Some days, something happens and the world just looks different.  That’s how this day is for me.

There is no one reason why this happens.  For me right now, maybe its because I slept especially well last night.  Well, that’s probably not it.  Maybe its because I’m in a summit for work this week and am in a conference room surrounded by toys and candy.  That’s a possibility.

But the world looks brighter.  Life looks bigger, so problems look smaller.  And the things that seemed so important just 24 short hours ago suddenly don’t seem so important.

As amazing as it is, it is kind of scary.  Big world = Little me = Scary.  But it also equals exciting.

 So sit down, enjoy some pumpkin bolani and brownie a la mode ice cream, and adjust.

1.  My new Xoom.

I never thought I needed a tablet.  I have 3 laptops and 2 smartphones – what would I need a tablet for?  Well.. now that I’ve had it for approximately 48 hours… I don’t know how I lived without it.  #obsessed

2.  Halloween tastes and flavors.

3.  Coffee – especially in my new Contigo mug!

Nothing like 10 days with no caffeine to make you appreciate your morning mug ‘o joe. 

4.  Free fingers

S and I finally took our wedding rings to the jewelry store to get them engraved.  We won’t get them back for 2 weeks.  Freeeeee Fingers!  We are thinking about having a competition of who can pick up the most people in the next two weeks.

5.  Monopoly

I’m not the biggest fan of McDonalds, although I must say that it is my favorite fast food chain (besides Subway, of course).  Part of the reason I love it so much is because it reminds me of my childhood.  My dad always used to take me there as a treat.  Nothing like chicken mcnuggets and artificially flavored orange drink to make daddy and daughter time super special.

I used to especially love going when they were having the Monopoly game.

It was the one time of year I was allowed to get bigger things – a large fry or drink – just so that I could get a monopoly piece to peel.  (@McDonalds – kids are people too!  I think they should have a special Monopoly game for kids with the pieces on the new healthified Happy Meals).

One thing that hasn’t changed – the odds of winning.  We now officially have a million pieces and are missing one of each color.  Of course.

But we have plenty of free medium fries coupons to hold us over… until 11/7.

5.  Treats ice cream

Treats is a local ice cream company that is sold in a few grocery stores in the bay area.  One of them is Lunardi’s. 

However, very close my office is the place where they actually make the ice cream.  You can go there – there is a tiny, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it door, and buy the ice cream directly from them for cheaper.  It costs about $8 per 1.75 quarts in the grocery store, and you can buy it from them directly for $5! 

I’m not exactly a discriminating ice cream eater, I love it all.  When some of my coworkers offered to take me there and told me that once I had this ice cream I would never go back to regular grocery store freezer aisle brands, I didn’t really believe them.  On Friday, we piled into a car together and headed to the incognito factory.

I got Brownie a la Mode flavor.

Uh-Maz-Ing.

The vanilla ice cream is out of this world creamy, and it has big chunks of brownie in it.  But the most incredible part is the fudge swirls.  I have literally been eating out of the container for two days, picking through it and digging for the fudge swirls.

Hence why there are tunnels and holes in the ice cream.  One side had a huge fudge pocket.  Once I started digging, I couldn’t stop

Please… take away my spoon!

6.  New clothes

A sale at Target made me the proud owner of 3 new sweaters for work.  JB-approved.

This one is incredibly soft, and I love the buttons on the sleeves.

Two cardigans that were on sale for $15 each!  I love these because I wear cardigans almost every day at work.  It’s cold in the office, so layering is important.  And these can be either dressed down or dressed up – very versatile.

7.  Pumpkin Bolani

Nothing new here.  Except they are still selling it at my local Costco, which makes me a happy girl.  I was afraid it was just a temporary item but looks like it is sticking around.

Yesterday we went and bought four packages.  And that’s all.  In all of Costco, we didn’t buy one single other thing.  #worldrecord

8.  Snail mail letters

From Grandma.  On special stationary.  Love.

9.  This.

The past 6 months have been about running.  Not that a lot of my life isn’t usually about running, but when I’m training for and running marathons it is particularly prevalent. 

By the way, two days ago – on October 17th – was our 6 month wedding anniversary!  I can’t believe it has already been six months.  I got a surprise at work.

