WIAW: Albuquerque Edition

Buenos dias! Good morning! Today for What I Ate Wednesday I’m sharing the food I ate while on a weekend trip to Albuquerque to visit my girlfriends.

I arrived in the 505 on Friday afternoon with an hour of time to kill before my friend got off work. So I went to Uptown shopping center which is right off the Interstate. I spent my time drooling over stores like Lululemon and Anthropologie. I also hit up the Trader Joes since I live no where close to one. I only got items that weren’t fresh nor would melt in my vehicle, so my choices were limited.

I picked up some Cookie Butter, coconut cookies, and coconut oil. I haven’t tried cookie butter before and wow is that stuff good! I don’t even know how to describe the taste.

Photo Source: http://www.abqjournal.com

For dinner we wanted something light and quick before we went out and so we decided upon Chipotle. When we walked in the line went through about half the building and I thought that was long. Supposedly it’s common for the line to be out the door because it’s one of the few in Albuquerque.

Our evening festivities began at Zacatecas with some margaritas and then the night rolled on from there!

After a night out at Nob Hill, we were ready for breakfast the next morning. If you are familiar with Albuquerque then you would know that the Frontier is a must-eat place at some point if you visit.

One of my ABQ girlfriends suggested we all try a cinnamon roll and man was I glad she told me to do that. So I had a cinnamon roll along with my breakfast burrito filled with eggs, hashbrowns, and green chile. I was one happy girl after breakfast.

Saturday we spent the day shopping at the mall and went to Uptown again. I had been wanting to find a kimono cover up with a cute print and I finally did at Charlotte Russe! At Uptown we into Francesca’s and I came out with this wild tribal print shirt and a faded gold monogram S necklace. I don’t know what got into me. Nothing I bought was black!

It was pretty hot in Albuquerque on Saturday so we grabbed some fraps at Starbucks. I got a mocha frap and a chocolate chip cookie. Definitely chocolate overload, but it sure helped us cool off. Next time I’ll choose one or the other.

After a full day of shopping and a pick-me-up at Starbucks. We were ravenously awaiting our dinner at PF Changs. Of course all 5 of us had to shower and get ready so by the time we finally arrived none of us were evening talking to each other due to being so hangry! And I didn’t get any pictures of the food because once it was out we inhaled it.

We ordered California Crab sushi, Spicy Tuna sushi, and split the Spicy Chicken and Mongolian beef entrees with rice. We were still hungry after dividing all of that up between the 5 of us, so another California Crab sushi appetizer was ordered. That finally satisfied us.

After another night out on the town we were ready for breakfast on Sunday morning. We all agreed on Weck’s.

I ordered the papas bowl with scrambled egg, hashbrowns, and green chile. They offered peanut butter with your pancakes so of course I had to get a pancake too. Too say I was stuffed after breakfast is being modest. The papas bowl was soooo good and the green chile was perfect! The pancake on the other hand was so-so. Good, but not life changing.

The leftover hashbrowns made an appearance on Monday morning at home for my breakfast with some sauasage and scrambled egg. Best breakfast I’ve made at home in a long time!

And that’s all I have for y’all today on my weekend eats in Albuquerque!

Do you like green chile? What have you been eating lately?

WIAW #5 The Struggle Bus

I was a bit hesitant to link up today for What I Ate Wednesday because I’m riding on the first seat of the What I Ate Struggle Bus.

What the heck does that mean?

Let me explain…

I read this verse in my devotional this morning: “Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else.” Galations 6:4

The devotional was about how we tend to fake it. We try to appear to others as everyone but our true authentic selves. We compare ourselves to others and want how we appear to be comparable to this other person. When in reality we just need to be ourselves.

Sometimes when it comes to WIAW I want to fake it. I want it to appear that I eat all this great and healthy and colorful food all the time, but I don’t. And I know nobody claims to do so with WIAW, but there is almost this added pressure and competition to do so. And like I listed in my July goals that I liked to cut back on bread, eat more fruits and vegetables, and try to eat more Paleo-ish, it can be freakin hard and life happens. Life happens a lot.

Like when you try to make perfectly round protein pancakes, but once again they end up falling apart or coming out in weird shapes.

Or when you have hot cheetos with your peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch because hot cheetos are the bomb dot com.

Every now and then I’ll make a delicious and healthy coffee protein shake. I’ll take picture of it on a pretty table outside. Because this is really where I drink my coffee shake. I lean over and take a sip while I fight the flies off. Sometimes I get a few leaves in it from that plant in the picture to get some added greens. Totally kidding. But hopefully you get my sarcastic point…

And when I celebrate my 22nd birthday with my best girlfriend, I like to drink things that have a sugary or salty rim. We won’t even go into how much sugar is in that thing…

Then your parents take you to a church service that lasts for almost 2 hours and you don’t get to leave until 9:30 at night (I promise I’m not complaining about church). Leaving McDonald’s or Taco Box as your only options for dinner. And when I go to Taco Box, there’s no going “healthy.”

