Crazy Sexy Diet Cleanse Take 2: Day 16

Hey everyone! I can't believe I've already made it to Day 16 of this cleanse! I feel like it has gone really quickly! I am excited and feel like it has been really successful in terms of how I feel and also in how I've experimented with creating new meals and not getting stuck in a rut.

The wedding went by pretty quickly yesterday. I was working with two photographers yesterday and ended up carrying all of their stuff. One bag was at least 40-50 lbs alone, then I had two other smaller bags to carry. Needless to say my shoulders and back are feeling a bit jacked up today but I was able to rest and hopefully I'll be ok for my training session tomorrow. They had a great party though so the time went quickly! They were standing on chairs and jumping off speakers, it was hilarious! Cocktail hour wasn't as good as the last time I was at this hall but I still had some fruit and they had stuffed grape leaves! Score!

I woke up at about 7:15 today (after not so much sleep) and decided that it was a gorgeous morning and I'd be silly if I skipped the farmers market to stay in bed. I dragged my ass out of bed and drove about 30 minutes to the market. I made today a rest day for working out but still decided to park on the other side of town so I'd get a nice walk in. The weather was so perfect this morning I'm so glad I did that. We had a bit of a sun shower this afternoon though, more on that later ;)

The market was much bigger than last year, some more vendors must have signed up. There were still only 2 produce vendors but they had some more bakery type stalls, some with home made spreads, one with aromatherapy type stuff which was vegan friendly and smelled so good (I'm going to get something next time) and some other ones. The produce stalls had the same stuff too so I went to the one with a slightly better selection and picked up a few goodies!

Some baby bok choy (!!!), a big bag of mesclun greens, a big ol' carton of strawberries, some sugar snap peas and some new dill pickles from the pickle vendor!

I had a really lovely morning. The best part was that I was home by 10! I was able to load up my dehydrator for the first time and then relax for the rest of the day. More on the dehydrator later ;)

For breakfast I had my non-smoothie breakfast for the week :) Banana with raw pecan butter, raisins and cinnamon with some farmer's market strawberries! Yum! 

For lunch I had these gorgeous spring rolls I picked up from the Wild By Nature that is by the Farmers Market. I figured I deserved to eat a meal I didn't have to prepare ;) So good! This had rice paper, lettuce, cucumber, carrots and avocado. There was a Thai Chili Sauce but I didn't eat it because it contained wheat. I don't really like sauces on my spring rolls or sushi anyway though...except peanut sauce. Yum. I ate 2 of the 3 pieces and figured the other would be great as a quick snack!

Dinner is an uninspired plate of carrots, stuffed grape leaves, hummus and Farmers Market pickles. Good but nothing interesting. I think a headache and fatigue won this battle. 

I didn't eat too much during the day because my appetite was a bit low and I was feeling a bit headachey so I knew dessert would be in order tonight. It is pretty hot here so I wanted something cold so what better way to end a day than with some icy, sweet frozen fruit! I have a few frozen grapes mixed with some frozen pineapple (anti-inflammatory food!). It'll be the perfect sweet dessert. It's a bit icy but I'm ok with that ;) That's on tap for a bit later!

I became incredibly aware that my nails needed to be done immediately so in honor of the last week of my cleanse I decided to "go green." ;) I have since cleaned them up around the edges.

Check out this double rainbow I saw outside my window after a brief sun shower! You can only see the second one in the upper right corner of the photo but it was so pretty!

I took my dehydrator out for a test drive but it's still going after almost 8 hours! I'll have to show you what I made tomorrow!

Yikes, this is a long post :) Hope you all had a great weekend! I'm not going to lie, I could totally go for another day off :X Have a great evening!

Fun Friday: Summer List!

Hey everyone! Happy Friday! I hope your week has treated you well and you are all ready for the weekend! I have one more day of work to go until I get to my day off and I can't wait for Sunday! I'm still planning on waking up really early and taking a nice 30 minute drive to the opening day of one of our Farmers Markets! Assuming I can get up of course. Today I did some more running and I'm feeling really good about it. Starting to build distance. I should be back up to my two miles in a week or two hopefully! I'll also start to strength train after my runs. Gotta get that upper body super strong for all the climbing I'm going to be doing! Who knows, maybe if I can get my arms all buff I'll have a reason to start a half sleeve tattoo ;)

OK so for today's Fun Friday I was inspired by Ingrid's Summer List that she posted a few days ago! Summers are really busy for me because of the wedding season, so I think it is really important to make this list because it will be a constant reminder for me to take the time to do things for myself. It is the best way to keep my sanity, my motivation and my happiness going when things get crazy.

Here's the list!

I'm sure it is obvious that Tough Mudder training is on the list. Running, strength training, endurance are all on the list. My nutrition goals are also tied in to Tough Mudder training.