So a year ago, everything was about the wedding and planning for it.  Six months ago, as soon as the wedding was over, I was ramping up my mileage for the San Francisco Marathon.  After that, I kept up the high mileage for the NorCal marathon, and then had fun at the Rock ‘n Roll half marathon.  And, if you remember, I was supposed to run the Nike marathon last weekend.  A couple of weeks ago I found out that I would have to work all night on Friday 10/14 (until 6am on 10/15).  Knowing that, and after thinking about it carefully, taking into consideration some doctors advice plus the way that I feel right now physically and mentally, I decided against it.  It was a hard decision to make, although truth be told it was more because I wanted the Tiffany’s necklace at the finish line than that I actually wanted to run it.  Also, the Nike marathon is pretty tough to get into and I got in this year through a lottery.  So I might not have the opportunity to do it again.  Oh well!  Sunday morning, I was really, REALLY glad that I wasn’t in San Francisco running 26.2 miles!

Now that it’s over, though… I don’t have any races planned.  Well, except for the Turkey Trot, which is just for fun and doesn’t count   I am going to take a break from the long distance races and let my body recover a little bit and give myself some time and freedom to try something different.  I love, LOVE running.  But whenever I am training for marathons, running consumes a lot of my time.  And if it’s not running, it’s THINKING about running – what I will wear for long runs, eat before long runs, music I will listen to.  How will the weather be?  Where can I fit in all my mileage this week?  Plus, the day before my long runs is a rest day because I have to be prepared, and the day after is a rest day because I have to recuperate.  I go crazy during taper weeks, and the weeks after races.  So my world revolves around running.

Now, all of a sudden, it doesn’t.  So…. what to do?  Now I have time to do all the things that I wanted to do during marathon training but didn’t have time.  Like… yoga.  P90x or Insanity.  Getting back to step aerobics.  Swimming.  Zumba??  The possibilities are endless. 

So far, though, the newfound time I have on Sunday mornings has been used for…  sleeping   Since I have German class on Saturday mornings, Sunday is now the one time that I have to sleep in past 7am.  I don’t sleep in late, but a couple extra hours – until 9am or so – feel like heaven!  I could get used to this.

So… what should I do?

As if the pumpkin shortage wasn’t a big enough blow to bloggers everywhere, word on the street is that we will soon be looking at a peanut butter shortage.  Apparently there will be a price hike of between 20-40% at the end of October.  The cause is the intense heat and drought that hit the southern U.S. this year.  Bummer.  Stock up now, folks…

I’m ok as long as there is no pumpkin bolani shortage.  I’m just sayin.

A few weeks ago, as a part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program, I received a coupon for a free Birds Eye Voila skillet meal – advertised as a complete meal in minutes.  This weekend I was feeling a tad lazy and didn’t feel like making a meal from scratch and decided this was the perfect time to try out the item that I bought:

I picked the Chicken Florentine because I thought S would like that one the best.  Grilled white chicken, penne pasta, diced tomatoes, spinach and yellow squash in a basil parmesan sauce.  But they had lots of other delicious-sounding varieties such as Three Cheese Chicken, Cheesy Ranch Chicken, and more.

The instructions were easy enough.  Just open the bag and put all of the contents, including the sauce, into your skillet.  Heat… and eat!

I was pleasantly surprised by the big pieces of vegetables.  Especially the squash! 

I was cooking it exactly as instructed, over medium heat.  After a few minutes, I saw this:

The bottom of the pan was all burnt  

Heat and eat FAIL.  By that time it was almost cooked, so I salvaged the non-burnt part, put it into a dish and finished off the cooking in the microwave (the microwave was the other option for cooking it that was on the bag.  I had thought stove top would be better, but next time would probably go directly with the ‘wave.)

It ended up pretty good!  Served with a little parmesan and some garlic bread, it definitely made a complete meal.

It had a creamy parmesan flavor, and was quite filling.  It served both S and I (with a salad on the side) even though part of it had burnt to the pan and so didn’t get eaten.

I’m not looking forward to cleaning this up, though.

If I’m too lazy to cook, I’m certainly too lazy to scrape a pan.  This can wait until tomorrow.  It needs to soak anyways, right? 

For dessert, my obsession with all things birthday cake flavored continued with this new flavor of Pop-Tarts:

Birthday/confetti cake is my favorite flavor of all time.  I love finding new things in that flavor and always buy them.  If any product creators out there are reading (um… yeah, right…) here are a few of my ideas:

• Birthday cake gum
• Birthday cake pudding
• Birthday cake whoopie pies
• White chocolate birthday cake m&ms

That last one came from my newest want:

Supposedly these are sold only in Walmarts, but I have gone to two Walmarts in my area and can’t find them!  I have found them online, but can’t yet swallow the $10 per bag I would have to pay to buy them.  Maybe if I haven’t found them by the end of Halloween I will think differently…

On Wednesday, I finished 10 days of my detox.   I was pretty darned proud of myself, especially considering that at the beginning I wasn’t even sure if I would last more than a day.

My thoughts?

