Lots of Veggies and Another Dehydrator Experiment!

Hey everyone! Thank you all so much for your kind comments yesterday :) It made me happy to read them after a long day of work :) The wedding went well yesterday, we just ended up being so far from home that I got home an hour and a half after we left the hall! It didn't help that I was at the gym by 7:45 am yesterday to get in a pre-wedding workout in. I did 45 minutes of intervals on the arc trainer (no impact cardio when I work 12 hour days) and I rowed an 8 minute mile. I have no idea of that is good or not but I plan on continuing to do a little rowing to hopefully help strengthen my shoulders/upper body.

Like I mentioned yesterday, since starting this cleanse I've been craving fruits and veggies like crazy! I eat them like it's my job! Yesterday I enjoyed some yummy fresh fruit during cocktail hour and they were nice enough to make me a special vegan dinner. It was a MOUNTAIN of veggies cooked in olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. It was the most delicious meal I've ever had at a wedding. It was just so much though. I ate 1/4 of it and there was still a mountain on there! I was very happy though! I wish I had gotten a pic!

Today I woke up craving veggies and water. I tend to get dehydrated when I work and I usually am good about drinking water but not so much yesterday. I've been drinking a ton of it today though!

For lunch today I really wanted veggies and I wanted pizza. So I ended up making one of the healthiest pizzas you can probably eat.

Isn't it pretty? ;) I used a gf tortilla as the crust, added some organic, all natural sauce, lots of spinach and zucchini and 1/4 cup of Daiya Mozzarella. After it came out of the oven I sprinkled it with garlic powder. So good and no need to feel guilty! I think Kris Carr would approve of this pizza :)

We are going to my brother's house for dinner tonight and since they are having a meaty BBQ I'll be eating a chopped salad for dinner. More veggies, this time raw :)

Here is a teaser of the dehydrator recipe I'm testing today! It is making the entire house smell amazing! I have a good feeling about this one. Recipe tomorrow!

Finally, I just wanted to share my favorite picture from last night! I got bored during the reception so I decided to go outside and play with long exposures and nighttime photos. My night photography is pretty weak so I wanted to play and I got this shot that I love! The hall is on the right, the water on the left. The bride and groom brought Bocce balls and had done a few photos with them and left it on the lawn when they were done.  I think it adds to the pic :) The pic is a little soft since it was such a long exposure but it's not too bad. And I actually didn't touch the color or enhance it at all, that's what the sky looked like out of the camera! So pretty! Oh and it is shot with a Fish-Eye lens that I borrowed from the other photographer.

I hope that you are all having a great Sunday so far! I'm going to try and take a nap before we go to my brother's house. I'm so tired! I woke up early to get to Whole Foods so between the long day of work in the heat yesterday and not getting much sleep I could use a rest day :) Assuming I can get my butt out of bed tomorrow morning I'll be starting my morning running tomorrow! 

Have a great evening!

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! 

Green Everywhere!

Hey everyone! Hope that you all had a great Saturday/St. Patrick's Day! It was such a lovely day today it totally lifted my spirits :) I started off my day with an hour of cardio at the crack of dawn. It felt good and I was glad that I got out of bed and did it. My intention was to go to work but I decided that it was too nice to spend the day inside when I didn't really have to.

My friend asked me to do a quick maternity portrait session for her today so I went over there and took some pictures of her and her husband. After that I decided to take a ride out to Whole Foods and enjoy the weather for a bit. There is nothing like driving around with the windows down on a beautiful spring day. It even made the horrific traffic a little more bearable :)

So as I mentioned yesterday, my plan was to eat all green food today. I think I was pretty successful! Check it out!

Green smoothie after my workout for breakfast. This one is a Banana Berry Smoothie! Frozen strawberries and blueberries, a small banana, almond milk, Vanilla Almondilla Shake and Go Powder, lots of spinach. Delicious!

S&M salad for lunch! Greens, nori, hemp seeds, and avocado dressed with some lemon juice. Very delicious.

A green snack was difficult but I ended up eating some Veggie Booty. A little processed food once in a while is totally ok in my book :)

Dinner was a spinach and Daiya quesadilla. I was going to put more avocado on top to make it even more green but decided against it because the cheese would make it rich enough and I wasn't super hungry.

I mentioned my backpacking adventure yesterday and FF asked if I had any photos. Unfortunately I have no idea where they are, this is the only file I could find! It is one of my favorite photos I've ever taken. It is out of the window of the Louvre in Paris and it is blurry but I feel like that makes it look like a painting :) I love this shot.

