Category Archives: Eating

Running, Eating, and Traveling in Philadelphia

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It had been one month since my last outside run, but I was committed to my tradition of running in every big city I go to. In a very cold morning, I did a 5 mile loop around Valley Forge National Historic Park in about one hour, stopping for pictures here and there. This park is about 15 miles from Philly and it was the site of an American Revolutionary War encampment. It felt so good to run again! I really needed a break, but now I was ready to start training again.

In the afternoon the boyfriend and I tried to do some sightseeing, but it was so cold I really didn’t want to be outside, so we just did a quick city tour by car, walked by the river for a little bit, and spent the rest of the day at the Barnes Foundation, an impressionist / post-impressionist museum. We had to get tickets online in advance and when we got there we still had to wait in line, but it was worth it to see their extensive collection of paintings by Renoir, Monet, Seurat, Van Gogh… I always love it when I get to see an original of something I’m teaching about and the week before was all about Monet.

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To end our day we walked to Love Park, which has the “Love” sculpture by Robert Indiana. Super cute with all the Christmas decorations!

M. (the boyfriend’s sister) and I
Love Sculpture
The boyfriend and I

As for eating, I had to try a Philly cheesesteak, but since we went to a middle-eastern restaurant (Saad’s), that wasn’t even the highlight of lunch: the lamb shawarma was amazing! I love cities and all the options for authentic places.

Falafel
Philly Cheese steak
Lamb shawarma

Dinner time was “meet the boyfriend’s parents time” too! We met them at  McCormick and Schmidt’s, which is a chain from California I had never heard of. It turned out to be really fancy and really good, which is my cup of tea. Best of all, the boyfriend’s family is awesome. So glad everything went well!

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Eating and Traveling: Christmas in Minnesota (and Reno)

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So sorry it’s been taking me so long to update this blog, but with the holidays and all, I needed a break from running and writing to be able to fit more eating and traveling. In order to be able to catch up on everything, I’ll try to keep it short. Pictures tell a better story anyway!

Minnesota Winter

Minnesota Winter

Minnesota was cold. Very cold. We had negative numbers for the low and single digits for the high. And that was even before the whole Arctic storm hit! The last day was nice though, and I could watch my host sister K. and my host nephew C. go cross-country skiing and make snowmen.

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The rest of my time in Minnesota involved relaxing, reading, playing with the niece and nephew, watching Christmas movies (oh, how I love “It’s a wonderful life”!), and eating. I love the Christmas traditions they have there, like decorating cookies, making lefse (Norwegian flatbread), and opening my stocking on Christmas morning! Christmas Eve at Grandma’s is also very special, especially with the kids opening presents from Santa.

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Christmas fun wasn’t over on the 25th. A couple of weeks later the boyfriend and I had our own little Christmas celebration with the dogs. Morning walk, gluten-free egg-free banana candied nut muffin (yes, yum! I should totally post this recipe one day!), bacalhau, my Brazilian lime pie, and a talent show where I sang “Santa Baby”. Plus, I got a glass door for my bathtub and a pre-Christmas dinner prepared by D. with baked brie and all sorts of goodies. I’m a lucky girl.

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More: My Christmas Party

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Every year I have a Christmas party and this year it was another great one full of friends, food, and wine. Oh yeah, and kids. I think there were more kids there than adults. Note to self: hire a babysitter for the next get together. Also, congrats to my friend B. who has been to EVERY SINGLE ONE of my parties for the past 5 years.

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It was a crazy weekend with another Improv show on Friday and another holiday party on Saturday. The Saturday one was at Soule Domain, a really nice restaurant in Tahoe. Thanks to my friends L. and T., D. and I made it home safe after an overdose of good food and wine. I know Thanksgiving has passed, but I can’t stop being grateful for my good friends, so thanks everyone who made it to D.’s show and to my Christmas party and shared some holiday cheer!

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Steamed Artichokes with Garlic

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As far as my eating habits go, it has been really hard not to have my dad here to keep me accountable. In this past week I ate a whole pecan pie by myself, chocolate bars every day, and French toast with tons of syrup and mimosas for breakfast. I really love my sweets. Thankfully, I also really love my veggies. Got some spinach in my organic basket this week. It was my first time seeing spinach with the stems and all. Beautiful 🙂

New fireplace!
Who knew spinach could be so beautiful?

I also made roasted sweet potatoes with honey and cinnamon. They were even better than the mashed yams I made a while ago. Just ordered more for next week. However, my favorite dish this week was the steamed artichokes. So amazingly delicious that I didn’t even need a dipping sauce with it.

