50 Burpees?!?!

After missing crossfit on Thursday because of the rain, I really wanted to make it to Friday's class because it was the last week of my Groupon and it would be my last chance.  Since we're moving to Silver Spring, there's no way I'll be able to keep going to Crossfit Towson, but my experience there has been so great I'll probably look for a crossfit gym down in the DC area to keep it up! 

 

Friday's class was a short workout, but a good one!  There were only six of us at the class, and I was the only girl, so I definitely had to make sure I kept up with the boys!  The WOD was four rounds of 8 front squats, 5 toes to bar (knees to elbows), 8 back squats, and 10 handstand pushups (the instructor had us put our knees on a box if we couldn't do the handstand - which most of us couldn't. 

 

I used 35 pounds for the front and back squats - mostly because I couldn't press more weight to get the bar to my back for the back squats!  I actually finished first, in 9:34 - definitely because I was using the least amount of weight. 

 

But just when we thought we were done with a quick WOD, our instructor said we then had to do 50 burpees for time.  I couldn't believe it!  Burpees are the worst, and I always get light headed doing them.  Still, I pushed through and did them in 6:32.  Definitely not the first to finish, but not too shabby. 

Rain, Rain ... Ruined My Crossfit Day

By Thursday morning I'd gotten a new supply of bananas, so I enjoyed a delicious banana and graham cracker protein shake (using up those graham crackers!).  I had a meeting in northern Baltimore that morning, so I got to leave a bit later than usual since I wasn't driving all the way to Annapolis.  Yay for Baltimore-based meetings!  Pretty soon when we move to Silver Spring that won't be so convenient, so I've got to enjoy it while it lasts ...

 

Because I was going to a meeting and then straight to work right around lunchtime, I couldn't pack a lunch that needed refrigeration.  Luckily a while back I had picked up this Simply Asia Spicy Kung Pao Noodle Bowl and stashed it at work. 

 

To make the bowl, you unwrap and plot the noodles into the bowl, then dump in packets of seasonings and dehydrated vegetables, top with the contents of the sauce packet and two tablespoons of water, then microwave and let stand.  It wasn't terrible, but this certainly doesn't look like the picture on the box either, does it? 

 

I rushed out of work to try to make it to crossfit by 6:30 - tough to do when it takes an hour to get to my house from work, then I need to drop off my stuff, change, and turn around and get about 20 minutes from home to the gym.  But of course while I was on my way home from work it started pouring rain, which just made the commute slower-going.  I realized I wasn't going to make it, so instead I just rushed home as quickly as I could, hoping I could "un-RSVP" to the class before it started.  Just in case anyone else wanted my spot ...

 

Since I didn't get to crossfit, I decided to make a healthy dinner and then Josh and I did a crossfit inspired workout downstairs in the gym.  I made tofu with broccoli and edamame, topped with Thai peanut sauce.  Delicious and healthy! 

 

Our crossfit inspired workout consisted of a three-minute warmup on the treadmill, then three rounds of 20 situps, 20 pushups, 100 single jumps on the jump rope, and 20 overhead lunges (I started with 25 pounds, but went down to 20 for the third round).  Then we finished up with another three minutes on the treadmill.  It was a short workout, but we were both definitely sweaty by the end. 

 

And for dessert ... a few spoonfulls of dark chocolate dreams peanut butter.  I finished off the jar, so I won't be having any more for a few weeks - until I stock up on groceries again after the move.  *Tear* 

Very Belated Blog Post

It seems going out of town every weekend is really taking a toll on the timeliness of my blog posts.  This post on last Wednesday's eats is now almost a full week overdue.  I'll really have to step it up if I want to catch up on everything that's happened in the past week.  And with the big move now less than two weeks away, there will be plenty more to keep me distracted from the blog!

 

Luckily, last Wednesday wasn't too complicated a day, so I will just do a quick recap ... starting with the morning's breakfast smoothie - raspberry!  We were out of bananas, so I just mixed together frozen raspberries, protein powder, flax, vanilla soy milk, and just a touch of vanilla coconut ice cream.  It was delicious and a beautiful pink color, but I was picking raspberry seeds out of my teeth until mid-morning!

 

For lunch I enjoyed a piece of leftover rustic onion, potato, and blue cheese tart.  This is definitely another one of those recipes that is just as great as leftovers.  (As long as you're careful not to nuke it to the point of lava core temperature!) 

 

Our little indoor basil plant has been growing quite huge lately (not a bad problem to have), so I decided to prune a bit and make some yummy fresh pesto sauce for dinner.  It was also a great opportunity to use up some frozen peas (not sure when or why we originally bought those, but we need to get rid of excess food before the move!).  I mixed together linguine, grape tomatoes, peas, and pesto for a quick and delicious dinner. 