I'd say mission accomplished! This was fun :) I'm not going to lie I'm still feeling a bit lethargic so I'm looking forward to a relaxing evening at home. I'm glad I went to Whole Foods today because now I can just relax tomorrow morning and not rush out of bed.

Hope you all had a Happy St. Patrick's Day! Can't wait to see what you all ate :)

Photo Shoot!

Hey everyone! Sorry for the brief hiatus but Thursday was a pretty uninspired day and I ended up working a wedding yesterday and was out all day until late. I'll post a catch up post tomorrow :)

Last night I saw a post by a friend on Facebook asking if anyone had a camera that would take high resolution photos. I knew he was selling his car so I offered to do the shoot for him. I guess I'm just nice like that ;) I knew the perfect location for it too so today after I got out of work we went and I took pics of his car for about an hour or so. I'm really happy with how they turned out and decided I'd like to share them with you!

It started to flurry in the middle of the shoot! I was SOOOO cold!

This was actually a detail shot to show the scratches on the bumper or whatever it is (not a car person obviously) but I LOVED the way this angle looked!

You can really see the flurries here!

Cool angle with the graffiti wall in the background.

I took a shot at getting this lens flare and it worked out really well. This may be my favorite shot. Look at how sunny it got after the brief snow!

Against the train tracks.

He had asked me if there was a way I could get a shot of the car with the train blurred in the background when it passed by. I told him I could sure as hell try. I wasn't expecting it to come out as well as it did so I'm pretty excited about this shot too!

So that's the best of the best. There were a lot of small detail shots because he is trying to sell it but I actually had a lot of fun with the shoot. He has a lot of friends that are major car guys that he said will probably be interested in doing a shoot after they see these so it may end up being a great way to stay busy and working/shooting during the winter!

I hope you all have had a great weekend so far! I'll be back tomorrow to post some meals from the past few days!

A Meal, A Workout, And A Baby :)

Hey everyone! Sorry for the brief hiatus. It was kind of unintended but once in a while I just kind of feel like I need a break from the computer. I didn't even turn it on yesterday. So as an apology I'm bringing you a yummy meal, a great workout and some cute pictures of Delilah.

First, the workout. On Saturday I went to the gym before work and had a pretty good workout that I came up with myself using exercises I typically do with my trainer. Here's what I did:

20 minute warm-up on Arc Trainer
5-1 minute rounds of jump rope
5x up and down stairs with ankle weights on (3 sets - so 15x up and down stairs altogether)
walking lunges across gym with curls into an overheard press (3x across gym)
2 sets 12 weighted squats (60 lbs - on machine)
10 minutes on elliptical

My calves are still on fire for tonight's training session. Oops!

I ate pretty standard fare this weekend. Yesterday I knew I was going to be at my brother's house all day helping everyone wrap holiday gifts so I had a delicious brunch to hold me until dinner.

This was intended to be a breakfast burrito but it turned into a quesadilla. The tortilla was a but delicate and I knew it would never wrap so I just layered a think layer of spicy refried beans, some browned tofu with nooch (which turned out to be more than I thought it would) and a half of an avocado. It was SO delicious and super duper filling. Some of the tofu escaped from the tortilla and ended up on the plate...where it stayed. Definitely going to use much less next time.

As promised, some of the holiday portraits I took of Delilah!

I am the only one that feels this way but this is my favorite shot. She isn't looking but she looks so sweet and innocent. Love it.

I love that she decided to cross her feet in this one. So funny and so cute.

On another note, I missed like a day and a half of comments and I felt so far behind! Yikes, I'll have to make sure I stay on top of that!

Hope you are all having a great Monday. Training session tonight which I'm looking forward to :)

No Food, Just A Cute Baby :)

Hey everyone! I don't have anything interesting meal-wise to show you today but I want to show you a few shots I got of Delilah yesterday. It was a combination of her 1st birthday party and Christening. Yes, I'm Jewish, but my sister-in-law is not. We are not super religious and it was something that my sister-in-law wanted so my brother went with it.  And yes, I know it is VERY late to do a Christening, but that's how they roll ;)

Not much else to say, I kind of have a case of the Mondays. Finally had a training session and it felt great.

Check out the cuteness!

I love this picture so much. She is so young but she is so expressive and has so much personality!

Lol I can't deal with how cute she is! She was gnawing on a chocolate covered pretzel. The birthday girl can eat a treat if she wants!!

Love my girl :) Can't say it enough!

Have a great night!

