Hello, hello! I’m currently blogging from my new place, under my new (roommate’s) purring kitty.

Kitties love t-shirt quilts 🙂 Charlie LOVES mine back home!

I wanted to do a full day of eating fro my first day here, but first I want to let you all know HOW I got here, and my final day in the Bay!

Monday, I basically spent all day packing. I broke to make a loaf of chocolate peppermint bark bread from some OLD peppermint bark to take with me and stick in the freezer here.

I still think this is one of the best things I’ve ever baked. It’s so ridiculously good.

I went to evening Crossfit one last time and tore the blisters off my hands from last weeks 100 pull ups during the extensive toes to bar and pull ups in that workout.

Post-workout, my parents and I split a couple of beers we wanted to try as happy hour: Honey Wheat and Mango Wheat Blue Moon. Both good, but I think i prefer Anchor’s mango wheat!

For dinner, we made one of my favorites, butternut squash soup with rotisserie chicken, with Brazilian cheese balls on the side.

That evening, I grabbed a beer with someone from Crossfit as a nice send-off!

Monday morning, I went to morning Crossfit (with extensive hand taping) one last time before we hit the road! Moving was a pretty big deal this time. I’ve never really had to have furniture before, so that was a new adventure.

My roommate was gone (thankfully, because we made quite the mess), but the minute I put the keys in the door, I could hear her cat Rina meowing. She is a lot different from what I was expecting! When I met her before, she had only been in the house for a few days, and I’ve come to learn she is quite the talkative kitty!

“Helping.”

We took a break around dinner time, and had much needed happy hour at a pizza place.

We weren’t planning on actually eating dinner there, but they had GF crust so we went for it! My mom and I split a salad and a cheese pizza.

Afterward, we stumbled on a little creamery and got ice cream. I had honey lavender!

After my parents left later that night, I spent some quality time on the couch with kitty (her name is Rina).

Nighttime was when I ran into trouble.

I let her come in with me, but she meowed ALL NIGHT. She wanted to cuddle, so she’d walk around yowling until I would call to her to come up. Then, she’d jump up and be super purry, but eventually leave and the process would repeat. I do not think I slept too much last night!

On that note, let’s go into our full day of eating!

Breakfast:

I may be back to yogurt bowls! For breakfast, I had plain Greek yogurt with KIND cinnamon granola and sunbutter, with blueberries on the side. Note: the lighting in my kitchen is actually awesome! I had this breakfast basically all fall last year, so we’ll see if that happens again now!

Lunch:

I stopped at the nearby fruit stand and bought over 10 pounds of produce for a really good price! I had one of the figs that I picked up.

For lunch, I had leftover soup and a slice of leftover pizza. I’m not really huge on leftover pizza, but I decided to give the “heat pizza in a pan on the stove” method a try. I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. I ended up cooking both sides of the pizza, flipping it cheese side down at the end. It actually came out really well, and the cheese got a nice crispy layer.

For dessert, I had a couple of squares of dark chocolate.

While I really did get the goods at the produce stand, I still needed to hit up the grocery store for staples. I managed to go into Trader Joe’s and get out with only one impulse buy, which I snacked on mid-afternoon with a Luna bar:

That evening, I visited my new Crossfit box! It’s definitely not air-conditioned (I was ever-hopeful since it’s often over 100 degrees here in the summer), but the people were really nice! I actually met a couple of older vet students! What’s crazy though is that now I’ve been doing Crossfit for 4 years, which is a LONG time. Like, longer than most people. What??

Dinner:

So….I had tonight’s dinner planned, and was also planning on making zucchini lasagna tomorrow…so I bought a massive amount of zucchini (definitely got carried away with it), so that was the focus of tonight’s dinner! I love zucchini because it’s really easy to sauté up quickly, so expect a lot more of it around these parts! Way faster than roasting broccoli or carrots. I made a little bowl of brown rice, zucchini with garlic powder and nutritional yeast, an egg with yolk so runny it exploded all over the floor when I was taking it out of the pan, and some super creamy avocado from the local produce stand.

And mango kombucha.

Yeah, with the local produce, I am definitely not going to mind living here for the next 4 years.

Dessert:

I definitely don’t have the unlimited options from home, but I made out pretty well! One more square of dark chocolate, plus chocolate Halo Top with sunbutter swirled in for a little faux chocolate peanut butter action.

I haven’t done a full day of eating in a while, so I thought I would do that today! I’m actually off to Denver tomorrow morning for my sister’s bachelorette party (that I was mostly in charge of planning), so I wanted to pop in early quickly and share!

I took the morning off and made myself a chocolate banana smoothie, and half a piece of GF bread with sunbutter.

Mid-morning, I took Chloe for a walk.

After our walk, I had a cup of Blueprint decaf from the beans I brought back from St. Louis!

The main event of the day was going to tea with my high school friend and her mom with my mom. I haven’t seen her mom in a long time, so we all had tons to chat about! The tea room was absolutely adorable.

Even better, they had great gluten free options (GF crumpet…what??)

My mom and I split a full tea, and got decaf mango black tea.

Here’s our tea service: fruit, GF blueberry scone with Devonshire cream and jam, salad, and tea sandwiches. We chose artichoke hummus and pear stilton sandwiches.

GF crumpet:

And for dessert, sea salt caramel truffle.

This was seriously such a great pre-vet school sendoff. These are great people, and I’m lucky to have known them for 12 (!) years now!

We ended up there for almost 3 hours! II had enough time to relax just a bit before heading to Crossfit.

^I was surprised to walk out of my room to find these two hanging out together.

The Crossfit WOD was tons of front squats and hand release push ups.

For dinner, I requested a lighter salad after all the carbs! We made a caesar salad using Bolthouse Farms yogurt-based Caesar dressing. We topped it with grilled chicken and parmesan crisps. On the side, we had roasted purple sweet potatoes.

For dessert, I had half a piece of double chocolate cranberry bread and a skinny cow froyo bar.

So…since I’m about to leave, I’m realizing I have a ton to eat from the freezer before I go so I’ve been doing double desserts the last couple of days. Dessert #2 was leftover birthday cake from the freezer.

For the record…I think this was a little too much dessert for me. But gotta clean out that freezer!

Overall, a fun day. The countdown to vet school continues!

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but I’m about to start vet school, and have definitely not kept up my Quick and Easy series. I have a big list of things I wanted to make posts of, so for the simpler ideas (i.e. “stir fry”) I am just going to post pictures onto my Quick and Easy page.

But today’s post is a recipe I’ve been holding onto for a while, with every intention of posting.

I love my salads, and I LOVE peach and goat cheese salads, but I was having them nearly daily. I really wanted something savory, something different, but still quick, easy, and healthy. The recipe was majorly inspired by my favorite grilled romaine salad with corn and avocado, but this is a far lazier version with some twists.

The base of this salad is lettuce tossed with a little bit of balsamic vinaigrette dressing. The lettuce is then topped with the following, mixed thoroughly in a separate bowl:

1 ear of corn

1 oz chicken (cooked)

1/8 cup fresh basil

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon maple syrup

1 teaspoon olive oil

1/2 teaspoon mirin (rice vinegar)

1/2 teaspoon white miso paste

a dab of fresh garlic, minced (or from a tube)

Then, top that all off with goat cheese. The best version of this salad has truffle goat cheese!

I promise that despite the lengthy list of ingredients, this comes together in less than 10 minutes. Just how I like it!