Avocado, Kale & Newbie Runners

The happiest of Fridays to you!! I'm sitting outside, basking in the sunshine and the unreal feeling of being done with my first year of grad school! I hate to admit how often I find myself saying "time flies" and thinking back to days of childhood where I never understood adults who said that. Certainly I'm not a real adult, right? I do far too many handstands in unorthodox places and giggle at all the wrong moments to be considered a real adult, but I am catching the drift of the whole time flying idea.

In celebration of today's lack of commitments and to-do lists, a rare beauty, I'm finally catching up on blogging. I've been gone too long and have missed writing for the simple joy of it (rather than to prove my knowledge of a certain topic). Today I'm sharing a delicious new salad recipe unlike your go-to side salad along with some of my usual random chattering.

Let's start with that salad. I'm sure you've heard of massaging kale if you're going to eat it raw. If you haven't, look up any blog with a raw kale salad and you'll quickly catch on. The idea is to soften it up a bit since its quite hearty, especially compared to any greens you find in other salads. I found this recipe for raw kale avocado salad from one of my former teammates, and she suggested mashing up the avocado in your hands then mixing up the kale with it! It sounded so messy/fun/brilliant I had to try it. I've included a few pics of my own to convince you to try the avocado mess yourself. ;)  Check out her blog to get the recipe!



















In other news, I've recently re-discovered how awesome it is to celebrate new accomplishments and met goals of others. I originally thought I wanted to personal train for that very reason, to help motivate and cheer people on and to celebrate with them when they accomplished whatever they set out for. It wasn't quite as I expected and that's okay. But I've been cheering on some friends and family who are new to running and it is a lot like what I thought personal training would be! They tell me how their workouts are going, the love/hate aspects of running (we all have them), and then they share when they beat their former best race time! I even got to run a 5k with my dad recently, and it was wonderful to cross the finish line with him and celebrate his new record. Its joyous to share my love of running with others and to hear when they, though somewhat begrudgingly, start to realize they love it too. So this is a thank you to all those who allow me to share in your workout celebrations with you; for lack of a better exclamation, its the cat's meow! ;)

I'm off my soapbox now (hallelujah, right?); have an incredible weekend. XOXO.

--KQ