Another semester down.

I can’t believe I’m 5 YEARS into my college career! It seems like only yesterday I was in high school…

I remember homecoming so well.  Such fun times!  High school was full of some of my favorite memories, mostly sports-related.  Then came college at NMU with a new group of close friends… most of these memories are slightly fuzzy, but fun nonetheless!

Apparently one degree just wasn’t enough for me so in August of last year (2 days after my brother got married), I moved to the beautiful state of Colorado to pursue my R.D. in hopes of a career in nutrition. In case you couldn’t tell, I have a pretty strong interest in food.

I can definitely proclaim that this move was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. In terms of schooling, the adventures of living with my best friend, meeting an awesome group of people, and taking advantage of all that this place has to offer, I am extremely content.

I love skiing…

I love hanging out with my crazy friends…

I love going to sporting events…

and concerts…

and I discovered my new favorite restaurant and beer. Love love LOVE this place!

He’s alright too.

It’s been such a great year and I have plenty to look forward to in the days ahead!

Regular food blogging resumes now.

Some fun FITNESS things coming up:

• NEW Boot Camp class starts on May 24th
• Boulder Boulder 10k on May 31st
• Les Mills Quarterly on June 5th

And also… I may or may not have made the best salad ever for lunch today.  I know I say this quite a bit, but seriously…best ever.

I was on my own at the grocery store this week and let’s just say it was a successful shop.  We finally have food again!

Hope you all have better weather than we have here… It’s a little cold for my liking today.  I’m headed to the city tonight for dinner so I hope to have some nice pictures for my morning post.  Location is a surprise so I don’t know details.  Is the suspense killing you as much as it is me?

I’m off to read non-school book.  Wow I love summer. Bye for now!

Weekend Fun

Our fun with visitors continues! We went to Boulder on Saturday to browse and go out for lunch.

Nothing quite like broccoli cheese soup in a bread bowl.  We ate at one of our favorite spots in town, BJs Brewery.  They have a great beer selection, solid food, and a really nice “chill” atmosphere.   FYI, I highly recommend Jeremiah Red.

After lunch, some window shopping was done (hellooooo everything North Face), we stopped for frozen yogurt and then proceeded to the nicest Whole Foods I ever been to.  Took everything I had to not go crazy in this place.  Becky and Jessica were making fun of my extreme grocery shopping obsession.  There are much worse things to spend money on, right?  We managed to leave with only sushi (dinner) and a Kombucha.

Check out the view from outside the store!  We had some retro-dressed skiier take this picture of us before we left town.

Love Boulder.  I will live there someday!

Saturday night—shenanigans at the apartment.  I love catching up with friends!  I think we looked at every single picture on both Jessica’s computer and mine.  Think Spice Girls for Halloween in 6th grade.  Definitely had some good times with these two!

Sunday was Rocky Mountain National Park!  First time any of us had ever been and it was BREATHTAKING.  It’s interesting how aesthetically pleasing mountains are.   I could seriously sit and look at these all day and be completely content.

Weather was perrrrrfect for wandering around an old tourist town.  I guess the Stanley Hotel from the book “The Shining” is also in Estes Park and seeing as I now have an annual pass, we may have to make a special trip up there just to get creeped out by images of Jack Nicholson.  I already have nightmares all the time as it is.  No thank you!

An Elk burger for lunch was extremely necessary.  When in Rome?

Don’t worry, I had a side salad too but that wasn’t nearly as exciting…  Can you tell I love onions?  I love them so much, we had to make more for dinner last night.

A grill out sesh to set the tone for summer, complete with veggies, BBQ chicken and of course, Bloody Mary’s.

Yes, on a Monday!

Becky’s last night was a success!  Let’s just say it was a celebratory kind of night… Shots out of measuring cups seems to be a recurring theme in this apartment.  Julie aren’t you so happy we get good use out of these?

Classy.

I’m off to sit in the sun for a few hours before I have to go back to work.  Rough life, huh?  It’s like 75 degrees outside today so I better enjoy it before it snows again (probably will).

Until next time!

Much-needed relaxation

I feel like it’s been forever since I had a chance to just sit around for a few hours! Our house guests are all gone so today was the first in about a week that I just relaxed without any plans for the day… and it was nice!  Not to say that I didn’t have a blast with our friends (I felt like I was on vacation all week!), but I’m happy to have things settle down a bit too.

I had brunch at the best spot in town–The Egg and I. They’ve got a really non-traditional menu and everything I’ve tried has been awesome.  Think less greasy fare, more unique veggies and whole grains.  Today I had the Raisin French Toast.

It was really good!  Perfect little Saturday morning… Other things on the menu I would recommend:

• Veggie Benedict
• Raspberry Granola Pancake
• Mediterranean Crepe Eggs

After breakfast we headed over to the Bux to sit outside in the AMAZING weather.  It was 60 and sunny so I went with an iced chai–I haven’t had one of these ages and it hit the spot!

I also got to SKYPE with my parents and nephew today!!!!!! It was so nice to see their faces.  And Tristan is getting so big!  Starbucks was  a weird location to be having a conversation with them, but it was unplanned so I rolled with it.  Seriously made my day!

Me attempting to study…

Let’s just say I wasn’t as productive as I had hoped.  There’s always tomorrow right?

After some spinning at the gym it was already close to 6 so I came home to make dinner.  Where did this day go?!  I was really craving a wrap for some reason so I made this grilled turkey and muenster and loaded on the vegetables.

