4th of July Fun!

Hey all! Hope everyone had an awesome 4th of July holiday! I myself got Monday off of work...couldn't be happier!

As follows with the great American tradition, I spent my Independence Day at a friend's house eating barbecue and watching the neighbors blow up stuff. The following is a recap of my fourth starting with what I ate:

You'll hopefully excuse me for photographing my half-eaten meals lately :/. Since I've started running I've made a habit of scarfing down my food before remembering I wanted to show it to you all. SO, what I had here was an Amy's California Veggie Burger with avocado, salad greens, a little carrot, a little red pepper and some cucumber in it. Essentially I took my friend's beautiful salad and put it in my burger. She was kind enough not to be aghast. I also, ate her salad as a salad, since I could only stuff my burger so far.

Put these bad boys on the grill. The zucchini was especially delicious!

Fruit salad. I am REALLY big on fruit. YEAH!

Among other things, potato chips and cookies were also consumed, however, I do not have pictures of these. For the evenings activities we played a few rounds of "HORSE" disc golfing, where I come from a lot of people call this "folfing," but most people look at me a little funny when I say that here. There was a general suggestion that we call it "frolfing" for frisbee golfing. What do you think?

Here is what the disc golf net looks like. The object of the game is to get these mini-frisbees (the disc) into the net. If the person before you throws it under their leg while jumping off the porch and rolls into a ninja pose and their disc makes it in the net, you must exactly replicate this approach in the same manner. It was a really cool activity for people who had just stuffed themselves with awesome BBQ.

And here is the best pic I could get of a firework. It pales in comparison to what we actually saw, but there ya go!

As for running, I have been keeping my pace slow, stretching a little longer and doing about 20 minutes of actual running 6 days a week. Today was the start of my second week of running, so I have officially run 12 miles last week and two today. I'm feeling pretty good! Well, I think I'm going to keep this short and we'll see if I've got something interesting to say tomorrow.

Peace!

Vegan Italiano!

Hello hello! And happy Friday to everybody. I'm gratefully looking forward to the upcoming three day weekend that's stretched out ahead of me. The promise of barbecue with good company and berry picking has gotten me through what seems like a really long week. :)

So...I did miss a post last night, and there was a good reason why. This reason is called Portobello. Evidently it is not just a type of mushroom anymore...




:) So. Now you know what I did last night. I was having a sort of rough day and Jay was awesome enough to take my super subtle hints that I wouldn't be able to stand after work even to make dinner because I was so tired, and he took me to some of the most amazing vegan food.

We definitely indulged. First I got a drink...

*all pictures taken via Jay's I-phone...I forgot the camera oops!

You may be wondering at this point, why there is a straw in my beer. That is because my beer is not my beer. It is my kombucha! I have been informed that kombucha may be a good source of probiotics, and since I have adopted a mostly vegan diet of late, I am decidedly a bit lacking (no yogurt etc). Does anyone know the specifics about what probiotics do and what good sources are? Luckily, there are plenty of alternative methods of incorporating probiotics into one's diet that do not involve yogurt. Perhaps a blog post on that later.

Jay had a beer

I thought the stopper was cool! Jay was all excited because he's apparently not seen this one outside of the actual brewery.


I got a little dressed up for me. I decided this was the best kombucha I'd ever had. So good.

This was our mushroom paté with tiny pickles, mustard, and baguette. This was definitely my favorite part of the meal. As much as I hesitate to idealize meat taste and texture, I feel it would be unwise to deny the obvious resemblance both in texture and in flavor that this had to really gourmet meat loaf. Amazing!

I must find out where I can get these little pickles! I don't even like pickles but these made for a great accent on the paté.

And this is what I ordered as a main: Vegan Lasagna. 100% true story.

The lasagna had a "cheese" made with cashew butter and tomato sausage that tasted so good. I cannot even begin to describe how much better it was than "real" lasagna. I wish I had paid more attention to the menu to see what else was in it.

Jay had gnocchi with tomatos and zucchini. That was also great, but I liked mine better :).

All in all a successful night out with awesome eats!

And now for running updates!

Yesterday was my rest day. I didn't have any pain in my legs yesterday, but as I mentioned, I felt a little off and was having trouble keeping my head above water. I think maybe I got used to feeling those endorphins in the morning and wasn't expecting to end up at work groggy.

This morning I woke up on the right side of the bed. It was supposed to be my second rest day, but I was really craving to get back out there before my muscles forget everything and I'm screwed Saturday morning, so I convinced Jay to ride in the rain on flat tires while I ran. It went by pretty fast this way, I mostly laughed the whole way at seeing him half drowned by the rain, trying to balance with my slow pace and on flat tires. For those of you that know Jay, you know he HATES the rain and prefers not to be in it. It's a good thing we live in Portland where we get ~76 days of sun a year ;).

Anyway, he was a sport.

The run was a little tough, I did feel a little pressure (now that he was there and definitely going faster than I could) to step up my game and run faster. However, this did not work exactly. Pretty much immediately I was gasping for breath. Not good. I recently spoke with my sister and she gave me a tip which I think will be valuable. She said that I should find a pace in which I could comfortably converse with someone and step it down a notch from there. Essentially go really slow and I will be able to cover more distance. This seems like key for a beginning runner. So that will be my experiment for the next few days. I think it will definitely be a challenge to go slow, but I'll give it a try!

Well, good night for tonight!