Today's Eats - Barely Anything

Today I had my doctor's appointment, you know, the one where I was considering dressing my hoo-hoo in a costume? Well I chickened out of that but I had a good appointment nonetheless. I didn't want to eat beforehand on account of I like that weight to be as low as possible! I was 192. It's official, the three pounds I lost have been found. Darn it! After my appointment I went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch because I'm a self-medicator and I felt that was going to make me happy. It was tasty but I felt so guilty later for eating it. Here's what I had:



With a sweet tea no less.

The rest of the day was spent carving a pumpkin and taking the kids to my mom's for a visit. By the time we got home we were in Halloween preparation mode so I didn't eat dinner. Well, I had a few packs of Halloween candy, but that certainly didn't satisfy me! Now I'm really hungry but there's no point in eating this late.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow because we have nowhere to go, Ryan has a playdate away from home in the afternoon, and the day after, I'm off to Disney World! yay!!

Hope you all had a great day and a happy, safe Halloween!

Today's Eats - Don't Faint

Yes, friends. Your eyes do not deceive you this really is a post, current, about what I ate today. Nothing glamourous, mind you. Pretty standard fare. Anyway, here we go.

For breakfast this morning, Iain wanted scrambled eggs, so I had some, too. Along with a piece of buttered toast.



Lunch was leftover Creamy Artichoke Soup:



I think I posted a link to the recipe in an earlier post.

For dinner I made gumbo and tomorrow I'm going to post more pictures and the recipe because everyone should know how to make gumbo. It's a great one pot meal that can feed a lot of people. I ended up not eating "dinner" because I snacked on the gumbo while it cooked (and some tortilla chips and salsa, and some skittles, and asmall box of Dots!) but here is Sean's bowl:



It was quite good and I am excited to share the recipe with you tomorrow!

Hey, in the morning, I'm going for my annual pap exam (tmi?) and I got all cracked up because my sister and I were joking about how I should dress "it" up for Halloween. Have mercy, we came up with some doozies! Let your mind marinate on that...

See you tomorrow!

Where have I been??

Good grief! Almost a week since my last post, now that's ri-damn-diculous! I'll tell you it's been hard to get back into the saddle since taking that time off, friends, but I'm going to attempt to recap what I've eaten since last week. It won't be pretty, it won't be descriptive but hey, I've got some catching up to do so let's go!

Thursday

B - Chicken Club biscuit (fried chicken, cheese, lett, tom, pickle on a biscuit. uh-oh)

L - in the car Fish Filet Combo from McDonalds. Double Uh-oh

D - in Charlottesville, at a local Mexican Restaurant. A taco salad topped with a spicy ranch dressing and steak. I ate about half. Not so bad! WAIT! Oh no! Churros?? Aye caramba! Fried dough covered in cinnamon sugar? uh-oh again.

Friday

B - two chocolate doughnuts from the free breakfast at our hotel.

L- McRib? They have the McRib!!! On the road...mcrib combo from mcdonalds. What is wrong with me??

D- a small bowl of she-crab soup. It was pretty gross.

Saturday

B - no breakfast
L - hot dog on a bun with mustard
D- shrimp and grits and peach maple crisp Now, THAT was good!

Sunday
B - scrambled eggs and natural bacon
L - ice cream from cold stone
D - leftover shrimp and grits and peach maple crisp

Monday

B - 2 eggs fried in a touch of butter and a piece of whole grain toast
L - frozen Totino's party Pizza (uh-oh, not again)
D - Pork Chops and Brussel Sprouts Lardons a la Barefoot Contessa


I promise that today I'm back, really. I've been taking pictures since yesterday and am ready today to get going. Now, keep in mind that Friday - Sunday I will be AWOL because my sister and I are taking a girls only trip to Disney World. I haven't decided if I'm taking my camera or not yet but I will recap all of our glorious eats while we're there and record here on Sunday night or Monday.

Whomever is still with me, thanks for sticking around!

Today's Eats

Today is Sean's birthday and I had much to do in preparation for his dinner tonight. This morning when I woke up, one of the first things I did was - no, not eat breakfast - make his birthday cake. Nigella Lawson has a recipe in her book, Feast, for a Chocolate Guinness Cake. One of the ingredients is Guinness beer. Yes, you read that right, the cake is made with beer! Here is what it looked like when it came out of the oven:



Doesn't that look good?

Once the cake had been baked, I fixed myself something to eat - leftover Zucchini Gratin. It was the last of it and it was quite tasty.



