phoenix Archives - Ari's Menu

The Grind

October 17, 2012 · by Ari ·

Early last week, I started asked my facebook friends where I should go to dinner after my 20 miler. I mean, clearly food is the most important thing after you run! I wanted to be prepared. 😉 I got a lot of great suggestions, but ultimately my friend Nicole won with her suggestion of The Grind. The menu looked awesome and all of the food is coal fired. Not to mention the drink list looked amazing.

Nicole’s drink: The Moscow Mule

My Blackberry Sidecar. Probably my favorite thing I tasted all night. After one, they ran out of blackberry and I was sooooo sad!

For dinner all of us except for Lance ordered the turkey burger. Nicole and I added goat cheese to ours which was an excellent choice. I would add goat cheese to pretty much anything though.

The burger was seasoned well, but it was a fattier turkey than I would have preferred. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I like my turkey burgers to be practically white, and at least 90% lean. A lot of restaurants in Phoenix offer some really lean turkey burgers, but this one was definitely a little greasy for my taste. It still tasted good, but not sure it’s something I would order again. Nicole and I also split an order of the half and half fries which were half herb fries and half sweet potato fries.

Honestly, they were pretty disappointing. The herb fries just tasted like regular old french fries, and the sweet potato fries were fine, but not exciting. Not like the sweet potato fries at Fez! They didn’t taste bad, just kinda boring. However, you know what was NOT boring? Umm this AMAZING dessert.

Hot, fresh donuts with a salted butterscotch dipping sauce. I diiiiieeee.

LOOK AT THEM!!! SO MUCH DELICIOUS!!!

Seriously, the drinks and dessert alone were worth the entire experience. Steve’s veggies that we didn’t photograph were also perfectly seasoned and delicious, so maybe I just need to try and order something else for my main course? Either that, or just go for cocktails and dessert, because those are the most important things anyway. 😉 Nicole posed with me to remind the world that I ran 20 miles. Good friends take silly pictures with you in public for you to post on your blog.

20 (.5)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That face is so cute, right? Maybe the next cycle of ANTM will be for old people, and I can pursue my amazing modeling skills.

What are your favorite restaurants and your favorite things about them??

Nourish

October 11, 2012 · by Ari ·

Sunday evening I went out with some of my awesome teammates to celebrate all of our training, and making it all the way to peak week! Well, we didn’t say exactly what it was that we were celebrating other than actually getting to hang out with each other, but those sound like awesome reasons to celebrate to me 😉

Jason, Wanda, Jaime, Tara, Lisa, Stacey, Moi. And after this lovely evening, I will be throwing out that shirt and NEVER wearing it again.

When we were trying to decide what to do/where to go, we all agreed that some awesome healthy food…and of course some wine. 😉 Jaime and Tara eat gluten free, so I suggested Nourish. I first tried Nourish a couple of months ago with Nicole and Emily, and LOVED it! They have a menu filled with healthy options to fit every diet–gluten free, vegan, raw, paleo, you name it!

As soon as I mentioned their air fried sweet potatoes, my friends were all on board!

Heaven.

They have a special air frier that bakes the sweet potatoes at a very high temperature without the potatoes ever touching oil or butter! They do place some oil in the oven, and have a fan that they say infuses the “fries” with the flavor of the oil. They are perfectly crisp on the outside, while soft on the inside–so much better than the kind I make at home! It is kind of magical. The table split a bottle of pinot grigio and an order of the sweet potato fries to start.

I ordered the southwestern rice bowl which was ridiculously good! I don’t know how they get their brown rice to be so soft!!

We ended up spending over 2 hours chatting and talking about, well, running! 🙂

Jaime & Tara

Stacey & Jason

Lisa & my shiny red face

“Ari take a cute picture of me for my blog! ~~And then out me for asking on the internet~~!” I believe I was successful on both accounts.

Training buddddddies!

What a fantastic night!! I’m so glad we all had the chance to hang out and do something fun with real clothes on, and eat food that isn’t gu!! Also, I haven’t stopped craving the delicious food from Nourish since we left, so I think an other trip very soon is in order!

Cheuvront

September 24, 2012 · by Ari ·

Friday night I went out with some of my favorite AZ Blogge r ladies to Cheuvront for restaurant week.