Ah yes, perfect.  Had some chips and salsa on the side too.  Is it weird that we currently have 4 different jars of salsa in our fridge?  We’re salsa people I guess…

So I rented Saw VI tonight because as sad as it is, I really like these movies.  I know I know, they’re sick and twisted!  Red Box was fresh out of Time Traveler’s Wife so this was the next best thing!  Talk about a genre switch.

Feels like Sunday.  And I’m so happy it’s not!  See you in the AM.

What I’ve Been Up To

Hellooooooo there!

Sorry I’ve been MIA the last couple of days.  I wanted to drop in for a quickie post so my pictures aren’t so backlogged when my life regains some sense of normalcy!  Our house guests are keeping us super entertained and we’ve been busy doing anything and everything including…

…cooking some great at-home meals (Mediterranean Turkey Burgers w/sweet potato fries and asparagus)…

…ROLLER BLADING!!!! Yes, I still own roller blades.  And I love to use them!  Jessica and I took the boys to a lake nearby so they could run and we could blade in the amazing sunshine.  Do you love my amazing socks???

It’s been right around 60 degrees all week so we definitely want to be outside.  Check out the view in the background!  Not a bad way to spend the afternoon…  I may or may not have skipped a couple of classes to partake in these activities.  Whoops!

…drinking massive amounts of espresso to keep me on top of my game!  Latte love. I’ve been getting about 4-5 hours of sleep every night this week.  Not optimal, but sometimes there’s just not enough time in the day!

…Eating some fabulous Mexican cuisine at our favorite local restaurant.  Remember “the best margaritas in the world“?  We make sure to take all visitors to this place so they can experience them as well.  Nice, right?

Gosh the mountains have been amazingly clear lately.  I can’t believe it’s already March!  Springtime is upon us.

Oh yeah, and have I mentioned how much I love running?  Look who hit double digits on Tuesday!!!

I’m so happy I decided not to skip it in favor of studying all afternoon–I would have been miserable missing out on such an amazing day.  And I felt so good the entire time that I’m convinced I can finish the 1/2 in 2 hours.  Just one short week from Sunday!

I’m done with class for the day (woo!) and as soon as Jessica gets back, we’re heading to Fort Collins for the New Belgium brewery tour.  I’ve never been there, but heard great things about it.  On the way home we were thinking of stopping at Whole Foods to pick up some appetizer-type things for tonight. We’ll see what looks good once we get there!

Enjoy the rest of your day!

Makings of a Fun Weekend include…

…  friends & family, good food & wine, SKIING.

Jessica’s brother Justin flew in on Friday night and he’s going to be here for the whole week!!! On the way down to the airport we took full advantage of a Whole Foods salad bar.

There’s no way I can recall everything that’s in there, but it was amazing as always!  We had some bites of this extremely moist carrot cake too:

And had these 2 beverages throughout the course of the evening…

Saturday we were up bright and early, as usual, to hit the slopes.  We left at 5:30am and made our usual S-Bux stop on the way to Copper Mountain to meet up with my cousin Sue and her group of friends that were staying at the base.  Breakfast was my classic banana chocolate vivanno + espresso:

and a SuperFood Odwalla bar.

Lunch was a great new find in the main lodge’s cafeteria.  We’ve eaten here before, but I stumbled upon the “Lemongrass Kitchen” and saw a great-looking shrimp curry on the menu so I went with it… Delicious!  Check out how good this looks for being cafeteria food (made to order):

After we finished our day of skiing, I went with Sue and her group and they were all kind enough to let me stay at their condo for the night—which was AMAZING to say the least.  We snacked on some appetizers (cheese, crackers, wine)  in the room and sat in the hot tub with some beers while we relaxed before our 8:30pm dinner reservation.

Saturday’s Dinner———————————————————————

I think I had the most enjoyable dining-out experience of my life on Saturday night!  A few people suggested that we try a restaurant in the village called C.B. Grille (website found here), and I’m so happy that we decided to join because this place was great.

If you’ve been out to eat with me before, you know I’m one of those people that has a tough time deciding what to order.  This time was no different, so Sue and I decided to order two entrees and split them so we could try both. I ordered the lamb that was on special and she ordered the short ribs.  Both came with veggies and a starch–mine was risotto, and hers was grits–both jazzed up with fancy cheese and seasonings.

I was definitely impressed with the classy feel of this place!  We started off with these mouthwatering breads that I could have made a meal of (thankfully they served each of us just 2 pieces):

And here’s my Lamb chop dish:

It was cooked to perfection:

The dish that stole the show was this “Espresso glazed Short Ribs” plate which was served with Roquefort hominy grits, smoked ancho and onion marmalade and peanut butter demi glace.

Almost everyone at the table agreed that this was the top choice.  I’m not typically a fan of ribs, but the meat just fell right off the bone and we all know how I feel about espresso… need I say more?

We passed red wine to share, as well as two fun appetizers, the rock crab fritters and a brushcetta of some sort:

Last but not least, we ordered a wonderful dessert to share, the Chocolate and Vanilla Creme Brulee Tart:

That’s peppermint gelato on the side, by the way.  An amazing end to the meal!  I would have ordered a cappuccino, but I honestly couldn’t fit it at this point in the night.  What a restaurant!

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The rest of the night was spent playing games and getting to know a wonderful group of people.  I had a blast and was so glad I had the opportunity to spend this time with my cousin!

Thanks for everything Sue!