 

And because we need to use up food, of course I had to finish off the last of the chocolate coconut ice cream for dessert!  You can't really move frozen food easily, after all.  It was for the good of the move ... really!

Rustic Onion, Potato, and Blue Cheese Tart

Since we were going to be getting back into Baltimore incredibly late Monday night (more like 2 am Tuesday morning), I had the excellent forsight to take Tuesday off from work.  Josh still got up and out early, but I stayed in bed and slept in until almost 10.  When I finally got up, we didn't have much in the way of groceries in the house, but luckily we had frozen strawberries to make a delicious strawberry protein shake. 

A while later I decided to experiment with a few other random ingredients we had around that need to be used up before the move.  First was a Trader Joe's pie crust that's been in the freezer for quite a while.  It's not vegan (yeah, it's that old), but I don't like the idea of tossing it either.  I decided to make a rustic tart using the pie crust, a few random small potatoes, a red onion, and this vegan blue cheese I picked up on our trip to Pangea Vegan Foods. 

I hadn't had a chance to try the blue cheese yet, but wasn't really sure how to eat it.  My guess was that it wouldn't taste great on its own - when there's nothing to hide the inevitable "oddness" of fake cheese.  So mixing it into mashed potatoes seemed like a great way to try it out. 

I made some quick mashed potatoes using the potatoes, rice milk, Earth Balance, the blue cheese, salt, and pepper.  While the potatoes were cooking I caramelized the red onion, then layered the potaotes and onion in the center of the pie crust. 

For a "rustic" tart, just fold the edges of the crust up, and bake on a baking sheet until the top is golden brown!  The same technique works with pretty much any filling, and is so much easier than making a traditional tart in a pie pan. 

The result was actually really delicious, and I ended up having two pieces for lunch!  You could definitely taste the blue cheese, and it tastes like the real deal.  The problem was in the texture - it doesn't melt.  Not sure why I would expect nuts to melt, but it's still disturbing when it doesn't. 

 

That evening I headed to crossfit where we did a partner chipper WOD, which means that you work with another person to "chip" away at the workout.  You don't have to do every exercise 50-50, but can split it however you and your partner prefer.  I paired with a girl named Jaclyn, and we pretty much split the workout evenly, but I know she picked up some slack for me when I needed an extra bit of rest! 

Between us we did 300 single under jumps, 90 sit ups, 80 pushups (yeah, I did those on my knees), 70 wall balls (I used 10 pounds while she did 15), 60 pullups (I used a green and red band, while she rocked it with just the red), 50 burpees jumping onto a 25 pound plate, 40 overhead lunges with the 25 pound plate, 30 dead lifts (we both did 85 pounds), 20 cleans (I went down to 45 pounds - can't remember what she did), and 10 push jerks (I stripped off all the weight and just used the 35 pound bar here).  It was definitely a crazy intense workout and we finished in just under 30 minutes.  (And I spelled her name wrong ... oops.  I fixed that after the picture.)

After crossfit I wasn't too hungry, so I went out with Josh to get him a falafel sandwich and I just picked up a bag of vegan Doritos - spicy sweet chili.  I know, I know ... not a healthy dinner.  Not even really a dinner.  But they were a nice TV snack while we watched Breaking Bad :)  

Colbert Report

Funny story.  It seems I've already packed up the cord I need to connect my camera to the computer to get the lovely pictures of Minnewaska State Park ...  I know where it is, but don't really feel like opening up the box to get to it, so those pictures will have to wait a couple of weeks.  Or, more likely, they will never come because I will forget or think it's just too late.  But do a Google image search.  It's a lovely park. 

 

Anyway, time for the last recap of our weekend trip to New York.  Monday morning we decided to head ... yet again! ... to Karma Road Organic Cafe for breakfast.  Clearly, we liked this place. 

Rather than get another smoothie, I opted for the granola bowl with fruit, which was served with soy milk on the side.  It was really delicious, and not my typical breakfast.  I may have to try eating more granola on my own at home.  

After breakfast we said goodbye to New Paltz and drove down to New Jersey to leave our car at a park and ride and take the PATH into NYC ... definitely no need to drive into that craziness.  We had plans to meet up with friends for lunch, but first we took a little time to walk through the city, including a stroll through Central Park.  Fortunately, the weather was cool and sunny. 

 

We met our friends and walked to a little Falafel Place they had scoped out on Yelp called Soom Soom.  It was advertised as vegetarian, and had good reviews.  It was pretty much your average falafel place, with a big fixings bar to top your falafel however you wanted.  It was pretty tasty, and definitely filling. 

