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!

nature's stair master

lake echo from vista trail

 finished two weeks here now and PA and i went all out today exploring. there's 5 lakes in the plymouth area and we wanted to explore but the state park is closed until the end of june and the lakes are pretty much private so we went back to the plymouth vista lake echo trail we did yesterday w/ the participants so i could get some good shots and we could walk around more. so w/ the participants it took about 30 minutes to get to the top for the view (PA and i charged up in about 10...so we took some detours). 

it's finally not raining in vt, i'm sure it'll change but we took full advantage and explored the trails. then grabbed some maple creemee- which was vanilla soft serve w/ maple flavoring. i'm not sure if i can ever get used to the maple syrup in all my food (w/ my pasta was probably the weirdest so far). 

at the sugar house there was a dad losing his mind and cursing left and right at his wife...so awkward to get back into our car right next to them. but the sugar house has really cute vt stuff- shot glasses, shirts, jewelry to food stuff (i need to get my hands on some grade B maple syrup before i leave this state).

man, this is gonna be a long post- but lunch was tempeh surprise. the potato "fries" were amazing w/ siracha (my best friend) and ketchup. i'm off and on again w/ the tempeh but i'm hoping for some chili tonight!

going up the tower

after lunch, PA and i headed out to okemo so she could climb the mt and we could both finally go up the tower and get a view of vt. we went off the rd and took the ski trails (kind of brutal on the low back and calves but broke up the monotony of transversing the rds). we got a little mixed around but finally saw other people and they pointed out the fire tower to us. 

the 360 views from the fire tower were absolutely amazing! you could see the lakes, ludlow town and our home for the summer. it was also very very very windy and the tower would shake, so that was kind of freaky and fun. the total walk, up the ski trails and down the rd took us about 2.5 hours