I’ve been pretty busy in Cleveland so far, per usual! It doesn’t matter how long I’m home for, things are always busy. It hasn’t helped that I’ve been a little under the weather either. I did start to feel a bit better today. Now, I just need 8hrs of sleep! Aren’t I always saying that?

I swear, blueberries in oats, is the best mix-in ever!

I made Scottish Oats with the typical banana/cinnamon mixed in and then 1 egg white at the end for extra protein, fluff and creaminess. I topped it with maple cinnamon almond butter sauce [mixed with 1T almond milk + heated], about 1/2c blueberries and Love Grown Foods cranberry pecan granola [YUM].

I mix the blueberries in at the very end just to take the chill off, but they still give a nice POP when you bite them. SO delicious! The almond butter sauce is amazing.

Keurig coffee makers are fun, although highly wasteful [sorry dad! ;)]. Each time you make 1 cup of coffee there is a small plastic container that you have to throw away that holds the ground beans. It might take 30-40 containers to equal 1lb of coffee that normally you would only have the 1 coffee bag to throw away at the end. I just hate excess waste!

DELICIOUS!!! Insanely creamy, not too sweet and love the chunks of mango. I miss Trader Joes for things like their cheap Greek yogurt!

Bays English Muffins are THEE best ever. They have the biggest nooks and crannies and aren’t too bready. These are sourdough and I topped them with maple cinnamon almond butter + jelly and cashew butter + jelly. With a big side of ‘loupe!

VitaCoco on the rocks!

I’ve been on a workout hiatus for a week now, except for taking walks. I’m getting really sick of it! Hopefully I can do a little more tomorrow since I’m not as dizzy tonight.

We ate dinner at StoneWater the other night, which is right down the street from our house. It’s a golf club and just happens to be where Chris + I got married. It’s fun coming home and going to dinner there. Tons of good memories!! We ate on the porch where our ceremony was :)

My mom and I split a veggie pasta with a white wine sauce. It was light + delicious.

I also had the BEST salad everrrr. Seriously. Grilled romaine with parm, s+p and some amazing sauce on top. I can’t even explain how delicious it was. Right behind the dressing cup is also a poached egg that I plopped on top of the warm salad. YUMMMM.

Riiiight where we were married!!

Went for a walk the other night!

Tonight I made dinner for some of my family. I wanted to make something quick, healthy and pretty easy. I have been dying to try the recipe Emily posted for vegan black bean burgers. I ran the idea by everyone and they said that sounded good!

I made the recipe exactly as she had it, except I left out cayenne + coriander, because we didn’t have them on hand. I also only had a mini food processor. So, first I ground the oats + seeds and put that into a bowl. Then I just ground the other ingredients in a few batches, dumped it in the bowl + mixed it with a spoon. Worked perfectly!

Grilled veggie time!

baby bellas
zucchini
onion
s+p
garlic powder
olive oil

Grill until tender!

I also baked sweet tater fries and yukon gold fries with olive oil, s+p.

Everyone scarfed these.

Everyone also RAVED about the black bean burgers. I thought they were PERfect. The consistency was great and they were not dry in the least. I baked them for 30min, flipping 1/2 way and then grilled them [over medium] for about 5min per side. Even my 11yr old cousin gobbled hers up. Awesome recipe.

LOVE grilled veg.

How cool is this retro stand mixer??? I might steal it from my aunt! We baked for a few hours, for AJ’s [my 15yr old cousin], birthday party tomorrow. We made 3 different things, completely from scratch, and I am very excited about everything :) More on that Sunday!

I’m off to finish answering all of your questions about my last post on barefoot running, so definitely check them out if you’re looking for an answer! Thank you for ALL of your comments. I really enjoyed reading them and was very excited by the response! I know I harped on going at the new running style slowly…but I just wanted to quickly talk about the approach I’ll be taking once I start running again.

When you’ve been a runner for awhile it’s hard to re-start something from the beginning and not just try to jump to the place you’re currently at. I thought I was taking it slow enough a few months ago, but wasn’t. It was frustrating because I was trying to get a good cardio workout in but shouldn’t have been pushing myself as hard as I was [which didn’t seem that hard…like 3 miles]. Now, my new approach is to not think of running as my cardio, for the time being. I will think of training for running much like I weight train.