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I made it back from Chicago safe and sound Sunday night and have been wanting to get a post written to highlight the SCAN Symposium I attended.  I didn’t get to do too much sightseeing, but Chicago was a really neat city just really really cold!  brrrr I about froze all my fingers off!  While Vegas was enjoying a heatwave at 75 degrees, Chicago was around the upper 30s, which is about the start of their spring time.  oh boy.  

As some of you know, I wasn’t sure if I was financially going to be able to attend SCAN, but fairly last minute I had some wonderful things happen that made this trip possible.  A fellow dietitian that lived pretty close to the conference graciously offered their guest room to me.  I was so thankful!!!  And they had a cute doggie 🙂  I also sought out to be a student volunteer to help pay for the actual conference.  I was just tickled to be able to go to a great conference with such an inspiring group of sports dietitians.

I don’t want to delve too much into all the sessions in details, but there were a few that were really interesting to me that I will try to touch upon in the future (let me know if you have an interest in one in particular):

• Athlete’s 24 hour Meal Plan
• Update on Protein Needs for Athletes
• Low Carbohydrate Availability and Training Adaptations (writing a paper on this one for my class!)
• Quercetin

Not only did we have a great line-up of speakers, they fed us really well too 🙂

The exhibitors also had some tasty snacks for us as well.

and I could be found always carrying around my handy dandy nalgene.  Have to stay hydrated!

Even got the chance to try a local Italian restaurant that was fabulous.  It was packed which is a good sign of yummy things to come.

I tried  a limoncello cocktail to start.

plus a shared caprese salad.

I ordered a stuffed chicken dish, but I didn’t know it was going to be covered in cream! ack!  well, it sure tasted good 😉  The chicken was stuffed with prosciutto, spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, and fontina cheese.

Had to try real Chicago deep dish pizza!

mmmmm

The last day of the conference I had a little time before my flight to walk down Michigan Ave. and it was great!  Lots of neat shops, architecture and views of monstrous buildings.  I love walking around a downtown that locals also frequent.  Most of the time Vegas locals avoid the strip like the plague and there isn’t really a local downtown.

This is one of the last buildings left standing after the Chicago fire, neat!

I was so excited to finally get to walk around a Crate and Barrel and look what I found!!  cute spoons!  Why don’t they have one of these in Vegas?!

They dyed the river green!

Trump Tower.

This was a really neat looking amphitheater and they have summer concerts on the grass.  Fun!

Out of all the neat structures that I did see, by far the neatest of them all was the bean!  I’m not sure what it was, but it was the strangest yet intriguing structure I have seen.  I wanted to keep staring at it.  So neat, but so random.

This is underneath, weird!

I love the inspiring energy of conferences and always feel so motivated afterwards.  I still need to look over all the info again to synthesize it all, but it was a great experience and I was so grateful I was able to go and enjoy it.

I have so much school stuff to catch up on, including a 10-pg paper due next week for class, yikes!  The Swanky Dietitian’s Birthday is today so we are going to celebrate over dinner and then I’m going to go visit my dad and kiddos this weekend too 🙂  I’ve also been fitting in the wee early rides in the am at least 2x per week and trying to get stronger with hills!

I’ve still been in the kitchen, but cooking very simply with things like tacos, beans, baked pastas, soup, etc . . . oh yes and the beloved egg is great for an easy meal like a frittata.

Hope you all had a wonderful week!  As always, thanks for sticking around with me and reading 🙂