Food Fight Friday Food Tour De Force!

Hey triple F fanatics, how’s it goin?

Why do Fridays tend to rush at you full speed, acting as if Monday thru Thursday doesn’t even exist? What? Just me? Well for us every day is a Friday but only one day is @foodfightfriday, which means I get to catapult my food as fast and as hard as I can right at your blog… ready, set, FOOOD FIIGGHHTT…

We got to our new location on Monday and first things first, @dandays located his gym. I was feeling particularly staticky earlier this week, that’s what happens when I’m not running regularly and I have to adjust my routine monthly, so to remedy this I went in search of a yoga studio. A quick question to the right local and I was peddling my bike to yoga at 8:30 am, Wednesday morning. It’s been a few years since I’ve practiced and I fully intended on being the sucky one in class but to my surprise I took to it like I never stopped.

After an hour and a half of balancing my inner energy to my outer energy, I left class feeling light as a feather. This is despite that extra gain of 10 pounds I built on my rear last month 🥶… (I shit you not… yes, I just dropped the “s” word).

I even made a friend the first day of school 😍. Since I always forget to get a Food Fight post together until I realize there is #fff blogs flying at my face, I thought I’d take you with me to yoga and all the way up through dinner. Shhhhh 🤫 spoiler alert!

This may look like a sugary, carby (is carby a word? 🤷🏼‍♀️), candy like fancy latte but it really isn’t. Which, by the way, iced coffee, the size of which I’m used to, does not exist down here. I’m used to pulling up to 7/11, Starbucks or any other California coffee vender and having the option of walking away with a bucket of coffee, not in Costa Rica my friend. In Costa Rica when you are lucky enough to find a joint that makes iced coffee and you order one Togo, you are often handed a slightly larger mini Dixie cup filled with mostly ice. I seriously truly thought that the world ran on coffee like the United States does. Sometimes I’m tempted to order two and just double fist it like the savage I am 😉.

Today, I had yoga in the a.m. where I peddled my bicycle the short mile and half to center my namaste 🙏. Dandays took off to the gym at the same time as me so we peddled together. When I finished class I walked my bike to the nearest coffee shop with my new yoga friend. She said this place had the best coffee and if you couldn’t guess from my bucket gripe in the previous paragraph I’m sort of a coffee addicted snob, brat, connoisseur, aficionado, a professional drinker of coffee if you will. We both ordered an iced latte with coconut milk and this is what the barista created (barista is a fancy word for coffee art-teest). There is no added sugar or added guilt, just pure caffeine and pleasure in this cup (okay, it’s topped with shredded coconut but who’s counting).

The perfect after class treat and it even came in a normal sized cup. Still not as large as I prefer but at least I’m able to take the appropriate 7-10 minutes to finish it rather than the two slurp cup I’ve been getting acquainted with. My friend had to run off so I hopped on my bike and peddled the rest of the way home.

Upon opening the door I was able to quickly beat Dandays to the shower even though he’d been home for awhile. Gotta love Steemit working with me on that one 😉.

My after yoga meal was a half mason jar of gluten free over night oats accompanied with 9 almonds and 5 peacans… I already know I’m a freak for counting out my toppings 🤓. I did not get a picture of this but I did snap a picture of my morning smoothie topped with gluten free gogi berry granola from the day before… please accept this in place of my over night oats…

I technically had a smoothie similar to this one before yoga so it totally counts guys. Usually my smoothies consist of 3 strawberries, 5 chunks of freshly cut pineapple, a handful of stemmy spinach (the spinach in CR has some strong stem action going on), 1/2 tablespoon chia seeds, 2 teaspoons maca powder, 2 teaspoons moringa powder, 1 heaping scoop of sunwarrior chocolate plant protein, and 3-5 small ice cubes with about a cup and a half of water. The only difference between the pictured and my Usual is the toppings and the almond milk I used to make the smoothie bowl a little creamier.

Anyway, I had soaked chickpeas in water the night before with the intention of making falafel for dinner. Yesterday I whipped up and am working on perfecting a simple hummus recipe and with the left overs I thought falafel would make a good contribution to the hummus party.

Dandays and I chilled at the beach this after noon listening to the thunder and predicting when we were going to get rained on. Yesterday we were so relaxed at the beach, relaxing in that “I’m not quite asleep but I’m definitely not awake” state when without warning the tide decided to help us wash the sand out of our ears. I jumped up and grabbed our back pack faster than if a spider fell on me and we both collectively laughed at our now sandy and soaked beach towels, clothes, and shoes. Today we made a point to not get wet!

Around 3:30 I rushed us off the sand to the nearest grocery store to grab a pod of garlic (what do you call those flowers of garlic anyway? I know the Clove is the individual so would the group be called a gang? A pod? An AA meeting?), an onion, and a Diet Coke… stop judging me. I’m quite aware it’s an aspartame extravaganza in a plastic party I’m consuming, Nancy! We got home and I immediately got to work on the falafel.

Half a bunch of cilantro, red onion, 2 cups of chickpeas and 3 cloves of garlic later I added several secret spices and viola… perfectly seasoned falafel was born. Because I didn’t have flour I added almond meal and sesame seeds to help bind the batter but it didn’t work too well. I also had to bake them being that I didn’t have any other oil other than olive oil on hand. This tactic proved to work out well with the freshly baked Camote fries complimenting the pita I was about to make.

I had a bowl of hummus I made the night before, baked falafel, camote fries, left over gold potato fries, left over broccoli and carrot medley, tomato cucumber salad and a tahini sauce to make pitas out of. Also, I didn’t take a picture of this either because I suck a big one so instead I offer a picture of the hummus Mediterranean plate I made for us the night before…

Instead of the purple cabbage slaw here, imagine a whole wheat pita stuffed with baked falafel and that hummus, and instead of those pita chips, imagine a layer of tomato cucumber salad in the sand which, and instead of a plate, imagine a pita pocket, and you’ve got a picture of our dinner tonight.

I was able to grab a shot of the aftermath…

It doesn’t look like much now but before stuffing our soup coolers all of those bowls and plates were filled with fixings to build the perfect pita. There will be more to come on that “hummus perfecting” I’m up to. Dandays is going to help me with my first recipe video so I have to get the recipe just right. Also in Costa Rica yellow lemons are very difficult to come by and when you do encounter them they are more expensive than you can imagine so my recipe utilizes something other than lemons… stick around my blog to find out what it is.

Thanks for the opportunity to entertain you for a minute and happy Food Fight Friday to everyone reading this and everyone who is just skimming this, you know who you are 🤡. I’ll be off going around not reading and not commenting on your Triple F contenders now 😉.

Pura Vida ✌️