Arizona restaurant week is one of my very favorite things! When I was growing up, we didn’t have a huge restaurant scene, but ever since I moved back after college, it seems like new, indie restaurants are popping up like crazy! Or maybe I’m just finally starting to get into the scene? Either way, there are lots of amazing options for people who love food in this city, and I (obviously) really, really love food. Each restaurant has a special restaurant week menu with a set price and a few options for each course–you can choose to order off this menu, or stick to the regular menu.

This was my first time at Cheuvront, but I was super excited as soon as I looked at the menu. I had a really tough time making up my mind because everything looked amazing, but the one thing that was easy to decide was the first course. Goat cheese is one of those items I always immediately scan a menu for, and then I usually choose what I order by which options come with it. Obviously, I started with the goat cheese salad.

It was delicious! Fresh greens, the perfect amount of slightly sweet champagne vinaigrette, and of course the star of the plate–the fried goat cheese! For the second course, everything looked good and I had a hard time deciding, but ultimately went with the half roasted chicken because it came with cranberry apple stuffing.

That stuffing!!! I just kept digging underneath the chicken to try to get more of it out. It was probably my favorite thing I ate all night. The chicken was great too–perfectly cooked and tender. I asked the waiter what his favorite dessert option was and he pointed me towards the chocolate bouchon which is a small, lava-like chocolate cake that was served with dulce de leche ice cream.

Okay, maybe this was my favorite thing I ate all night. The chocolate bouchon had a slightly crisp outside, but the entire inside was gooey, like a half baked brownie, and it paired perfectly with the ice cream which was aaaaaamazing.

I absolutely loved Cheuvront, and will definitely be returning! It was also so great to spend time with some of my favorite ladies, and meet a couple of new ones!

Remy, Emily, me, Megan, Robin, Nicole & Jenn

Thanks for an awesome evening ladies!! Can’t wait to do it again soon!

NYC Marathon Training Week 8

August 13, 2012 · by Ari ·

I would like to take this moment to thank the Phoenix Metropolitan Area for this warm welcome. Get it? See what I did there? Because, you know, the record breaking temperatures and all. Okay, it wasn’t funny. Not even a little bit. Sorry. Anyway, I’m back home and I made it through my first week of legit Phoenix summer training and lived to tell the tale! It hasn’t been easy. You see, I started running in October, and it was warm then with highs generally in the 90s, but that means lows in the 70s with not ideal, but not terrible morning running weather. When I left for Oregon, the highs had climbed into the triple digits, but you could still run at 5:30 or 6 and get temps in the high 70s-low 80s most days. I thought that was tough–hah!

Then, I traveled to a land far far away where there are clouds and rain and the most amazing running weather! It was a dream come true. This has been a rude awakening, and my paces have slowed considerably while my effort level feels higher than ever. The good news? I get that it’s normal, and that I will be tougher come November. I don’t mind sucking it up for then next month if I will be stronger because of it. It’s just an adjustment. And so is the schedule.

Today I feel absolutely exhausted. I haven’t woken up later than 5am since last Tuesday. I know a lot of people wake up at 5 every day, and 5 isn’t so bad, but there’s a big difference between 5 and when you see a 3 at the beginning of your alarm. I know I can’t just spend the next month in a constant state of exhaustion. The heat is enough to do that to me, so I need to help myself out. Until my alarm time changes, I’ve decided to just be 80 (or 8–you decide) and change my bed time to 8-9pm. It’s going to mean less going out, and probably a lot less of a social life, but it’s what I need to do in order to achieve everything I want right now, and when I committed to running a whole freaking marathon, I didn’t just mean the end result. The nights I work until 9 or 10 are going to be tough, but every other night I am enforcing a bed time. Yes, I’m 27 and I have a bed time. It’s earlier than your kindergartner’s.

Anyway, here’s a look at how my first week back in Phoenix went down.

Monday–Off. Traveling counts as a work out, right?

Tuesday–Linda’s spin!! 23.4 sweaty spinning miles of AWESOME! While I was away, I missed the following things in this order: Steve/Winston/Clementine, ~~Linda’s spin~~ my family, Linda’s spin. It was like being back in my happy place!

Wednesday–Track with Team Chances! YAY!! It was so great to be back running with my team and to get to run with Stacey again. We did a 1.2 mile warm up, then 1600 @ 1/2 marathon goal pace (8:49), 400 recovery, 1200 @ 10k pace (8:40), 400 recovery, 800 @ 5k pace (8:24), 400 recovery, 400 @ 1mi pace (7:02), followed by about .5 mile cool down for a total of 4.84 miles in 47:19. It was tough, but it went a lot better than I expected. For some reason, I am always one of the very last ones out there on the track, but when we do long runs I’m right in the middle. Weird. I actually think my body prefers long distance to short and speedy.

