For lunch on Friday, I drove up to San Francisco for lunch to catch up with two of my high school friends.

I had an Asian chicken salad.

A Giant GF cookie (It was staring at me the whole meal, so how could I not?)

And some great conversation with fantastic people.

That evening, I had just enough time for Crossfit before picking up a college friend from the train station. She recently moved to Boston, but was here for work and stayed with me for the weekend.

For dinner, we had homemade lasagna with zucchini noodles, salad, and bread with dipping sauce.

Because the occasion warranted it, I broke out some of the home brew chocolate milk stout (yes, I still owe you all a post on the process!)

One of my other friends brought a MASSIVE amount of peaches to us, so while sipping our beer, we made a delicious peach crisp using our favorite blueberry crisp recipe.

We ended the night with peach crisp and a movie.

Saturday, we had a big day of dog-friendly adventure planned. First, we drove to the city and visited my FAVORITE coffeeshop/donutery, Dynamo Donuts. They have an outdoor patio, so Chloe was able to sit with us.

Of course, I’m a sucker for marketing and had to get her a doggy donut.

I got a GF lemon buttermilk donut.

With a cappuccino of course.

My friend requested some outdoorsy activities, and we were originally going to hike around Mt Tam, but traffic wasn’t looking good in the area, and it was unclear how to get to the dog friendly areas, so we decided to head over to Crissy Field instead.

We did the fairly steep climb up to the bridge, and of course Chloe had a blast.

I didn’t really think about how touristy this area was. Chloe is a pretty noticeable dog, and it was interesting to see people, especially kids, exclaim about her in a multitude of languages!

Bridge views:

After our walk/hike, we drove across the city to All Good Pizza for a “Paws for a Cause” event benefiting an organization that helps adopt out animals. There were tons of dogs there, and Chloe was moderately well behaved to start.

The pizza place was basically a permanent food truck with a beer garden-esque outdoor area. I tried a few bites of my friend’s pizza and it was super good! I got a kale salad with turkey.

We didn’t stay too long because as the event got busier, there were more and more dogs and Chloe got a bit overstimulated and barky. My friend suggested we go somewhere with a beer flight, and through some googling, we found Southern Pacific Brewing Company.

This was the perfect place because they had a big flight with all of their house beers, and dog-friendly outdoor seating. I really, really enjoyed the Hefeweizen. It had a really interesting depth of flavor. My second favorite was the farmhouse ale.

Chloe was good until some barmy dogs came, but she was manageable with the presence of her new favorite treats.

Then, it was time to head home. We cleaned up and relaxed for a bit before heading out for Thai food with a college friend we hadn’t seen in over a year who just moved back to the area!

^Garlic chicken with brown rice.

We had so much to catch up on that we couldn’t stop at dinner, and headed to a pub next door for beers.

Eventually it was time to part ways. A couple of people from Crossfit were out, so on the way home we stopped by and hung out with them for a while. Seeing so many people these last couple of weeks is making leaving so hard!

Sunday morning, I sadly had to take my friend to the airport. On the way back, I stopped at the gym for a spin class and got my movement in early for the day.

Lunch was leftover lasagna and some of the amazing fruit we currently have in our fridge.

After lunch, I made my dad’s Father’s Day gift: our family recipe for trifle.

This recipe is actually pretty simple. Line the dish with lady fingers or pound cake, spread with jam, top with 3 tablespoons of cherry and let it sit 5 minutes, then top with custard. The custard is just pudding from a mix with an extra 1/2c of milk added. Then topped with whipped cream and a cherry!

I made my only baby GF version with a leftover blueberry lemon muffin from the freezer as the cake, raspberry jam, a minuscule amount of sherry, and the custard.

We basically spent all afternoon watching baseball.

For dinner, I went out to a pan-Asian place with a high school friend who I have no seen in a while. We both ordered soup to start; sweet corn and chicken for me!

Then we split a paneer based Asian dish that was really different, but good!

We walked around downtown a little bit afterwards, and I got some ice cream from Baskin Robbins. I haven’t been there in forever, and ordered my childhood favorite, Gold Medal Ribbon.

It was such a fun weekend full of amazing people. I cannot wait for more adventures this week!

The first of which being my annual Christmas cookie baking night, which I’ll share today! Nothing like some cookies to get into the holiday spirit, right?

This tradition started in my freshman year of high school (eek).

And we’ve done it every year since. We usually use this recipe for sugar cookies, and then make frosting from the recipe on the powdered sugar.