After lunch, the boys and I had to run some errands and during that time, I struggled to decide what to fix Sean for dinner. On the one hand, I had no idea what time he would be home so that caused me some concern. I wanted to fix Shrimp and Grits but we're having company over for dinner on Saturday and I plan to fix that for them. I settled on London Broil, which turned out all right.

The frosting for the cake was a Cream Cheese frosting, which was intended to emulate the frothy, creamy head of a Guinness beer. I mixed mine up and frosted the cake and, while mine was a tad bit lumpy it tasted just fine!



This is what the cake looked like in all its frosted glory!

Well, usually when I cook London Broil the preferred method is on the grill. I like being able to see it and touch it to check for doneness. As luck would have it, our grill is on the fritz and the last time I cooked London Broil, it didn't cook well. Tonight I decided to cook it under the broiler in my oven with, unfortunately similar results to the broken grill. Sean was a trooper and ate it but I was disappointed.

Here is my plate from dinner:



London Broil is best when thrown on a hot grill and cooked for 6-7 mins per side. My oven took way too long to cook it which makes the meat tougher. Oh well, the cake was good and I think Sean enjoyed it. He's taking the rest to work tomorrow because we're going out of town for a couple of days and won't be here to eat it.

I feel like I'm getting back on track which is good because, according to the scale I've put on the 3 lbs I had recently lost! Argh! I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I will focus that energy on staying on course. We'll be on the road tomorrow so I'm not sure how I'll update but hopefully the hotel will have internet access and I can post something tomorrow night.

Recent Eats

Well yesterday and today have been hectic so I don't have any photos to share but I am going to tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly of what I've eaten over the last couple of days.

On Monday we got up and out the door early to go visit our friend Marin in Raleigh so for breakfast I had a package of chocolate covered donuts and some potato chips. Mmmm. Doesn't that sound healthy?! Wait, it gets better! On the way home we stopped at Burger King and, being the glutton for punishment that I am, I ordered a Big Fish sandwich combo. It was horrible, thank god, so I couldn't eat it. Dinner was decent at least. Leftover Zucchini Gratin and a small caesar salad. That was good! The recipe is as follows, adapted from a Barefoot Contessa recipe:

2 zucchini (sliced)
2 yellow squash (sliced)
one small onion (chopped)
1 cup half and half (HOT)
salt and pepper, nutmeg
1/2 cup fresh or panko bread crumbs mixed with 1/2 cup grated swiss cheese
1/2 -3/4 stick of butter
2 Tbs flour

Melt the butter in a large saute pan. when melted, saute the onions over medium heat until translucent, 15-20 minutes. Watch them because you don't want them to brown. Once they're ready, add the zucchini and yellow squash and cook that for 5-10 mins, or until soft. Add the flour and cook for a couple of minutes and then add the hot half and half. Add salt and pepper to taste along with a couple of sprinkles of nutmeg and cook until the sauce thickens. Once the sauce has thickened, pour the mixture into a small casserole dish and top with the bread crumb cheese mixture. If the mixture doesn't cover the top, add more. Dot the top with a few small pieces of butter and then place in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes or until brown and bubbly.

It is delicious!! I tried to wrap things up with a gorgeous espresso that I saw Giada de Laurentis make which consisted of freshly made espresso, heavy cream, and chocolate liqueur, topped with sweetened whipped cream. Doesn't that sound divine? I tried it and YUCK. I'm just not grown up enough to enjoy the bitter drink. My husband loved it though so if you're a fan of espresso then give it a try!

Today, we went out to get some things for Sean's birthday which is tomorrow. I'm having a hard time planning for it because we may be going out of town for a couple of days. I won't know for sure until later! At any rate, after skipping breakfast this morning, we went out to eat at a local restaurant and I got a cheeseburger and some chips. It was good, not exactly healthy, but good. I ate about 3/4 of it.

I'm not sure what I'm fixing dinner tonight but tentatively, I'm planning to fix another Giada recipe, Artichoke and Leek Soup. You can find the recipe here.

I will update tonight, hopefully with a photo!

UPDATE:

Argh. No photo but I did make the soup with the following changes. Giada called for marsacapone (sp) cheese and I didn't have any so I just used half and half instead. Also, I added some thyme leaves to it because nothing cozies up a meal like thyme. Other than that I followed her recipe and it was good, people. Warm, thick, rich. Mmmmm. Like curling up in front of a fire with your honey, that's how cozy it was. I also served a bratwurst with it because, as filling as soup can be, I need something to chew on as well. It was a very satisfying meal.