Thursday–5mi. Monday was supposed to be 4, but I thought it was supposed to be 5, so I did that on Thursday. Stacey and I warmed up for a mile, then did the middle miles slightly faster (not on purpose, just kinda happened that way), and cooled down for the last .5. I was actually feeling pretty good until about mile 4 when the heat started to get me and I just wanted to be done. Good thing I had company, or I probably would have ditched out early, haha.

Friday–25.75 mi bike ride. I MISSED MY BIKE!!! I missed Friday cross training and breakfast with my BBFF!!! I felt a little out of bike shape after my almost 2 month hiatus, but I finished in just under 2 hours with an average pace of 13.2 mph. Not fast by any means, but not too bad for a friendly ride, and my first one back!

Saturday–8mi run with Team Chances. I averaged 10:16 and finished in about 1:22, which I was actually pretty happy with. It’s weird because everyone already kind of knows each other, and I just showed up. Our first team run was the day I left for Ashland, and although Coach Susan had been letting me come to group runs and track sessions before then, our team hadn’t officially started, so I’d hardly met anyone. I decided I didn’t want to run by myself, so I found a group of ladies that looked like they ran about my pace and creepily followed them before just deciding to announce that I was there, and I wanted to join the group. I ended up with a lot of company along the way, and ran very little by myself. I loved getting a chance to get to know some of my awesome team mates, and running with other people definitely pushed me to keep going all the times I wanted to stop and drink a frozen margarita.

Sunday–Arizona Road Racers 5k @ South Mountain. About that. I made a last minute decision to run a 5k this morning, and it basically sucked. Okay, maybe that’s too harsh, but it wasn’t great. It started at 6:30 when the sun is already all the way up, and it is HILLY. I ran sssslllloooowwww. And by that, I mean I walked way too much of it. I “ran” it 30 seconds slower per mile than the last time I ran the same course, and slower than almost any other race I’ve done. That’s okay. I’m not upset. It was just a reality check about the heat, and how much it can affect my pace, and how I feel. I’m sure eventually I will get used to it, but this was definitely the hardest so far. Anyway, here’s a picture of my friend Nacho kicking the race and the sun right in the face!

This beez ran in like 26 minutes.

And here I am trying to pretend I don’t want to lay down on the side of the road.

This love/hate thing is totally missing the love right now.

How was your training last week??? Tell me awesome things you did!

Firefly Run 5K Race Recap

April 18, 2012 · by Ari ·

Saturday evening I had the opportunity to participate in my first night race!

Heather, Emily, Nicole, Me, Bethany & Jason

Decked out in glow gear. We take night racing very seriously.

Steve, Jason, Bethany and I arrived pretty early so that Jason could register. We quickly met up with Nicole, Emily and Stacey, and hung out for a bit before lining up for the race.

Jason, Bethany and I started towards the back. It was Bethany’s first race, and we had all three planned to run it together. Usually, I’m a big jerk and I ditch my friends at races (or if I race with Nicole, I tell her to just leave me because I will never make it at her pace haha), but I really wanted to run Bethany’s first race with her, and I was excited about the idea of running with my two best friends.

When we started running, I was amazed at how nice it was to be able to look around and enjoy my surroundings. The only thing I usually see during the race is the face of little Garmi. And she’s cute, but Phoenix at night kind of is too. The weather was perfect, and it just felt amazing to be running through the city at night!

The race was an out and back route, so shortly after mile 1, we saw Nicole and Stacey racing back. We all shouted and waved at each other. I was ridiculously energetic, and I kept trying to talk to Jason and Bethany, but they were not feeling as chatty as me haha. Emily and Heather were pretty close to us for the majority of the race as well.

At mile 2, I could tell Bethany was getting tired, but she turned it up a little bit and surprised Jason and me. I started thinking at that point

10 years ago, who would have thought that we would be here?

10 years ago I was near the end of my “first round” of weight loss. I was ridiculously unhealthy, and in a very bad place in my life. We had all been through an impossibly tough and life changing situation together, and the three of us were doing the best we could to get by. Sometimes I can’t believe we’ve made it to this point in our lives–not running a 5k, but maintained our friendship through thick and thin, grown and changed so much as human beings, and found even deeper love and appreciation of our friendships.