Let’s see if I can dig up throwbacks from the years past, shall we?

^This is freshman year. The VERY first time we made cookies actually wasn’t for Christmas!

^Also freshman…?

^Sophomore. We made a gingerbread house murder scene and gingerbread cookies.

^Junior

^Senior. No cookie pictures but I KNOW based on these pictures we must have done it.

^College freshman

^College sophomores

^College Juniors

^College Seniors

And now, somehow, we’re college grads, but we still managed to squeeze it in.

We started the evening with dinner at a Japanese restaurant. I had miso soup and salad with grilled chicken.

And of course, everyone was decked out in their Christmas sweaters.

We poured a little champagne as we rolled out the dough.

Once everything came out, it was decorating time! I had some help from Chloe, of course. Once she got over how excited she was to see everyone, she was much calmer thankfully!

And here are the results!

I actually used half gluten free, half regular flour for the dough. I thought that I would be able to eat a few bites then without dying, and without harming the texture too much!

Delicious. No death, but I think I was way sleepier than I should have been when everyone left just before midnight!

Such a great night with friends, and I love this tradition that we’ve maintained year after year. I hope it’s something I continue to look forward to as our lives change and we move away!

This morning, I participated in another Christmas tradition. At 6am. But come on, worth it for 12 days of Christmas!

This is always a fun one. The workout goes like the song…1 push up, 2 burpees 1 push up, 3 PU 2 burpees 1 push up….etc.

I used 75# for the barbell movements and finished in 36:55. It was surprisingly festive for 6am, and definitely a fun way to start the day! That being said, I think a nap may be in my future….

One a final note, I achieved one of my life goals of getting a snapchat filter on my cat. Merry Christmas.

As 2016 draws to a close, I encourage everyone to take a moment and look back on the good times in 2016. What’s done is done, but we can shift our mindset. Don’t let the negatives wash out the positives for 2016. Life really is filtered by whatever attitude you take on. I challenge you to look back over the past year and find 10 of your “best moments.” 10 times that you were exhilaratingly happy, times that you were proud, times that you felt loved. Let go of the negativity and hold these 10 best moments close to you as we hop into 2017.

For inspiration, here are my best moments.

A fantastic night with a best friend resulted in a victory in which we won expensive wine.

I finally made it out to some Stanford baseball games. One of my big college regrets was not going to more games, so I made it happen in my final year.

Doing better than expected in the Crossfit Open. I didn’t rank super highly by any means, but I made some big breakthroughs in Crossfit and I think they started to come out in the Open. Plus, good workouts with good people? Always fun.

Going to Seattle for spring break with some of my best friends, and especially this night. I had dark beer for the first time and the beer I had was the best I’d ever had. Still on a beer kick since then!

Running the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler in DC. This race was a dream for me to run, and I was so excited to get in through the lottery. I may have been slightly sick, had a broken foot, and run in sub-freezing 50 mph wind, but it was all totally worth it.

Going to a beach house with some good friends. It was so great to spend time together, get off campus, and unplug (no cell signal there).

Not letting the boot hold me back. I tried to have fun with it and do all the same fun activities with it. I put lights on it. It was my pal, my trusty sidekick. Always find the positive in negative situations.

This is one of the moments where I was just so overwhelming happy. I had a little graduation party during the last week of school, and everyone I care about came. It was incredible. There was a school tradition of walking around campus as a giant group on the last night of the year, ending in the fountain. I had never been since I would usually go home earlier than that, and everyone wanted to go. I had just gotten my boot off and could barely walk, and surely couldn’t make it all the way across campus on foot. My friends literally took turns carrying me across campus. So grateful for them.

Visiting Emily in Nashville when I was living in Tennessee. I had such an amazing time, and it was great to see a friendly face and catch up after some time living alone, plus getting some solid life advice.

My time in Knoxville was incredible. I think one of the best moments was leading an alpaca around, although I don’t have pictures of that for confidentiality reasons. It was one of those moments where I just thought, “this is so freaking cool.” When I came home, I felt like a completely different person thanks to all my experiences there. And it got me even more excited about my future career path.

Coming home from Knoxville and seeing old friends, and getting a good look at this view. I love my city.

Doing something I never thought I’d do: go to a country concert. After living in Tennessee for 5 weeks, I felt pretty qualified to attend a Florida Georgia Line concert in St. Louis. I went alone, but still had a blast. Made me miss TN!

