Saturday was the day! The day of the competition! If you follow me on Instagram you’ll have seen that- guess what?- I won! I placed second in my class- mind you, it was a small class but still exciting none-the-less. After all the moaning and groaning I did during prep, I felt really happy and excited about winning. Having done it once before, I was able to relax and have a lot more fun during the day of the event. Unfortunately at this point in time, I mostly have just cell phone pictures, so excuse the poor quality, but here are some highlights from the event.
The day before the event I was scheduled to get spray tanned (probably my least favorite part). So we went from this:
To this:
Creepy, I know.
Then there’s a ton of waiting backstage. In fact, most of the day is just spent waiting, pumping up (aka, lifting weights or using resistance bands to keep your muscles “pumped up”), and eating.
Here’s me being bored.
After pre-judging, you wait some more. There’s usually a lot of time before finals, so I left the event and hung out at the host hotel before meeting with a friend for lunch and coming back.
I startled a lot of people on the street.
Finals started at 5pm but I didn’t get onstage until around 9 or 10 or so and didn’t get to leave until 11- it was an extremely long way. Most of the competitors had gone through their food and we were all eating candy and chocolate backstage and suffering from serious sugar-highs and being severely bloated from all the binging that happened while we waited. After the awards my mom took some quick pictures with her cell phone before we headed home.
Despite tons of scrubbing, I’m still extremely orange. Slowly returning back to normal though!
But now let’s get to the real reason why you’re here- the food.
My mom and I made French Toast for breakfast- yum! On Friday and Saturday we had prepared cakes. We made a Sour Cream Lemon Cake from About.com’s recipe. It was a new recipe we were trying for the first time (my mom had tons of lemons and sour cream that needed to be used up) and it certainly gets a thumbs up!
My mom also made a triple-layer Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting– also a total winner. So good!
I went out for lunch with some friends on Sunday to a local spot. We shared lots of plates and it was delicious!
While I was out, my mom finished up the Cruffins she had prepped the day before. We used Lady and Pup’s amazing recipe that uses a pasta roller to get those thin flakey layers!
Check out her recipe: How To Make Cruffin with Pasta Machine.
Total game changer.
For dinner we made Beef Bourguignon- a special treat.
There was, of course, excessive candy and chocolate consumption as well along with evening wine. Monday I sent off most all of the cakes and candies with my mom to take to work with her- I learned from my mistakes last year. Binging for a day or so is ok, but it’s certainly not good to keep it up for weeks or months!
I drove back to the city yesterday and made it back in-time for class in the afternoon and while I did still overeat yesterday, I can see myself slowly returning back to normal. The weather was amazing and I was able to ride my bike to school which was also wonderful. Today I have meals loosely organized for what I want to eat, but am no longer living with my food scale and measuring cups. Instead, I’ve learned to eyeball what is an appropriate amount of food for me and used that when preparing yummy meals for today. While it’s cloudy and a little rainy, I’m hoping to bike into the city and take a relaxing yoga class before class this evening.
