Technology troubles :(

Hi guys!

So I’m having some trouble with Livewriter. Looks like my photos didn’t load last night (ggrrrrrrr) and I’m not really sure what is wrong . I’m getting by on free wifi in the hotel lobby ($45US a day for in room – no thanks!). I will probably go ahead and write today’s post and wait until I can get a better connection to post, hopefully from the coffee shop nearby or Starbucks.

We are having a great time and I can’t wait to show you all of today’s photos including our climb to the top of Diamond Head volcano!

Test

Test

Let it rip!

Aloha friends!

Sorry to be MIA for so long, it’s been a long and lovely day , starting with a solid 12 hours sleep! Got to sleep by about 11pm and woke at 11am, then left Adam for an hour while I hit up the Moana gym. I chomped on a Be Natural cranberry muesli bar on the way. I did a 45 minute session, 15 mins Elliptical, 10 mins hillwalk on treadmill, 7 minutes stepper, squats, lunges, plies, abs. ‘Twas great to work out, I felt awesome afterwards.

Since we basically slept through breakfast we went to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch.

Adam ordered Chicken with White Beans, Rice and Touch of Cream. It was so delicious! I had quite a few mouthfuls.

I kept it light with the beet, goats cheese, candied pecan and asparagus salad.

Plus we shared the bread basket. I had about 1/2 the rye serve.

After lunch we shared some Red Mango frozen yoghurt. Not bad for 90 calories. We split the pumpkin spice.

We strolled the strip for quite a while enjoying the sunshine. No rain today and beautifully warm and sunny!

Beer o’clock at 4.30pm . Heineken Light!

 

Plus a dip in the sea.

Once ready for dinner out we went to a sports bar near our restaurant for a cocktail. I had a sour apple martini. YUM!

Then we moved on to Nobu for dinner. I went to Nobu in July last year with my sisters Merilyn, Rosie and my mum while we were all in Hawaii for Merilyn’s 40th birthday holiday. It was one of the best meals of my life and tonight it did not disappoint! Adam was blown away!

Edamame to start.

Green peppers (warm and so good!)

Yellowfin tuna with jalapeno

Tuna tataki salad

 

New style scallop sashimi (amazing!) 

Miso cod (what I came back for, incredible!)

   

Tempura king crab (a highlight!)

Bento box signature flourless chocolate cake with green tea icecream. This was actually a chocolate fondant.

See!

Gooey and soft! We shared a bottle of Frog’s Leap SB from Napa Valley. It was delicious! The whole meal was amazing, I love Nobu!!!

Now were are relaxing again in the Banyan courtyard, what a lovely day! I’m so happy the sun came out. Our waiter at Nobu said there is talk of 40 foot waves out at Banzai Pipeline in the next few days so we are going to keep an ear out and the hire a car on a good day and go watch some surfing!

Aloha friends!

Sorry to be MIA for so long, it’s been a long and lovely day , starting with a solid 12 hours sleep! Got to sleep by about 11pm and woke at 11am, then left Adam for an hour while I hit up the Moana gym. I chomped on a Be Natural cranberry muesli bar on the way. I did a 45 minute session, 15 mins Elliptical, 10 mins hillwalk on treadmill, 7 minutes stepper, squats, lunges, plies, abs. ‘Twas great to work out, I felt awesome afterwards.

Since we basically slept through breakfast we went to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch.

Adam ordered Chicken with White Beans, Rice and Touch of Cream. It was so delicious! I had quite a few mouthfuls.

I kept it light with the beet, goats cheese, candied pecan and asparagus salad.

Plus we shared the bread basket. I had about 1/2 the rye serve.

After lunch we shared some Red Mango frozen yoghurt. Not bad for 90 calories. We split the pumpkin spice.

We strolled the strip for quite a while enjoying the sunshine. No rain today and beautifully warm and sunny!

Beer o’clock at 4.30pm . Heineken Light!

 

Plus a dip in the sea.

Once ready for dinner out we went to a sports bar near our restaurant for a cocktail. I had a sour apple martini. YUM!

Then we moved on to Nobu for dinner. I went to Nobu in July last year with my sisters Merilyn, Rosie and my mum while we were all in Hawaii for Merilyn’s 40th birthday holiday. It was one of the best meals of my life and tonight it did not disappoint! Adam was blown away!

Edamame to start.

Green peppers (warm and so good!)

Yellowfin tuna with jalapeno

Tuna tataki salad

 

New style scallop sashimi (amazing!) 

Miso cod (what I came back for, incredible!)

   

Tempura king crab (a highlight!)

Bento box signature flourless chocolate cake with green tea icecream. This was actually a chocolate fondant.

