365 Denver: 71-80

Day 71

Sunday, October 13

Family dinner!  Gathered with some friends for a delightful meal and some chill time.  I meant to take a picture of the food (chili, salad, cookies etc.) but forgot... so I captured the shenanigans that followed.

Day 72

Monday, October 14

When your boss asks you "Do you have any plans tonight?" sometimes it pays off to say no!  Free tickets to watch a preseason Nuggets game. :)

Day 73

Tuesday, October 15

WE LOVE FALL!

Day 74

Wednesday, October 16

We won the "Spirit Stick" this week.  Good job kiddos.

Day 75

Thursday, October 17

Dinner with Kirsten!!! We ate a Pho on 6th - a place nearby I've been wanting to try.  Delicious and I love Kirsten!

Day 76

Friday, October 18

Date with the ladies.  We decided to go get our nails done and go out for dinner.  It was so nice to be pampered and I said treat-yo-self and went for some gel nails!

Day 77

Saturday, October 19

Wonderful day! Slept in, run with Sally, dog park action, and an afternoon/evening with friends enjoying fall time festivities!  Spaghetti squash dinner, pumpkin pie from scratch, pumpkin carving, spiked cider, and Harry Potter.  Perfection. (My pumpkin is 2nd from the left - a witch!)

Day 78

Sunday, October 20

Brunch at Lucilles - a delicious and adorable Creole restaurant in Denver.

Day 79

Monday, October 21

Costume crafting + watching Great Gatsby w/Lauren.

I'm going to be a bird.  Lots of feathers...

Day 80

Tuesday, October 22

Best part of my day? Going to the mailbox and getting this!  Generally, it was just mail that was sent to my former address - but a reminder of home and a funny little note made my day! 

Great American Beer Festival!

Last Saturday Lauren, Pam, and I went to the Great American Beer Festival.  Basically heaven for beer lovers... and I love beer.  Hundreds of breweries with thousands of delicious beers from all over the country come for this competition/festival!  You just stroll around with your 1oz tasting glass and try beers all night long.  We made pretzel necklaces (a common and popular item) to snack on.  Also, picked up some sweet SWAG.

We had a BLAST.

Had a friend-making "competition"... and made tons of friends. 

Tried too many beers to count and loved about 90% of them. 

Here are some highlights.

 Excited!  Also, I love the bear peeking in the convention center.  Somebody give that bear a beer.

 I thought I'd take a picture of my favorite breweries... but then they were pretty much all my favorite so I stopped.  But I was excited to try beers near and far - here's a new place to try in Golden!

 Some people dress up in weird outfits.  Why?  Who's to say.  But it's fun.

 We watched a family feud game between some brewers.  He is a brewer at a bar near my house! Made friends with him and tried on his hat.  It was sweaty.  Good shot of my pretzel necklace and accumulating SWAG too!

 Made friends with the Alaskan Brewing Company.  Spent a long time at their booth.  They were fun. And had mascots.

Shenanigans.

Love beer.

Love friends.

Love Colorado.

365 Denver: 61-70

Day 61

 Thursday, October 3

Skyping with Heather!  It is always sooo lovely to see her beautiful face.  Although it makes me miss her even more, it helps to make the distance less burdensome. Love love love.

Day 62

Friday, October 4

C IS IN TOWN!

So excited to see C!!  We met up with Lauren for dinner and drinks at the Cherry Cricket (often voted best burger in Denver) and met up with some other friends at The College Inn - both very close to where I live!  I love exploring this city, but most of my friends live on the west side (I live on the east side) so its especially nice when we explore by me!

Day 63

Saturday, October 5

I thought we'd have a nice fall hike... but then we drove into winter!  A snowy hike with C & Sal and then over to Oktoberfest with friends!  Sally wore her sweater and was adored by all.

Day 64

Sunday, October 6

Pumpkin patching & a BBQ with coworkers.  A lovely fall day.

Day 65

Monday, October 7

NO SCHOOL! Fall break - for some reason we did it today instead of Columbus Day...

Sal and I walked to Einstein Bros. for a whole wheat bagel with pumpkin cream cheese, coffee, and HP.  Delightful. 

Not having a car was quite frustrating today...

Day 66

Tuesday, October 8

Volleyball with a new attitude!  So there is this asshole on my team who always talks shit to me and makes me feel like crap.  But after talking about it with C I had new found confidence (and some beer didn't hurt either).  And it worked! I felt so much better about the whole session.

Afterwards, enjoyed some pizza from Fat Sully's with J - delicious and also located near me!

Day 67

Wednesday, October 9

12 days later I HAVE MY CAR BACK!

Day 68

Thursday, October 10

New cold weather running outfit!  And a much needed run with Sally. 

