Hey Friends!  Happy Sunday afternoon 🙂

I hope your weekend has been fun, relaxing, productive, active, or whatever you were hoping it would be.

Mine has been a mixture of productive AND fun which I totally love, but before I share my weekend with you I want to share some of the yummy things we have been eating in the Rochford household along with my weekly workouts!

Workouts:

• Monday–This week I got back into lifting, which was a fun change.  Since moving to Colorado, I feel like I was getting more of my strength training through Barre and boot camp classes, which has been great!  I just have exercise ADD and REALLY love all things fitness, so switching things up often helps keep me interested.  I also taught my first cycle class in what seems like forever and LOVED IT.  So fun!
• Tuesday–Boot camp and taught my Cardio HIIT class at noon.
• Wednesday–Lifted again (woo!) and did about 30 minutes on the elliptical.  I really wanted to run outside but it’s so dang dark until about 7:15am and I’m just not comfortable running in the dark on my own.
• Thursday–took the day off and was super productive!
• Friday–Brian and I did our usual Friday morning Tabata and Total Strength group fitness classes.  Such a great group of people to be around 🙂
• Saturday–went for a jog and did yoga at Lululemon.  It was an AMAZING class!!
• Sunday–took the day off 🙂

Meals:

I had a couple of breakfast smoothies mixed in with my pumpkin egg white oats this week.

Vega actually sent me some protein powder to review and create a recipe with, so I added it to some smoothies and LOVE it!  While it’s good in smoothies, I think I want to bake with it.  Time to get creative in the kitchen!

In this smoothie, I combined blackberries, banana, spinach, protein powder and just a TOUCH of almond milk for an almost ice cream like treat 🙂  So yummy!

For me, I really love salads and raw veggies for lunch.  I’ve been eating them for years, so I think it’s like programmed in me to eat that way mid day.

This is a salad with green beans, cucumber, leftover shredded chicken, romaine, hummus and a brown rice wrap.

I also LOVE throwing just about anything and everything in the fridge into the bowl and calling it a salad.  Exhibit A (see below).  Bowl of spinach, romaine, black beans, hard boiled egg, tuna, salsa, bell pepper, and hummus.

For dinners this past week we had some serious winners!!

I whipped up a batch of Paleo Pad Thai (I could seriously eat the sauce of this stuff ALL by itself!)

We tried a new-to-us fish:  Rainbow Trout courtesy of Sizzlefish and served it alongside a tasty salad and roasted Brussels.

This was kind of like a Panera inspired meal with sweet potato chipotle soup (recipe coming this week and it’s SUPER simple!) served with a salad inspired by everything fall:  romaine and spinach topped with beets, roasted veggies, pecans, dijon, and salmon.

Weekend!

Saturday morning started with a run and “Flow and Joe” yoga at Lululemon in Cherry Creek with Marisa (from Uproot from Oregon) and Noah!  So fun and a great start to the weekend.

After that, I got busy on a NEW blogging project (can’t wait to share the details SOON!) before Brian and I got ready for a date night!

I feel like we cook so much at home, we really hadn’t experience any of the amazing Denver restaurants yet and there are SO many we want to try.  It was so fun to put on nice clothes and head out to an amazing dinner with my man 🙂

I picked a very “me” place called True Food Kitchen, which is surprisingly a chain but I am SO glad we ate there.  It honestly may be my new favorite restaurant.

The atmosphere at True Food Kitchen is relaxed, fresh, and inviting.  They have an open kitchen so you can see exactly what is happening back there, and the restaurant is decorated with fun and inspiring “healthy foodie” sayings.  We loved it!

I was overwhelmed with all of the wonderful menu options.  Everything just looked SO good.

I ended up choosing the inside out quinoa burger with a side of kale salad and sweet potatoes.

So the “burger” is made of the quinoa patties, but they are on the outside to serve as the bun.  The inside is feta cheese, tomato, lettuce, onion, and cucumber.   It was AMAZING!! Brian ate what I couldn’t finish 🙂

Brian enjoyed the turkey lasagna and loved every last bite of it.

Our waiter was actually FROM Indianapolis too (small world!) and bought us dessert, so we were able to try the butternut squash pie which was also AMAZING!! Seriously, if you are looking for a great restaurant with unique, plant-based, healthy food…True Food Kitchen is it.

Yum!

This morning, Brian and I met up with a friend for Breakfast/Brunch at a cute little restaurant called Gaia Bistro before strolling around the farmer’s market.

This restaurant was in a cute old house and the food was absolutely wonderful.  I didn’t snap any food pics but I had the Roasted Poblano Crepe, which was very tasty and a little spicy.  Another great way to start the day.

We shopped around for a bit then parted ways to get some other Sunday errands done 🙂

Such a great weekend!

Your Turn:

• What’s something fun/happy/productive you want to share from your weekend?