Red, White, and Blue Everything (4th of July)

I know we’re a few days out from 4th of July now, but I swear I haven’t had a minute to recap my 4th of July! It was a pretty relaxing day, with emphasis on red, white, an blue!

Of course, my morning started with a Crossfit workout.

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We did a simple but longer workout, with the option of having a partner and splitting it up:

50 squats

400m run

50 push ups

400m run

50 pull ups

400m run

50 wall balls

I chose to do it alone…and started regretting that decision during the pull-ups! Honestly though, my pull ups need so work, so builds character?

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After a sweaty workout, I relaxed on the coach with sparkling water and a mid-morning baseball game. Perfect way to spend a holiday!

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On the way home from my workout, I picked up some food for the day, including apparently bad goat cheese. I was going to have some for lunch, but it was rotten. What the heck?? It wasn’t past the expiration date!

For an early, light lunch, I had a single serve bag of rice cakes (current obsession) and a salad with peach and burrata.

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After the game, i spent a few hours relaxing with a book and a kitty, which was fantastic.

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Then, mid-afternoon, I went to a BBQ with some of my high school friends.

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I got to play with my friend’s puppy, drink beer and eat delicious food, and lose a water balloon toss.

I came in time for the dinner I envisioned earlier in the day: red, white, and blue salad!

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I’m already obsessed with Blueberry Burrata Salad, so I figured why not throw some raspberries in and make it patriotic? This salad would also have been delicious with goat cheese in place of burrata.

We also had grilled corn, because #summer.

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Of course, I also had to make red, white, and blue banana bread. It’s just my basic banana bread recipe, but with white chocolate chips, raspberries, and blueberries stirred in. It’s also possibly the most delicious banana bread variation I make.

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For fireworks, we weren’t feeling too ambitious, so we walked to the top of our street with Chloe to where we could see the whole Bay, and were able to see a couple of different fireworks displays from there.

Here’s the obligatory blurry fireworks picture:

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It was a nice low-key holiday!

 

Pre-4th of July

Happy 4th of July! I hope everyone is out having a blast, or enjoying some quiet time beforehand. I’m blogging in front of baseball, and wanted to share a day of eating from yesterday,  July 3rd!

Breakfast: maple blueberry bread and strawberries I picked up in Davis, plus a beautiful nectarine!

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Since I didn’t run on Sunday, I wanted to fit in some miles yesterday. Since I had some time on my hands, I went to my favorite running trail.

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I went at a bit of a speedier pace than my normal casual run, and my achilles felt actually amazing.

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Post-run, I made a quick stop at home for Chloe and then took her for a walk.

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I learned on this walk that Chloe does not appreciate being honked at by a goose. It was sort of hilarious though.

When I got home from our walk, I made a quick but delicious lunch. I tried a new salad combo that came out amazing! I used guacamole as my salad dressing, then spread a leftover turkey patty with creamy goat cheese, and topped everything with ketchup. Yum! Plus a couple of leftover roasted sweet potatoes.

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After lunch, my family and I went to a movie, which I thought was a mixed bag. During the movie, I snacked on a bar.

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That evening, I went to Crossfit and then raced home to shower before having dinner with some friends. My friend was ambitious and made mushroom risotto! I brought beer and heavy cream (the missing ingredient).

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On the side we had bread, corn, and a beautiful salad with egg, avocado, corn, tomato, and goat cheese.

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I enjoyed time with my friends, and with kitties and the pup.

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And now I’m off to enjoy my day. Have a good one my friends!

Weekend+Weekly Workouts

I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend! Tomorrow is 4th of July, and that’s crazy to me because I feel like the summer has flown by so far! Today we’re going to do a little weekend recap and then go over the week’s workouts!

Friday I didn’t have work, but I had a lot of errands to run. I made a big smoothie with banana, cocoa, chocolate protein, and milk for breakfast, and then took Chloe for a little walk.

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I had an early lunch at home of a salad with maple/miso/garlic salad dressing, grilled chicken, and soft goat cheese. I recently got soft and creamy goat cheese from trader joes, and I love it!

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The first stop was to buy scrubs, which was more complicated than I was hoping because my favorite scrub top was discontinued. I had to try on a million pairs of scrubs! Next, I visited IKEA to look at bedroom furniture. My last several stops took me to a shopping center.