Day 69

Friday, October 11

Dubuque Fest of the West.

Dubuque is a nice little town in Iowa, and all the people from there who live in Denver get together once a year to celebrate the town with this strange little party.  Here are some Dubuquers.  I won a raffle too!  Cards that say "You're not a Dubuquer if you can't play euchre."  An entertaining, albeit strange evening.

Day 70

Saturday, October 12

OU v Texas - a disappointing game to say the least, but I managed to (easily) convince a few friends to come out to the OU bar in Denver!  It was a festive event with themed brunch items like the McTexassucks egg sandwich & Bradford Biscuits (& gravy).  

Later this evening was the Great American Beer Festival!! But it deserves a post of it's own.

Queen of Sheba

My friend Sarah has told me about an Ethiopian restaurant in the city called Queen of Sheba.  If you watch the league, I hope you too can only think of Queen of Shiva.  

Excellent selling point: you eat with your hands.

I thought that sounded like a great new thing for last week!

We had a good size group - Sarah, Misty, Chris, C, T, Jess, and me! I love love love dining in big groups.  It brings such a festive element to the meal. 

I was very excited to have T in town. :)

 And C was very excited for our new thing of the week!

 I got the variety plate - why try one when you can try many? 

The crepe/pancake part is called injera - its super spongy. You tear off a piece and scoop up some food.  A bit messy, but fun and different. Every now and then its nice to ban utensils.    T started a bit of a game where she tossed some injera on your plate and wherever it landed, thats what you ate. haha Even more fun!

 I enjoyed the food, but its not the type of flavor/texture I would want regularly.

I was reading about Ethiopian food on the restaurant website and came across this bit of information: 

"Dining in Ethiopia is characterized by the ritual of breaking injera and eating from the same plate, signifying the bonds of loyalty and friendship.  The quintessence of those bonds are often demonstrated in the form of gursha-that is, the placing of food in the mount of another diner from one's own hand."

When in Rome...

bagel friday

New York is known for its bagels, and rightfully so.  When I lived there, I fell in love with bagels.  Not the kind you buy at the store, or the type you'll get in a Starbucks. Real bagels - thick, soft, delicious bagels.  

To treat myself for making it to then end of the week, I had Bagel Friday!  It also prevented me from having Bagel Monday-Thursday.  I looked forward to that bagel all week and cherished it once it came.

It's the little things.

I recently decided to bring back Bagel Friday!! There is a really yummy bagel shop in town called Old School Bagel Cafe, with the tag line "No New York in the name, but the bagels are the same!"  And I will say, they are the closest I've had to a good NY bagel.  And they have pretty good coffee too which isn't so much a plus as it is a requirement.

Bagel Friday is the best.

Juice Cleanse

After a very busy September/early October of fun and traveling, I decided to kick off my return to healthy habits with a juice cleanse!  I have been intrigued by the idea of doing a cleanse for a while, and there was no better time to try!

I researched the web and found some recipes that sounded the easiest and yummiest... and at home recipes are WAY cheaper than cleanses you can buy. 

Breakfast:

1  beet

2 red apples

1 large carrot

It has a beautiful red-orange color and the combo of flavors is actually quite tasty! 

Lunch, Dinner: The Green Machine

A few handfuls of kale

A few handfuls of spinach

1 green apple

1 kiwi

1 banana*

*Blend banana in a blender with other juiced ingredients.  Technically this is a juice cheat, but it adds a LOT of substance to a very light diet. 

This tasted... somewhere between nothing and earthy. haha

Dessert!

1/3 pineapple

1 red apple

1 cucumber

A yummy way to end the night!

The juice cleanse also allowed for coffee and herbal teas (no milk or sugar added). 

So... how do you feel?

For lack of a better word, I feel empty... in a good way.  

The past three days were a good exercise in self control, discipline, understanding hunger, and changing my relationship with food.

I have also gained a new found appreciation for solid foods... so much that I dreamed I ate grapes last night... such an odd thing. 

Overall, glad I tried it and will probably use juicing sparingly in my future food choices. 

nomnomnom

i recently made some vegan muffins to take to our monthly work meeting - i wanted to show people how delicious vegan food can be - it was a huge success... three people e-mailed me later today to ask me for the recipe!

yummm

mmmm food

My favorite thing, so far, about being vegetarian/vegan has been cooking!  Forcing myself out of the typical sandwiches/chicken dishes has opened up an exploration of new food - mainly veggies.  I've made so many delicious things and I've really enjoyed doing it!  I need to take more pictures of the food I create, but here is one recipe I made from Veganomicon - my favorite place for recipes!

It was a cold a rainy day, so I made Plantain and Pinto Stew with Parsnip Chips.

DELICIOUS.  And fun fact - parsnip chips taste just like sweet potato fries.