Sharing more about why I started to eat red meat again, how I’m feeling, and a friendly reminder that the best eating strategy is the one that works for you. No shade or judgement here.  

Hi friends! How are you? I hope that your week is going well! We had dinner with friends, family dinner at madre’s, Mass, NCL, the usual fun stuff. This is our first full week of school + homeschool so we’re officially back into it. Good luck to all of my mama friends out there as we head back into the chaos!

For today’s post, I wanted to talk a little bit about MEAT. I realized a couple of weeks ago this this summer was my 10 year beefiversary after not eating red meat, or much meat, for most of my life.

I stopped eating meat when I was eight years old because I read in Tiger Beat that Jonathan Taylor Thomas was a vegetarian. Since I was DEFINITELY going to marry him – he just needed to meet me – of course, I had to be a vegetarian, too. (And yes, my parents totally tried to talk me out of it but I was a stubborn little thing and they supported me.)

I didn’t eat meat much at all until I was in high school and even then, it was a little iffy for me. I eventually added it back in during college (eating low carb will kind of force you to), met the Pilot, saw a bunch of documentaries and read a particularly frightening book, and then found myself again as a pescatarian, then a vegetarian, and for a couple of years, a vegan.

I loved eating plant-based and still love vegan food. (A random fact about me is that I went to raw vegan culinary school. This chocolate tart is the best vegan tart you’ll have in your liiiife.) I had added fish back in, and right before I got pregnant with Liv, I started eating chicken again. The internet went wild. Also that was back in the day when a trash post that took me 30 minutes to write would get 100+ comments. Those were the days haha.

When I was pregnant with P, I was craving a steak, so I came home and asked the Pilot if he’d grill one for me.

You should have seen the joy on his face. He went to Whole Foods, grabbed a beautiful grass-fed steak, grilled it to perfection, and I ate the entire thing.

When I told my acupuncturist about it, he said, “You need to eat flesh and blood to make flesh and blood.” Primal lol.

Since then, I haven’t really looked back, and now I eat meat multiple times a week. While I don’t think we need insane amounts of protein, I definitely think it’s important. (I still believe that fiber and micronutrients are the most important!)

Eating beef again after being a vegetarian

Anyway, now that I’ve been all over the place as far as meat consumption goes, here are some things I’ve learned along the way:

– Quality makes all the difference in the world. It’s important to me that the products we use are responsibly and sustai

Sharing more about how I’ve been working on Spanish over the past couple of years and what has helped me the most. Spoiler: Duolingo did nada for me.

Hi friends! How are you? I hope that you’re having a lovely morning. We did a waterpark and theme park yesterday, so I have a feeling today will be a little more low-key.

Now that we’re heading into our 4th week in Spain, I figured I’d do a little update on my Spanish journey and some of the things that have helped me the most. I think that as an adult, it’s so important to be a *beginner* at things; to challenge your brain in a new way and try out the hobbies and activities you’ve always wanted to do, even if you’re not good at first. I know many of my friends out there have a goal of learning a new language, so I hope this post is helpful! I’d also love to hear any strategies that have worked for you.

My Spanish journey

A little background:

– Growing up, my mom’s side of the family often spoke Spanish. Because of this, I’ve always been able to understand it, but never spoke it. I would do the thing where my family would ask me something in Spanish, and I’d respond in English. When people would speak Spanish around me, I knew what was going on, but didn’t contribute to the conversation.

– I took Spanish classes in elementary and middle school (super basic stuff) and minored in Spanish in college. I thought that it would be my chance to feel fully confident and fluent in Spanish. I wrote essays, read novels, analyzed poetry, but maybe spent 5% of the time in my college Spanish classes actually SPEAKING Spanish. So once again, it just solidified my understanding, gave me the ability to write and read in Spanish, but didn’t really get me to my goal of feeling confident speaking.

– A couple of years ago, I decided that I was going to start practicing again and really get the hang of things. We love to travel, I love to be able to interact with people in different locations, so it became really important to me. Some of our closest friends are Colombian, and they have friends who speak Spanish, so I wanted to be able to contribute and feel more comfortable with speaking. Also, I would like to start working with IHP clients in Spanish starting early next year.

I tried a few different things to refresh my skills and feel more confident speaking.

Here’s what has made an enormous difference and here’s what did absolutely nothing.

Learning Spanish as an adult

APPS:

I have not found an app that is helpful for real-world situations. I’ve tried both Duolingo and Babbel and was unimpressed with both. I feel like it’s a lot of matching and vocabulary, but little understanding behind the grammatical rules and how to use the languages in real life. Also, most of the time, you don’t even remember what you were doing. Even with using apps on an on for a bit, I didn’t learn anything new.

