Hey guys!

I hope you are all having a fantastic week! I’m glad to hear you all enjoyed yesterday’s Blend 2013 recap! As promised, today’s post is all about…

THE FOOD!!

We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s do this!

Tess and I had one of the later flights in. We met up with Heather, Linz, and Stephanie at the airport, scored a BMW rental (woo!), and arrived at the Hyatt Escala Resort around 5:30pm. Everyone else quickly headed downstairs for the start of the cocktail hour hosted by Silk, but I HAD to have a shower so fashionably late it was! 😉

By the time I got downstairs, everyone was EVERYWHERE! It was so overwhelming! I quickly grabbed a drink (a Ginger Refresher) and managed a few sips in between hugs, moments of jumping up and down (when I turned and saw Meg), and nearly crying (the moment I finally got to meet Sarena after TWO YEARS of following her blog!)

It wasn’t long before we were all ushered into the dining hall for dinner. I ordered a glass of Chardonnay and was on my way…ok, that rhyme was totally an accident…WORD! 😉

The dinner the resort prepared was amazing!

Mixed greens salads, bulgar wheat salad, and a big pot of sautéed veggies…

Quinoa vegetable cakes with tomato pepper coulis (whatever the heck that is), chicken with roasted potatoes and natural jus, and Alaskan halibut with brown rice pilaf and citrus nage (nage? umm, wtf?!)

And for dessert? Eh, you can read! 😉

I managed to get a little bite of everything (the quinoa cake was my favorite…I’m still trying to figure out what all was in it and that coulis red stuff was fantastic! 😉 Oh and I also got a bowl of carrot ginger soup (I took a picture of the pot it was in but it was SO not pretty…though it tasted amazing…and kinda made me wish they were serving grilled cheese! ;))

Laura, Lindsay, and I split the three desserts…they were all pretty tasty but the panna cotta (my first time trying) was out of this world!! I may or may not have gone back for one of my own a little later! 😉

The next morning after a hellacious workout led by Neil of GPP Fitness, which I am STILL sore from, we enjoyed a co-hosted breakfast by Muesli Fusion and Laughing Cow!

There were several flavors of muesli, bagels (regular AND gluten-free), various cream cheese spreads, fruit, and Chobani.

I got a sampling of the bagels and cream cheese (the garden herb on the everything bagel was my fave), a few pieces of fruit, and a bit of muesli (again, a first for me!)…then I went back and tried the three other flavors of muesli (the An-Ox is the BEST!)…needless to say, I was STUFFED after this meal! Lol

It wasn’t long after breakfast that we were zumba-ing it up (I swear it’s a miracle I didn’t toss that muesli), but afterwards, we were left to our own devices…

Which CLEARLY translates into B-E-E-R-R-U-N! 😉

After sampling some tasty selections at Wasatch Brewery…the smoked porter was amazing (dark chocolate, caramel, coffee, and smoke?!)…we did a little bar hopping and ended up at the No Name Saloon.

Laura, Heather, Michelle, Calee, Heather, Sonja, and I all worked on a basket of house-made chips, salsa, guac, and some un-pictured carrots and celery before leaving the bar and heading out for a real meal.

We had seen good reviews for Riverhorse on Main before heading out that night and decided that’s where we would have dinner.

Roasted red beets on potato crisps shared with Heather and Michelle and my entrée of slow roasted pork shoulder, whipped potatoes, and caramelized fennel.

The service was VERY poor, but everyone seemed to enjoy their meal…except for me. Unfortunately I paid thirty bucks for two pieces of delicious fennel and some apple slaw because the meat definitely left something to be desired…twss?! 😉 Of course, since we had a table full of foodies, there were random forkfuls of things passed around the table. I think Heather got the best dish of the night. Her pistachio crusted trout with pomegranate salsa was fantastic!

The next morning, after ANOTHER hellacious workout (we do NOT love burpees!), our Chobani hosted breakfast TOTALLY made up for the dinner disaster!

Smoothies, granola, and omelets…oh my!!

And pancakes too!!! 

It seriously took me an hour to get my food (the omelet line was VERY popular), but it was totally worth it! I ended up with two pancakes topped with plain Greek yogurt, granola, dried apricots, almonds, and a few chocolate chips, berries, and one of the best omelets I’ve ever had…egg whites with spinach, mushrooms, zucchini, and onion stuffed AND topped with crumbled goat cheese!

I know…if I hadn’t been ready to chew my arm off, I probably would have ohh-ed and ahhh-ed for a good 20 minutes over this plate…sadly, it lasted about 5 minutes! Lol

They also had oatmeal, which I snagged for the road air, but apparently TSA hates ALL healthy food…not just hummus and so I never actually got to taste it! 🙁

What I SHOULD have done was ordered another plate of this to take on the plane…

On the way back to the airport that day, Tess, Amanda, and I made a stop at Cafe Rio to have lunch after hearing Meg rave about it the night before!

And she had every right to rave!

I ordered the grilled chicken tostada with black beans with guac, sour cream, and an amazing tomatillo dressing…

I mean Ahhhh-freakin’-MAZING!!

I may have never touched a tomatillo before, but I have GOT to figure out how to recreate that stuff!

Now, if you made it through all that, how about hopping on over to Peas & Crayons, giving Jenn a shout, and partying it up with the best of us?

I’m willing to bet a FEW of my Blends will be linking up! 😉