I began to get a little ~~lot~~ sentimental, and started to wish that our whole group could be together, but mostly, I was just happy to have these 2 amazing friends in my life, and to be accomplishing goals together. We’ve always been really different. Neither of them are into theatre, and we’re all just really different, so it was awesome to be going after something together.

Bethany kicked some serious ass, didn’t stop once, and ran the fastest she’s run in this stage of her life. I couldn’t be more proud of her!

Before we finished, Steve caught Stacey busting through the finish line with a rockin’ PR!!

You PR that shit, Stacey!!

Then at the very end, Jason picked it up a little and finished a few seconds before Bethany and me.

So serious!

Shortly after, Bethany rocked it out and pulled out a sub 9 pace for the last stretch. I finished with the biggest grin on my face.

Running is fun!!

WHEEEEE!!! I love running!!!! Usually at the end of a race I hate running. This was a pleasant change 😉

After the race, we headed over to Papago Brewing Company for food and drinks, where we met up with Nacho.

And Miriam and Scott who were visiting from Indiana.

Jason and Nacho had been to Papago Brewing Company before, finding it after we had all been huge fans of their brews at various other restaurants. The beer selection was ridiculous, and the food was incredible! Almost everyone ordered pizza.

Everything I tasted was delicious, and I absolutely loved the atmosphere of this place! I was worried it was going to be a little stuffy since it’s in Scottsdale, but it was definitely beer people atmosphere if that makes sense. I absolutely loved it and will definitely be back in the future!

Final funny note: I mentioned to Steve that he didn’t get a single picture of Nicole after the race began and he commented “She ran by so fast at the end, the camera couldn’t focus on her!” Nice job, Speedy Gonzales. 😉

Steve’s Birthday Dinner @ Switch

April 11, 2012 · by Ari ·

After returning from an awesome weekend up north, I tried to pretend I had nothing else up my sleeve and all birthday surprises were finished. Well I don’t think Steve was super surprised when we arrived to dinner and our friends and family were there waiting. He knows me too well. We arrived at Switch

and met up with Steve’s mom & sister, my mom, Hank, Charlie, my dad, Hermano, Jason & Nacho, Nicole & Lance. Switch is a restaurant and wine bar, and Jason and Nacho had already polished off a bottle of wine before we got there, so I went ahead and ordered myself a delicious glass of pinot grigio.

Then I had total drink envy when Nicole ordered this delicious blackberry cocktail, so i ordered one too. Then I spilled it before I even got to take a sip. I’m awesomely coordinated. But the nice server brought me another one!

Look! It even comes with a blackberry inside! It was super cute, and even more delicious! Also, that photo is of Nicole's drink. I did not drink my wine and that drink at the same time. Not that I wouldn't do that, but I didn't on this particular occasion 😉

We all had an amazing time chatting and hanging out while we waited for our food.

I hate this picture, but there were not a lot of people pictures from the evening, so I'm posting it. My chin looks the size of Texas, and my face looks oddly misshapen. Weird. Hermano looks great though! He finally got a hair cut and so now he can see. It's awesome. Also, slightly less Beiber-like, yes? Which could be a good or a bad thing depending how you look at it...

Nacho is so classy. You should take him to all your fine dining events.

Lance and Nicole

Then the food came, and oh my goodness, it was sooooo yummmmmy!

Yes, those are sweet potato fries. My favorite thing in life. And somehow I'm surprised that I weighed like 10 pounds more after this weekend. I have no idea how that happened.

Steve's birthday burger. I tasted this one too. And still I don't like ground beef, but you know what I do like? Blue cheese. I could eat it plain. In fact, when I was a kid, I used to eat it plain all the time and then my hands would smell really gross like moldy cheese. It was so cute. You're welcome, mom!

This was Nicole's dinner. I forget what it was called, but I can tell you that the flaky bread part was a little like heaven on earth.

Then they brought out dessert with a candle! In fact, they brought out two because we told them Nicole’s birthday was coming up too.

Like pizookie. Yummmmm.

This was super good, but it did not compare to the cupcakes they wouldn’t let me bring in. What’s up with that trendy Phoenix restaurants? I do not prefer this rule.

Hank got this blueberry vanilla bean bread putting thing which put anything I’ve ever created to shame. Maybe that’s bad plugging for my blog to say their food was better? But seriously, this bread pudding was probably made up of sticks of butter and heavy cream and it was incredible. In fact, every single thing I tasted, I absolutely loved. I would most definitely return to Switch again, and again, and again!