The Giant’s wildcard win, which was incredible and allowed me the chance to take a trip to Chicago (my first time there!) to see my home team play in the playoffs. We can also toss in our Game 3 victory which was the biggest roller coaster of emotions and kept me up past 3 am.

Bottle feeding young goats at Grant’s Farm. Or even just being surrounded my goats. I love goats.

Running the Halloween Race in St. Louis. It was my grand return to racing post-stress fracture, and it’s always fun to do races in new cities.

Yindi (Tasmanian Devil) playing with a pumpkin. This made my morning, my week, and my year. This was the only thing that was going to cheer me up the day after the election.

Wine tasting in Missouri wine country with my fantastic coworkers. But seriously, my zoo buddies were incredible and I miss them dearly!

And finally, having the opportunity to spend hours a week with this fantastic creature. I miss Kali!

What is one of your best moments?

Although it’s Tuesday, I thought we could still do a little weekend recap!

My Saturday morning began with a fun spin class and a trip to the farmer’s market.

I really, really love figs. And California peaches—they cannot be beat! Pro-tip: put your farmer’s market peaches in the fridge ASAP even if they are still hard. They ripen super fast and will start to rot otherwise! (I knew this but still failed to do it…)

For lunch, I picked up a falafel salad with tahini dressing from a food truck.

And enjoyed the last of the caramel sauce with Halo Top and whipped cream.

The afternoon was low key, but dinner was delicious. We had grilled romaine salad with avocado, chicken, and grilled corn. Last time we made this salad, we used grade B maple syrup for the dressing, and this time we used syrup that was less than A. It made a HUGE difference—I’m never going away from B again! This was sweeter with less mapley flavor and the whole salad didn’t hve the same “wow” factor as before.

I was in the mood to bake, but didn’t want to commit to a giant loaf of bread, so I tried the 2 ingredient cookies I’ve been seeing all over the internet lately. 2 bananas, 1 cup of oats, 12 minutes in the oven at 350. I spiced them up a bit by adding some milk and semi sweet chocolate chips (I may or may not have gone to the store exclusively to buy milk chocolate chips, but worth it!), and fresh strawberries to some of them.

The verdict? Delicious, but I highly recommend adding chocolate chips. They MADE them.

Sunday morning, I went for a run! I went to my favorite place ever to run, down by the reservoir. It is just so beautiful there. I was struck by the fact that the last time I ran there, I was running on a stress fracture. I ran 3 miles! This is a big deal, because it’s the furthest I’ve gone since my stress fracture. I don’t think I’m going to be running longer than 3 miles for a while though. It’s a good distance, and there’s no reason to take any risks. My foot definitely doesn’t feel as good as new. It feels really creaky, and I think there might be some scar tissue there. But again, I am being careful.

Sunday afternoon, I went to a Giant’s game with my friend. It was AMAZING weather. No jacket—what??

My lunch was actually a salad. At a baseball game. I do concede that that is sort of ridiculous. I normally get amazing flatbread, but I’ve gotten it the last couple of times. This beet+parmesan salad was delicious though!

We left a little early to get on the train to go home, and in that time the lead was blown and we lost. :/

I was hungry by the time we got home, so my family and I quickly threw together fig and goat cheese salad with grilled chicken, and had some of the homemade buttermilk biscuits my mom whipped up that morning.

Monday consisted of vet school apps and a hard but fun Crossfit workout. We worked on snatches, and I was able to hit the prescribed 65% feeling good!

The WOD was full of all the things I love to do. I was the only one in the class, and would have preferred someone to suffer through it with! It was:

10 rounds: 5 pull ups, 7 front squats, 9 push ups

I think it took me around 16 minutes? I used 75# for the pull ups.

Food highlights for the day included butternut squash, chicken, and quinoa stew with roasted brussels spouts:

And leftover graduation cupcakes from the freezer:

2 months later, I stand by my decision to ask the cupcake place to switch the dulce de leche and chocolate frostings, resulting in dulce cake with chocolate frosting, and chocolate cake with dulce frosting.

The best part? I still have 2 more in the freezer, which I’m eyeing for dessert tonight!

Did you ever apply to grad school? How was the process?

Pre-first run of my 10 miler training—4 miles this week.

Saturday I had a chocolate tasting event with my dorm and then dragged my sister out (with the condition she could wear pajamas); the night included meeting new people, seeing kitties, and a cat ear cleaning #vettech.

The stars aligned for my schedule on Sunday; spin class at my favorite studio then a cupcake pickup, then lunch with some of my high school besties!

