Am I Kali yet?

One of my best friends ever from college came to visit! She lives about 2 hours away, and I recruited her here to help with Blogmas. So look for that post next week

The first thing on the agenda was to take a trip back to our college campus to have dinner with our 3rd roommate from last fall. It was nice to catch up, and I don’t think I’ve had guac in like 6 months.

On the way home, we stopped at Zest, a GF bakery near me. I needed a cupcake for my Blogiversary, after all. She has a gluten intolerance, so had no problem with that stop. We shared an amazing warm cinnamon roll and lemon poppyseed loaf.

We weren’t sure what to do for the rest of the rainy afternoon, and found ourselves in the mall. A Sephora recently opened there. They apparently have some type of technology where the computer scans your skin tone and finds the perfect shade of foundation of lipstick for you, and then you can “try it on” on a computer screen. A few of my friends have had fantastic lipstick success, so I wanted to try it out to find a shade of red lipstick. Even though I’ve never worn lipstick before. Go big or go home, right?

After the mall, we made dinner, which will appear on Blogmas in a few days! I’m kind of crazy pumped about it.

That evening, we trekked 20 minutes south to see some other college friends, and so I could introduce them to Yumi Yogurt, a classic froyo place in this area. I got butterscotch! We ended up heading back to their house and chatting until late into the night. So good to be reunited!

My college friend/roomie is fantastic, and if you’ve been reading for a while, you may remember she has an orchard with incredible persimmons. I had my first persimmon in many months, and I’m so excited. Apparently Chloe is too.

We decided to spend the day (post-rush hour traffic) in San Francisco. It was so good to be back there. We went to the Ferry Building, which is one of my favorite areas (I love the Embarcadero). It was typical San Francisco weather.

The Ferry Building has an amazing farmer’s market on select days, and I had never been before on one of those days. Sadly, the farmer’s market was pretty small this time of year.

A (decaf) Blue Bottle cappuccino was necessary. I love quality coffee.

This area is so incredibly gorgeous at night too, with the Bay Bridge lit up.

We wandered in and out of the shops before grabbing lunch at Mariposa, the gluten free bakery. I had an incredible turkey, cheddar, and cranberry sandwich.

The entire time I was eating this, I kept saying, “I missed CA food so much.”

Next up was one last coffeeshop that we had been meaning to try. I had a (decaf) cafe au lait for the first time, and it was nice and milky!

We beat rush hour traffic on the way home, and watched Friends for a while, before cooking dinner. Another Blogmas feature! (Although granted, less exciting than the previous night.)

Dessert was another form of persimmon: persimmon sauce (like applesauce in the slow cooker) with vanilla frozen yogurt and an oatmeal cookie crumbled on top.

Friday morning before my friend woke up, I went to 6am Crossfit and it was a good and tough one, but I’m really happy with how I did. We did our 20 rep set of deadlifts, which I did at 150#. It actually felt better than last week’s 145# so I guess I’m getting stronger? The WOD was TOUGH. 20 minute AMRAP (yuck) of 5 power cleans at 95#, 10 toes to bar, and 15 wall balls. I was determined to do toes to bar because they definitely need work. I considered scaling the cleans, but 95 really isn’t that heavy for me, so I decided I just needed to suck it up and do it, and it was definitely the right decision. I wasn’t the fastest in the class, but I’m still proud of Rxing this workout. I got a bit over 6 rounds in.

For breakfast, I had an amazingly right hachiya persimmon.

So ripe it was bursting!

I also tried a GF garlic bagel from Mariposa. Not bad!

I brought my lunch to the library again to work on classwork, and of course it involved persimmons. Salad with cranberry chèvre, persimmons, and champagne vinaigrette.

That evening was my dad’s company Christmas party! I have never missed one yet. I decided to break out the festive red lipstick.

Before and after:

Family selfie!

This is always a fun and festive event. It’s crazy how much all the kids have grown up! (Me included, I suppose.) And I’m always on board for good food and wine.

Salad:

Dinner was family style. I had some cedar plank salmon that was absurdly good, rice pilaf, roasted veggies, mashed potatoes, and spaghetti squash.

(The plates were absurdly large.)

Dessert: flourless chocolate cake with raspberry puree. YUM.

It was a fun night, and definitely a holiday tradition.

What’s going on in your life?

All this led to be fasting for 16 hours and then eating radioactive eggs.

It’s weird going to the doctor and having them feed you, right? I did a gastric emptying study. Basically, they fed me radioactive eggs that they can then track through my stomach with an MRI type of thing, over the course of 4 hours, beginning with a 30 minute long picture. The process was long and involved a lot of waiting, but was relatively painless. While waiting, I googled symptoms/treatments for delayed stomach emptying and found myself nodding along with the symptoms, so I wasn’t too surprised when the test came up positive for delayed stomach emptying.

After a follow up appointment, it sounds like this is likely what is causing the problems. Treatment is mostly managing the symptoms and changing eating habits. I basically have to avoid eating too much. I have to eat more mini meals throughout the day, instead of full meals. I’ve actually been pretty good about eating fairly light over break so far, and I think that has kept most symptoms at bay. So I will be eating lot of small meals, and soups (since liquid can be easier to handle).

Lunch today was a mini bowl of soup and a baby piece of cornbread.

I have mixed feelings about this. I’m glad to finally have some answers, but I’m nervous this lifestyle change will be either difficult to adhere to or won’t “cure” anything. When I think to how bad off it was when it first started, I can’t imagine that smaller meals would make a difference. Thankfully I am better than that, but the threat of that worries me. I just want to be normal! If mini meals might get me there, then that’s what I’m going to have to do. But I feel like at least for now the threat of a full on flare is still very present.

So what else have I been up to?

More soup-Greek lemon chicken. We added carrots and lemon juice. This was topped with chives and feta, and the feta linked all the flavors perfectly. On the side was Trader Joe’s Gluten Free cornbread (from a mix). I really liked it! With butter and honey.

My first ever flat white.

Peppermint hot chocolate with my sister from Peet’s.

Last night’s dinner: sage, chicken, and mushroom soup, with a gluten free rosemary roll on the side. The roll is from Mariposa in San Francisco. Yesterday my mom and I went up to San Francisco to go to the Ferry Building.

We started out with a gluten free lunch at Mariposa, and I got a turkey sandwich with cheddar and cranberry sauce.

We also stopped by the gourmet ice cream shop. I was hoping they would have olive oil ice cream like I had last time, but they didn’t so I settled for some delicious chocolate.

We wandered the shops a little bit before heading home.

Another food excitement—new energy bars! It’s nearly impossible for me to find bars that meet all my various restrictions, so when I saw a website for custom bars on Kaila‘s blog, I jumped at the chance.

I got mine with a date and sunflower seed butter base, and then had whey protein, chia seeds, chocolate chips, vanilla, and honey. SO delicious!

In terms of workouts, this morning I went to the track to do my simple 6x200m. Love the view from this track though!

The other night, I went to a fun Santa Themed spin class, which I dressed up for with Santa socks and a holiday bow in my hair.

I’ve also been going to my home Crossfit, which has been SUPER fun. My first workout back was Tuesday, and the WOD was 5 rounds of 400m run, 30 sit ups, and 15 back squats at 115#. This is exactly the type of workout I LOVE, and it was fun! However, I haven’t done a ton of back squats since hurting my shoulder (I think the first time I was able to do them was like a month ago?) so while the weight wasn’t too heavy, the underuse plus high reps has left me unbelievably sore! Man!

Currently, I am blogging from under both a cat and heated blanket. Winter break isn’t too bad!