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Steamed Artichokes with Garlic

6 garlic cloves

1 lemon

2 tbsp. olive oil

2 whole artichokes

A bit of garlic salt, Italian seasoning, and olive oil to season the water

Pan with a steamer basket

Cut off the stems of the artichokes close to the base. Cut off the top inch of the artichokes. Trim the tips of the petals. Rub the artichokes with half a lemon.

Put some water in the pan and add a bit of garlic salt, Italian seasoning, olive oil, and the juice of half a lemon to it.

Peel the garlic cloves and slice them in half. Tuck the slices of into artichokes leaves. Drizzle olive oil inside them too. Put the artichokes on the steamer basket and cover. Steam over low-medium heat for about 40 minutes.

Makes 2 servings of 200 calories each.

Artichoke

Artichoke

Running, Eating, and Traveling in Las Vegas, Nevada – My second HALF-MARATHON

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It was a great 7-hour drive last weekend to Vegas. I know it seems like a lot, but I just love driving by myself. The road to Vegas from Reno is pretty straight forward so I don’t have to pay attention to any turns, and it is super empty, with  only a couple of towns along the way. By the time I got to Vegas my throat was scratching from so much car singing.

Every time I go to Vegas I do three things: hang out by the pool, watch a Cirque du Soleil performance, and eat a lot. This time was no different. Unfortunately, I had some work to do online, so I spent Sunday morning working… by the pool. Beautiful weather as always. The Cirque du Soleil show I watched this time was “Zarkana” at the Aria casino, which is actually a much larger and nicer casino than I had expected. Definitely one of the best Cirque du Soleil shows I’ve seen because it had the most acrobatics of all. The first 10 minutes is already worth the price of the ticket. As far as eating, I had pizza at “Five 50”, lots of food at the “Excalibur Buffet”, and finally a well-deserved three-course meal after my race at “Camelot”, the Excalibur’s fine dining restaurant, for only $16.

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Now, the highlight of the trip: the half-marathon. As you know, I had originally signed up for the full marathon but didn’t think I would have had enough time to train for it, so I changed it to the half. When I got to Vegas, I had a hint of craziness for a few minutes and thought maybe I should try to run the marathon anyway. I mean, how hard can it be to run for about 5 hours straight??? That way I would have reached by goal of completing 26.2 miles before my 30th birthday and then I wouldn’t have to train anymore. Yeah, thank goodness I got my senses back. Can you imagine how many injuries I would’ve gotten? I know I have the emotional state to do a marathon, but physically I need to train more to do it right.

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Since I had been there for the same race last year and knew how things would flow, I had a pretty chill day before I headed to the starting line five minutes before the official start. The first 2 miles were awesome. Then I got a side ache. Usually I just try to breathe deeply and the pain goes away a quarter mile later. This time it didn’t work. The pain lasted for at least 5 miles, so the middle part of my half-marathon was miserable. Fortunately I was able to finish the race, but I thought for sure that I had taken over 2h30, which was my goal, to finish it. I was exhilarated when I found out I actually had done it in 2h21 minutes! Can you imagine how much faster I would’ve been if I had been feeling well the entire time? I celebrated with tons of chocolate milk as my recovery drink 😉 I really don’t understand why there are no other night time races around. It was such a fun weekend. Can’t wait to go to Vegas again next year!

I run for chocolate

I run for chocolate

I did it again!

More Eating with Dad

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My dad is going back to Brazil, so this past week we had to take advantage of the little time he has left here. Here are the places we’ve tried:

Miguel’s – Mexican Restaurant. Reasonable prices. Really good chips and salsa.

Briscola – Italian restaurant inside the Grand Sierra Casino. Warm artichoke dip – Yum.

Romanza – Fine dining restaurant inside the Peppermill. I really have to stop going to nice places in yoga clothes, but casino restaurants are so tacky I didn’t feel that bad… Great garlic soup and date/pumpkin cake.

Bowl – local, organic, fresh food. Menu changes often. Order at the counter and sit anywhere in the West Street Market area. Duck confit was amazing. Can’t wait to go back to try everything else.

Z Pie – I can’t believe I hadn’t tried this place yet. Every time I miss my Australia/New Zealand pot pies, I can just buy a Z pie and it’s close to perfection.

Olive Garden – So I asked my Dad which dish he had liked the most out of the 50+ restaurants we’ve tried in the past 3 months, and he said “the salad at Olive Garden”! Well, I don’t blame him: I had an entire bowl by myself, plus ravioli and pumpkin cheesecake.