See!

Gooey and soft! We shared a bottle of Frog’s Leap SB from Napa Valley. It was delicious! The whole meal was amazing, I love Nobu!!!

Now were are relaxing again in the Banyan courtyard, what a lovely day! I’m so happy the sun came out. Our waiter at Nobu said there is talk of 40 foot waves out at Banzai Pipeline in the next few days so we are going to keep an ear out and the hire a car on a good day and go watch some surfing!

Maitai anyone?

Back again!

Maitai anyone? Yes please, I had one this afternoon. Then promptly fell asleep! Hopeless! That is what a 9 hour flight and no sleep does to you I guess .

Some Waikiki snaps.   

Palm trees .

  

We had lunch in the Banyan courtyard. I ordered the Mahi Mahi wrap. It was tasty and I had 1/2 and shared the other with Adam. Adam got the Mahi Mahi salad which was pretty average. I had a taste of his fish and cleaned up some salad.  

Anyway it was light and fresh so that made me happy .

We spent most of the morning waiting for our room to be ready and wandered the strip. We stopped by Food Panty and picked up some goodies.

Australian Food Blogger in US heaven – new Larabars and Clif Bars, Kashi cereal – what is a girl to do but buy the lot? Ha ha

 

After 4 hours of afternoon catch up sleep, soon it was time for a cocktail and dinner. We had a cocktail at the Beachhouse Restaurant bar in the hotel before dinner. I had a Pear Martini and it was great, no sweet .

 

Adam got an Apple Mojito which was also joy!

Then we were seated for dinner. We ordered the wine special which was Justin from Nappa, California.

 

There was a really big knife set at the table!

 

Fresh rosemary bread arrived and we devoured it in 30 seconds flat I think!

We shared an entree of seared Ahi with some kinda sauce that was lovely .

For my main I ordered Shrimp Scampi. I was expecting it to come with pasta but was pretty relieved when it didn’t because by the time I’d eaten the bread and tuna I was heading towards Fulls-ville.

Up close. 

Side of perfectly steamed broccoli.

And 20 oz of rib eye. Enough said. 

Sipping on some Gwautztraunimer (that is a mouthful) while blogging in the Banyan courtyard now. It’s quiet, warm and chilled. Loving Hawaii .

Hitting up the gym tomorrow then maybe the outlets since its going to rain all day tomorrow . We’ll see, come on sunshine you can do it!!!

Aloha!

Aloha friends!

We are in Waikiki, I’m blogging from the Banyan courtyard at the Moana Surfrider, just finished a gorgeous dinner we are watching the rain fall down. Yes, it’s raining. Seems we’ve arrived in the middle of some crappy weather . Luckily we are in Hawaii for 15 nights so we should get some good weather during that time.

But to back track, we ended up being in a total rush yesterday afternoon as we left Sydney. Around 12.30pm I met up with Merilyn and Martin for lunch at Kobe Jones, a japanese restaurant on the King St Wharf.

We started with Edamame.

Vegetable tempura.

 

Volacano rolls (california rolls with scallops on top)

 

Seared blackened tuna gnocchi.  

I had lots of edamame, 1/2 the volcano rolls shared with Mez, and 1 little piece of tuna and about 3 gnocci. The gnocci was really creamy and mustardy. Great, but really rich, I don’t think I could have finished the whole dish if I’d ordered it for myself. The volcano rolls were, as always, amazing .

Once Adam had arrived from his Perth connection (seriously late )  we went to the Qantas club 1st class lounge (Adam’s has access from his platinum frequent flyer programme) and I snacked on some cherry/pisatchio trail mix

and some hot roasted cashews.

We also got some drinks. I had 2 glasses of Veuve Cliquout

and Adam had Peroni. He ordered us some snacks as well (we only had about 30 minutes till boarding). At the lounge you can basically have whatever you like off the menu and they will make it in time for your flight. There are much more elaborate meals, stir frys etc. but we just went with quick and simple. In the end we were delayed about 20 minutes so we didn’t had to rush which was nice.

Organic beef burger for Adam.

Chicken BLT for me.

I had 1/2 the BLT and it was awesome! Yum yum! A little too much mayo but otherwise so tasty. 

Plane food + Gossip Girl.

Skipped the food, I was full.

Plane food (breakfast), skipped the quiche thingy, had a couple of bites and gave it to Adam. I had the yoghurt with my prepacked cereal which I didn’t eat when I got in to Sydney with the Adam’s yoghurt and mine on top, 2 x 100g packs.

 

Plus Julia + Julia again .

I didn’t sleep much unfortunately though the Jetstar flight was great. No hassles, quick and easy customs etc. a great ride.

