may the fourth be w/ you

one of the breakfast cooks always puts up funny sayings w/ the chalk board food board and "may the fourth be with you" was for the 4th of july. 

some of the participants w/ sparklers before the main event

yesterday was a fun day at work- we had fun games for the women- 3 legged race, water balloon toss and staff vs. participant beach ball volleyball (staff 21: participants 20, oh yeahhhh. hahaha). our baked dessert got moved to wed night so they could make this black bean brownie, whipped cream with strawberries and blueberries topping thing that was amazing (i snuck into the kitchen during dinner time and had leftovers!).

ludlow has their own firework show, so we drove the women to the parking lot and got shuttled to the viewing area. for such a small town their fireworks are pretty awesome, especially when there were only maybe 300 people watching them. it started drizzling again which always seems to happen on the 4th no matter where i am. 

is it friday yet though???

cloudy with a chance of meatballs

and i mean a lot of meatballs. enough to feed over 35 women. mike, the sous chef was feeling wiped out from the bbq at the chef's house so i offered to dig my hands into the mix and make up the meatballs (i had gloves on! although they are so large that it looked like my fingers all got amputated in the process of making them). i used a scale to get the weight right for the first couple (each women got three 1.5ish ounce meatballs) and then was able to eyeball it for the rest.

this morning, kate, the fitness specialist, and intern coordinator, took us out to the long trail to test out a hike for the women on friday. it started out w/ a mini suspension bridge (too short in my opinion) but w/ a nice view down.

the water looked really low but we did have some rain last week. 

the long trail is part of the appalachian trail and we hiked up part of it and got this awesome overlook of rutland and beyond. unfortunately we kept hiking and could never figure out if it connected back around so we ended up hiking back down and around and then hiking another section which made the morning a long 3 hr hike, but it was pretty. i just hope my feet heal soon so i can actually walk and workout properly on them (esp as i teach kickboxing on thurs).


oh, and PA and i made a mini trip to sunoco to get contraband. bwhaha. it closes at 12 so now we know our hook-up. biggy iggy's ice cream cookie sandwiches are pretty excellent.


tmrw is 4th of july so we're doing fun games and different food. woot woot! i'm excited:D i'll update you guys on that soon. have a wonderful 4th!

cheesecake success!

look what i baked! gluten-free cheesecake :D last night was baked dessert night so i got to whip up this cheesecake before heading out to take women for a walk. the base was made with brown rice "krispies," sugar, and butter. the cheesecake was neufchatel (the lighter cream cheese), tapioca flour, vanilla extract, eggs and some sugar. it was crazy hard to mix the 15+ cups of neufchatel and other odd ingredients by hand but the mega huge whisk was nice. so was melting the cream cheese a bit by hand.


there's a curse on ankles at work, we've had at least 4 sprained ankles since i've been here and i rolled my ankle this morning on my run but i think if i just be nice to it today then i can still teach my first cardiokickboxing class tmrw!


today we re-hiked the plymouth vista and i remember my first week one of the participants was starting her first week and she couldn't make it to the top to see the view and she wanted that to be her goal before she left and today she made it! it's amazing what these women are accomplishing in the time they spend here and the changes their bodies undergo. and i think i want to become a life coach if this whole dietetics thing doesn't work out...haha, i think i just need to make up my mind in life.