Full Kauai Vacation Recap

Wow. My blog juices have not bee flowing and I couldn’t decide how/if I wanted to do it because the full recap seems so daunting! Luckily, the scenery in Hawaii is pretty nice so my pictures hopefully make up for lack of coherency. I should be asleep right now but I blame jet lag and chocolate for the fact that I’m awake!

Our first stop off the plane was a farmer’s market. I had a chicken taco, and we shared flour less chocolate cake in a jar for dessert.

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The fun thing about Kauai is that there are wild chickens EVERYWHERE; they have chickens like we have squirrels.

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While there, we stayed at a condo with this view:

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Our first full day there I started off the morning with a hot and humid 3 mile run with my dad. Then, we visited a coffee plantation and took a tour, learning about the coffee growing and making process.

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There were 22 types of coffee to sample after the tour. I had a few sips of the caffeinated coffees before retreating to the safety of decaf. I could actually tell the difference between blends! Hawaiian coffee seems to be a little bit lighter than some of the other high quality coffee’s I’ve had (read: less strong). I ordered an iced decaf latte for the full experience.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but we took this trip with my sister’s fiancé’s family, as a joint vacation. Her fiancé and his brother are crazy athletic—they ran down the side of the road from the coffee place to lunch just for fun.

For lunch, I had a basic chicken salad with parmesan and papaya seed dressing.

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After lunch we stopped at Auntie Lilikoi for some passion fruit products, and I had a Lilikoi (passionfruit) cheesecake ice cream bar.

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Outside we found this family of wild chickens:

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Our final stop of the day was Waimea Canyon. It is truly incredible. I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon, so I can’t compare, but I can’t imagine anything grander than what I saw.

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Dinner was vegetable pho on the way back.

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The next day was my little WIAW post.

At this point, the days are blurring together so I’ll just share some noteworthy moments.

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Nike Training Club app workout with my father.

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Friendly geese.

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Homemade dinner: chicken and my new fav salad: papaya, papaya seed dressing, parmesan.

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Horseback riding. I had a naughty horse with lots of personality who kept trying to eat the bushes! Highlights of this ride: the scenery, the baby wild hogs, and the kitty in the barn.

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We went out for a nice dinner that night with everyone.

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Many of us started out with a cocktail. Mine had champagne, lemon, and pineapple puree. This wasn’t mine, but look how pretty!

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For my entree I got an avocado salad and split roasted vegetables with my mom. Both were excellent.

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There were lots of cool desserts—you can’t really see it here but our chocolate torte is on fire!

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New Year’s Eve morning started with a Crossfit workout at Kilauea Crossfit again. It was Fran: 21-15-9 thrusters and pull ups. We started out with PVC Fran to warm up, which is Fran with a PVC pipe (presses in place of pull ups). The strength was back squats, working to a heavy set of 5. I guess I haven’t done that much equating lately because my legs are still sore!

Afterwards, we made a final trip to the beach. I read my book—I have a nice book shaped sunburn on my legs.

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For lunch, we stopped at a roadside food truck that advertised local fare. My mom and I split a chicken lau lau (chicken wrap in taro and banana leaves. Normally lau lau is pork, so it was cool to try!

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The purple stuff is loin. It’s made from taro leaf. I like to eat it topped with sugar (which is NOT traditional), but they didn’t have any. Normally it is eaten with Lomi Lomi salmon, which is on the right. That’s sort of like salsa or pico de gallo with chunks of salmon added.

For the night, we ordered a bunch of pizzas from the pizza place essentially right outside our door. They had a gluten free crust which was exciting!

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After eating, we broke out the fireworks are firecrackers. This was a new to me experience because they were always illegal where I’ve lived.

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We then toasted the new year (at 10pm—midnight in CA) with blubbery champagne (the blueberry was super subtle).

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January 1st was ROSE BOWL DAY!!!! It was also the day we were leaving which created some complications.We found a sports bar near the airport that supposedly had 9 TVs, and we arrived 10 minutes before kickoff only to find that that sports bar was out of business. Luckily we spotted a cafe across the street with TVs, and they kindly turned on the game for us. A bonus? The food was really good too!

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My mom and I both had caprese salads and split the most amazing sweet potato fries.

For dessert, we all shared a flour less chocolate cake.

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The game was AMAZING. We started out right away with a touchdown, and before we knew it it was 35-0. Stanford is so freaking underrated so this was fantastic to see. Because no one bothers to watch us, McCaffrey (our insane runningback) didn’t get a much deserved Heisman. Hopefully this dominant performance will give us some more attention!

At halftime, we raced to the airport and got through security as fast as possible. As it turns out, we were able to watch the game from our ESPN apps on our phones will going through security and checking in. Once through, we settled at a restaurant to watch until nearly the end.

SO MUCH STANFORD PRIDE RIGHT NOW. A Rosebowl win to start my Stanford career and a Rosebowl win to end it. Here are some throwbacks from Rosebowl 2013:

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Ok, now I ACTUALLY need to go to bed!

So I Guess I Should Blog…

Ugh, I am so ready for Thanksgiving. We get a whole week off, which is basically the best thing ever. I’m still teaching my Monday spin class that week, and you better believe it’s going to be Thanksgiving themed! I spent my entire run this morning brainstorming and I think I have a solid idea! I’ll be sure to share it next week!

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:

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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.

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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.

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

I brought a giant cake.

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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?

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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.

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

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And a visit from the (kind of) pups.

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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.

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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?

This Weekend

Happy Monday! Who is ready for Thanksgiving? I know I am! I’m going to pick up my Turkey Trot race packet today! Woo!

How about a little weekend recap?

My Friday started off with a track workout and a free cappuccino.

