Category Archives: wine

Orlando Vacation 2k13: What I Ate

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Hey everyone!! I’m back from Orlando :) I had an AMAZING time and I’m excited that I have tons of pictures to show you! So many, in fact, that I’m going to have to split this into two posts. So today I figured I’d share with you the yummy food that I ate and tomorrow I’ll show you some of the cool and pretty things I saw during the trip. For those of you on Instagram I know you’ve seen most of these pics :)

So here are the yummy things that I ate! Be forewarned that this stuff isn’t particularly healthy… I made a deal with myself before that I’d enjoy vacation and get back on the CSD train when I got back :) So here’s (some of) what I ate on my vacation!

I’ve come to realize that as I get older I’m becoming more and more of a germophobe. Walking through the airport I realized that planes are gross, and people are gross so I picked up some Airborne, mixed it with a bottle of water and sucked it down.

We stayed in for the most part on Thursday and ate there so our first meal out was for lunch on Friday. We decided to go to Loving Hut because it’s so damn good :) I really wanted to try something different but I decided to stick with my usual which is “Combo 1.” It has a fresh summer roll, golden rice, tofu and veggies. It is so good and definitely not too heavy (which is what I was afraid of with some of the other dishes). I could eat buckets of that rice, it’s SO GOOD.

After Loving Hut we decided to go to Raphsodic Bakery, which we first tried the last time I was there. I LOVE that they put the word “Love” on all of their bags and boxes. Anyway, we chose four different treats to share because we couldn’t decide. There is a slice of pumpkin loaf, a chocolate chip sandwich cookie, a chocolate almond biscotti, and chocolate marzipan brownie. Everything was amazing but believe it or not the biscotti was my favorite! And Shen, now I know how you can eat just half of your yummy desserts :)

My friend happens to live near a Mellow Mushroom which I had read offers vegan pizza. This is not something I come across every day so we decided to bring pizza in. I don’t remember what day but it was early on so I want to say maybe Friday night? Anyway, I got a small (10 inch) Kosmic Karma pizza which (when veganized) had roma tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, spinach, and daiya. It was great and it literally lasted me all weekend.

For brunch on Saturday we went to our usual brunch spot, Ethos Vegan Kitchen. I really love this restaurant. The food is always good and their new location is larger and has a great atmosphere. However, this is the one meal of my trip that I kind of regretted a little. Not because it wasn’t good because damn it was actually REALLY good. I decided to go for something on the menu that I knew I’d never be able to recreate because sometimes that’s the fun of going out. I decided on the biscuits and gravy. Like I said, the food was delicious but holy shit was it heavy. I got about 2/3 of the way in before I had to throw in the towel. And I didn’t eat again until that night because I couldn’t shake that heavy feeling for a long time. I want to re-iterate though that the food wasn’t bad by any means and in fact was really delicious! I just should have known better than to order a really heavy dish, especially for my first meal of the day. Ethos is definitely still one of my fav spots in Orlando!

Every time I visit I like to bake something for my friend and his friends. This time I decided to take something I found on Pinterest and veganize it. I saw the recipe for Funfetti Cheesecake Cookie Cups and thought they were so cute! I decided to veganize it and make my life a little easier so I made them into bars! Look how cute they came out. Basically I used the cheesecake recipe from Vegan Heartland’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bars (doubled with sprinkles added at the end) and the chocolate chip cookie recipe was Super Vegan’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Ever recipe. I followed the directions on the pinned recipe (I had to cook it a little longer though) and it came out really well! Above is the only piece that I ate but it was damn good.

My laziness got the best of me for Cinco de Mayo so I went the easy route and made some vegan nachos. They were REALLY good. All I did was heat/melt some spicy fat free refried beans and Daiya Cheddar on some tortilla chips. Simple but tasty.

I talked a big game about how I was going to partake in some alcoholic beverages but the reality was that I only drank this single glass of wine. Partially because I am a cheap date and it doesn’t take much for me to start feeling warm and partially because I just wasn’t feeling it. This glass of wine was really delicious though. This is by far my favorite wine and I can’t find it here in NY! Wah!

So these are the meals and beverages that I thought were photo worthy. As you can see we ate a lot of meals in and made some meals and snacks last pretty much the whole weekend. Everything was delicious but I’m definitely craving some fresh produce and am looking forward to getting back on track with a Crazy Sexy Diet inspired lifestyle.

I hope you enjoyed part 1 of my Orlando trip wrap up! I know it was a long post so thanks for bearing with me! The next one is probably going to be even longer since I have so many pics so sorry in advance!

Hope you all enjoyed your weekend! Back to the grind, boo!

New Year’s Resolutions

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Hey everyone! Thank you so much for your patience while I was away :) I’m back now and I should hopefully be able to post a lot more often now. I hope you all had a lovely week and have been enjoying the end of the holiday season.

I’m not usually someone to make New Year’s resolutions but I decided to try it out this year. I am looking at it more as an evaluation of my year and just where I want to be by this time next year and I’m going to take it from there. So this is pretty much how I see it…

I think that in general I have pretty good habits regarding my health. I work out a lot and for the most part I eat pretty healthy. My resolution in terms of health is to reverse my worst habit which is my inconsistency. When I am not being lazy I’m really on top of things but once I get lazy I just stop in my tracks. For example, the apple cider vinegar. I’m really good about it most of the time but when I get off track it isn’t for a day, it is for a week. I feel the effects of taking that much time off. I need to be more consistent and I’ve been getting better lately so I think this is definitely an obtainable goal.

My other resolution is to reduce my stress. I am the kind of person that takes things very personally and I let everything affect me.  I need to mellow out about things like that and let things roll off my back because I think that it’ll really make me a much happier person. I also need to make sure I consciously take “me” time. The winter is the perfect time to start making this a habit because I have time. Once I make it part of the routine it will hopefully follow me into the busy season and help to make that a less stressful time.

The main theme of my “resolutions” is to start forming new habits. This is really the only way to make sure that you stick to your resolutions. It is easy to go to the gym and eat right for a few weeks, but if you don’t commit to making it a habit or a lifestyle, you fall off the wagon by the end of January. I feel like we’ve all been there.

So, now that I’ve done the somewhat obligatory resolution summary, I figured I’d show you something you don’t see much on this blog. As you all know by now I’m not much of a drinker. I rarely ever drink actually. I wanted a margarita for my birthday and it never happened lol. I can’t drink beer because of the wheat and I really am not a fan of wine. I will taste wines to try and change that because I see nothing wrong with a glass of wine now and then but have never found one I really like. Then I found out that I like sweet dessert wines, mostly moscatos.

This one is especially delicious. I’ve never heard of or seen a red moscato before, but I had given this one a try at the Chocolate Trade Show I went to a few months ago. It is called Red Electra and is made at the Quady Winery which, according to my “Is Your Wine Vegan?” app, is vegan. I only drink wine once or twice every couple of months and decided to have a (admittedly large) glass this week while I was at my bro’s house last week. I will have another glass to celebrate New Year’s Eve tomorrow night :) After that I probably won’t have a drink for a few months. For the record, I was DEFINITELY feeling that glass when I was done, which is a pretty good indication of how rarely I drink.
What are your resolutions, if you make them?
P.S. My abs and triceps are on fire today. Good training session yesterday ;)