Taste of Chicago

I feel like all I did this weekend was eat and drink! Oh and run a 10k. 

The weekend started with a date night visit to “The Counter.” This build-your-own-burger place I first visited about a month ago with my aunt and sister. You get to pick if you want a ground beef burger/chicken/turkey burger/veggie burger and then pick all your toppings, sauces and what type of bun you want it on OR you can get it as a salad.

My first visit I wasn’t too impressed because I went the salad route, and I don’t really like salads. This time I went with the 1/3 lb burger and it was delicious.

A Cheddar burger with a side of BBQ sauce. Yum yum yum.

Sean had a burger with grilled onions, lettuce, feta, tomato and pickles.

After the race on Saturday, Sean and I rode our bike over to the Taste of Chicago.

The Taste is one of my favorite Chicago events. There are a ton of different vendors that sell a sample of their food. You purchase tickets and then use these at the different vendors. All the vendors have “taste portions” which are only 2-4 tickets so it’s really easy to sample a bunch of different food. Sean and I took fall advantage of the taste portions and got a bunch of fun food.

Smoked Chicken Sausage

Cheeeese Fries

Pot Stickers

Boneless Rib Sandwich

Cheese Bread

Eli's Cheesecake

1/2 a Cheeseburger

Frozen Chocolate Banana

I was trying so hard to capture all of our food on camera, but I got a little ambitious with the frozen banana hence the bite marks. I also forgot to take a picture of my rainbow cup ice cream. It was all so yummy and I am glad we went!

I am also glad we got to harass my friend Steven who was working at the Taste. HI STEVEN!

We ended the weekend with a bucket of beers (or two..) on Saturday night than brunch and some day drinking to celebrate the Pride parade on Sunday.

Bucket o' Beers

Brunch from Rockit

Gay Pride!

Mimosas

And if you are still looking at this super long post..thank you I will quit attempting to be a food blogger now and go back to my normal posting.

What did you do this weekend?

Does your city have any special food events?

Proud to Run 10K Race Recap

Yesterday I ran my first 10K since grade school! The Proud to Run 10k was held on the lakeshore path on Saturday morning. It started at 8:04 (I am guessing that has something to do with gay rights..anyone know?!) so it wasn’t too early of a wake up call for me.

I got up and did the easy 20 min bike ride over to the race and got there with plenty of time to spare. As I stretched and jogged to warm up my legs felt really heavy and tired, not a good way to start a race. Lucky as soon as I started running my legs felt great.

I really tried to run a smart race and not start out to fast. Unfortunately when my watched beeped 8:14 for the first mile I knew that was way to fast for me to maintain. I tried my best to keep up my pace for as long as I could which worked well until mile 3. After that it got a lot harder and I slowed down and took a few 30-45s walking breaks the second half of the race.

I ended up finishing in a great sprint with a time of 55:41 (8:58 pace). My garmin was a mess the whole time or I just did a really bad job of running the tangents because my watch splits were 6.31 miles in 55:49. Mile breakdowns below:

• Mile 1: 8:14
• Mile 2: 8:30
• Mile 3: 8:56
• Mile 4: 8:54
• Mile 5: 9:12
• Mile 6: 9:30
• Last .3 were an 8:21 pace

I was really happy to be done at the end, it was HOT. Over all the race was really well run..it wasn’t a huge race by any means (for Chicago) only 600 or so participants but it was really fun. Lots of people dressed up and where wearing gay pride clothes.

After the race I chugged some water, ate an orange slice and then tried to retrieve my bike from the very overly packed bike rack. It was a mess!

I don’t think I will have any race photos besides this one I snapped of myself at the end. Clearly I was trying to look my prettiest.

Overall Stats were 8/26 in my age group, 65/275 women, and 286th overall.

Happy to have finished a 10k! Anyone else race this weekend?

Baby I like it..

Guess what..A Spoonful of Smash is on Facebook!

If you all could go check out my page and hook a sister up with a “Like” I would really appreciate it!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Spoonful-of-Smash/210021302366983

Thanks ya’ll! Happy Friday night!