Happy New Year!

I can't believe it's been almost 6 weeks since we last posted! I don't think I'll take the time to fill you in on everything that we did since the last post so just imagine that it was AWESOME!

On the eating front, the big news in our house is that we got a brand spanking new Kitchen Aid Artisan Series stand mixer. The next day we busted our our Martha Stewart cookies cook book and made a few batches of her Banana-Walnut Chocolate Chunk Cookies. You'll just have to take our word that they are delicious!

 

Back on December 27th, we went out for Carly's birthday to a great little Italian restaurant in Venice called Ado. It is definitely one of those places that someone needs to tell you about because it's pretty hidden and not in an area where you'd accidentally stumble upon it. We shared an amazing home cured duck prosciutto appetizer and then each had a pasta for dinner that paired nicely with a bottle of chianti. Buon compleanno!

2 Weeks Down, 2 To Go

So we’re officially half way through our month detox/diet program and going strong. First week was pretty easy, but we started to get some cravings between week 1 and 2 which means Halloween night will only be that much sweeter when we come off the diet.

We’ve managed some meals out, though.  We went to BJs with Clayton’s family; they even have a gluten free menu. We settled on a big steak salad without the blue cheese and substituted ranch for honey mustard. Another night we went to see a hilarious comedian Paul F. Tompkins in Glendale with Clayton’s brother and planned on eating at CPK who also has a gluten free menu (even just a couple years ago this kind of diet would have been that much harder), but when we couldn’t find the restaurant we opted for protein style burgers at In-N-Out (and happily enough fries are allowed – no gluten or sugar there!). We recently went to Killer Shrimp in Marina del Rey and had the Shrimp bowl (traces of dairy in the broth) and the filet mignon (butter sauce on the side) with the asparagus side. Both were absolutely delicious and didn’t compromise our diet. This actually was the night we brought home our newest addition, 3 month year old kitty who we named Louie after Louis C.K.’s TV show (and it didn’t hurt that he is light orange in coloring)!

Carly's Epic Post

Clayton and I are trying a combination of two detox/diet programs - one called Arbonne called Figure 8  and the other called Fresh Start - that my brother Eric and his husband Ryan did at the start of the year and liked. To give you a basic idea you remove all simple carbs (gluten, wheat, etc. replacing with brown rice versions of pasta, bread), sugar, dairy, caffeine, and yeast promoting foods including alcohol and vinegar, and veal/pork (grass fed beef in moderation, chicken, and seafood is okay) for 1 WHOLE MONTH. Arbonne does sell nutritional and cleanser products that you can use in conjunction with the program, but we are opting out of that because we don’t want the extra costs and want to keep this as realistic as possible.

The goal is to remove your body of toxins that can lead to extra weight (toxins are drawn out of vital organs and stored in fat cells), tiredness, poor skin health, headaches, etc. Also many people don’t know that they have an allergen towards a certain kind of food and by eliminating the common causes (gluten, dairy, soy protein, etc.) and slowly reintroducing one at a time back into your diet after the month, you can see how different kinds of foods affect you (it literally takes seeing how you feel just 30-60 minutes after having that kind of food again to see if it has any affect on you). The post-program advice is the 80/10/10 rule, “80% of the time follow the 4 week principles, 10% of the time stray slightly (perhaps have a roll at dinner, eat a slice of pizza), 10% of the time FORGET IT (have a glass or two of wine and your favorite dessert...ENJOY!!).” More we want to force ourselves to try meals and foods we wouldn’t otherwise try and incorporate them into our regular diet after we finish the program.

Back To The Farmers' Market

I think we have officially found our new favorite farmers' market -- the Mar Vista Farmers' Market! We visited for the first time this past weekend and as you can see from the photo below, we did quite well:

We made it home with red beets, kale, arugula, spinach, peaches, plums, tomatoes, corn, carrots, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and figs.  We're putting our Williams-Sonoma Cooking From The Farmers' Market cookbook to good use too! As we were unpacking our bounty, I found a small stowaway hiding in the kale...

Disneyland Half Marathon 2011

What an amazing weekend! We are back from Anaheim and we've finished our 3rd half marathon. We drove down to Anaheim on Saturday to pick up our race bibs and look around at the Disneyland Health & Fitness Expo. After that, we checked in at our usual Anaheim hotel, the Ramada Maingate. It isn't the fanciest hotel but it is a perfect location and the staff there is phenomenal. The only drawback to staying that close to Disneyland are the 9:30pm fireworks that sound like gunshots in your room. Next year we're brining ear plugs.

On Sunday morning we woke up at 4am to give us time to wake up and make it to the start line by 5:15am. We were in Corral A this year so we actually started the race just over a minute after the official start. The course takes you through Disneyland, California Adventure and through Anaheim including running on the field at Angel Stadium. We crossed the finish line with a new personal best half marathon time of 1:54:53 -- more than 3 minutes better than our previous best and more than 10 minutes better than the 2010 Disneyland Half Marathon!

Right after we crossed the finish line.