Spend more time on the beach. I realized this past weekend when we were on the beach for the portraits how much I love the beach and how genuinely happy I was for the 30 minutes we were there. My absolute favorite time to go is first thing in the morning before anyone is awake. I like to watch the surfers and soak it all in and leave before the crowds get there. 

Go to the farmer's market more! I usually only go a few times every season because ours is so small. I should try and seek out larger ones and start buying locally grown produce. I chose this image because it is what I wish my farmer's market looked like! I really wish I had access to the Winter Park Farmer's Market I went to in Florida. It was so amazing.

Experiment with my dehydrator! I finally got it after lusting after it for at least a year so I need to make sure I get use out of it! I'm going to dehydrate everything in sight ;)

Eat mostly beautiful, raw foods. I have been feeling amazing on this cleanse (day 14 today!) and I want to keep it going so I'm going to try and maintain a mostly raw diet as a lifestyle instead of a cleanse. It'll be a little more lenient than the cleanse but I'll be following the same principles :) 

Be creative and crafty and complete more DIY projects. First up is this beachy hair spray! 

Finally (for now), I'd like to try and create more recipes. I feel like most of the food I eat is simple and I never write a recipe for anything because I feel like it doesn't need one. In reality, I should be writing down recipes because it's probably not as obvious as I think it is? And I figured I'd start off on this by including a recipe for you today! This is a recipe for my breakfast Carrot Cake Smoothie (pictured above). I've tried many Carrot Cake Smoothies but decided it was time to make my own!

Carrot Cake Smoothie!

1/4 cup oats (I used gf)

3/4 cup plant milk (I used Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk), plus a few tbsps

1 tbsp raisins

1 tbsp chopped walnuts

pumpkin pie spice to taste

1 giant carrot or 2 small carrots, grated

1 serving vanilla protein powder (I used Vanilla Almondilla Vega Energizing Smoothie Powder)*

As much ice as you like (you could probably also use a frozen banana!)

Directions:

1. The night before, combine oats, milk, raisins, walnuts and pumpkin pie spice in a bowl. Mix and cover and place in fridge overnight. 

2. Put contents of bowl in blender and add protein powder, carrots and ice (or banana).

3. Blend until smooth and add plant milk until you reach desired consistency. I added 2 tbsp.

4. Enjoy!

*I use the Vega Energizing smoothie powder because it has 2 servings of greens in it :) No spinach required in this one!

OK that's all for today! I will try to post something tomorrow before I leave for the long day of work. Tomorrow also officially starts the third week of my cleanse :) Home stretch my friends! 

I hope that you all enjoy your Friday evening! 

This Is What I Eat on Vacation!

Hey everyone! Got home from my long weekend in Orlando. It went by so fast!! I'm bummed that it's over but I had an amazing time. It was great to see my friend, I ate some amazing vegan food and went to one of the most amazing farmer's markets I've ever seen.

I have a lot of food to share with you so I'm going to try and organize it so it makes it easier for you to read (and for me to post!). I'll share my restaurant meals, my cooked meals and something I picked up from the farmer's market :) I took all of the pics with my phone so the quality isn't great but you'll definitely get the point. I used instagram on some to spruce them up so the color may vary a bit but they look ok I guess! Let's dive in!

So first I'll share two of the three restaurant meals I ate. I didn't take a pic of the third because to be honest it made me really annoyed. I'll explain in a second.

I actually ate this absolutely DELICIOUS sandwich for lunch today. I usually go to Ethos Vegan Kitchen for brunch when I'm in Florida but I wanted to try it for lunch so we went somewhere else for brunch (which subsequently served me the meal that annoyed me). I got the "Hippie Wrap" in the gluten free option minus the banana peppers. I chose the fruit for my side. This was AMAZING. Ethos is one of my favorite restaurants in Orlando which is why I go back every time I'm there!

This meals is from The Loving Hut! I actually ordered the "Combo #1" but was given the Combo #2. It originally arrived with a faux beef skewer type thing that was definitely made with wheat gluten which I wasn't really interested in. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it since the summer roll and rice were correct. Instead of the spring roll I was supposed to get veggies but it was fine so I just asked them to switch the wheat meat for the tofu I was originally supposed to get and all was well. It was SO GOOD! This is another place I come every time I'm in Orlando. They usually get the order right but the girl who took our order was new. No big deal though, it was still delicious!

Quick story about that third restaurant. They had a salad that looked great...basically greens topped with supposed fresh fruit. I expected beautiful fruit to be sitting on those greens...instead I saw a sparse, sad looking salad with minimal fruit that was far from fresh. The thing that annoyed me about it wasn't necessarily that the salad was kind of pathetic. It was that I was sitting in the restaurant staring out the window at the farmer's market. It drives me nuts when restaurants don't even think to utilize the beautiful, fresh, local ingredients located literally 100 feet from their door. So ridiculous.

