Playing Catch Up

Soooooo....you may have noticed it's been a while...like 4 months worth of a while.  But to be fair, I've been a bit busy.  Let's see...hubby came home from deployment (yay!), raced 3 sprint tris, hubby made Chief (double yay!), kids have been on summer break, went on a mini vacation...ummm...that may be about it.  So needlss to say I've been neglectful.  But all of these happenings in my life were awesome!!  Here are a few pics to prove it.

Homecoming USS Carl Vinson 2012

The Long Road Home (or back to Petaluma, CA anyway)

I swam, biked, and ran my way into a 7th, 1st, and 5th place finish at my races!

Spent lots of QT with my two little hooligans

So there you go...my summer in review.  Not that it wasn't important, I just don't think I can truly capture it in words, so I'm not going to try.

I have also been spending loads of time cooking. 

You may remember I went mostly vegan a while back...and that severely limited my choices (or so I thought).  This choice forced me to open my culinary horizons and really get my hands dirty in the kitchen.  It also forced me to buy 2 cute new aprons.

It may also be contributing to my wino habit, but hey...such is life!  So anyway...where was I?  Oh yeah....food!  So I've been playing around with recipes...following awesome food blogs (see them all on the right!)...and now I feel like I'm ready to join the club.  You see, as a vegan/gluten free/endurance athlete, I have needs (shush your dirty minds).  I need calories!  I need my food to taste good!  I need it to be healthy and fuel me through long runs, rides, and swims.  I'm gearing up to do Oriflamme 50K again in April (told you I had a course to avenge) and I need food that will carry me through.  Last year I wasn't getting the calories I needed and subsequently dropped too much weight.  But I'm paying attention now...I know what I'm doing and I have the tools to bring me there (plus I'm uber inspired by this book). 

Here goes nothing!  I'm hungry and I'm ready to step up to the challenge...bring on the food!  I know there will be some duds along the way (this is where I'm grateful for my family of taste testers...and possibly my dogs if things go really wrong).  But I'm hoping that some really great meals, snacks, and such will come out of this too. 

I'm starting Monday with a full 3 day juice/smoothie cleanse (yeah, I'll be blogging about it)...then it's onto the real work.  Along the way I'm going to keep following my friends (aka amazing food bloggers), because they know what they are doing and are seriously cooking up some amazing eats!

So I raise a glass in toast to this adventure and whatever it may bring!  Cheers!