Business Cards and Busted Cars

Today has turned out to be the strangest day. I woke up with an evening packed with activity and places to be...and I ended up home. My training appointment got canceled (wah, total bummer) and I was supposed to do headshots for a friend of mine and her mother for their business cards. She canceled as well. It was fine though because I had SO MUCH to do so I was happy for the free time.

First some happy news! I finally ordered business cards for my small vegan baking venture and they showed up today! There is a great company called MOO that does custom printing. What sets them apart is that you can upload different photos for every business card (up to 50 I believe). I was going to do the cheap standard cards but I think it is important for customers to see the product so I chose some of my favorite pics and decided to just go for it. They came out AMAZING. I'm so happy, the card stock quality is amazing and the print quality is gorgeous. Check them out!

The back of the cards is simple with all of my info. These are worth every penny.

So after I got home it was about 5pm. I decided to run to Whole Foods because I haven't been there in like a week and a half and I'm living off scraps here. That's part of the reason I have no food to post for you lately! So I go and the traffic is so horrible I turned around after about a half mile. I decided to do my laundry then I'd go. Wrong. I get into my car and it is totally dead. Not a stutter, no blinking light, just total stillness. Sigh. Can't catch a break.  

Oh well, it is what it is. It'll get fixed and life will go on. I'm just glad it didn't happen while I was AT Whole Foods! I'll just have to piece together some meals and be boring and eat the  same thing for a few more days.

It's almost Friday!

WTF Wednesday!

Why hello dears, happy Wednesday! As usual, I work until 9 tonight so I'm going to do a quick post before I jet out the door (in like 10 mins :X) and I'll catch up on your posts tonight!

For breakfast I had another bowl of oats. Today's oats were topped with a half of a banana, and a sprinkling of walnuts and shredded coconut. SO good.

For lunch I packed up some carrots, dolma and an avocado and tomato salad made with the other half of my avocado from yesterday. It stayed nice and green, thanks lemon juice!!

I roasted up my brussels sprouts and cauliflower  from Trader Joe's this morning and packed it up with the rest of my sesame tofu from Whole Foods for a quick dinner.

This photo is for Shen who is always confused by my food touching rules :) I decided to save my leftover veggies in one container...but I found one with a divide that happens to fit the leftovers perfectly and I thought Shen might get a kick out of it. I honestly didn't care if the veggies touched but it was really just amusing to do it this way.

I just wanted to show this pic because I think it is hilarious.  My boss found a podcast demonstrating this cool effect with a fisheye lens and a ring light so we were testing it out yesterday and I love the way it looks. We all now have a ridiculous picture of us as our desktop on our giant screens at work. It is a bit scary because the shots are not the most flattering (which is why I posted this one and not that one hahaha) but I just thought I'd share. Yes, I wear glasses when I use the computer and I can't stop staring at the one brown spot in my blue eyes. :)

Anyway, hope you all enjoyed this quick post. Have a great hump day!

Quick Update

Sorry for the lack of food lately, been super busy with work.  I got put on a wedding today at the last minute so I'll be out all day working.  I do have tomorrow off (yay!!) so I'll have yummy meals to post and plenty of time to plan for my raw food experiment (starting Monday and lasting until my friend comes to visit on August 25).

Already did 30 minutes on the trampoline which felt great! Can't wait for yoga tomorrow and I'll make up today's training session I miss today right after yoga tomorrow.  I have found that I have better training sessions right after yoga because I'm so stretched out and feeling great so I hope the same is true tomorrow after the long day I'm going to have today.

Any suggestions for raw meals? I have Ani Phyo's books which will help, planning lots of veggie noodles and salads and whatnot, but anything different? Maybe breakfasts?

Sorry again for the lack of food.  I promise to make it up tomorrow! Maybe I'll post the recipe for those amazing truffles as an olive branch for my laziness :)

Since I like photos I'll post 2 random photos I shot at Five Pointz in Long Island City. I can't remember if I've posted them on this blog before, so if I have I'm sorry but check em out again!

Lens Flare!

Love these walls and the angle makes it look almost seemless!

Z Hotel Launch Party Part 2 - Party Pics

Here are a few fun party shots from the night!

The staff has very unique, casual uniforms: Jeans, converse sneakers and plaid shirts.  I liked it :)

One of the rooftop bars with the view of the bridge in the background.

The owner of the hotel busting out a little dance move. Check out that stunning view in the background!

More dancing.

The ladies bringing it down!

Hope you all enjoyed a few of my shots from the night!