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^iced peach tea

After getting everything I needed, I actually stopped in for a SoulCycle class since I was down right next to one. Another SoulCycle opened up closer to me, but I refuse to go to that location out of principle, because it is literally right next to my favorite locally owned studio. RIGHT next to.

The class was fun, but SoulCycle still is not something I would recommend to everyone (unlike normal cycling classes, which I suggest everyone try!)

After class, I met my parents for dinner at True Food Kitchen. I had heard of this place, and was excited to see one had opened up! We started with torched avocado and cucumber noodle salad.

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And beer for me.

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For my meal, I got the seasonal salad with chicken, which had roasted cauliflower, chickpeas, roast broccolini, asparagus, raisins, and manchego.

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Also delicious was my mom’s spaghetti squash!

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For dessert, we shared a few things, but I ate most of this flourless chocolate cake with caramel sauce and ice cream.

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Saturday, I had work as per usual.

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For lunch, I packed a goat cheese, chicken, and nectarine salad with a side of microwaved sweet potato dipped in ketchup. It was fun to mix up my carb source from my usual crackers!

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My parents met me with Chloe downtown after work and we tried a wine bar that served small plates style food. I skipped the wine because I had to go back into work later that evening for a treatment, but I enjoyed my food! My mom and I split a lemon poppyseed salad with goat cheese, and my main plate was a delicious ratatouille.

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Since dinner was on the lighter side, of course I had to big a big cup of froyo. I had chocolate and blueberry, and a tiny bit of cake batter, with chocolate sauce and chocolate covered raisins.

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We ate our yogurt outside, and there were a couple of dogs out there. Chloe was sitting right next to this pretty golden and she honestly couldn’t have cared less!

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After I got home from work round 2, I popped open a bottle of this dark beer and watched the replay of the baseball game from earlier that day.

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Sunday morning, I was up BRIGHT and early. I actually made the drive to Sacramento to volunteer at a spay and neuter clinic for feral kitties with my future classmates! Every month, vet students go to a local shelter and help spay and neuter anywhere from 60-90 feral cats, which are then released. This helps keep the feral cat population from exponentially increasing. As an incoming first year with limited knowledge, I was a little nervous, but everyone was super nice and helpful, and I learned and practiced some new clinical skills. It was such a cool experience, and I had a blast!

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^My beautiful stethoscope.

On the way home, I stopped for gas at the gas station near where I’m going to be living (soon!) because there is an amazing produce stand attached. The prices cannot be beat, and the produce is so fresh and beautiful! I got 6 ears of corn for $2, and peaches were 79 cents a pound.

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I got all that for $11! It’s a TON of food too!

My two hour drive back flew by thanks to both my road trip playlist (made for my road trip to Chicago for playoff baseball last fall!) and a phone call with a  good friend from college! We’ve been trying to Skype for a couple of weeks now, so I figured, hey, I’m stuck here for 2 hours, might as well chat for a bit!

When I arrived home, my family did a beer flight from our final box of beer of the month club.

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This was a good one! More summery than past shipments (no dark beer or stout). We had an IPA, a lager, and 2 red ales that were very different from each other. My favorite was the Gypsy Lager. I love a good lager int he summer!

For dinner, we had grilled burgers (mine was turkey served bunless), roasted broccoli, and roasted sweet potatoes. Of course with lots of ketchup.

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For dessert, I had a piece of cranberry orange bread with chocolate chips form the freezer. I am slowly but surely getting through my freezer stash!

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And now onto the workouts!

Monday:

Crossfit! We did sets of 5 lighter squats for a “deload,” but then the WOD was rough! It was 21-18-15-12-9-6-3 of thrusters at 65# and lateral over the bar burpees. This is basically Open workout 14.5/16.5, but lateral vs. bar facing, which in my opinion doesn’t really make much of a difference. From 2014 to 2016, I improved my time by over 4 minutes, so I was curious how this year would compare to last year. I believe I beat my time by 45 seconds, finishing in 18:39. Is that the difference between lateral vs. bar facing? I don’t know, but I’ll take it!