Hollywood Bowl Celeb Chef Picnic

This past weekend was another crazy one, especially on Saturday.  It felt like Saturday was 3 separate days.  We started off early in the morning with an 8 mile run that took us from our apartment down to right near where I work and then back home.  Here's the route:


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We started a little after 7am and it was already approaching 80 degrees out so it was a warm run.  After we got back and had some time to rest, I started preparing our picnic feast for our trip to the Hollywood Bowl later that night.

Our meal was comprised of 3 recipes from 3 amazing chef's and it made for a fantastic meal. The main course was was Ina Garten's Caesar Club Sandwich. Brothers-in-law/talented chefs Eric & Ryan introduced us to this sandwich a few years ago when we were in town for a visit.  Ever since we've made it for all of our trips to the Hollywood Bowl.

90th Birthday Party and Coming Down A Mountain

It was another busy weekend for us running (pun intended) all over socal.  On Friday we headed down to San Diego to celebrate Carly's grandma's 90th birthday. We all met up at the Stone Brewing World Bistro for a late lunch/early dinner.  There were 14 of us and they gave us a great table outside in the corner that was nicely shaded and semi-private.  It was the perfect setting.  Since the food at Stone is amazing, we knew that we had a great meal ahead of us.  We shared a deep fried mashed potato appetizer and for our entrees I had the Mac n' Beer Cheese and Carly had the Tempeh Shepherd's Pie.

Made with Mike's Stone Smoked Porter & Garlic Beer Cheese and basil, along with Stone Smoked Porter Sausage from San Marcos' T&H Prime Meats & Sausage

Chock full of spiced tempeh, carrots, zucchini, corn and onions, topped with mashed potatoes and cheddar cheese.

Running to the Ocean and Back

Sorry for the 2 week gap in blog posts, August is shaping up to be a crazy month. This past weekend was no exception. We started Saturday with an 11 mile run marking the end of half marathon training week 6. Our route took us from our neighborhood out to Venice beach and and back.


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Having the goal of running all the way to the beach mentally makes the run much more enjoyable because you have a goal in mind. This helped especially on this particular run since we were both feeling a bit sluggish throughout the whole run.

New cookbook and a 8 mile run

Since we've started to visit some of the local LA famers' markets, we've noticed that there are all sorts of delicious things there but we're clueless on how to cook them and what to pair them with. So, we decided to take a page (pun most certainly intended) from our favorite cooking duo in NorCal (my brothers-in-law, Eric & Ryan) and we got ourselves a farmers' market themed cookbook.  This particular one is called Williams-Sonoma Cooking from the Farmers' Market.  You can purchase it from the Williams-Sonoma site here or from Amazon.com.

Surviving Carmageddon

This past Saturday was a busy day of running but lets face it, mostly eating.  By doing all this local stuff we thought we'd be avoiding all the Carmageddon hoopla.

We started our day off with a 6 mile run which marked the official end of Disneyland Half Marathon training week 3.  I've started using the Nike+ GPS app that's I downloaded to my iPhone and it's pretty awesome.  I just strap my iPhone to my arm and run with the app activated and it keeps track of my distance, pace, run duration, elevation changes and even draws a map of the route I just ran.  It works on the treadmill too.  I'll try to figure out how to share that info to the blog.  Anyway, here is the map of the 6 miler:

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4th of July Foodie Weekend

It's Tuesday and we're recovering from a great holiday weekend. On Saturday we drove down to San Diego and planned on some beach time before grabbing dinner. Unfortunately the drive from LA to SD took 3.5 hours and cut out all our beach time. We did drive by the beach because we're stubborn like that.

After our failed beach attempt, we were hungry so we headed over India Street in San Diego with our friends Marie and Dan from Meandering Eats. Make sure to head over to her blog and read/subscribe/obsess over it, you'll be happy you did.  Anyway, Marie and Dan made reservations at one of their favorite places called Wine Vault & Bistro.

This place was AMAZING! It has a set 5 course menu at $30 so everyone eats the same food and they have an optional $20 wine pairing for each course.  Carly and I decided to share the wine pairings.  Below are pictures and descriptions of the food:

Vegan Beerfest 2011 (via Vegangelical)

I thought about writing my own blog about our experience at the Vegan Beerfest 2011 but our friends over at Vegangelical beat us to it. Instead of me rehashing exactly what they said (in a much less entertaining way), I figure I would give them all the credit and give you a link to their blog. So, click here, click on the image below, read the post and subscribe to their blog!

Lovingly borrowed from the Vegangelicals

And so it begins!

I feel like it was only a matter of time until we started a blog...

Carly and I have been married for almost 2 years now but we've been together for almost 9.  About 2 years into our relationship we started running together.  We started first at the track at UCSD Spanos Field and then moved on to the Campus Loop. Eventually we started doing 5k and 10k races.

Disneyland Half Marathon 2010

After college, we got a place together, got engaged, got married and then said, "Ok, time to work towards a marathon."  That process started in June 2010 when we started training for our first half marathon.  We both ran and completed the 2010 Disnelyland Half Marathon in September 2010 with a finishing time of about 2 hours 5 minutes.  About 2 months ago we ran in the Santa Barbara Wine Country Half Marathon.  Our goal was to best our original time and we did with a finish time of 1 hour 58 minutes (Carly beat me by about 5 seconds).