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Not a bad start!

After a full day of classes, I packed up and headed home for the week. From there, I threw on my school colors and headed to our rival school for the night. I have a ton of friends that go to Cal, and this was Big Game week-our rival football game! As you can imagine, I was pretty popular rocking my red on the streets of Berkeley the night before Big Game.

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Our night began with a pizza dinner from Sliver, one of the many gourmet pizza places in the area. We then went and saw Mockingjay. I actually liked it a lot more than I was expecting. I don’t remember liking the book much but the movie was good! And I thought they split it off at a good point.

After the movie, we chatted and then watched Pitch Perfect, which I had never seen.

Luckily, we managed to sleep through all the rain expected and wake up the next morning to a partly sunny day. First stop was brunch, where I got a chicken and avocado omelet.

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From there, we went to a restaurant to watch the football game from. Let’s just say I was definitely the happiest person there. WE WON!

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At halftime, we stepped out to grab froyo from my friend’s favorite place. It was super thick and delicious. I got pumpkin and chocolate, with cookie dough!

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After the game, I headed home to hang out with these guys:

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Sunday morning began with a 6 miler along one of my favorite trails.

(Recycled pic)

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Followed by lunch at the Whole Foods hot bar.

My lunch of choice was macaroni and cheese with butternut squash, plus some assorted salads.

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For dinner, I shockingly met up with my sister. This is shocking because she is so busy and I never see her! We went to a Russian restaurant, and I got some delicious mushroom dumplings. They were served with onions and a sour cream type of sauce! So good!

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This weekend was such a fun way to kick off Thanksgiving break! There was one casualty though.

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My shoes had a small rip in them before I left for Berkeley, and I figured it wouldn’t be an issue. It quickly became worse  (than the picture) and let’s just say I was lucky my toes weren’t sticking out, given about half the shoe is disconnected to the soul. Oops…

What did you do this weekend?

MIMM-“Ski” Trip

Happy Monday! How are you guys doing? I have to day off today for MLK day, so I’m currently at home doing food prep for the start of The Project!

Today, I’m linking up with Katie for Marvelous in My Monday!

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Over the weekend, I went to Lake Tahoe with my dorm for our ski trip. I use the term “ski trip” a bit liberally-not many people skied-there’s hardly any snow right now! We are officially in a drought. It meant the weather was nice though!

Friday before we left, I got in a great workout-I did my treadmill workout, followed by some weights-back lunges, single leg RDLs, and abs. Basically all my favorites! My knee is still not fabulous, so it limits what I can do a little bit. On the plus side, this means I’ve been running more, which I really should do anyway since I claim I’m trying to PR a 5k soon. 

We left school in the afternoon, and hit horrible traffic. We stopped for dinner-and there was a Safeway nearby! Not just fast-food!

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Whole wheat pita, chicken, veggies, and hummus.

Kombucha.

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I also got some 86% chocolate for the bus ride. 

I have to warn you guys-not a lot of food pictures from this trip. Or a lot of good food. The food they provided us was basically carbs and sugar. And lots and lots of potato chips. Mmmm and blueberry muffins-definitely a weakness of mine!

The most Marvelous part of my weekend was probably Saturday’s run. Not skiing meant I basically had all day to hang out and do whatever. I was excited to run in a new and beautiful place! I bundled up (sort of) and got going on my first snow run!

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It was definitely not as cold as I was expecting, especially given there was some snow on the ground. I’ve had much colder runs at home!

I ran through the little ski village, taking a comfortable pace. I wore my Garmin just so I would have some idea of how far I had gone (so I wouldn’t get too lost) ad just listened to the sound of my breathing and my footsteps. I didn’t really have any destination in mind. I ended up in another state, which was cool.

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I somehow ended up finding a trail that took me through a forest/wildlife preserve area. I stopped a bunch for pictures, and to read some of the signs-there were a bunch that talked about casinos that were supposed to be built there (definitely not in CA anymore), but how the space was preserved instead.

One of the best moments of my run was finding a pond that was completely frozen over.

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I have a strange obsession with finding frozen puddles (maybe because I never see them) so this was pretty exciting!

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I was tentatively planning on running 4-5 miles. I wanted to get a glimpse of the lake, so around the halfway point, I decided to go a little bit further to try and get a picture. That was a good decision-I turned a corner and BOOM. I was on the beach!

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That was one of my favorite runs in a long time! I didn’t really feel the high altitude either!

I spent the rest of the day walking around and exploring the little village.

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Like I said, food was not the best quality on this trip, and I definitely ate so much junk! This was actually one of my healthier things (and I felt the need to document it!)

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Graham crackers with melty banana and 86% chocolate. 

For dinner, we had frozen pizzas to cook up (we were staying in suites with a small kitchen)-this was an interesting task, as the pizzas had thawed a bit and were floppy, and there were no trays or anything. One of the pizzas ended up as a calzone because there was no other way to get it into the oven!

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Sunday morning we were up fairly early to head home-we left early enough to get back in time for the 49ers game!

Lunch stop along the way-Starbucks salad. (Bonus-it had kale!)

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Upon arriving at school, I packed my things up super fast to head home in time for the game. It was disappointing, to say the least. And I’m kind of embarrassed I go to the same school as Sherman did…

Dinner was Greek salads with grilled chicken-we grilled up a ton extra for food this week-enough that some will have to go in the freezer!

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And of course being reunited with this guy was kind of Marvelous too. Image

And now, I’m finishing up meal prep. I’ll do a post on this as well as other “project” food later tonight! Before I head back to school, I’m going to get a Crossfit style track workout in-I can’t do the Crossfit workout today thanks to my knee-squats are still a no go!

What did you do this weekend? Do you have today off!