Once we arrived at Moana Surfrider we promptly grabbed a coffee and sat on the rocking chairs to wait for our room. 

I love you Moana Surfrider .

 

More to come soon!!

Simple breakfast

Ahhaaa more blogging from Maccas – gotta love this free wifi with purchase of a bottle of water . After posting before I snacked on this new muesli bar I picked up at Coles yesterday. It is a Be Natural Cranberry bar and it was pretty good. For 111 calories it is satisfying and not too sweet, plus seems to not have much crap in it. The ingredient list is relatively short.

My Maccas blogging set-up . I’m using Adam’s Sony Vaio while were are away this month. Yay for a tiny, light and fast laptop!!

I’ve been walking around Sydney, checking out some shops and just spent about 2 hours in Dymocks looking at books. I picked up French Women Don’t Get Fat as I’ve heard it has some wonderful recipes in it and love the message that it puts forward (especially for when on holidays) so I thought it would be a good one to get me in the intuitive eating/eating for pleasure/mindfulness while on holiday mindset.

My tummy started rumbling around 9.30am and I stopped at a cafe in QVB for a piece of wholemeal toast with PB (vegetable oil laden Kraft Nuts unfortunately) and a skinny capp.

The coffee was terrible! Oh well, the toast was lovely and hit the spot. Caught up on some Jamie and Claire Outlander action as well.

I’m going to hangout out in the McCafe for a little while longer then go to David Jones and then meet Merilyn. Then I am back on the train to the international airport.

Hitting Sydney again!

Hi guys! I’m in Sydney now blogging from Maccas (free wifi), nearly on our way to Hawaii! Not long to go now. I had a good flight over from Perth on the red-eye and am now getting ready to go meet Merilyn for lunch in the city. Adam is coming this morning and we are meeting at the international airport at about 3 and leaving for Honolulu in the afternoon.

To recap on yesterday though, we spent most of the day packing and cleaning up the house for our housesitter Sam. Sam is looking after our house and Little while we are in Hawaii and Sydney in December.

I finally felt like a snack around 11am. I had some corn thins and cottage cheese and that was about all I could handle. I still felt ick.

I didn’t have a proper lunch but at about 2pm had 2 muesli breads with PB which took the edge off any hunger and was simple enough not to exacerbate my sick feeling.

The yummiest snack! So the headache I had in the morning kicked in badly yesterday. Not sure if it was dehydration or the sun during the race or what. The race left me pretty tired and sluggish all day though. I really think the amount of food I’ve eaten in the last couple of days contributed though to my sluggish feeling and general meh-ness of the race.

In the late afternoon, I had a beer with Adam, it was hot and we’d cleaned all day so we worked for our beer!

 

I also nibbled on some Sakata wholegrain rice crackers. For dinner we were supposed to meet Adam’s dad and stepmum at JusBurgers for a quick burger before my flight but there was a huge waiting list for a table so we gave that a miss and headed to the Subi Hotel. We ordered the Turkish bread and dips plate to share to start.

 

The dips were hummus, red capsicum and feta, oil and chives. I had about 1/2 of one of those pieces in the picture with lots of hummus.

Adam ordered the fish special which was gold band snapper, potato puree and Greek inspired salad. He said it was great.

 

I ordered the lightest thing on the menu pretty much, given I had little appetite and I wasn’t in the mood for meat or seafood.  This was the pumpkin, leek and feta risotto and it was absolutely delicious! I would go back for this again. On top there were bread crumbs and it looked like it had been baked for a short time to crisp up the top and brown off the feta. So good.

I savored every bite of this dish! Jack had a meat pasta dish which looked tasty and Ann had the pork belly and they both said they liked their food a lot.

I packed some cereal to have for breakfast this morning and a few bars to nibble if I get really hungry during the day or on the next flight. Even more exciting is that Mez and I are going to Kobe Jones for a japo lunch . Stay tuned, lots of fun adventures coming up!

Last race of the year – Deepwater Point 15km

Morning!

Last race of the year is done and done. I ran an ok time I think, but I felt terrible most of the run. It was super hot and 1/2 of the run was in direct sun the whole time, no shade. Despite the race starting at 7.30am it’s hot in Perth today!

For breakfast I had a very small bowl of Digestive 1st with Greek yoghurt.

I really wasn’t hungry for this at all but thought I should put something in my stomach before the race. Anyway, I wish I had skipped it because I felt full and sluggish the whole run. It was more of a mental game today for me. I wasn’t very focussed, felt yuk and just wanted to get it over with with 3km to go. Oh well, was a good run in the end I guess since my time was 1 hour 25 minutes 40 seconds (as I crossed the line). I’ll have to wait for the official times. Once back in the car I had 2 bites of an apple and chucked it – so wasn’t in the mood for it.