I stole GF cornbread from the freezer at home and have been eating it all week with a touch of butter and honey; side of tomato soup with cheddar (the best way to eat tomato soup!)

Little cupcake mishap in the car but cupcakes escaped relatively unscathed; Valentine’s sampler included coconut chocolate, chocolate cream, caramel chocolate, red velvet, chocolate raspberry, and white chocolate passionfruit.

The gluten free—dulce de leche and chocolate. Freaking amazing, and I have 2 left in the freezer!

I threw a Valentine’s Day party for my friends on Sunday night and it was awesome; the spread included English cheddar and 1000 day aged gouda from TJ’s, crackers, and cupcakes.

My friends are the cutest; we had an awesome turnout and everyone had a great time!

Luna has a new formula and I strongly dislike it, especially the S’mores (the lemon seemed ok and I haven’t tried the others) so I’m trying to stock up!

Whole Foods green smoothie post-80 degree noon Crossfit was perfect and necessary; the workout included lots of back squats which luckily I am getting less sore from each week.

Leftover GF dulce de leche cupcake, inside view!

Sometimes I’m so classy I can’t handle myself. Breakfast was yogurt in a jar because I had a jar to use and we were out of bowls. Lunch in a can because I didn’t have anything else to store it in.

I tried this for the first time and like it better than the other flavors. It’s growing on me but needs some salt; better alone because it’s a milder flavor overpowered by yogurt! I’m still partial to my farmer’s market gourmet sun butters though.

The Grad School of Business arguable has the best food on campus, and I had some awesome chicken mushroom chowder. Also exciting, but right before lunch I successfully gave a mouse an IV injection!

I like Italian food way better without pasta I’m learning. Tons os delicious homemade sauce over greens, with plenty of cheese. I added a meatball after the picture.

New favorite way to eat bananas: once they get speckled I won’t eat them plain, but they’re awesome microwaved and served with a pool of chocolate butterscotch sunbutter! Eaten post semi-soggy run. I hit my paces at least!

Check back in tomorrow for details+results of my experiment!

First, on Sunday, I drove to my roommate’s hometown in the country to visit her!

…and her persimmons. She has tons and tons of trees in her yard, and she is my source of mass quantities of persimmons this time of year, which I always look forward to so much! I was able to try one straight off the tree, and then as we walked through the trees we found a ripe hachiya. Hachiya persimmons are the pointed kind that have to be eaten when they’re soft—anything less than soft will make your tongue curl up! What I’ve been eating are the Fuyu variety and those can be eaten hard!

Anyways, the point is that I was forced to double fist persimmons. Rough life.

I also got to meet her sweet pets! The dog and the kitties were adorable together!

We went to lunch downtown where I had delicious tomato basil soup, and we shared sweet potato fries. I think tomato soup is so underrated.

While out, I went to Sprouts for the first time and picked up some new granola bar flavors as well as individual packets of flavored sun butter. Then, we stopped by a softball field. Why? Many years before we met, I used to come to her hometown a lot to play softball, so we thought we’d stop by and say hi!

It was weird being back after so many years, but it made me reflect on how much softball shaped my life and who I am today. If I hadn’t played at the field many years ago, I wouldn’t have learned my work ethic and determination, and I wouldn’t have gotten into the college I’m at now. So I would never have met my awesome roommate, so I would never have gone to see her and then returned to that field. Crazy how life works.

We made an elaborate dinner. Well, sort of. She mostly made it and I mostly watched and offered insightful commentary. She claimed it was a lazy dinner, but it involved multiple dishes and baking chicken in the oven for an hour. That’s certainly elaborate for me! We (she) made chicken thighs, sautéed broccoli, and gluten free butternut squash ravioli that we picked up at Sprouts.

The next morning, I went to San Francisco with my high school friends to go shopping.

This is something we’ve done every year at Christmas time since before we could drive. We usually don’t end up buying much, but it’s fun to look around and see the festive decor!

We actually spent much longer there than in previous years so we had dinner at a restaurant at the mall.

It was a tap house so we each tried different beers.

For my meal, I ordered butternut squash soup which was SO good! It had sherry soaked grapes at the bottom and pumpkin seed oil drizzled on top which made this way more fun!

We got back from the city around 10 and then it was time to start our annual cookie baking! We’ve been making the same sugar cookies since our freshman year of high school!

Here are some of this year’s cookies. Sadly the picture quality is not great. Every year I like to make lots of turkeys for some reason or another!