Physically, I feel good.  Not great, or incredible, or really that much different than I did before.  But I feel really good mentally because I’m proud of the fact that I was able to complete 10 full days.  My tastebuds have adjusted too.  I tend to live by the “sweeter is better” philosophy – there’s no such thing as too sweet!  I am particularly bad about artificial sweeteners.  I used them every morning in my coffee, as well as in yogurt, cottage cheese, baking… pretty much anything sweet that I made.  And don’t get me started on my diet pop addiction.

For those 10 days, however, I had zero artificial sweetener.  None.  Nada.  When I was craving something sweet, I had a piece of fruit, I made a protein shake or I put a spoonful of honey on some socca.

Socca.  I socca’d my socks off.  I tried various kinds, including pumpkin.

Recognize my plate?

I made it myself (like you couldn’t tell…)

I think socca is one of the few things I have ever made that I didn’t like better with pumpkin.  I prefer the plain socca.

I’m also really excited about the new things that I tried during these 10 days.  Besides socca, coconut became a good friend of mine.  I picked up three coconut goodies from Whole Foods:

Coconut flour, coconut butter, and cacao bliss.  I tried a packet of coconut butter around day 3 or so, and couldn’t get it out of my head.  I couldn’t swallow the $12.95 per jar price at Whole Foods, but I went and it happened to be on sale for $9.95.  Plus, I had a $20 whole foods living social deal to use!  So technically I got it for half price

I haven’t tried the cacao bliss yet, but can’t wait to!

I also picked this up, which was my treat for making it through 10 days:

It was just ok.  I was really excited for it, but I actually wasn’t a fan of the coconut taste in the mint chocolate chip flavor.  It was also a little bit bland.  Don’t get me wrong, though – I still managed to finish it off!

So now on to my confession:  I didn’t give up gum.  I went without gum for the first day, and by the second day I was in total gum withdrawal.  I am a gum addict – I always have a piece in my mouth.

It was really difficult for me to give up soda pop and flavored beverages AND gum at the same time.  My hand/mouth complex was out of control!  Eventually I caved and let myself chew gum like normal.  I figured that was the lesser of all the possible evils.

So technically, I guess I did have some artificial sweetener.  Sugar free gum has artificial sweetener in it, right?  But the majority of my ten days were spent on beautiful meals like this.

So my detox readout.

Things that went well:

• No artificial sweeteners (except for gum!)
• No pop
• No caffeine
• No wheat, gluten, oats, or any other grain besides quinoa
• No processed foods
• Lots of beans, avocados, quinoa, vegetables and fruit

Things that went not-so-well:

• I missed MEAT, CHEESE and EGGS.  Particularly meat and eggs.  I’ve written about my love of eggs before, and probably neglected to mention the vast number of eggs that I go through on a weekly basis.  It was very difficult for me to go 10 days without them.
• I didn’t get enough protein.  I ate a TON of fruits and vegetables – especially fruits.  Everything I ate was pretty healthy.  But at the end of the day, my stats weren’t great because my protein was too low.  And since I usually eat my weight in eggs and meat, with a lot of protein bars, that was a big shift for me and I could feel it.
• Coffee.  I missed thee.  Mucho mucho.
• Gum.  ’nuff said.

So what now?  As I mentioned, this was in total a 30-day detox plan.  I made it through the first 10 days, which were the hardest and most restrictive.  But now I think I have to make some adjustments.  Am I going to go back to the way I ate before?  No way!  I’m happy as a clam without the artificial sweeteners, and will keep my processed food and chemicals level as low as possible.  I will keep my newfound loves, including coconut butter, quinoa flour, garbanzo flour (and socca) in my life for sure.  But I will welcome back my old loves, meat and eggs, with open arms!

Speaking of arms, somebody got arrested outside of our house last night.

I was trying to go to sleep and couldn’t because I could see some bright lights coming through the window.  I eventually gave up and got up to see what was going on and got to see a live episode of Cops right outside my window   These pictures were courtesy of S, who was loving every single second of it.

I just went back to sleep and let him play paparazzi.

Ok, I’m off to bed.  With dreams of meat and eggs dancing in my head

A few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to participate in the Foodbuzz Tastemaker program with Bauducco® Panettone. 

They sent me two different kinds of Panettone – the more traditional one with raisins, and also a chocolate chip panettone!

With a husband from Switzerland and a father from England, I was already familiar with panettone, although I have only had it a couple of times when I was in Europe.  I haven’t tried it for years, so was really excited when I received the package in the mail.

