Green Monster Smoothie & ENERGYbits Spirulina

I've been a big fan of spirulina for a while. So when I was invited to try out ENERGYbits spirulina I was keen to give them a go!

ENERGYbits are 100% organically grown spirulina. That's it! ENERGYbits have got ahold of this awesome superfood, put it into little bite sized 'bits', done some great modern styling, added a little groovy metal tin to carry them around in, and made this 'hippy weirdo superfood' just a little bit more 'cool and mainstream'. I like it!

I love that Spirulina is a FOOD, and not a supplement. I've stayed away from supplements on the whole, always striving to find what I need from natural food sources. Spirulina algae is 64% protein - the highest concentration of protein in the world! It also has the highest concentration of antioxidants, the highest concentration of beta carotene and the second highest concentration of Omega 3 in the world and contains 40 vitamins and minerals. 

They recommend you take ENERGYbits in the morning or prior to a workout and some of the biggest health benefits are;

• to get a steady stream of energy
• improve mental alertness
• remove fatigue
• healthy (natural) high protein snack
• helps curb your hunger

Even though I've been using Spirulina for a while now I still find the smell and taste pretty dodgy - it's very 'green' so I preferred to swallow the bits whole. But it's worth it knowing the 'goodness' you're ingesting - we take disgusting tasting medicines when we're sick so I don't mind taking something a little unpleasant tasting for health - it's my 'healthy medicine' and I'm good with that!

I personally love using Spirulina in my morning smoothies. Talk about GREEN Goodness as a kickstart to your day! This is my go-to recipe.

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If you'd like to to try ENERGYbits for yourself then enter the code BLOG into the coupon box when checking out on their website and you'll get 10% off your order!

I received this product free of charge in exchange for writing a review on my blog. However all opinions are my own.

I'm linking up to Jill's Fitness Friday post.

Retro Music at Sun Peaks

Last weekend we drove to Sun Peaks Mountain resort outside of Kamloops to spend the day sitting in the sun and enjoying some 'retro' music. They'd brought in a bunch of cover bands to some old classics - we enjoyed music from 'Bob Marley', 'Tragically Hip' and 'ZZ Top'. There was quite a buzz around the village, and we took a stroll and grabbed some goodies from the bakery, and a couple of drinks on the patio of the nearest bar!

The highlight of the day though, might have to be the blissful 2-hour drive home. The skies cleared, the air was warm, the moon was bright and the colours of the dusk were magical. And it's moments like this that we LOVE having a soft top sports car! A jazz CD playing on the stereo just topped the whole experience off to perfection!

Barnhartvale Road, between Kamloops and Highway 97. Normally we ride along this stretch on the motorbike, so it was lovely to actually go at a more 'sedate pace' and enjoy the views!

Meli stayed the night at Auntie Liz's, and we picked up an extremely happy (And pooped out) pup the following morning (and this is a big deal because I now have a photo of her actually looking happy for once - she always seems so serious and grumpy in photos!)

Kona Kase Happy Mail

This is the third month I've received the Kona Kase and I'm loving it! Apart from the obvious fact that it's fun to get happy mail I'm loving the variety of products and the opportunity to try out new brands I'd never tried before and oftentimes never even heard of!

I think I tend to judge an item on how quickly it disappears...and this month the Health Warrior Chia Bar was the first to go. De-lic-ious! I'm a big fan of Chia with all it's antioxidant and protein packed goodness. It was naturally sweet and chewy and I admit it was kind of fun to find little seeds stuck in your teeth half an hour later swelled up and gelly like!! (That might also sound gross, but just try it!)

I also loved the Garuka Bars. Named after one of the few remaining mountain gorillas in Rwanda, it was packed full of simple ingredients - in this case lots of peanuts. It was sweet and salty all at the same time, with a strong taste of peanut butter. Another thumbs up here!