As usual, we stayed up far too late catching up and going through old yearbooks. Totally worth it! We’ve continued this tradition through high school, and I really hope we can keep it going when we graduate and enter the real world!

What are your favorite Christmas cookies?

Speaking of sharing…I haven’t blogged much lately. I’ll almost certainly blog more over the holidays, but I honestly feel like not that much has happened, or at least not much Internet worthy. Just typical college stuff.

My high school friend visited, which was super fun! We both wanted to go shopping, so that was enough of a reason! Over the course of 2 days, I basically bought every long sleeved shirt in existence. I <3 long sleeves. The goal of shopping was actually to find lion colored clothes-more on that soon.

We also went to my friend’s Wind Ensemble Concert:

My friend is also crazy enough to want to track down a spotlight with me. There had been a HUGE spotlight in the air all week, and it was driving me crazy not knowing where it was coming from! We took to the streets and tracked it down. Success.

The course? HP. Typical. Gotta love Silicon Valley. We then proceeded to videochat our other high school friend for 3 hours…much needed!

I was met that weekend with quite the delivery-my roommate went home and brought persimmons! The obsession continues.

The following night consisted of dinner with my parents, an awesome prank, and a friend’s birthday party.

I brought a giant cake.

I feel pretty confident that none of the prankees will ever find my blog, so I’ll go ahead and fess up to it here. We got a walkie talkie (they’re pretty cheap off of Amazon these days) and hid it in our friends’ room. The next morning, after 2 hours of sleep I sat outside in 40 something degree weather blasting various things through it-notably the music from both Jaws and Psycho. Nailed. It. More pranks to come.

Other college things. The reason for lion colored clothing?

We had a big themed dinner/party at my dorm. The theme was “Who Run the World? Girls!” So vaguely Beyonce, vaguely vague. Since I sure as heck cannot pull off Beyonce, I was planning on dressing up as the lion from the music video. It actually didn’t end up working out due to a failed effort at coordinating another costume, so I ended up vaguely Beyonce, meaning I wore the one sparkly thing I own, paired with a pencil skirt and heels. Well, briefly heels. I think it’s actually been a year since I’ve worn heels so they definitely did not last the whole night. I think there’s a full outfit picture of me floating around on someone’s phone, but here’s a selfie.

Also noteworthy-hiking the Dish trail with my mom. It was the perfect day for it!

And a visit from the (kind of) pups.

I also went to a football game, which was a crazy and frustrating one ending in a close loss. Unfortunately, I only stayed for half the game because I had a retreat for my sorority.

So that’s college. I realize that is not remotely food/fitness related, so stay tuned for lots of talk of that. Spoiler: I did my final trial for my class project of improving on a fitness endeavor!

Who’s excited for Thanksgiving?

I still have a 6 mile run to do today. I really should have done it early this morning but I’ve been moping around all morning.

I’m excited to go back to school, but I’m also not ready for this to be my last year. I don’t do well with endings or goodbyes, and I’m already worrying about how to stay in touch with everyone, especially if I move away right away.

Mid-mornign today I had a pumpkin mug cake to drown my sorrows (because I firmly believe it is never too soon).

I just threw some things together in a bowl, and it turned out great! Egg, butter, pumpkin, spices, maple syrup, vanilla, and some gluten free flour.

Also-this is about my life right now. To keep the puppy busy, we dumped out every toy she owns. Having a puppy is hard!

It looks like we have just about every holiday represented up there, including Earth Day!

Since I’m feeling sort of nostalgic and not ready for things to change, I thought I’d share some snapshots of college memories through the years.

21st birthday party with all of my friends! Such a great day.

Visiting my best friend in Berkeley for her birthday.

Dorm trip to Disneyland.

Random nights hanging out with my roommate and doing ridiculous things for no reason at all. #fashionicon

Visiting my friend in Berkeley during our rival football game, decked out in Stanford gear.

Halloween party+the popcorn ball making fiasco beforehand.

Practicing a spin class on my friends before my first audition, and then heading to froyo plus the the pumpkin patch afterwards.

Color run!

Bay to Breakers.

Tortilla chip sombrero for my birthday, a la Despicable Me.

Rock n Roll SF Half Marathon.

Embarking on “The Project” with my roomie, our big healthy eating overhaul.

Tea party with the ladies of my hall.

Yoga by the bay with a high school yoga buddy.

Keeping my plant baby alive and well.

Becoming obsessed with my roommate’s persimmons.