 

After lunch we wiled away a few hours chatting at The Pony Bar.  This one was Josh's pick, also from hearsay, but it was a great choice.  It wasn't crowded, so we easily found a table together and didn't feel rushed to leave.  Plus, we could actually hear each other!  It was a short visit with friends, but still a lot of fun. 

 

By late afternoon, we had to say goodbye so we could head over to the Colbert Report taping, which was pretty much the whole reason for the trip.  Back at Christmas, I got tickets to the show for Josh (who is against material presents) but when we showed up we were turned away (they overbook).  So sad! :(  But they said if we picked another day to come we would get VIP tickets to the show.  Yay! 

 

We showed up dutifully on time and were quickly ushered in with our VIP tickets.  What does a VIP ticket entail, you ask?  Since we were supposed to get there before the other regular ticket holders, we figured it might involve seats at the front, maybe a t-shirt, and maybe even a quick meet-and-greet with Steven himself! 

Yeah, we dream big ...

 

Apparently "VIP ticket" just means you get to go into the audience holding pen first.  Which means you get to sit there while a 20 foot x 20 foot room slowly fills up with about 200 audience members with no where to go and little room to move.  This is not an ideal situation for someone who might be claustrophobic ... like Josh.  He really wasn't doing well and I thought we might have to leave :(  Luckily he pulled through and we did indeed get to sit near the front.  Other than that, no perks for our "VIP ticket".  Everyone at the show got a free pen ... but one of ours was broken :( 

But of course the show was still funny and we got to see lots of cool behind-the-scenes action (no pictures allowed).  The show we were at was the Monday, August 5 episode with guest Hugh Laurie. 

 

After the show we grabbed a quick dinner before heading out of the city.  Again, we turned to Yelp, and stopped into Basera Indian Bistro.  In NYC I'm always worried that every restaurant will be incredibly crowded if it's any good, but we didn't have any trouble getting into Basera ... and that didn't turn out to be a bad sign!

 

I asked the waiter about the dairy content of a few dishes, and he helped me pick out the Vegetable Jalfrezi - mixed vegetables cooked with fresh onions, peppers, and tomatoes.  I ordered it "spicy", and they certainly didn't skimp on the spice!  All-in-all, it was a delicious meal, and was definitely enough to help us power through the long, late-night drive home!

New Paltz Day 2: The Parade-O-Dinner

Sunday morning we both woke up bright and early to start the day.  Fortunately we'd gone to bed really early, because I had a horrible time getting to sleep the night before.  Too much country noise!  There were bugs and toads chirping and croaking all night and they were so loud!  I couldn't believe they could make so much noise.  Give me ambulances and crazy drunks shouting any day. 

 

First thing in the morning I snacked on one of the blueberry muffins for breakfast on the balcony.  After eating one Saturday morning, Josh quickly declared them "gross" because I'd made them with apple sauce instead of coconut oil and they were too moist for his taste.  Really, they were too moist for my taste too, but I hate wasting food so much I ate the rest anyway. 

 

Once we got ourselves up and out, we headed to a restaurant recommended by the owner of the apartment we were staying in, Cafe Mio, which was in the next town over from New Paltz.  It was a "farm-to-table" place, with a list of their source farms right on the menu.  It seemed like the kind of place straight out of the premier of Portlandia, where they know the name of the chicken you're planning to eat and what his favorite color was. 

 

Unfortunately, all their organic and locally-sourced food didn't manage to come very readily in vegan form.  I ordered the only vegan option on the menu aside from side items - the coconut curry tofu.  (I know ... again!)  I definitely would have ordered something different at Karma Road if I'd known I'd be having it again for brunch the next day ...  And unfortunately Cafe Mio's was really pretty bad.  They obviously hadn't pressed the tofu, so it couldn't absorb the (bland) sauce.  The side salad was good, but nothing stellar.  And the toast was toast ... what can you say?  Basically we came away from Cafe Mio wishing we had just gone with Yelp reviews rather than the Airbnb guy.  And yet we didn't learn when it came time for dinner ... (see below). 

 

After brunch we headed out to Minnewaska State Park for a big hike.  We hiked for a few hours, taking frequest breaks to take pictures at lookout points and eat hiking snacks.  (I will put hiking pictures in the next post.) 

 

By the time we got back to the car we were both pretty tired and eager for a shower.  But first we decided to stop back at Karma Road Cafe to get one of the smoothies we'd spotted on the menu the night before.

 

I ordered the strawberry colada because I wanted to try to get something that was different from the normal smoothies I make at home all the time.  Josh ordered the "chocolate in my peanut butter" (which was exactly like what I make all the time).  Once we sat down to drink our shakes, Josh decided he liked mine a lot better and because I didn't really care either way I agreed to switch with him.  So I ended up with my usual shake anyway - chocolate, banana, and peanut butter.  Oh well!