Thai Nakorn – This place is in South Lake Tahoe and has a new name now, but the food and the service are still the same as before. We had the Pad Thai, the pumpkin curry, and the mango curry. I swear Thai food is better in the US than in Thailand itself.

Friday’s Station – Another restaurant in South Lake Tahoe (fine dining – entrées start at $46), this time on the top floor of Harrah’s. Still got VIP treatment, with a nice window table for the sunset and a plate of oysters prepared three different ways sent by the chef. Oh, and I did dress up for this one!

My house – I made my Dad’s favorite dish for his last weekend in town: bacalhau. He loved it 🙂 BTW, even with all this eating, my dad was able to lose 12 lbs while he was here. As for me, I’m just happy I didn’t gain any!

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Eating in Reno. Again.

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I completely gave up on cooking dinner at this point. I just don’t have time to go grocery shopping, prep, cook, clean… Even though going to restaurants are still time consuming, at least they know what they’re doing so the food is always good. Here are a few of the restaurants my dad and I tried:

Chuy’s Mexican Kitchen: they looked super busy, but the food came fast and the owner made you feel welcomed. Gosh, there are so many new restaurants in the Midtown area!

The Gas Lamp: yes, this is fine dining with a piano player and everything, but we went with yoga clothes on, and I was so hungry I didn’t care. Actually, not a good restaurant to go if you’re hungry because they don’t serve bread, nor soup or salad with your meal, plus, the portions are pretty small. Nevertheless, they have the best tilapia ever.

Crème Cafe: this place is only open for breakfast and lunch, but I bet I’ll be returning every week. It has one of those European cafes feel so next time I’ll be bringing a book to have with my coffee. (I don’t even like coffee but I’ll order one anyway because they serve it in a French press!) Oh yeah: they serve amazingly light crepes. (Have I talked about Sup, their sister restaurant?)

Harrah’s “Carvings” Buffet: I just love brunch buffets where I can have mimosas, French toast, sushi, and prime rib all at the same time. Their bananas foster is to die for. If you’re a local, you get 50%. C’mon, it can’t get any better for only $7.

Lulou’s: another fine dining restaurant in Reno – don’t go there if you don’t like to spend money. The entrees start at $38. I definitely splurged ordering a cocktail, wine, a crab skillet appetizer, entrees (short ribs for Dad and an Italian style ahi tuna for me – both divine), and a chocolate tart dessert. The $200 dinner was definitely worth it (easy to say when your dad is footing the bill.) At the end of the meal I had a couple of suggestions for the owner Coleen about the service and introduced myself as a “food blogger”. LOL

We also had venison at a friend’s house. Can’t believe I don’t have any pictures of it. It was so good!

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Traveling: Apple Hill, California

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Two hours away from Reno, is a little piece of heaven called Apple Hill, near Placerville, California. We went there on Nevada Day and every place had a deal going on for Nevada residents.

At Kids Inc. we got apple crumble and apple cheesecake. They also had an amazing chicken pot pie. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

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At Boa Vista Orchards you get to pick your own apples straight from the tree or you can buy any apple product at their market.

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My dad really enjoyed the apple part of Apple Hill, but what I really cared about was the wine tasting. We first went to Lava Cap, a winery that also has a gourmet restaurant, and then we walked to Madroña where they were doing cheese pairings as well.

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Although the wineries are year-round, the apple picking only happens in October, so be prepared to deal with long lines and lack of parking, but the combination of lovely weather, delicious food, and good wine is well worth the day trip.

Eating in Reno/Tahoe

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I’ve been eating out a lot and I’m a horrible reviewer because all I can say is that everywhere I went  the food was excellent, so I’m just going to name one of the dishes I recommend and the places we’ve been in the past week: butternut squash soup at Campo, salmon and crab cakes at Wild River Grille, any sandwich at Wedge, salmon and lobster ravioli at Twisted Fork, surf and turf at The Timbers in Tahoe, asparagus and roasted garlic sushi at Wasabi, and finally, my house, where I made gnocchi. How is it possible that I eat this much and still lose weight, even without training as much as last year?

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Eating: National Cookie Day

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That’s right, October 1st was National Cookie day, so we had a cookie bake-off at work with a twist: the cookies had to be somewhat healthy. I had bought some gluten free flour from Jules Gluten Free and I couldn’t wait to try it, so I made gluten free chocolate chip cookies – they were gone in a minute!

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

After eating so much sugar on Tuesday, you’d think I’d go back to my salads and smoothies, but sometimes I like to indulge (well, actually all the time – sorry, but I’ve never dieted in my life), so I took my dad to one of my favorite restaurants in Carson City: Adele’s.

Adele's Restaurant

Adele’s Restaurant