An hour and a half after finishing I still don’t feel like eating and have a headache. I hope I feel better soon!

Off to keep packing, cleaning and enjoy this gorgeous day – then I’m leaving on a jet plane .

Seafood and eat it

Just got back from a lovely family dinner up at Rosie’s. Rosie and my mum put on a gorgeous spread of seafood and an amazing dessert!

To recap, for lunch today I had my last Eatwell veggies pattie with mozarella and the rest of my chick pea curry with cottage cheese on top for protien.

Then we ran some errands and went to Woolies to pick up some last minute stuff. I noticed a new brand of PB so had to grab it! It’ll still be good in the fridge in a month’s time when we are home. I smothered some for a taste test on a toasted muesli bread!

 

Such a great snack.

Plus I shared a pink lady apple with Adam.

At the famer’s market this morning I picked up this treat for Rosie as a thankyou for having us. 

They look great! I sampled a few things from the stall (mostly breads) and they were all tasty.

Once we got to Rosie’s we had a nice selection of nibbles, of which I ate quite a bit . I definitely overate again tonight… but this time the food was worth it! Still tomorrow I need a really clean and light day before the holiday begins.

On the table we had carrots, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, stuffed capsicums, various cheeses, fig paste, spinach and feta dip, hummos, crackers and olives.

Then mum presented the scallops – all the meals were from this new Donna Hay cookbook

that Rosie received as a birthday present. I’m not sure of the exact names of the recipes but they were all delicious!

I know these scallops had thyme, butter, lime and salt on them. I went back for another couple after this . Scallops are my favourite seafood after all…

These jumbo prawns were lightly floured then tempura style shallow fried and sprinkled with a ground topping of cracked pepper, salt and chilli flakes. SO.GOOD!

My serve.

Foil baked pink snapper (the best fish ever).

My plate.

Mum made an amazing dressing for the fish with peanut oil, spring onion and ginger amongst other things. It was so fresh and tasty.

And finally Rosie made a syrupy orange cake. The oranges were incredible, they became totally candied and were just like toffee. So delicious. 

Served with Bannister Downs double cream.     

Stuffed to the brim! Time to get some shut eye before my race tomorrow morning and then its on to packing and cleaning all day.

Night!

Too much

Hi guys!

Wow, yesterday was a huge eating day! I literally felt stuffed and sick last night when I went to bed . But today is another day and I’m back on the bandwagon!

I started the morning early with a tiny bowl of Digestive 1st cereal, only a tiny bowl because I wanted to pick up this baby for morning tea! For the last 6 months that I have been working at my job I have walked past a Croissant Express and they have the best baguettes ever – they call them Frozwiches. I have no idea why, but they sure do taste great. Anyway I have been dreaming about a PB Froz for months and yesterday I satisfied the craving. The baguette was delicious and I ate the whole thing when I really probably was full after 1/2 but oh well. The PB on the other hand was spread a little thing for my liking. Probably a good thing in retrospect! Ha ha.

There was also a morning tea at work that I had forgotten about, a couple of hours late so I went along to that and there were homemade Florentines which looked amazing so I had a small Florentine too. No pics sorry.

For lunch I met up with some old colleagues and we went to Country Road Cafe. I ordered the frittata which came with salad. The frittata was tasty but super creamy and cheesy. Again, oh well. What can you do!

Anyway so I was completely stuffed from all that obviously so didn’t eat again till way later, like 9pm later, which is never a good thing with my belly because it usually means I don’t sleep very well. Some wine and beers later a bunch of us decided Mexican was a good idea…

Paella

Fiesta plate

Nachos

Chilli con carne

 

I had some cheese and jalapeno quesadilla, a tamale, chips and gauc, and heaps of paella and another beer. I totally overdid it and felt a bit sick afterwards . Of course, I slept badly too and woke up with a headache wishing I had eaten steamed vegetables. Gosh it is amazing the way crappy greasy food makes you feel as opposed to fresh, nutritious veggies and wholefoods.

Just went to the hairdressers and I’m blonde again! Couldn’t eat till about 10.30am and really all I felt like was a veggie juice. I popped into the Subiaco Farmers Market and ordered a Green Smoothie with a wheatgrass booster!

It hit the spot and I really do feel a lot better. I’m even contemplating some lunch now…

Lots and lots to do today, packing, cleaning, washing, errands, hanging with my guy!

Then tonight we are having dinner at Rosie’s place. Tomorrow I have my 15k race at Deepwater Point, then a Hen’s Day lunch and then I’m off on our month away .

It’s all happening here!!!