Good morning!
Thank you all so much for your birthday wishes yesterday! I ended up having a great day.
After breakfast, Eric told me to put on my spandex shorts. I could only assume that good things were going to follow!
He put my new gear on my bike…

Bike bag and tire pump are now on my bike:

The bike bag now contains a bike tube and a swiss-army type bike tool.
Eric revealed that he was taking me through our try-a-tri route! We have been meaning to go for a while now, but the rain from the past two weeks has prevented us.

The 2.5k run will be done on a trail, which we weren’t aware of. I love running on trails!
We saw the water where we will be doing the open-water swim! *GULP*

We both got nervous thinking about it and tried to imagine what 375 metres looked like.
*gulp, gulp*

Gorgeous.

After the trail ride, we had a picnic lunch that Eric packed earlier.

He took these pictures beforehand…

Our picnic lunch contained:
- 2 apples
- 2 Raw and GF Glo Bars
- Salsa + hummus
- Homemade trail mix (apricot, almonds, raisins)
- Chips
- Cashew butter and blueberry jam sandwich (to split)
Look what we saw!
We got home hours later and I had a minor incident with my sunglasses.
Eric surprised me with CSA half share at Plan B Organic farm! You might remember me gushing about it last year. I was really shocked because I thought he forgot that I even mentioned it. It begins on June 2nd and carries on through until October. The gift that keeps on giving!
I have wanted to support a local organic farmer for a long time now. This makes me very happy. :wub:
We will be picking up a box from the farm every Wednesday. They also have tours of the farm that we would like to go on. Eric said it ‘brings him out of his comfort zone’ because he knows I am going to be getting him to eat all kinds of weird veggies. :lol: True, dat!
As for the Vita-Mix— my new GF + Raw Glo Bars require the use of a blender and my current Kitchen aid blender doesn’t do the job very well. I am toying around with the idea of using some of my tax return money to get a new blender, but I haven’t decided when I am going to get one though. I also haven’t decided whether I want a Vita-mix or a Blend-tec…I hear great things about Blend-tecs too!
After lounging around outside for a bit longer, it was time to make dinner. We decided to cook together and make something very light and summery.

Quinoa Summer Salad
Ingredients:
- 1 cup uncooked quinoa
- 1 English cuke
- 1 large tomato
- 6 green onions, chopped
- 4 tbsp dried cranberries
- Italian Seasonings
- Sea Salt and pepper
- Sweet and Tangy All-Purpose Dressing (we doubled it)
Directions: Rinse and cook quinoa according to package directions. Chop veggies. Mix together with dressing and serve. Serves 2.

It was fabbbbbulous and very easy.
I also had two brewskis!

In my next post, I will show you what we had for dessert. It left us with chocolate all over our hands and faces and sitting on the couch with our hands on our bellies.
Have a great start to your week!
The quinoa looks delicious!
LOL I stopped wearing frameless sunglasses for that very reason! It annoys me so much when they get stuck in my hair :-p What an awesome day. Love the CSA idea. I’d like to do that, too.
I got a vita-mix back in February and could seriously not live without it. LOVE IT!
The best deal though is when they come to Costco, it’s about $100 cheaper than buying it from the site… So far, I’ve seen them come by 2x since January but to different Costco locations in my area.. worth checking out if you’re going to vita-mix route!
Looks like you had a wonderful birthday!
LOL story of my LIFE WITH THE SUNGLASSES! that is hilarious!!
so glad you had a great bday-you deserved it girl!
Happy Late Birthday wishes – love the new header! I’ve been on vacay and have been sporadically hitting Google reader so clearly I missed a lot! Sounds like you have a fantastic day!
What a great sounding birthday! So fun!
What a fantabulous birthday celebration for you! All kinds of prizes and fun times!
I love the looks of that Quinoa summer salad, might have to try that for dinner tonight!
Guess what, I made my first batch of Jiffy Spelt Veggie patties and the hubby loved them. Woohoo!
Happy Belated Birthday! Mine is 5/15, so I celebrated this weekend too. Your husband is the sweetest with those great presents! A CSA share is about the best present I can think of, other than a VitaMix of course :)
Oh my gosh! I just bought a half share at an organic local farm this past week! Isn’t it exciting? The sold out on all shares and have a waiting list; it seems eating local and organic is getting more popular – woo hoo!
on a sad note, today I ate the last of my Adore bars – Boo! :(
Guess I gotta order more ;D
WOW! What a great birthday! Your hubby is awesome!
I LOVE that triathlon course – so beautiful :)
happy belated birthday angela! :)
looks like you had a fantabulous day! eric does such sweet and thoughtful things! i love the fact that he cooks for you :)
Happy belated birthday wishes… .what a great guy to plan such a great day for you! :)
thats an exciting gift! Right on.
I seem to always have those mishaps. Good thing I’m not a celebrity cause I’d be in the section “Celebrities…they’re just like us!” about 1000x struggling to untangle my hair from the glasses.
Awww, that’s awesome! What a sweet hubs! Glad you had such a great day!
What I love most about my BlendTec is that I can add my green monster ingredients, hit the juice button and walk away for about a minute while the program runs and sucks down everything I added. No standing over it using a blend stick to push everything down. I bought my at Costco and received a five-year extended warranty above and beyond the standard warranty as part of the purchase. Love it, love it, love it!
I work at Booster Juice and yes we use both brands, but I find that Vitamix is good depending on what you’re going for. The nice thing about it is that it can turn itself off when it overheats (I doubt you will be using it that much!) and blendtec turns itself off in about 50 sec of consecutive blending. And blendtec seems to chop down everything XD (Have you watched Will It Blend?) The downside is Blendtec can be louder. Vitamix is better if you do more of the hard/solid/frozen blending for a smooth consistency, warranty, and cleaning. For everything else, Blendtec is good. I should mention that when you have a vitamix I can’t really leave it alone. A lot of the times I have to shake the blender and keep it going (partly due to the wear and tear of the blade I think and/or the fact that vitamix likes it a bit more liquid to keep running).
I hope that helps XD
I think getting a good Blendtec will be best for you (unless you’re making all purees all the time). And it’s way more universal and powerful too.
Hi Angela – I just recently bought a Blendtec blender and did a lot of research comparing the two blenders. I found these websites to be helpful:
http://gotgreensrevolution.com/Vitamix-versus-blendtec-review.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0Nx52bpuV0
In my research I found that you need to get the 3qt carafe if you purchase the Blendtec, but that ensures that you don’t have to use anything to scrape food down towards the blade (like the tamper on the VitaMix). The Blendtec also has pre-programmed buttons, which are great for our smoothies in the morning because you can just hit the button and walk away to do other things until it is complete. One other thing that we really liked was the height of the Blendtec. It fits perfectly on my kitchen counter underneath my kitchen cabinets. The VitaMix would’ve been too tall.
They’re both great blenders and I’m sure you’d be happy with either one. I bought the Blendtec from rawfoodworld.com and, at the time, they had a $60 discount with the purchase of Blendtec with the 3qt carafe. I’m not sure what kind of promotions they may be offering now.
Good luck in your decision making process!