At 5:15am you could hear me tapping on John’s shoulder, “Johnnnn, Wake up….”. I regularly get up at around 5:20am to go workout every morning before I head off to work, but I thought that given the day off, I might be able to sleep in. Nope! Lucky for me, Columbus is one hour ahead of Chicago, so John’s clock was really looking like 6:20. We moaned and rolled around for a good 30 minutes before deciding to get up and head to the gym. We wanted to make sure that we got an early start to the day so that we’d have time to do everything that we had planned: working out, breakfast, shopping, going to dinner, doing more shopping, etc.
We got to the gym around 7am and decided to do one of the workouts we did last time we were together. It is a mix of sprint intervals, with high incline intervals. You can find the exact workout that we did below.
The last time that we did this workout, which was about 3 weeks ago when I was visiting him in Ohio, we stuck to the standard times/inclines; however, I guess we were both feeling energetic this morning. We picked two treadmills next to eachother, and after each minute was over, we’d look at eachother and challenge one another to go a little faster than what we had intended. It’s a nice change having a partner to work out with who is able to help push you through the times when you want to stop and hit the “END” button! It was quite a sweaty mess when we were done! Afterwards, we headed to the weights room where we branched off and did our own strength training.
My workout looked something like this:
When I’m strength training, I like to incorporate different moves while still keeping a high heart rate. I usually pick a song to combine two moves into. Usually, I do the “lighter” move during the verses of the song, and the “harder” one during the chorus. This was a pretty quick strength training workout today but I was so tired from the long week!
After the gym, we decided to walk down the street to see if we could find somewhere to eat a healthy breakfast. Nothing really caught our eye, except a small little coffee shop on the corner of the street, called The Coffee and Tea Exchange. It was awesome inside!
The store was filled with barrels of magnificent smelling coffee and tea leaves (see the picture above 
). After smelling the beans in about twenty barrels, John and I both agreed we liked the “Carmel Macchiato” coffee the best and decided to order a quarter of a bag for the weekend. We also ordered drinks to go! John had a regular coffee with cream and I had an iced Strawberry Green Tea. I put some raw cane sugar in my drink which made for a nice little refreshment after the workout. We ended up walking and drinking the rest of the way back - where I had two bowls of Vegan Overnight Oats ready that I had made in case of an emergency the night before! I’ll be writing another post about my obsession with VOOs very soon!
After a few hours of surfing around on the computer, John & I decided to go shopping. I live a bus ride away from an Urban Outfitters Surplus Store – the perfect match for a shopping addict on a budget. John walked out with a a few T-Shirts and I left with a dress and a tank. We we’re both pretty hungry after that so we decided to head to lunch at Karyn’s Raw Gourmet.
Karyn’s Raw Gourmet is a raw, vegan restaurant located in the heart of Lincoln Park, Chicago. “Raw Food” in case you aren’t familiar, “is food that has not been cooked or exposed to temperatures over 118°F. At that temperature, the natural enzymes in food are completely destroyed” (Rawfoodlife.com).
When those enzymes are depleted, the body’s ability to digest at it’s optimum level and absorb nutrients is inhibited. Many raw foodists also choose to eat an organic diet. There are claims that eating a raw food diet contributes to weight loss, more energy, clearer skin, and improved overall health. I am not a doctor and cannot scientifically support these claims, but I do know that food that has not been cooked using unhealthy cooking methods is a better option than food that has.
We decided to order the Hummus as an appetizer: “Creamy cauliflower and red pepper puree. Served with crispy flax crackers and veggies”
This was my favorite dish of the whole meal – the hummus was light and creamy and the cauliflower was an excellent dipper. The crackers were awesome – they had a light nutty crunch, made with flax and sesame seeds. They reminded me of OSG’s Endurance Crackers.
We decided to split two meals as our main course: The Spinach Pizza (on top) and the Tamales.
The Spinach Pizza: An Italian herb crust topped with raw marscarpone cheese, tomato basil puree, and garlic oil infused spinach
Tamales : Corn husks filled with organic masa, tomato puree, mushrooms, asparagus, olives, extra virgin olive oil. Drizzled with a raw béchamel sauce and side of chipotle salsa
The spinach pizza was…. interesting. The base of the crust was made from almonds, with the tomato layer made of a tomato purree and garlic paste. The “cheesy” layer at the top was a mix of whipped mascarpone “cheese” and a few other things – I couldn’t remember what else the waitress said, it was all so intense! The texture of the pizza was closer to that of a mousse pie – it was really light and fluffy but the flavors were INTENSE. Almost TOO intense! John and I both agreed that it’d be better off mixed with some other sort of texture – we actually ended up dipping the leftover crackers from the appetizer in there!
The tamale (Featured on bottom) was great! The filling was a mixture of mushroom and asparagus – with the outside shell made of corn and almonds, served with a fresh mango and corn salsa. I ate the entire tamale and scrapped the leftover crust off of John’s plate. It was a bit on the oily side and pretty dense, but I definitely preferred it over the pizza!
We ended up ordering a Coconut Curry Icecream for dessert – but before I could manage to take a picture, our spoons were in the bowl! Oops! The dessert was good, but rich like the rest of the meal. Overall, we both thought it was a good experience and we’re definitely feeling an excited digestive system later on that day!
