Run Plant Based

Formerly The Raw Project - Running on a Healthy Vegan Diet

Christmas 2016

by

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I am thankful to have today off work, much needed after the busy holidays. For most adults, the day after Christmas is more like Christmas – the pressures of the holiday celebrations are over, no more cooking or rich eating, and hopefully a relaxing time to enjoy gifts. I’m planning to meet my sister and mom at the gym for a little post Christmas workout and maybe a little shopping to restock fresh ingredients since I avoid Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods the week before Christmas to save my sanity.

There has been a lot of rich eating over the last two days, so much that I’m looking forward to getting back to my normal whole foods routine. Friday night hubby and I opted to stay home and eat simple before all the celebrations and I made miso soup with protein-packed soybean spaghetti.

Hearty and delicious with veggies.

Christmas Eve was very low key, we just had my mom over and hubby prepared this delicious Butternut Squash Pasta recipe we served with simple veggies.

We used Trader Joe’s vegan cream cheese in the sauce and it had a nice mild creamy and savory flavor.

Miko was pooped by the end of the evening after playing with my mom’s dog and going for a long walk in the cold to look at decorations.

Christmas morning we woke up to temps in the 20s and lots of frost – it was gorgeous.

And perfect for enjoying the warm indoors.

Miko got so many new toys, he wasn’t sure which to play with.

Leela and Smokey were just really happy to get new beds to snuggle in.

Christmas is a great excuse to deviate from our usual smoothie breakfast routine and I made hubby’s current favorite breakfast recipe – this Basic Vegan French Toast with fresh sourdough bread.

It’s such a great recipe using chia seeds and sourdough bread does amazing things for the sweet, savory, and tangy flavors.

Around lunch time I went out for a quick run to try my new gift from hubby – the Nike Edition Apple Watch!

For over the last year, I’ve been using a Pebble Time smartwatch for Runkeeper and general smartwatch stuff and really liked it for the battery life and always on display. So much so that I backed the Kickstarter fundraiser to get the next generation that included longer battery life, heart rate, and bigger screen. I was supposed to get it before running the marathon, but that didn’t happen and Pebble announced shortly after they were shutting down and selling off to Fitbit. I got a refund for the Kickstarter, but it was heartbreaking to see the possible end to their smartwatch concepts with lots of fun apps and watch faces. I decided to keep using the Pebble Time for as long as I could, but it started having issues with bugs in the final software update crashing and/or disconnecting from Runkeeper during runs.

Hubby sweetly surprised me with the Apple Watch and I had to try out it’s Runkeeper support which is very different from Pebble, the running activities can be launched and completely controlled from the Apple Watch and tracked standalone since it has GPS – awesome! And I’m already having fun replying to text messages with the voice option and can’t wait to try Apple Pay with it.

My run was just okay after such a heavy late breakfast, haha. And I’m a little sore from trying new runner’s strength exercises the day before. But it was not as cold and nice to get fresh air before our family gathering.

As usual we had too much food at our family party, lots of veggies, hummus, salsa, and holiday tortilla chips I found at Grocery Outlet colored with spinach and beet juice.

For the main course, we brought a Gardein Holiday Vegan Roast that included generous amounts of vegan gravy in the box.

It had a tasty seasoned crust and delicious stuffing in the center, paired nicely with mashed potatoes, green beans, and salad.

It’s been a great Christmas and I’m thankful for the amazing family, friends, and food! Now on to what seems like the awkward week between Christmas and New Year’s, actually a great week that’s usually peaceful and a great time to reflect on 2016 and set goals and plans to look forward to in 2017.

Comments

  1. Oooo the Apple Watch! That sounds fancy! I love my Garmin Forerunner 225 and probably won’t upgrade till it breaks. Do you like getting all those notifications when you run? I think I might be annoyed =P

    • The notifications are more muted on the Apple Watch, they don’t interrupt the active app like they did on the Pebble, so it seems a lot better. I tweak the notifications a lot too, Instagram and Words With Friends notifications aren’t needed on the watch. :-P

  3. Sounds like you had a wonderful Christmas! I agree, the day after Christmas is the best. You spend so much time cooking and wrapping presents and trying to please everyone that I just hit the couch and crash the next day. My dogs got new toys and the one dog always takes both for himself and hides them in a corner. They are so bad!!!

    • Haha, too funny on the toys. Miko keeps leaving one in bed and gets frustrated when he can’t find it and the cat has already claimed one of the new dog beds.

  4. Hiya! I know it’s been way to long since my last comment and I have a lot of catching up to do and I hope to do that over the coming weeks! I always LOVE all of your posts but your Christmas Posts are even MORE Special! I LOVE seeing what other veggie heads get for the holidays. All of the food looks amazing! And Miko is cute as ever!!!!

  5. Merry Christmas, Christine! It sounds like you had a wonderful weekend. Too funny, my hubby gave me an Apple Watch for my birthday last month. I LOVE it! Have fun playing with it, if makes me feel very James Bond like when I talk into it-haha!

  6. Such great eats! The butternut squash pasta looks delicious. I made something similar in the fall and loved it. :)

    I’m totally with you, the day after Christmas is more fun for me lately! It’s so much more relaxing and I can eat a bit healthier.