Holiday snack food

Hey peeps!

So on Monday night I impressed myself by staying awake until 10pm! I usually do have a little sleep after a night flight, but the combination of sleeping aid tablets (they are not actual sleeping ones, but can make you drowsy- over the counter ones not prescription strength) + sound reducing headphones + eye mask meant that I had some sleep on the plane. I am hoping it carries on. Tuesday morning I went on a 3 mile run, just to check I still could! I went faster than I thought (still 10.30 ish min miles) and felt OK, although as soon as I got home I felt shattered. This morning I went to work, and am planning on the Sweatshop run later.

I found that the new series of the Great British Bake Off has started! I managed to watch episode one on i-player and have the second one waiting for me on the box.

Anyway, one of the great things about holidays is the different food you can have while you are away. We visited some lovely restaurants, including a vegetarian cafe (where you could adapt things to be vegan- they would even sub cashew cheese or avocado for no extra cost!) but that will have to be in another post! Most days we would have breakfast (sometimes from a cafe/ the hotel, or sometimes cereal bars and fruit in our room) and then have snacks during the day (bananas, cereal bars, peanut crackers) and then dinner in the evening, as otherwise it gets expensive plus the portions are rather large. On our first day we were hungry (I think due to jet lag) and shared a pb&j (with fresh raspberry jam) – it was huge and way too much for one person.  So while I wait for Andy to get all the real photos off the camera, here are the ones I took of our snacks!

At the start of the holiday (the second day) we got the ferry to Victoria, on Vancouver Island in Canada. We had to be at the ferry terminal early (7.30am I think) and it took around 90 minutes.We walked around for a bit, and then saw a tea shop (Murchie’s) that offered all sorts of tea lattes, plus you could have soya or almond milk. I went for a latte with raspberry black tea and a hint of chocolate, and it was gorgeous. We shared the enormous cookie!

This day we had been up early for a big drive (300+ miles) and stopped at a Trader Joe’s, and could not resist this falafel wrap to share- it even came with a little tub of hummus for dipping.

Popchips make great snacks! My faves were the sweet potato ones (Popchips! Please release them in the UK!!), and Andy loves these the most . I took the photo as the bag inflated loads as we drove to higher elevations- not sure if you can really tell but it looked funny to me.

Iced tea! I love it, and usually have just plain unsweetened iced tea if we went out for dinner, but I also love this peach iced tea. It is sweetened with sugar (way better than the high fructose corn syrup in most things in America), but only a little, plus the peach flavour was summery.

Fresh fruit was delicious! Dark sweet cherries, juicy peaches, sweet nectarines and crunchy apples were my favourites, and we often had bananas for when we were out walking. The only problem I find is washing it so often I would buy some but have to wait until we got to a hotel to wash it before I could eat it. Although this does not bother me at home so much.

I got a bit over excited when I found these little hummus pots- this was red pepper hummus with little pretzels to dip in. I had them a couple of times (whenever I saw them basically).

We bought warm fresh pretzels from a German bakery in Leavenworth (the Bavarian town)- Andy had a salted one and I had a plain one- they were huge and lasted us into the next day (although by then they were a bit hard).

And of course we had a few visits to Starbucks (although most of the time we were in the parks so no-where near anything like that)- either we would share a large chai latte, or get a small drink each, but on this occasion there was a mix up (the person ahead took our drink and they gave us a small one instead of a large, they then made us a large one too, instead of giving us another small one to make it up to us)- we didn’t drink them all as that day we had a long drive (400 miles) so could not risk too much drink!

Our B&B in Leavenworth served dessert in the evening, so we sat outside on the decking and enjoyed black forest gateaux with an Earl Grey- perfect.

Also, I was very excited in Denver airport to see a froyo chain (I thought they were called Toby but on googling it seems they are called TCBY) making fro-yo using almond milk, although we didn’t try any. It make make it over here in 5 years!

I got my reminder email about the Marathon Talk Magic Mile- I had forgotten all about that! I think I have until next weekend to run and log my time, although I am not sure when I will do it yet. I want to leave it later so I can get my normal speed back- don’t think I will be breaking any records this year!

Do you watch the Bake Off?

Anyone sign up for the magic mile?