Good morning all! How is your Tuesday going so far? Mine is already busy, busy. I also have a feeling the rest of this week is going to be a little bit crazy.
But first, let me do a quick recap of my busy day yesterday. After missing my morning run, I finally dragged myself out of bed and ate some Kashi Heart to Heart Cinnamon cereal for breakfast.
My workday was very busy – I was tying up loose ends and prepping for a big training later this week. What I’m trying to say is that I forgot to take photos of my food throughout the day. I know – I’m a bad blogger. I had a granola bar as a my mid-morning snack, my regular salad for lunch and a pomegranate Chobani yogurt for an afternoon snack.
But the monotony of my daily foods was soon overshadowed by my “dinner” fun. After work I met my friend Katie and we headed to the Village Voice’s Choice Eats Tasting Event. This event featured 50+ restaurants and food from over 35 nations, including Vietnamese, Italian, Uzbekistani, Brazilian, Cambodian, Russian, Tunisian, and Cajun/Creole among many others.
Katie and I dove right in and tried so many things. Here are just a few snapshots:
This meatball, mashed potatoes and drizzle of cranberry sauce was delicious and came from Smorgas Chef.
We then had some delicious mac n’ cheese and I forgot to write down where it was from.
One of both of our absolute favorites was this mini salad with sweet glazed pork on top, along with pickled shalots and cilantro. Yum! This was from Xie Xie:
I took this kind of cool action shot while we were walking around. This place was über crowded.
Despite the many, many vendors and food options, there was a clear winner in our book. We tried a whipped cheesecake with blueberry on top and it was divine. In fact, we went back to Spot Dessert Bar’s table twice! 😉
Yes, technically this was a sweet, but it was eaten for the sake of taste testing.
All in all, Katie and I had a great time. The event went until 9:30 p.m., but they began to run out of food around 8:00 p.m. At that point, we’d had our fill anyway and couldn’t eat anymore. I also sipped on three mini cups of wine…seriously mini. There were tons of beverage stations as well, but we were more focused on the food. Here we are at the end of the night:
There were definitely some way-too-crowded moments with a bit of bumping and pushing, but overall the amount of people was tolerable. I definitely think I’d hit this event up again next year.
One of the best parts about the event is their charitable partner: Slow Food NYC. “Slow Food NYC is the local chapter of a national association that is part of an international movement. Slow Food USA, with over 200 chapters in the USA, is dedicated to achieving a good, clean, and fair food system, where good means food that is real and culturally rooted, clean means food that is produced sustainably and humanely, and fair means that those who produce our food are treated fairly and that everyone has access to good, clean food.
A portion of the Choice Eats ticket sales will be donated to Slow Food NYC. The donation will be used to maintain and expand these important Harvest Time Programs.”
Have you ever attended a tasting event like this?
This event was absolutely huge, but also a lot of fun.
I headed home in the pouring rain – not fun. I made it home by almost 9 p.m. and watched some of Dancing with the Stars and then headed to bed.
I expect a busy day today and then probably a 5-mile training run on the treadmill since the rain has continued. I’ve got a 15k race coming up this weekend which I’m pretty excited and nervous about. I won’t be racing it, but I’ll run it as a training run. I need to run 18 miles this weekend, so the 15k will be the first 9.3 miles of that long run. Fun, fun – right?
Have you ever run a race as a training run? I’ve seen a few other bloggers mention doing this (like this lady and this gal). And they are both pretty darn speedy, so maybe there’s something to the idea. I just have to focus on not running it too hard and getting caught up in the racing atmosphere or else my long run will turn into a painful run.
Have a nice day all!
Eat, Read, Run 
What a fun event! I love tasting events like this….you get filled up just by eating some “mini” dishes!
Looks like so much fun! I have been to one event by Vital Juice, it was interesting. And then a fabulous food tasting/celebration in the West Village which they do in the summer (the name escapes me) And yes, I have run races as training runs 🙂
Sara
http://eatmanhattan.wordpress.com/
That event looks awesome and for a great cause. We have a pretty active Slow Foods movement in my area, but no events on that scale of course. Many of the restaurants are definitely catching on to staying more local for their ingredients too.
I’m a huge fan of using races as part of your training, thus why I’m doing a 20 mile race this Sunday! The race is scheduled for Boston runners, as they know people use it as a training run. I have also added miles to a race too, in the fall I ran 7 miles before running a half marathon. To your average person it sounds nuts, but if you have 20 miles on your calendar why not run a race for some of those miles.
Aha gotcha – that’s really nice that they have that training race/run for you guys. Yes, people think I’m nutso, but it sounds like it should work great!
That event looks like a blast! I’ve never attended something like that, but I’d LOVE to.
So glad you had a good time at Choice Eats! All the food looks delicious. I had hoped to attend this year, but plans fell through. Ah well…
I think doing the 15K as the first half of your training run is a great idea! There will be clocks, mile markers, and water stations. Sweet! Perhaps you could even warm-up to the start (2 miles or so), run the 15K, and then you’d only have 7 miles left. Breaking it up that way makes a long run seem much more do-able!
I’ll be there on Sunday – maybe we can run a few miles together afterward 🙂
It was a lot of fun – I wondered if you were there!
I’d love to run a few miles with you afterwards. I was going to do a reverse loop from the 72nd traverse and head south on the East side and then back up north on the West side. I think you’ll probably be finishing a lot earlier than me though – any idea how we could find each other?
What a fun night!!
As far as running races for training runs…I have done it before but not often. As much as I say I am just going to for a training run my competitive spirit always comes out and I end up going all out and racing. So then I tend to be really sore and find that it causes more stress to my training schedule. Now if I could treat the race truly as a training run it would be a great way to make it more fun! haha! Maybe I will learn one day!
That’s my fear! I’ve never used a race as a training run – so I’m really going to have to exert some control over my speed.
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