A week @ Fallen Leaf Lake

After putting on the Non-Dairy Ice Cream Tasting, I took off the next morning for a week at Fallen Leaf Lake (right near South Lake Tahoe) with my family. This is something we've done every year for many years. We used to go to Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite, but once my grandparents reached their late 80's... they decided to go for a rental home with indoor plumbing. Fair enough!

It was me, my grandparents, my mom, my two aunts, and my cousin. My aunt L is a vegan, and my aunt S and my cousin L are both on the Eat To Live weight loss diet, and so we had a pretty awesome week of veggie eating!!! What follows (in no particular order) are some of the delicious goodies we ate.

We ate LOTS of fruit! This is a fruit salad - bananas, oranges & nectarines from my grandparents' garden, apples, & blueberries.

An Amy's All-American Veggie Burger, some salad, and some green beans... and - yes! -a coke. I decided to be honet and include that in the photo! ha ha. I don't drink coke that often, but after a 3 hour yoga practice in the sun, I was really thirsty. So, this coke was really good! At least... it was delicious until I tried to go to bed. Ha! I was *seriously* jacked up until about 2:00 in the morning, tossing around trying to sleep. No more Coke for me!

Here's a BLT with avocado in a whole wheat pita bread. Mmmmm. We used that delcious Lightlife Tempeh Smokey Strips bacon. Also a little dollop of Trader Joes eggplant hummus, carrots, and some steamed beets.

This meal is called " Tempeh Toss" - I think it's from one of Sarah Kramer's books, but I don't remember which one. It has become a real family favorite. We always serve it with quinoa. Plus there's some salad and asparagus.

One night we had a nice big make-your-own-salad dinner: lettuce, steamed green beans, steamed summer squash, onion, tomatoes, bell peppers, corn, beans, beets... and so on. Yum!

This is the salad I made for myself. I always like to arrange things in rainbow order, if possible!

Here's a hummus sandwich in a pita, with a side of some yummy quinoa salad & veggies.

My cousin and I made this great eggplant lasagna. It was mostly all her vision. She made a great raw tomato sauce (although we proceeded to cook it up - sorry raw folks!). I also put in some tofu ricotta... and then loads of veggies! It was delicious. We made a TON of it... so it also served as many a left-over lunch.

So far, on the Eat to Live weight loss program my cousin has lost 25 lbs, her husband has lost about 35 lbs, and my aunt has lost 20 lbs. How cool is that? As you can see, it was a great week of delicious and healthy eating!

Here's a picture of beautiful Fallen Leaf Lake (and a little sliver of Lake Tahoe on the horizon). Fallen Leaf is *right* next to the area that recently burnt down in a massive forest fire. We were relieved that our special place was unharmed, but it was very sad and shocking to drive through the burnt down neighborhoods on our way to the lake.

We had a really nice vacation, even though we ended up having to leave suddenly when my grandmother was having trouble breathing at high elevation. It was a scary way to leave, but luckily she is feeling much better now that she's back home at sea level. Phew. My grandparents are such special and inspiring people. It was really a blessing to spend a whole week with them.

Finally, I leave you with a picture of me clowning around on the dock by our rental house. This little dock is such a special and magical place to practice yoga. I look forward to it every year. Each morning I come down and set up my little spot... it's *such* a rare treat to have unlimited time and such a beautiful place to practice. So amazing to just keep going and going until I feel like stopping. Anyhow, my mom took some fun little pictures of me goofing around, just to memorialize my favorite yoga spot. :)

I hope you had a great week - sorry to inundate you with so many posts all in one night - but, as you can see - I've been dying to catch up on my blogging!!