 

After we got back and cleaned up, we decided to take a walk through a historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz.  A number of historic buildings line the street, including houses dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries.  Apparently some part of this church is also original, but I couldn't tell from looking at it what part that would have been ...  But the sun behind it is pretty, isn't it? :)

 

When it came time to choose a place for dinner, we forgot our lesson from brunch and spoke with the owner of the apartment again.  He recommended a German restaurant called Mountain Brauhaus.  Using our phones, we could see that the menu portion of their website says they have vegetarian and vegan options, but we couldn't pull up the menu itself.  But because they specifically mentioned vegan options, we thought it would be a good bet. 

 

Good thing I don't actually gamble ... The restaurant was packed, and when we were told it would be a 45 minute wait we took some time to look at the menu.  Turns out, their "vegan options" is just one option that's not even on the regular menu ... polenta.  It didn't seem exciting, and for $19 I couldn't imagine it would be delicious enough to be worth it.  Needless to say, we left. 

 

The next stop on our parade-o-dinner was La Stazione, an Italian restaurant that had also been recommended by Mr. Airbnb (we're slow learners).  We were promptly seated here, as there were only two other patrons, and sipped on water while listening to the specials.  After perusing the menu for a few minutes we realized this wasn't going to be an option either.  Since we'd taken the waiter's time and water, we tipped $3 and explained that we would need to go somewhere else. 

 

By this point we were getting pretty hungry and desperate.  We walked up the main street through New Paltz and finally stopped in at Rock Da Pasta.  The name sounds weird, but they had a menu posted outside and clearly marked vegan options, so it seemed like a good (or at least viable) option.  It was another small and fairly grungy seeming place, but the waitress was nice, and at least we could actually order something! 

 

I chose the "Hey Jude", which was mushrooms with onions and roasted garlic, herbed cream sauce, balsamic and truffle oil over penne.  The menu advertised that any cream or milk could be substituted for soy or coconut milk.  On the waitress's suggestion, I had mine with coconut milk, which was a little sweet but really delicious.  Please excuse the flash ... dimly lit restaurant and all.  But a giant plate of pasta turned out to be the perfect end to the day.  So I guess it was worth the extremely long wait. 

New Paltz Day 1

By the end of our long road trip up to New York, Josh and I were incredibly happy to get into New Paltz Saturday evening.  We rented a room on Airbnb which was a small studio apartment above a garage.  It was spare, but had the necessities - bed, bathroom, and TV. 

 

Plus it even had its own balcony!  Check out the views of the garden and huge back yard ...

 

After we'd settled in and lounged around a bit watching TV, we headed out to explore town and find dinner.  We didn't have to go far before stumbling on this little vegan cafe called Karma Road Organic Cafe, which seemed like the perfect place to grab dinner with no difficulty finding vegan options.

It was small, but cute.  And unlike a lot of vegan-only restaurants, it looked clean and well kept.  It was a no-nonsense kind of place ... order at the counter off the menu boards, then they deliver food to your table. 

And how cute are the tables?!  Each one had a picture of a rescued animal on it.  This pig being scratched on the head was adorable!

And this little lamb has an amputated leg that is bound up in a bandana.  And yet it still has a smile on its face ...  This is the table we sat at, and Josh moved the napkin holder over the lamb's lost leg so he wouldn't have to see that part while he ate. 

There was also art all over the walls - photos from Iceland and paintings of barnyard animals.  The whole place was bright and cheerful.  They also had a small outdoor deck seating area.  A beautiful place to sit and relax. 

We got all sorts of different food and shared between us.  We started with a tempeh bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich to which we added avocado (of course), and which came with a little kale slaw on the side.  It was delicious!  Josh is eager to try this one ourselves at home in place of our beloved B.A.T.s. 

We also ordered a mix of things from their deli case, including roasted vegetables (just potatoes, onions, and kale I think).  They were delicious, and easily something we could make at home - and which I'm sure we will this winter!

Also from the deli we got coconut curry tofu which was just okay, if maybe a little sweet from the coconut. 

And last (because they forgot and brought it out after everything else), but certainly not least, we got a sweet potato roll warmed with Earth Balance butter.  It was supposed to come with Walnuts, and neither of us detected a single nut, but it was really good and sort of like dessert, so it was a great way to end the meal.  (Don't worry, I also scraped off more than half that Earth Balance - way too much for me!) 

After dinner we went for a little sunset stroll through town to check out the rest of the stores and get more of a feel for the place.  But we headed off to bed pretty early so we could be well rested for our big hike the next day!