Enjoying the perks of being in a sorority sophomore fall.

First half marathon!

Joining a sorority freshman year.

Throwing a guac party freshman year.

Celebrating Valentine’s Day with the crew team at the beach.

Ski trip with my freshman dorm.

Early morning wakeups+freezer breakfasts for rowing.

Watching Stanford win the Rose Bowl.

Rowing training camp at the Olympic Training facilities in San Diego.

Meeting our friendly campus cat, who sadly passed away my sophomore year.

Just a typical morning freshman year.

Following the Giant’s World Series run on my phone between classes freshman year.

A lot has happened, and I can’t wait to make more memories!

These are spinach and cheese pupusas, and I’ve been sort of obsessed lately. They come frozen, and are basically spinach and cheese in a cornmeal shell.

Super simple dinner: BBQ chicken, spanish style rice, and green beans cooked in the same style as my garlic roasted broccoli.

Lunch at Le Boulange-salad with balsamic, chicken, dried cranberries, and gorgonzola.

Chicken and dumplings with a salad on the side.

I’m obsessed with this salad-I actually have it for lunch most days. Chicken, goat cheese, dates, nectarine, tossed in a champagne vinaigrette.

Funfetti pancakes with the family. For the pancakes I just did the banana+and egg trick in the blender and threw in some oats.

Cooking Light’s lemon parmesan risotto, with a salad on the side. The awesome thing is that this recipe is made entirely in the microwave, so it’s half the work on regular risotto!

Last weekend I went out to brunch with my friends. I got an egg white omelette with turkey burger, spinach, and cheddar inside (topped with avocado of course!).

That evening, I went to a Latin restaurant with friends and got delicious salmon over rice.I loved the fruit salsa on top!

Another Cooking Light gem was this lemon marinated chicken, with a side of feta rice. Super fast and simple, but so flavorful!

I’m obsessed with figs. Don’t you love summer?

Now-puppy picture overload!

We started with a home-cooked meal of my guacamole salad on Thursday night.

Friday morning, we were up early to head into the city! (SF)

Despite the fact that I went to the Ferry building a week ago with another friend, that’s where we were headed!

It was an absolutely beautiful day in the city.

I was actually pretty warm in my long sleeves and boots! Gotta love San Francisco.

We explored the Ferry building a bit before grabbing lunch. We are all very indecisive people, but eventually settled on a cafe. I had a beautiful rotisserie chicken, and an amazing salad with nectarines, feta, and dates. I will definitely recreate that salad for the blog!

We walked around about before grabbing ice cream to take outside.

I had olive oil ice cream with fudge sauce. I didn’t think I’d like the olive oil flavor, but it was delicious! It had a touch of orange, and the savory-ness of the olive oil had a similar effect as salted caramel does.

After enjoying the sunshine, we made the trek back to meet up with another graduated friend for dinner. It was a Mexican restaurant, and I had a delicious salad with cheese, avocado, pumpkin seeds, and chicken. Plus plenty of chips and salsa!

I also split a side of plantains.

Unfortunately, that night one of my friends had to leave, so the next morning two of us made the drive to Monterey. My friend returned from South Africa on Thursday (I picked her up at the airport), and I moved her into her summer apartment in Monterey.

On the way up, I had to offer her the true California experience by stopping at a fruit stand for cherries in Gilroy.

We rolled in around lunchtime, and hit up the Giant Artichoke for lunch. My friend had never had whole artichokes, so I showed her how to eat the leaves.

I’m so spoiled in CA.

For my main meal, I ordered an artichoke veggie sandwich and skipped the bread.

After lunch, we explored Cannery Row first by foot.

It was definitely cool out! Highs in the 60s. While walking, we saw a sign for “free chocolate tasting,” and wandered into a shop that offered chocolate tasting with a complimentary mini glass of wine for only $3!

We got to pick out which chocolates we tasted-mine were mostly caramels because I’m nut-free. The salted caramel was delicious, but I went home with the caramel apple chocolate-it tasted just like fall and was very unique!

Then, I showed my friend how to explore Monterey in style. In a surrey-a sleek 4 wheeled bike.

I had the pleasure of driving this bad boy.

It was a great way to get in some movement and take in the beautiful views of the water.

Neither of us was in the mood for a big-deal dinner, so we stopped at a little Indian cafe. I was hoping for more vegetables, but the food was good!

We were both stuffed by the end!

It was sad leaving my friend this morning, but it was such an awesome weekend full of friends and adventure!

What did you do this weekend?