VIRTUAL AND IN-PERSON TUTORING:

This has been the biggest gamechanger for me. <

Hi friends! How are you? Hope you’re having a happy Monday! I’d love to hear about your weekend and what you were up to! Today, I’m sharing a very exciting Alinea review!

In 2017, we took an AMAZING trip to Chicago to celebrate our 10th anniversary. We met up with our friends Betsy and Jeremy (who live in San Diego) for a weekend of fun, including ridiculous restaurants, a show (HAMILTON! It was everything), and lots of shopping.

Whenever we meet up with them, it’s like no time has passed at all. Since we move so often, we’re lucky to have friends all over the world. I feel so fortunate that our time in San Diego introduced us to these wonderful friends, who are really more like family.

I’ll be recapping some of the adventures, including where we stayed + all about Hamilton in the am, but for now, let’s talk about the food.

Chicago Eats: Alinea Review + Menu Details

Oh, the food.

In Chicago, there’s an awesome restaurant every 20 feet or so. I could stay there for 2 weeks, go all out for every meal, and not even begin to touch all of the best dining possibilities. While we depended on your amazing suggestions + online reviews to make restaurant decisions, going into the trip, we knew there was one place we had to go: Alinea.​

Alinea Chicago Booking​

The Pilot and I are huge fans of Chef’s Table on Netflix -it’s one of the few shows we both like- and when we saw the episode featuring Alinea and Chef Grant Achatz, we knew we had to go at one point or another. When we de

Hi friends! Hope your morning is going well. I have a long post tomorrow about creating a healthy relationship with food, but today, I wanted to re-share this oldie but goodie in honor of the upcoming “all things green” holiday.

Not only is this is the best St. Patrick’s Day cocktail, it’s the best cocktail for anytime, really.

There’s not too much “Irish” about me. There’s a little bit on my great-grandmother’s side, the fact that I used to Irish Step dance (I had a mean slip jig), and I married an Irish man. He introduced me to wonderful things about his family’s culture -they actually own a bar in Ireland that we’d love to visit someday!- including this cocktail. It has a rich sweetness to it, a little goes a long way as it’s very rich, and is absolutely perfect for the upcoming holiday.

We’ve had some pretty memorable St. Patrick’s Days, like when we visited Savannah and the power went out in the entire city. (I was convinced it was aliens or an attack of some sort.) But with all of the ones we’ve spent together, my favorite was the night we stayed home in Valdosta, watched movies and drank copious amounts of this cocktail.

My version is with almond milk, and the Pilot’s is with heavy cream or regular milk:

[One of these things is not like the others. Also, these are older pics but my go-to almond milk right now is the Malk brand]

As you guys know, I tend to stay away from dairy for health/skin/autoimmune reasons. I don’t stay away from Bailey’s Irish cream for any reason aaaaaand they now make a dairy-free version that’s pretty good 😉 I also have added back some dairy with success after healing my gut!

Here’s the recipe for my favorite cocktail, which I’ve dubbed “The Lucky Irish Girl.” Even though I’m mostly Irish by association, St. Paddy’s is one of my favorite holidays. Hope you enjoy this drink as much as we do!

Sharing my thoughts and review on Darin Olien’s book Superlife and what I learned.

Hi friends! How’s the morning going? I hope you’re having a great day so far. It’s been *slightly* cooler around here lately. Just to the point where the air feels nice and fresh without being too cold. The mornings have been really lovely.

For today’s post, I wanted to share my review and thoughts on Darin Olien’s book, Superlife. Written in Olien’s engaging conversational style, Superlife is a one-of-a-kind comprehensive look at dieting and nutrition, a timeless and essential guide to maintaining the human body and maximizing its potential.

Superlife Book Review

You may know Darin from a couple of places:

1) he was Zac Efron’s knowledgeable sidekick in Down to Earth (which I pretty much spent mentally debating who was more attractive. In the end, I think it’s a tie.)

photo source

2) he’s one of the creators of Shakeology! This is Beachbody’s protein shake, which is packed with superfoods and nutrients. I drank it religiously and loved it for years, but stopped drinking it when I was pregnant with P and never really got back into it. It tastes amazing.

When I saw that Darin had a book, I instantly downloaded it to my Kindle app. I finally had the chance to dive in and finish it, and wow. While a lot of it was info that I already knew from being in the health and wellness space for a while, I still learned a ton. It also was a gentle nudge to get back to some healthy habits that have fallen off