Even though you get the Paleo Kitchen cookbook for your birthday, you then realize you don’t have any groceries and need to buy a few lot of things to truly get started.

And that my dear friends is why I’m riding on the WIAW struggle bus. Because faking it is overrated. And people don’t eat perfectly. Next week my WIAW may be great. Maybe we’ll make it to the grocery store and I’ll eat a few things with some vegetables thrown in and take beautiful pictures of my plate.

I’ll end with the words of good ol’ Teddy Roosevelt:

Have a wonderful Wednesday everyone!!

Do you find yourself comparing yourself to others?

WIAW #4 Mom’s Birthday

It’s a foggy morning here as I’m constructing this blog post and it’s Wednesday so that means I’m linking up with Peas and Crayons for:

On a foggy morning I always crave something warm, so oatmeal was my breakfast of choice. And if you’re really curious you could probably zoom in and read my to-do list. It’ll blow your mind. Actually if you can even read my handwriting you’re doing pretty good.

Speaking of oatmeal I had it a few more times for breakfast this past week.

On the left: Peaches aren’t something you normally see on my blog, but whenever we make a trip to Austin we always bring home peaches. These peaches are pretty tasty.

On the right: One of my more normal oatmeal combinations: strawberries, bananas, peanut butter, cinnamon, and honey.

Keeping with the breakfast theme we’ll move on to pancakes.

On the left: I made these pancakes for my Mom on her birthday last Friday. I’ll have to share the recipe for these sometime on my blog because they were amazing! I had a hard time finishing those two on my plate which isn’t normal for me. They were dense with great flavor. Good pancakes just make my day.

On the right: Once again I made some protein pancakes that had came out in weird oblong shapes. At least they had more of a circular form to them than my continent pancakes.

Top: For some odd reason I just felt weird about putting seafood right across from a chocolate cake in my collage, so I gave them some respectful distance. For my mom’s birthday we went to eat at Red Lobster. I’m not the most experienced see food eater, so I stuck with coconut shrimp. I got a little wild by ordering crab legs which I know are pretty tasty.

However, I always forget how much work crab legs are. I crunched and cracked trying to get a decent amount of meat out of the legs. Most of the time I just got a baby bite, but the few times I actually got a whole chunk of crab leg meat out was pretty exciting. And it probably only happened twice.

Bottom: My mom requested a Dr. Pepper cake for her birthday, so that’s what I made her. I was worried it wasn’t going to turn out very good, but it was thankfully a success. The cake part reminded us of a Texas sheet cake taste and texture (if you haven’t had Texas sheet cake you need to check your priorities). The frosting part was drizzled over the top and sank into the cake. If you really, really want the recipe for Dr. Pepper cake I can give it to you. Es pretty bueno.

CrossFit Interruption: At the box we’ve been going to they do something special when it’s your birthday. So last Friday they made a WOD just for my mom. You’re thinking “Awww how nice!” No. No it wasn’t nice at all.

Here’s what went down:

Buy-in 19 Burpee Box Jumps: Those were fun until I got to around my 10th one.

4 rounds of:

6 Thrusters: I looked forward to these…

20 hand release push-ups: Because push-ups are rough and I hated the moment when I finished thrusters and had to start push-ups again.

Buy-Out: 67 Kettlebell swings. These were okay. If you look at the numbers for the buy-in and buy-out they form the year my mom was born. (Mom notice that I didn’t outright give away your birth year!)

My birthday is this Friday, so I’m a bit nervous to see what they have designed for us. I was born in 1992 so there will likely be 92 of something. What that 92 will be is the big question.

Let’s move on to happier things.

Left: Ater dinner plate of strawberries and bananas with peanut butter and a few chocolate chips.

Right: Quest bars are still making an appearance when I need a snack and Cookies & Cream has remained as my favorite flavor. I had the one above yesterday afternoon while I was driving the tractor. I have to stay alert somehow.

On the left: One night this week we had salmon with green beans, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. And I had a big crunchy carrot too.

On the right: We needed to do something with the peaches before they went bad, so my mom made a peach crisp. Basically a crisp is oatmeal and brown sugar covering whatever fruit you are using. And it was delicious. I may have had more than one bowl of it.

Though my actual birthday isn’t till Friday we’re having family over tonight to have my birthday dinner. You mean you still have birthday parties with your family. Yes, we sure do. I don’t care about presents anymore, it’s just a great reasons for us to all get together. That also means another chocolate cake will be making an appearance tonight.

That’s all I have for you today! If you feel up to it check out my first article on FitBodyHQ called 7 Things to Expect Your First Time Trying Crossfit.

Have a great Wednesday erry’body!!

Do you like peaches? What kind of birthday cake do you like?