Kona Kases are geared to providing fuel for athletes and whilst there's usually a good dose of yummy 'treat' snacks all months so far have also featured some more specific sports fuel - this month was Body Glove Surge Gel and some Chews from Pro Bar. I may pass on the Gel only because it was coffee flavoured (and I don't like coffee) but I'm looking forward to trying the Chews - lemon lime flavour seems very appealing.

Also in this months box were Granola, Caveman cookies, Enjoy Life Seed & Nut mix and some Perky Jerky!

I still think the modest $15 monthly fee is super reasonable for the Kona Kase - and actually works out much cheaper than that if you sign up for a 3, 6 or 12 month subscription which is what I did.

If you'd like to try Kona Kase (and I'd heartily recommend it!) then you can get $5 off your first box by clicking here, and using the code ReferKona095 when prompted. Enjoy!

Okanagan High Rim Trail Hike & MIMM

Well this is the first time I'm linking up for Marvelous in my Monday - such a great idea from Katie at Healthy Diva Life (and in case my Mum is reading this - yes Mum, I know my schooling taught me marvellous is spelt with 2 L's - it's just that Katie doesn't!! - and from here on in, I'll be going back to my British roots and spelling it 'right' ;-) So I'm all over my Marvellous Monday - it's BC Day here (er, in British Columbia Canada - eh!) and it's a Statutory Holiday - nothing more marvellous than a day off work. And usually I often only work part time on Monday's, but for the next month I've been contracted for a bunch of additional hours so I'm working my bee-hind off! So a Stat day is extra-lovely.

We had a marvellous relaxing weekend. On Saturday we finally drove out to a local trail we've been meaning to check out since we lived here (it's only been 4 years!). The Okanagan High Rim trail is actually a 55km trail running from Vernon to Kelowna. We live in Lake Country which is about 1/2 way between the 2 and there are a couple of access points to the trail near where we live. The views from our house are the hills which the High Rim trail runs along. We took about a 20 minute drive up Beaver Lake Road in Lake Country to the nearest access point (which if you're local and looking to find the same access point I believe it was near the KM10 forestry marker on the main Beaver Lake Road - look for the brown & white hikers sign on the left hand side, where there's a decent sized pull out with parking room for several cars). Since we did pretty much all the steep climbing up the hills in the car the hike on foot was a lovely, mostly flat trail. Since it's a pretty wilderness type trail, and from what I can gather, fairly sparsely used I wasn't expecting much of a trail. We've been up in that same area on the motorbikes and have frequently lost our way on trails that turn to dead ends....

But the trail access on either side of the road were well marked. We set off south from Beaver Lake Road and followed the trail for 3-4 kms before turning round. Most of the trail section we were on was marked by pink and black striped ribbons, and the occasional wooden marked stapled to a tree, but really the path was pretty obvious. On a hot summer day it's so refreshing to be up in the hills - the air is cooler, and everything around you is lush and green. Much of the hike was through fairly thick woods so no views to speak of, but man, did it smell good! We encountered a few downed trees and some serious wet patches that had us tippy-toeing around but it was pretty easy going. Meli, rather obviously LOVED it! So many smells, so many sticks to chew and so much freedom. She was a little taken aback by the cows we stumbled into (As was I, all I saw out of the corner of my eye as I turned a corner was something big and black and moving - it was a split second before I realised it wasn't a bear and calmed back down. Because we've seen bears up in them there hills when we've been on the bikes! AND Chris had had this crazy nightmare only the night before about us getting attacked by a bear!) 

We crossed over a couple of cute little trail workers bridges, and there were even a couple of hand painted interpretative signs about the trees we were passing so there's been some love and attention given to this trail at some point - it's amazing it's so little used or even heard of!  I'm so glad we finally made it up to the High Rim Trail - and whilst I'm not likely to hike it as a multi-day trek anytime soon, I'm looking forward to getting back up there and hiking another section too - I anticipate we could get much of it done by hiking north and south from each access point in turn, so over time we'd be able to cover almost all of it!