From wikipedia: 

Panettone is a type of sweet bread loaf originally from Milan.  It is usually prepared and enjoyed for Christmas and New Year in Italy, Malta, Brazil and Switzerland, and one of the symbols of the city of Milan… It is made during a long process that involves the curing of the dough, which is acidic, similar to sourdough. The proofing process alone takes several days, giving the cake its distinctive fluffy characteristics.

One of the unique things about panettone is its shape – It has what is called a “cupola” shape, which kind of looks like a mushroom with a big, cylindrical base. The word "panettone" derives from the Italian word "panetto", a small loaf bread. The augmentative Italian suffix "-one" (pronounced "o-neh") changes the meaning to "large bread".

You slice the cake vertically.

It is very soft and moist.  I opened the raisin one first, per S’s request.  Look at those raisins!

The bread is very filling.  So a decently-sized slice really makes you feel like you are eating something substantial. 

One thing that really surprised me (in a good way) was that this bread stayed soft long after it was opened and first cut.  It took us two weeks to finish off the full loaf, and the last slice on the last day was just as soft and moist as the first slice on the first day.  Pretty cool!  We always have the problem of breads and cake getting stale and hard before we can eat them all.  But not this time!

Looking forward to trying the chocolate one!  I think that one might be even better

My other new best friend?  Quinoa flour.

I almost didn’t get it when I saw the $11 price tag at Nob Hill foods.  But I caved.  And I’m glad that I did, because this has been my dinner for 5 nights in a row since I started my detox:

Quinoa protein pancakes!  I used Fitnessista’s perfect protein pancake recipe, with quinoa flour, and omitted the eggs.  I wasn’t sure how they would turn out without the eggs, but they are delicious and fluffy.  I can’t imagine them being any better with eggs!  It would give an extra protein boost, though.

I used my favorite protein powder – MGN cake batter.

I have varied the toppings each time, using either honey, banana soft serve, or coconut butter.

By the way, this week was also my first time trying coconut butter.  I received a couple of packets for free at the San Francisco Marathon but never tried them.  I was actually a little nervous.  I used to hate coconut, so trying new, really coconutty things makes me nervous for some reason.  It is amazing, though!  I can’t believe how much I am missing out.  Next up – making my own!

Just in case you were curious, my other eats for the last five days (besides socca, quinoa flour protein pancakes, and coconut butter – straight up, right out of the package?  Oh yes I did…) have been primarily fruits, veggies and beans.

Avocado – lots of avocado.

I’m loving my new snapware containers from Costco.  They are perfect for taking to work!

Can’t believe it is already Thursday.  This week is flying!  Hope you are all having a good one.

Today was the San Jose Rock ‘n Roll half marathon.  I ran it last year, but wasn’t planning on running this year since I just did the Norcal marathon two weeks ago and I have the Nike marathon in two weeks.  It’s not as much because of the exhaustion and giving my legs a rest, but more about the race fees.  I have to hold myself back from signing up for every race because they are expensive!

But last week, a friend of mine from the San Francisco Marathon offered a bib for the race.  Her husband had registered but was unable to run it so she was giving it away.  She asked if anyone wanted it and I jumped on it! 

S drove me downtown (best. husband. ever.) and left to make himself comfortable at Bijan bakery until I finished.  He snaped a few pictures of me heading to the start line before he left:

Oh and on his way there, he passed right by the (currently deserted) finish line.

The race started at 8am, which is on the late side, so I was a little concerned that it would be very hot and sunny after the first half hour or so.  Luckily, it was relatively cool and gorgeous the entire time I was running.  A lot of the course was in the shade, which was really nice.

I love this race – I am glad that I got a chance to do it this year.  The organization is great – fantastic water stops with Gu and Cytomax, plenty of porta-potties, friendly organizers and tons of spectators and support along the course.  Plus, it goes through some of downtown’s nicest neighborhoods.  I love looking at the beautiful houses as I run!

I just tried to have fun with this race.  I pushed it a little, but not a lot since I am still considering doing the Nike marathon in a couple of weeks.

I just had a great time.  Races like this remind me of why I run.  Because it’s FUN and I love it!

So… another note, I started a detox today.  I’ve mentioned it a couple of times in the past few weeks, but I have been having some health issues and have been going to the doctor a lot.  Too much (at least once per week, some weeks more.)  One of the issues I am having is that my hormones are out of whack.  So this detoxification diet (along with other things) was suggested to try to help get them back in balance and order.

I’ll write more about the detox tomorrow.  But suffice to say that I am pretty nervous about it.  It’s got three phases, 10 days each.  The first is the strictest about what I can/cannot eat.  I don’t know if I can make it the first 10 days, let alone all 30.  But I can’t finish if I never start, right?

Do you budget how much you will spend on races each running season or each year?