Pre-4th of July

Well, the long weekend is over. But at least it was filled with lots of fun stuff!

On Friday, we met up with our friend Jonathan to celebrate his birthday.

I had a glass of wine...but forgot to take a picture until after I had finished it!

On Saturday morning, I tried out a new restaurant for breakfast. Ingredient just opened in the new Midtown Crossing development.

One of the first things I noticed about this place was its huge menu.

During lunch & dinner, they have a 'build your own salad' option where you can choose from a giant list of ingredients. I'm excited to try this sometime - I used to get 'build your own salads' about once a week while I was at NYU!

Then I noticed that they had a good selection of coffee drinks, including the option for soy milk . This is a HUGE plus for me. I love eating breakfast in restaurants, but I hate the typical 'diner coffee' that oftentimes gets served. I ordered an iced latte with soy. It was delish.

I also liked the decor/colors of the place. It is bright and airy with a natural touch.

For my meal, I ordered a tomato basil egg and cheese sandwich. It came with gouda (yum!), a side of potatoes, and was served on either a wheat or sourdough English muffin. (I went with sourdough.)

Unfortunately, my food to WAY too long to come out. I was really hungry, so my long wait was even more disappointing. The place was not crowded, and it appeared to be properly staffed, so I'm guessing my food just got lost in the shuffle. It has only been open a week, so I'm sure the staff is still learning, but the amount of time it took for my food to arrive was unacceptable. In fact, at one point I could hear (what I assumed to be) a manager say, 'Why is this tomato basil still sitting here?!' and I knew my food was getting cold. Cold eggs are just no good. And eggs that get overcooked while sitting under a heat lamp are no better. And while I'm complaining, the potatoes were incredibly salty.

All that being said, I will definitely give this place another shot. The menu looks great and has lots of veggie options. Plus, it's a block from my work and a mile from my house. But next time will probably be in a few weeks - hopefully after they get their kinks worked out.

After my late breakfast, I went to my parents' house to help my Mom prepare for the 4th of July BBQ they throw every year for us kids and our friends. A few years back, we realized that if we did all of the food prep the day before, the day of the party is much more stress-free.

I came prepared with my own knife and apron.

And my Dad provided the (giant!) bottle of gin!

We had an extra cucumber, so I decided to whip up some cucumber fizz cocktails to have while we worked. I didn't have a recipe, I just kind of threw some things into a blender. In went a peeled cucumber, the juice of 2 limes, a cup of ice, and 6 'glugs' of gin. Blend until frothy!

After divided into glasses, I topped them with some fizzy water.

And then added garnish, of course.

They were pretty good - nice and refreshing, since they weren't sweet. However, if I were to make them again, I'd be sure to blend the cucumber until it was completely liquid...these were kind of pulpy.

Sunday started off early at a 7am group run. I had my typical English muffin with almond butter before leaving the house and packed a Gatorade and some water for after the run.

We met at the Wabash Trace (which is where Taco Ride is held.) The first few miles were SUPER humid and sweaty. I debated ditching my hat at a water stop, because the sweat was just dripping off of my face. But then, somewhere along mile 4, the sky opened up and it started pouring rain. It actually felt great! The trail has a lot of tree cover, but we still got soaked. Plus, we were running on a crushed limestone path, so we got pretty dirty.

I was happy to have kept my hat with me!

I ran with the coach again - we both seem to run at about a 10:00 pace during long runs. However, during the second half of the run, we started pushing one another, and really picked up the pace. Without talking about it much, we took turns taking the lead and pushed ourselves out of our comfort zones. It was great! We ran 11.5 miles at a 9:32 overall pace. Here are our splits:

• Mile 1 - 9:54
• Mile 2 - 9:44
• Mile 3 - 10:08
• Mile 4 - 10:11
• Mile 5 - 10:11
• Mile 6 -10:03
• Mile 7 - 9:15
• Mile 8 - 9:25
• Mile 9 - 8:30
• Mile 10 - 8:56
• Mile 11 - 9:19
• Mile 11.5 - 3:58

After my run, I met some friends for breakfast, showered, and napped before heading to my parents' for the BBQ. But I'll have to recap that in my next post...too much food and fun to include here!