Speaking of the farmer's market, I went to the Winter Park Saturday Farmer's Market and was completely blown away. They even had a small stall with raw shakes and some tea blends and a few raw things such as crackers, soup and moon pies. I have been dying to try raw crackers so I picked up a package.

I tried to eat a lot of healthy raw food in between some indulgences that I'll share at the end of this post. They were fairly consistent with what I eat on a regular basis.

A beautiful salad of greens, cucumber, carrots and some avocado. I dressed it with extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice.

Cherry chocolate green smoothie for breakfast one of the ninja turtle glasses I got my friend for his birthday!

Snacky type lunch plate with carrots, an orange and some of the raw crackers from the farmer's market with mashed avocado. So good!

I tried to be somewhat virtuous with my food choices during the trip but definitely wanted to indulge a bit as well. As part of our tradition I made a really great dinner followed by dessert, both of which were decadent and rich and 100% amazing.

Check out this amazing, decadent mac n cheese! I used this recipe and it was so good. I made it gluten free with rice pasta and gf flour and left the breadcrumbs off the top. Next time I'd add a little more seasoning but it was creamy and amazing!

I forgot to take a wide shot but I served it up with some amazing brussels sprouts that I picked up at the farmer's market and roasted, as well as some carrots. It was a really delicious meal and totally worth the splurge!

And every decadent dinner should be followed by an equally decadent dessert!

Vegan Heartland's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bars! 

You seriously have to try these! They are amazing! I was super careful to avoid wheat the rest of the weekend because I knew I would be eating this and wanted to make sure it wouldn't effect me that much and it didn't. These are great, impressive and pretty easy!

So that's what I ate on vacation! I indulged a bit more than I typically would and it is amazing that I came home craving healthy, raw foods. I guess that is a great thing and shows just how much my tastes have changed over the past month or so. It's a great feeling!

It's back to reality for me now. Here I am very relaxed and happy (although some makeup would make this photo a bit more flattering ha!) before I left to come home. Hopefully I can keep this feeling for a little while before I settle back into my reality.

Hope you all had a great weekend, now I have to catch up on all of your blogs!

Really Good Food Day and Farmer's Market!

Today has been a busy day and it is only noon! My mom was nice enough to lend me her car for the day since I get out of work at 9 pm.  I dropped her off at work then popped over the the farmer's market that is about 3 minutes from her office.  It was raining so I was in and out but everything looked gorgeous! I try not to overbuy because I'm afraid of waste, but I did get a few things!

I bought 4 honeycrisp apples, a bag of green beans, a couple heads of broccoli and some tomatoes (maybe for some more avocado/tomato goodness?!).

I put that honeycrisp apple to work for breakfast. Sliced one up, slathered with peanut butter, sprinkled a few raisins on half of it and cinnamon all over.

After breakfast I did a trampoline workout followed by a quick 15 minutes of yoga to stretch out the tightness and soreness.

After my shower I snacked on a banana and a cup of coffee in my awesome Mazel mug :)

Lunch will be eaten right after I finish this post: a rice bowl with brown rice, roasted cauliflower, roasted chickpeas and sun-dried tomatoes. Return of my favorite bowl!

Dinner tonight is all packed up and ready to go! I roasted those green beans I got this morning and packed some up with sesame tofu and a big ass carrot that I cut up.

I feel great now that I'm back on track! Now it is time for lunch and then I have to get all of my treats ready to take to the post office. Have a great day everyone!

Nommy day!!

Started my day off with a 3.5 mile run.  It was hard to get back into the groove and so hot it took a toll on my breathing pattern.  It was rough but I got through it.  After that it was smooth sailing though! Let's check out the grub.

Breakfast: Decided to go for some mochi this morning! It was AMAZING...I topped it with chopped walnuts, raisins, shredded coconut and cinnamon then drizzled it with maple syrup.  It was heavenly and call me crazy but it reminded me of baklava...especially when I had a bite with only walnuts, syrup, flaky coconut and syrup. Amazing.

Farmer's market mini-haul: Finally had a chance to get to the farmer's market and grabbed a few items.  I got a pint of cherries, a few ears of corn, a big ol' bunch of kale and some gorgeous peaches.

Morning snack: One of the aforementioned yummy peaches.

Lunch: Finished off the rest of my stir-fry with added broccoli to bulk it up. It was just as good the third time around :)

Afternoon snack: Iced coffee

Dinner: Farmer's market salad.  Kale topped with some raw corn, green onion and red beans.  I cut the avocado when I ate it so it would stay it's lovely fresh shade until then.  It was good but no matter how many times i try I don't think I'm a raw kale girl so it looks like I'm either making kale chips or steaming/sauteeing the rest of it.  

Have a great night!