THE PERFECT BREAKFAST

My whole life I have had cold cereal for breakfast. If it was a special occasion I knew I could make pancakes or some sort of baked good but I was happy with that for 16 years of my life. Then when I was 16 I decided that cereal had a terrible aftertaste but you know what still did (but managed to be edible while in the car?)... SlimFast Shakes! So had those for two awful years because I thought they were good (they weren't, I am sure my body still holds a lot of those chemicals!). When I went off to college it was BELGIAN WAFFLES EVERY DAY because why not?! It was such a cool thing in my mind and the only time I had waffles that were not frozen was on vacation at the free continental breakfast (and I lived for those trips!).  Then I married Drew and he usually does cereal so that's what I went back to doing till my pregnancy with little A. I had terrible texture issues, most of which I still carry to this day! But also something about your 3 year old leaving around bowls of his stinky breakfast cereal makes you lose interest in it real fast. So long story short, I have not had cereal for breakfast (other than maybe once or twice a year) for nearly the last 5 years. I don't miss it, my kids all eat it (cheerios or honey bunches of oats) but I still cannot stand the stuff. So since that time I have usually been content to have a muffin or fruit and toast for breakfast, especially when I was going for a run (PB toast has been my pre-race ritual since forever!).

Well, while we were in Costa Rica almost exactly 9 months ago, I had a lot of life-changing moments. One of these was this amazing dish called a Casado that I ate nearly every lunch and/or dinner that I could manage to find it. It was the most perfect meal with the best mix of colors and flavors and simplicity but complexity (does that make sense) I could ask for in a dish. I would eat that dish every day of my life if I could.

me with not a casado but still an (pesto/zucchini/mushroom/eggplant/etc) amazing dish... I am all about those Umami flavors since doing the whole30 a few years back!)

Anyway, something else I started doing in CR was to have a breakfast that included two perfectly runny sunny side up eggs. I couldn't figure out how they made them to not burn or have parts of the white that were too overcooked they could not be eaten...and over the course of the last nine months that quest to make the perfect runny eggs has been made....

Yup. Over the last nine months I have been eating two eggs (nearly) every morning for breakfast and it has been amazing. Sometimes scrambled or HB if I can't manage to wait long enough for the sunny side up version, but always two eggs with something. At first I tried roasted veggies, then toast but ultimately I had a HUGE bag of lentils given to me by Keely when she moved so I have been cooking a batch of lentils and having some every day with my eggs. The problem is, I would eat the egg but usually only a few bites of the lentils. They needed something extra. I tried cheese. But it seemed to heavy, so I tried salsa. Brilliant! This past week I roasted some zucchini and realized I had at last created my perfect breakfast, a filling one with the flavors and the beauty to rival the Casado!

Seriously my favorite combination of all time (I also recently added the red peppers for just a bit of "crunch"), and I found out after trying to cook my eggs about a hundred different ways that the key to the perfect eggs is twofold: 1) LOW heat (I keep my eggs at a "3" out of 10 on my stovetop), and COCONUT OIL (1/2 tsp to be exact!)!! The bottoms of my eggs are never burnt and I don't have any weird taste of coconut like I thought I would with the eggs. Winner Winner.

Now onto my quest to find the perfect lunch that doesn't involve a salad (the twin pregnancy left me hating on most salads!)... also I am still on the prowl for a pre-(6am) workout "snack" to tide me over till I get to eat breakfast, usually around 8am.

Made it home at 1am this morning

If it feels too good to be over, are we really ready to be back home?

Probably not but 1am this morning we were back anyways. An amazing week (2 mostly travel days with 6 glorious days of vacation inbetween) last pics at Islita:

And the first one we took:

 

Everything inbetween was a glorious blur of crazy delicious Costa Rican cuisine:

Ceviche  with patacones (fried plantains) is my new favorite.

Ok second only to casadas: fish, rice, beans, salad, some sort of pico/salsa and of course sweet fried plantains.

It's a good thing all the good food was sandwiched (pun intended!) between a lot of walking and fun activities! Highest step count OF MY LIFE:

Also no less than 4 runs on the beach (took me only 15 minutes to run from one end to the other and back so it was more of a glorified track)

Have I mentioned before I usually dont sweat hardly at all when I work out? Could be my liberal use of tank tops but also I just don't get super sweaty. Except in Costa Rica (10 minutes into my 5:30am run)

Sweat pouring out of my eyeballs!!

Good grief. Made sure to search for little treasures along the way: (my first sand dollars!) 

Sadly only one made it home 

Did I mention this trip, even with a lot of relaxing and reading and tv watching my, was still super active?

I suppose that's what you get when you book a resort alongside a mountain. You want the beach? Walk to the bottom of the mountain. You want dinner? Go walk back up! They had shuttles we used occasionally but I thought it was so fun to walk around.

Did I forget to mention I was up at 5am almost every day? (7am eastern time) in my defense, every morning looked like this at 5am, and it was amazing to have 2 hours or so alone to Myself to workout or reason whatever I wanted since no one else at the resort or beach was awake then either.

And our last 48 hours or so we're spent zip lining (round 2!), getting couples massages and facials, and just relaxing. Sort lf like these cows crossing the road...

Then back home to all these crazies

It feels good to be back home where we can put toilet paper in the toilet (where it belongs!!) instead of in the trash can beside us. Where we will miss most of all the genuinely sweet and caring (Costa Ricans) Ticos, the delectable taste of coca-cola made with real sugar, the geckos and iguanas and assorted wildlife running all over the place, but not miss dousing ourselves in sunscreen and bugrepellant  every time we walk out the door (but--minimal bites and no sunburn!!! Hooray!!). 

This trip was a fabulous reset button for me as a mom, wife and honestly, just as a person. I haven't had that much quiet time to think in 6 years and it was perfect... I have a list of things to start working on, epiphanies I realized, and goals to start setting. For the time being I no longer feel "barely head above water", and at least feel like I've got a decent handle on my life. Not just getting away but getting away to a much poorer part of the world and talking with people whose lives are so completely different than mine, it was a wake up call.

Time to re-resolute my resolution to simplify.

Missing my littles, 3 hikes, colorful food, and a puppy!!!

Horseback riding, cooking lesson, kayaking!

Started off my morning with a run for a few miles on the beach. Say what you want but there's not too much better in my mind than the freedom of a beachside run and workout first thing in the morning to justify eating extraordinarily delicious food.

(Not my picture but ran into a mama cub and her babies both this morning and tonight... Gorgeous but terrifying!)

Breakfast appetizers every dayyyyyyy

Then we did horseback riding which was awesome.

Followed by a nap (for me), a cooking lesson (making ceviche!), and kayaking, which was our favorite thing by far!

My seashell stash from the morning for the littles

Looks like a perfect day to me.... Loving those numbers!

And topped the day off with the most delicious meal I've now had twice... Fish and rice and beans and salad and plantains and some sort of salsa... The most delicious colors and flavors of my life.

I will be retuning to the states with a renewed appreciation and love for (naturally)colorful food!