEET they were, given they weren’t even orange. SO GOOD. 

My sister and her boyfriend popped in to pick something up just as the crisp was coming out of the oven, so they ate leftovers from our dinner, and joined us for the crisp. 



The ‘ice cream’ is actually nonfat frozen yogurt. I believe it is Dreyer’s, which is by far the best fro-yo (in a carton). I forgot how much better it is when it’s not ridiculously crystallized and freezer burned!

After dinner, we went out to our annual spot on a hill to watch the fireworks. From where we were, we could see fireworks from all over the Bay Area. We probably saw 10-15 different displays, although only 2 were front and center. Do you guys remember San Diego’s fireworks from last year? I remember hearing about it and watching the Youtube video. Check it out! Here. I believe they ended up realizing that in their calculations for the timing of the show, they accidentally used 15 seconds instead of 15 minutes. Too funny!

Aaaand today is back to the grind. Ok, not really, but here’s my breakfast:

A mango and blueberry smoothie topped with sunflower seed butter, plus scrambled eggs. I also had a grain-free waffle on the side. On tap for me today? Lab, 4 mile run (I’m going to just do it at school), possibly an afternoon movie, and Crossfit tonight. 

I hope you all continue to have a great holiday weekend!