Tuesday:

I worked the closing shift, so I had time for morning yoga! Pre-yoga, I did a little speed work on the treadmill. I did a half mile warm up at 8:00 pace, and then did 5 rounds of 2 minutes at 7:00 pace, 1 minute walk. It felt good! Then, I did an hour long yoga class that ended in perfect time for me to go straight to work!

Wednesday:

Crossfit again. We did lighter presses, and then the benchmark WOD Grace. I did this in March in Hawaii, and again was curious to see how I’ve improved. I used 85# and did it in 4:59. My previous time was 6:08, so I was SUPER happy with that improvement! After dislocating my shoulder 2 years ago, and then breaking my foot last year, I never really got my Olympic lifting strength back since I was out for a while between the two injuries. I feel like I’m finally starting to get some of it back, which is probably why I have seen such a huge improvement just from March to now.

Thursday:

I did my own gym workout before work. I’m not willing to do 6am Crossfit on days I don’t start until 10:30,  or I’d never make it to closing! Plus, it’s good to have a day to work on what needs work!

Here’s what I did:

Squat program: 6-6-4 this week at 155#, 165#, 175#. It felt surprisingly good! One more week of this squat program!

3 rounds of this circuit:

6 each of single leg squats with 30# dumbbells

10 rdls with 30# dumbbells

12 speed skater jumps

10 squat jumps

10 push ups

Then I did this little conditioning number:

10 minutes, every minute on the minute of 5 burpees+5 push ups.

I finished with a 3 minute Blogilates ab video.

Friday:

Crossfit again. We did lighter deadlifts, and then this arm crusher that I had to scale every part of: 21-15-9 of handstand push ups, ring dips, and push ups. I had to scale this to strict press, box dips, and push ups on my knees. I was going to try to not scale the push ups, but my shoulders were absolutely shot by the time I reached that movement!

Saturday:

Rest

Sunday:

Rest

 

SF Coffee Crawl

For Mother’s Day this year, I gave my mom a “coffee crawl” through San Francisco. Kind of like a bar crawl, but with more caffeine! Finally, we were able to rally the troops and do that today!

I started my morning with Cheerios and Crossfit. I actually think I want to do another weekly workouts post this week because we did a couple of benchmark Crossfit workouts this week that I want to talk about!

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Post-Crossfit, I was hungry but I wanted a light breakfast because I knew I had a lot of deliciousness in my future (read: donuts). I had a nectarine and some egg whites.

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Then, it was time to hit the streets! We (my sister, my mom and I) left home a little after 8:30 and arrived at our first location a little after 9.

Stop 1: Dynamo Donuts

This place is amazing. I’ve been there a few times before, but it had been quite a while! Their specialty? Donuts! And they always have GF donuts! They brew Four Barrel coffee, which is definitely a good one. Plus, their milk foam is top notch.

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My donut: GF lemon poppyseed. My family’s: chocolate passionfruit and blueberry lavender cornmeal.

Drink of choice: decaf cappuccino.

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Then, we were ready to move on.

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Stop 2: CoffeeShop

This had a different name on google maps vs. on their door, but if you search CoffeeShop on google maps, you’ll find it! This was located less than a mile from stop #1, but we drove (and struggled to park) because my sister has a pulled hamstring.

CoffeeShop is small, with no indoor seating (brrr….yay for summers in San Francisco). They specialize in iced coffee; they slow brew their cold brew and serve it wilt COFFEE ice cubes. Also, I believe all their baked goods were GF (and I can attest that they were quality).

This wasn’t my favorite simply because I had to get decaf (yay for zero caffeine tolerance) which meant the closest to iced coffee was an Americano, which isn’t my favorite. My mom enjoyed hers though!

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We also shared a blueberry muffin (GF).

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After shivering outside with our drinks, we were ready for the warmth of the car!

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Stop 3: Blue Bottle at the Ferry Building

Blue Bottle is Blue Bottle. It’s top notch, and I honestly can’t say more than that. We all had cappuccinos (decaf for my mom and I), and we all took our first sips and said, “WOW.” The quality is another level.

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That being said, I might still like Blueprint in STL more. I would say this was slightly better than the Four Barrels from stop #1.

Conveniently, we landed at the Ferry Building right around lunchtime.

