Coconut giveaway month: week 1

I spent literally the entire morning yesterday sitting on the couch in my pajamas.  I wasn’t a complete vegetable though.  I managed to get some blog housekeeping done including fixing some inaccurate links on my recipes page. I’m also working on soliciting opportunities to freelance for some local publications, so I worked on that a bit too.  Sometimes I’m most productive when I haven’t brushed my teeth or ran a brush through my hair. 😉

I finally got off the couch around 12:00 and of course it was for food.

I assembled this lunch with plenty of time to eat and digest before mine and Brad’s planned long run for the week.

These never get old: a perfect egg with (browning) avocado and Laughing Cow.  However, this time I mixed it up and put  it on a Thomas’ whole wheat bagel thin.  Not exactly the same as a real bagel, but still very good and a nice change of pace from toast.

I also ate a bunch of veggies leftover from the night before with a generous dollop of hummus that I didn’t manage to finish.

Funny though, because I still had room for the last black bean brownie.

No longer than 1 1/2 hours later, I decided what I really needed was a small bowl of Kashi Go Lean Crunch.  I’m going to hire someone to follow me around the grocery store to smack my hands when I reach for a box of cereal or put all the cashiers at Trader Joe’s on alert.  Cereal calls my name when it’s in the house.

The day was gorgeous outside yesterday and I’m kicking myself for not taking photos as Brad and I ran.  It was truly beautiful.

Brad and I started out at about 2:30 pm on our eight mile run.  I took him on a route I don’t often run and have never ran with him.  It was a nice change of pace.  We kept our pace around a 10 minute mile, somewhat against Hal Higdon’s recommendation:

Normally I recommend that runners do their long runs anywhere from 45 to 90 seconds per mile slower than their marathon pace. This is very important. Listen to what the Coach is about to tell you! The physiological benefits kick in around 90-120 minutes, no matter how fast you run. You’ll burn a few calories and trigger glycogen regenesis, teaching your muscles to conserve fuel. Running too fast defeats this purpose and may unnecessarily tear down your muscles, compromising not only your midweek workouts, but the following week’s long run. Save your fast running for the marathon itself. There are plenty of days during the rest of the week, when you can run race pace. So simply do your long runs at a comfortable pace, one that allows you to converse with your training partners, at least during the beginning of the run.

Brad and I would like to run our marathon at a ten minute mile pace, but for the life of me, I can’t get my legs to go any slower than that.  I cannot imagine trying to run 8 miles at a pace slower than an 11 minute mile.  I can only manage that pace when I’ve already put in a good 17 miles.

Brad is starting to have some knee pains and it really concerns me.  We’ve just started our training and I really don’t want him to injure himself.  He will be resting it today so hopefully that will help.  Also, he was just fitted for new shoes so that’s a potential culprit as well.  He’s going to try wearing his old shoes  back for his next run.

If anyone has any recommendations for him, I would love to hear them!  I haven’t ever dealt with any injury more severe than shin splints so I’m at a loss of what to do.

After we returned from our run, I rushed off to shower and meet blogger friends out for restaurant week.  I’ll post the complete review of the restaurant and recap in a later post.

I just can’t put off Coconut Giveaway Month any longer!

Here’s a hint for this weeks giveaway. The giveaway product is in this photo of my breakfast this morning: Vans Whole Wheat Waffles, grilled banana, TJ’s European yogurt, cacao nibs, and…

Look closer.  It’s mystery nut butter!

Well, the mystery is no more because what I’ve been eating/loving/licking off my fingers is Tropical Traditions Coconut Peanut Butter.

Tropical Traditions Organic Coconut Peanut Butter is made from organic peanuts and organic coconut. Two ingredients: nothing else! No fillers, no binders, no sweeteners, and no preservatives. The peanuts are 100% organic Valencia peanuts grown organically by family farmers in New Mexico and Texas. Grown in the dry climate of the southwestern United States, these peanuts are certified organic and free from aflatoxins. The dried coconut is certified organic coconut meat from the Philippines from coconuts that are grown with no fertilizers or pesticides. This premium dried coconut contains no additives or preservatives, and is not sweetened. Unlike most dried coconut on the market, our dried coconut products are not treated with sulfites to keep them white. Together, these premium organic roasted peanuts and the premium organic dried coconut are ground together to make a delicious and nutritious spread! (source)

If you like coconut and you like peanut butter, you will die over this.  It’s so incredibly good.  It has all the flavor of coconut, but it doesn’t have the texture.  The peanut butter is smooth and doesn’t have any of the fibrousness of typical coconut, just the flavor.  A lot of people who don’t like coconut tell me that it’s because of the texture.  So if that’s the case for you, you should really try this.

Another interesting thing about this peanut butter: it tends to harden when it comes into contact with cold food, just like the coconut butter creates a magic shell on smoothies.

Don’t you want to try it?

Good! 🙂  Here’s how you can get up to four entries to win your own jar of Tropical Traditions Coconut Peanut Butter.

1st Entry: Leave a comment telling me what you would do with the coconut peanut butter if you won.  Anything goes, including filling your bathtub and rolling in it. 🙂

2nd entry – Tweet “@Foodiefresh is giving away @TropTraditions coconut PB! #giveaway http://foodiefresh.com” and tell me you tweeted in the comments.

3rd entry – If you have your own blog, tell your readers about my giveaway and link back to this post.  Please tell me in the comments if you do this.

4th entry – Subscribe to the Tropical Traditions mailing list by clicking here, where you will receive notification of all kinds of great deals on all of their products.  They have some seriously good deals on all kinds of things, coconut and otherwise (For example: 40% off organic maple syrup).  Please tell me if you did this in the comments section too!

The cut off for the giveaway is this upcoming Saturday morning at 9 am.  I will then pick a winner and announce it here.

Please note: Tropical Traditions will only ship to the U.S. and Canada, so only residents of these two countries are eligible for the giveaway.  Tropical Traditions also requires that I provide the email address of the winner.  This allows them to contact you and make sure you receive your winnings.

Get ready, set, enter!