I made it through to Wednesday!  My work was a bear this week, and it is supposed to be my slow week. Not sure what happened there, but it was bad timing with me watching John’s biz while he is away.  Good thing it was really rainy because I would have had to neglect the garden anyway as I was burning some midnight oil.

I have tried a couple new to me foods lately.  Normally I don’t like to drink shakes and smoothies for meals because I like to chew my food and they never seem to last that long. However, when it is really hot, I just don’t feel like eating much and that is when I drink stuff.

I tried this because it has 15 grams of protein and not a ton of sugar.

It was good, actually! Not too sweet and not too yogurt tangy, if that makes sense. It was heavy enough in texture to be satisfying. I did have to really shake it up as the yogurt was really thick at the top. I might try a chocolate one some time.

You know I like dried fruit for ride boosts, like dates and dried pineapple. We were out of dates and I was going to get some at the grocery store when I saw these coconut date nuggets by the same company. The price was the same as a box of dates, so I picked these up.

These are just ground up dates rolled in coconut. I could probably make them myself, but meh, not this time.  I love these, however! They are very tasty and pack energy punch into each piece. One nugget has about 67 calories (pretty much a whole date). They are pretty rich, so not something I would go overboard and snack on when not riding, which is a good thing.

My drink of choice during the hot weather is seltzer water.  We have a Soda Stream and John did some sort of hack where we can hook up a refillable CO2 canister to it, which is waaaay cheaper than getting the Soda Stream brand ones. Then we use extracts to flavor the water. I don’t like the sweet, so we make unsweetened ones for me — lemon is my favorite, and John will make a stevia one for himself.

I don’t always drink it in stemware, but it classes things up, don’t you think?

After a hard few days of work, it was a treat to walk downtown tonight and partake in Take A Bite.  That’s the sidewalk food sampling thing that happens on Wednesday evenings in July and part of August. This is the first one I’ve gotten to this year. Where the heck does the time go??  It’s just a 20 minute walk to downtown from our house. I know I keep saying it, but I love how close we are to things like this.

Really nice evening. I decided on some pasta that sounded really good. This was tortellini with sauteed chicken, asparagus and roasted peppers in a creamy pesto sauce:

Yum! This was really good. I really like tortellini. This plate was $5, which is the most any dish will be at this event.  Good wife that I am, I also picked up a brownie for John from a place that makes amazing brownies.

Then it was time to sit in the park:

Isn’t this beautiful? Our city park. All of our recent rain has kept the lawns pretty lush around here. They look great for August.

Lots of exercise today. 17 miles of riding this morning and then 3.5 miles of walking (gotta hatch those eggs 😀 ).  Things will get back to a little more normal pace tomorrow, thank goodness. And Thursday is also John’s birthday!