We all had a great time and it was the perfect end to a pretty perfect weekend.

South Mountain Classic 5K Race Recap

March 25, 2012 · by Ari ·

All in all, I still feel pretty torn about feeling good and blech about this race. Jason and Nacho got to South Mountain early and had plenty of time to kill waiting for the race to begin. As it got closer to the start time, I did a quick and easy jog around the area to try to get my legs warmed up. This race was super small with no bells and whistles. When it was time to begin, some man just yelled at us to come up to the start, then the horn went off and we began. The very beginning started with a slight down hill, so I took off pretty quick at first, but almost right away my legs were not feeling super fresh. Hey, who would have thought basically taking a month off from long runs and speed training, then running 10 miles and doing a race the next morning would leave you with heavy legs? The human body really is shocking.

My goal was to run the first mile at around a 9 min pace, mile #2 around 8:45 and mile #3 with whatever I had left. Well, that slight downhill was really short lived and before I knew it, we were heading uphill up until the turn around. I will say this, that it was kind of like what I imagine Whiskey Row will be like, so I feel like it was good from a training standpoint.

Mile 1– 9:07
Mile 2– 9:01

Not what I was hoping for, but I hoped I could make up for it with the last mile being mostly downhill. I got to mile 3 and felt like I still might have a chance at a PR. I had kicked it into gear, and although I wanted to stop about a trillion times, I didn’t walk (with the exception of like 2 seconds to not choke on my water). No way in hell after making it through an entire half marathon with no walking breaks, I was taking one at a 5K. Even though my lungs were burning and I kind of wanted to die.

Mile 3– 8:37

I was doing the math in my head and I knew if I kept it up, it wouldn’t be a huge PR, but it would still be a PR. Well then I got to 3.1 and I still could barely even see the finish line. I almost completely just gave up and walked. I was exhausted, it was already feeling hot out (the high yesterday was 91!!!!), my legs felt tired, and I felt super lame knowing I wasn’t going to beat my time. I struggled through and finished in 28:05.

Okay, so here’s what’s annoying….My 5K PR is 27:56 which is an average pace of 8:59. Well, according to my garmin, my average pace for this race was 8:52. I know I should just be excited that my pace was faster and not focus on the difference in course length and it not officially being a pr and blah blah blah, but the thing is, I’ve really been enjoying my “I just started running 6 months ago and I PR in every race I do!!” that’s been going on. There are not a ton of fun things about being a new runner. Everything is hard. You feel like a turtle compared to others. You have to spend money on running clothes, and you don’t understand any of the terms that the fancy runners use! But lots of PRs is the fun part, in addition to the new challenges you get to face on almost every run.

So, yes, I am a tad disappointed. However, I’m not a total moron, and I get the fact that I ran faster than before, and I think that’s awesome. This was also the first time that other runners have come up to me after a race and mention that they thought I did well!! A couple of people that I was near on the course, came up to me after and said that they had seen me and I was doing awesome! YAY!!! I also got some extra push from Nacho who was back and forth with me during most of the first half. Unfortunately, he tried to speed up to pass me near the end, and hurt his knee 🙁 After I saw Nacho finish, I jogged back to find Jason and run with him to the finish line. I knew with the hills and the heat, he might need some motivation towards the end. I found him pretty quickly and ran with him until just before the finish line. He finished with an average pace of 10:53 which is amazing!!! I’m ridiculously proud of him!

After the race we went to The Farm at South Mountain for some breakfast.

In the middle of one of the biggest cities in the US, we have this beautiful green and rural farm with lots of restaurants and beautiful outside dining.

I discovered the editing options on iphoto--fun!!!

We enjoyed a lovely breakfast outside, then walked around. It was almost like a farmers’ market with several independent local businesses set up with stands, and tons of interesting items for sale!

There was a man and this was in his green house. It was humid inside there and he had lots of cacti for sale. It was cool, but I liked the bread man better. Obviously.

Look Nicole!!! Baby saguaro???

And we got to see real chickens!!!

Hello chickens. I hope the eggs I ate came from you. That would be sweet. Sorry, I know that's like I ate your children, or something. I hope you don't mind...

Rooster!!!

I absolutely loved eating and walking around at The Farm. In addition to their breakfast restaurant, there is also a bakery, and a super romantic looking dinner restaurant that I would love to try as well.