The Race to Dog Mountain

That's right fellow Oregonians I'm blogging about the W word... Washington! OK not exactly about Washington but about a trail on that side of the Colombia.
On a day I was feeling particularly motivated I took on this monster of a trail. Dog Mountain, about an hour east of Portland in the beautiful Colombia River Gorge which is a mecca of amazing hiking.

Side note you have to cross this banging bridge "The Bridge of the Gods"

Yea, the view was so gorgeous I nearly drove off it...

Back to the hike!
It was a pretty grueling hike straight uphill I was huffing and puffing from the start. But I just kept thinking of the reward at the end.

After about 2 hours:

Hey there's Oregon in the other side!

At this point I thought about how cool it would be to zip-line down to the water... or just roll down.

Another hour later I reached my final view point!

Ahhhhhh so worth the 3 hours of pain, sweat, dirt, and most importantly fresh air!!!

Oh yea I saw this along the way too

Wooo I did it. It took around 4 hours to complete the 7 miles but man I felt good afterwards!

That was my latest adventure, here's an update on the hunt for the perfect Paleo taco meat:

So I came home from work a few nights ago and my mom had done it, she had created some pretty delicious taco meat Mmmmmmmm. So good I ate until it hurt, I mean I couldn't walk it hurt so good. So you're thinking all's good then right?! Problem solved, mission accomplished. Nope. She couldn't remember what she put in it, a little of this, a little of that. So the mission is still on, the mystery unsolved! Game on taco meat, game on.

To be continued...

Outdoors

So if I haven't made it clear I'm on a journey to improve my health and heal my body and as I make more positive changes I'm able to do more and more things so this weekend I went on a 2 hour bike ride around the city and yesterday I went on an easy but amazing hike near Mt. Hood.

The hike started off a little rocky, my roommate and I originally planned on going on a different hike but I realized I missed the turn about 20 miles after I missed it... so we regrouped and found a different hike closer to where we were. Mirror Lake! It's a little workout going uphill for 30 minutes and then you reach an amazing view!

That's me!

We leisurely walked around the lake enjoying our time up there with the crisp, clean, mountain air! 

It doesn't take a huge long hike to feel great and enjoy nature. Baby steps people. Get out there even if it only lasts an hour!

Leftover omelet: spaghetti

Every morning one of the first things I do when I wake is make myself an omelet. I use one whole egg and 3-4 egg whites. Mmmmm protein! Because it's morning and I don't want to put a lot of work into it I normally just stuff the thing with leftovers so here's this mornings creation:

Spaghetti Meat Omelet

Spaghetti

Here's an easy recipe for paleo "spaghetti"!

3 zucchini (or 1 giant zucchini like in my last post)

1 jar of tomato sauce -make sure no corn or sugar is in it! (they like to sneak that in there)-

2 pounds ground meat

2tbls olive oil

1 garlic clove

A couple leaves of fresh basil

Step 1:

Chop or slice if you have the patience your zucchini.

Step 2: 

fry up that meat and add the sauce. Let simmer for a bit then keep on warm while your cooking the zucchini.

Step 3: 

In a large pot add zucchini, olive oil, chopped garlic cloves, and chopped basil. Turn stove up about halve way and keep stirring the zucchini so it cooks evenly. I like my zucchini a little crunch so I don't cook it all the way. Feel free to experiment!

It will look something like this yummyness!

A Saturday In The Life Of...

OK so Friday was a rough day. I found out I have arthritis... at 19! AND I've had the wrong inhaler for the last 4 YEARS so when I was hiking and wheezing and thinking my inhaler didn't work because I had let myself go and was fat as hell it was all because my inhaler prescription was switched for whatever reason and I never had this explained. So with all this my emotions were on high and I ended up crying in the backseat of my dads truck while my parents were bike shopping...

SO after giving myself a day to process and move on I was determined to start Saturday morning a new. I woke up promptly at 5:50am which was way annoying because my alarm was set for 7:50am it is Saturday after all. But I guess it's a good thing because it's just another sign of how much energy living Paleo has given me! Woot! Goodbye to the days of sleeping 10-12hours when I was a sick mess with no idea what was wrong with me. So I woke made myself a spicy tomato omelet and hit up a local farmers market.

I got me some of these:

Then planted these!:

TOMATOES!

I was way excited to grow my own tomatoes and save money! Then I realized the plants were $15 each and they will yield 5-6 tomatoes... That's $3 a tomato, not to mention the soil and the pots and the cages... So this turned into a somewhat expensive hobby but it will be fun to watch them grow and whatnot a guess.. JK I'm still excited about them and proud of myself for planting and growing something.

Think my Saturday was done after this? naw that just catches us up to noon.

I planted some flowers for my mom cuz I was on a roll planting things, and then I looked at my car and decided to tackle the deep cleaning I've been wanting to do to it for a while now.

OK I kinda HAD to clean my car because a tomato plant tipped over in the back but boy did it need it and I would have gotten around to it eventually I'm sure.

When I say I deep cleaned my car, I mean I took a toothpick and cleaned the gunk out of every crack and I vacuumed in every crevice. I washed the outside scrubbing the front twice because there are bug guts from my road trips which after round two of scrubbing I determined some bugs just do not come off the front of your car (it adds character?) and was finally done. As you can imagine this took a couple hours so I brought out the stereo and pumped some music while I was working (get over it neighbors).

Finally I watched Eat Pray Love while chopping giant zucchini (spelled that right without spell check!) and made zucchini spaghetti.

And that has been my Saturday in a nut shell. Man it was a long day, did you make it through my rambles? I guess the point of the story is to show how eating this way has given me energy to do things I could never do all in one day before... endless possibilities and all that. But if you got that the moral of the story is I had a break down and cried in the back of a truck yesterday I guess that works to!

Any-who I hope to upload some of the recipes I like soon so stay tuned!