You know you're a runner when...

...you relish being outside while it's raining with no umbrella, while watching your fellow pedestrians run for cover! This morning I woke up determined to get right back to my normal diet and exercise regimen, after taking a bit of a hiatus for our fabulous weekend getaway! This may sound like a negative thing to some people - after having an indulgent vacation - but I was sooooo looking forward to it!! We had a great time, but I love feeling healthy and accomplished, and I am much more apt to feel that way when I am eating right and exercising on a regular basis.

Here's a quick recap of yesterday: Mike and I had breafast at the Village Deli, which is one of the restaurants along Kirkwood in Bloomington that has probably been around since my dad went to school there decades ago. I had an egg white omelete with tomatoes, mushrooms, and advocado, a chocolate chip pancake, and some OJ. I was a bit worried that the chocolate chip pancake would be tiny since on the menu it said "one pancake", but have no fear - this guy was bigger than the plate! It was a great "last vacation meal".

A few hours into our drive home, we snacked - yet again - on some veggies with hummus. Until recently I had forgotten how much I love hummus, but now that I'm back home I'm going to go without it for a while - I plan to really give this RAW thing a shot (hummus isn't raw because it is miscombined). For those of you who missed my earlier posting, I am trying this for a few reasons, but mainly because I frequently get terrible stomach pains after eating various foods, and I'm going to try this out to see if it helps with that.

We stopped at a Costco in IN on the way home, and let me tell you, NOTHING makes this girl happier than buying food in bulk, and on top of that, not having to pay taxes on it! Illinois, puhlease take a lesson from Indiana will ya....

We mostly got huge quantities of produce, some salsa (Mike goes through the regular sized jars in ONE SITTING), salmon (for me) and hot dogs (for Mike) to grill, etc.

Once back in Chicago, I unpacked all of my stuff and decided to go to Best Buy to look for a juicer. I have my little heart set on a Breville Fountain Juicer, and there are two kinds - the compact for $100, and the "Plus" for $150. Since I'm pretty sure they have the same functions but one is simply large, the smaller one will suffice for me since I'm not juicing for a large family here. Unfortunately, they were out of the smaller one! I'll have to go back at another time.

Today I went for a run first thing, and knocked out an easy 5 miler. It was a glorious, party-rainy day and it was great!! It really does crack me up to see the walkers running for shelter from a few rain drops, while us runners get an extra spring in our step at the first drop, and hope for more! I had planned to run to the gym to go to a yoga class afterward, but I was so wet from the rain that I felt I owed it to the other yogis not to go to class smelling like a wet dog.

Breakfast today was FAB. U. LOUS. I'm sure many of you have heard of Gena's creative idea to throw a frozen banana into a food processor, blend for a few minutes, and it makes what tastes exactly like soft serve ice cream - well, I am here to tell you, that it DOES!!! When I was little my mom always threw frozen bananas into milk shakes so I know that they had great flavor, but I had never tried that sans milk. It helped to cut mine up a bit first since I was using the mini foood processor, but it was sooooooo good that I made two bowls full.

Then, I went downtown to take my camera to get fixed... the flash is broken :( and I know i owe it to my readers to provide quality pix, unlike the blurry nonsense that I have been posting the last few days! Cross your fingers I get it back soon!

I'm sad that I don't have my camera since I made a pretty awesome raw lunch today, if I say so myself. I threw some frozen red peppers (some hard-core raw-ists don't buy frozen veggies because they have been flash-cooked, but these were just frozen because I threw my fresh peppers into the freezer last week to store them), a bit of celery, one tomato, and some water into the blender. Ialso a 1/2 scoop of nutritional yeast, to make it a bit cheesy. I spiced it up with some salt, garlic, paprika, cumin, and some Penzey's BBQ seasoning spice. I also threw in about 1/3 c. pepitas and blended this too, to give it a bit more of a texture.

This soup rocks! It is super light and refreshing. Salads sometimes bore me, but lately I've been obsessed with cold, gazpacho-type soups. Sorry I don't have a picture of this!

I have a ton of random bits and pieces of produce sitting around our place (leftover from our fam party last week) - do you have any favorite cold soup recipes?