For my meal, I went to the gluten free bakery and had a delicious turkey, cheddar, and cranberry sandwich on the best warm gluten free baguette you’ll ever find.

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I’m not one to turn down gourmet dessert, so I had to try a scoop of the dark chocolate smoked sea salt ice cream from Humphrey Slocombe (and it was as amazing as it sounds).

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And with that, our tour came to an end!

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I also thing we need to celebrate the fact that I’m not wearing scrubs or workout pants. What?? When was the last time that happened? Jeans? What are those? (Sidenote: I’m in the middle of building a new wardrobe for vet school and I officially love black jeans.)

Later the night, we had a delicious grilled dinner that made use of our fresh corn and fresh lettuce from this week’s CSA. We had grilled romaine and corn salad with avocado, and added grilled chicken to the recipe. This si seriously one of the best things we make.

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For dessert, I nibbled on leftover blueberry muffin and whipped up some double chocolate flapjacked cookies. Served with a side of dog booty.

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It was a super fun day, and I think I definitely need to spend more time in the city before the summer ends!

When the Pups Meet+Weekly Meals

My goodness friends, what a week it was.

I’m actually pretty banged up right now, and Charlie and I tried to capture that, but this doesn’t show most of the bruises!
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I also felt like I had zero time to spend with my own pets the several days prior to yesterday!

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My Sunday involved a trip to the farmer’s market and dinner out with my friends and pups.

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I think we should go ahead and start with the pups, since I’m guessing most people would prefer to see that!

My friend has a 10 week old Norwegian Buhund, who is absolutely adorable.

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3 friends and I met for dinner with the dogs and sat outside, mostly spending the initial time managing the dogs.

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I don’t think Chloe has ever met a little puppy; at least not since she’s been a full grown dog! They both did really, really well.

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^Chloe sneaking in a lick. She LOVES my friend!

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The two were interested in each other an interacted really well! I think they’re both going to love it when the little guy is old enough to run around and play with her!

In true puppy passion, he was passed out in my friend’s arms as we ate ice cream. Chloe settled down as well and chewed her bone.

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Between the two of them, we had lots of people coming up to say hi!

In terms of food, I have some fun and sometimes different things to share, so we’ll break it down, shall we?

Breakfasts:

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I made a super thick smoothie with banana, chocolate protein powder, cocoa powder, and milk. I actually poured it into a bowl this time, and realized how massive it is! No wonder it fills me up! I normally just eat it out of my blender cup! On the side, I had a fig.

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I packed this for breakfast to go straight from the gym to work. It’s “bread pudding” (recipe here), and it turned out surprisingly delicious! It’s sort of like overnight oats, but with bread instead of oats. I surprisingly liked the flavor as well; super warm and cinnamony! I modified the recipe a little bit; I only used 1 tablespoon of protein, used plain yogurt, and used 3 tsp of honey.

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Mighty muffin and heirloom apricots from our CSA.

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Maple blueberry bread and strawberries from the Farmer’s Market.

Lunches:

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Bear and burrata salad with chicken and balsamic vinaigrette. I warmed up the pear to make it warm and sweet. Cheddar rice cakes on the side (obsessed with these…)

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Fig, chicken, and burrata salad with a side of protein chips. I didn’t have a ton of chicken to use in my lunch so I used the chips as an extra source of protein!
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Blueberry burrata salad.

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Goat cheese, nectarine, and date salad.

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Vegetable tamale from the farmer’s market with a side salad—goat cheese and white balsamic vinegar.

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Mini salad with the last of the burrata and blackberries, and then leftover BBQ pulled chicken and cheddar rice cakes.

Snacks:

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The usual.

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Rice cake with whipped berry cream cheese.

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Pre-Crossfit cheerios.

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Mint NuGo.

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Snack while cooking dinner one night because I came home from my workout STARVING.

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Chocolate chip NuGo.

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Farmer’s Market nectarine.

Dinners:

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BBQ Chicken salad with guacamole.

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Taco salad out with friends and pups.

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Desserts:

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Vanilla Halo Top with pumpkin gingerbread from the freezer.

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Giant flan+gluten free baked goods from the farmer’s market. Baked goods included olive oil citrus cranberry muffins, frosted pumpkin muffins, and chocolate torte.

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Adorable mini scoop of salted caramel ice cream.