It looks like we're not going out of town tomorrow so I will post pictures of the cake I make for Sean's birthday. I think I'm going to make Shrimp and Grits for him for dinner because I'm not sure what time he'll be home and that is a meal I can have ready in 30 minutes which is about how long it takes him to get home from work, give or take a few minutes. Also, the kids and I don't have anywhere to go tomorrow and I'm looking forward to hanging out in my PJ's, eating some yummy food, taking some glorious photos, and posting it all on here for you guys.

Thanks for sticking with me!

She's baaaaaack

Sorry about the break, folks but I really, really needed it! There were so many things I wanted to do, NEEDED to do, and I was feeling challenged by the need to keep up with the photos here on this blog. Also, it was getting a little overwhelming to come up with something pretty to eat every meal of the day. I'm over that now because I'm getting back to my idea of just capturing what I eat. If it's gorgeous, great. If it's ordinary, great. It is what it is. I know you guys aren't sitting out there expecting me to fix some fantabulous meal 3x a day!

Anyway, I took some pictures of dinner last night, which was fabulous and I'm here today to share with you the beauty of a tapas dinner. If you are unfamilar with the concept of tapas, it's a Spanish term referring to tastes of different dishes. If you went to a tapas restaurant you would order several different dishes to share with folks at your table. It's a great way to eat because it's hard to eat too much. It's like having a dinner of appetizers. Well, my sister and I had gotten together eariler in the day and had decided to cook something but we weren't sure what. IN fact, when we went to the store yesterday afternoon, we had a completely different idea about dinner and we changed our mind as we were collecting ingredients. Here is our menu from last night:

Steak Crostini, with Italian flat-leaf parsley, a sour cream mustard with horseradish, topped with shaved parmesan

Caprese Salad which is toasted bread topped with sliced tomato, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil leaf, olive oil, and salt and pepper

Mini Ciliantro Crabcakes made with (gasp) canned white crabmeat, chopped fresh cilantro, roasted red pepper, red onion, coriander, nutmeg, and chinese five spice powder. Along with egg, mayo and panko bread cumbs as the binders.

Hoisin Haricot Verts, french green beans blanched then cooked in a saute pan with Hoisin Sauce and sesame seeds.

Cheesy Chicken Quesadillas, my sister's own recipe so I'm not sure what's in it besides chicken, chili powder, cumin, sour cream, cheese, green chilies, sandwiched in 2 tortillas then fried in a saute pan. Yum-O

My sister also made these divine Mini Chocolate Cream Pies which are made up of chocolate pudding to which she added coffee and Godiva chocolate liquer. Holy. Crap. They were good.

Here are pics from dinner:



Steak Crostini



Caprese Salad



Mini Crabcakes



Haricot Verts



Chicken Quesadilla





Chocolate Cream pies before whipped Cream and after.

This dinner was so delicious, both to the eye and the palate which only increases the pleasure of the meal. I highly encourage you to try a snacky dinner at least once a week. It's a lot of fun!

Taking a few days off

Don't worry if you don't see any posts from me for a few days. I've been neglecting some things around the house and need to spend a few days getting things in order.

By Monday I will be back to posting as usual!

Thanks for your patience!

Evie

Recent Eats

I've been a tad under the weather, friends so my recent eats have been pretty slim to none. Yesterday I didn't manage to eat breakfast but I did eat some soup for lunch. Our grocery store carries some all natural soups that are pretty darn good, no additives, no preservatives. They were running a by one get one free special so I got one container of New England Clam Chowder and one of Charleston She-Crab Soup. Mmmm-mm good! Here's my bowl of soup from yesterday:



I spent a lot of the day on the sofa because I felt incredibly weak. Last year around this same time I was diagnosed with extreme fatigue. I don't know if it has anything to do with the time of year, or time of the month if you catch my drift, but I've been pretty exhausted for the past couple of days. I did manage to take the boys to the park for a little bit yesterday but then spent the rest of the night on the sofa. For dinner I had a bag of organic microwave popcorn and a Coke.

This morning I was determined to get off to a good start. There was some leftover french bread in the freezer so after thawing it out, I used it to make some french toast. Usually when I make french toast it turns out AWFUL. Have no idea why that is but sometimes the things that are the simplest for most people are the hardest for me. LOL Today though, someone was looking over me because the french toast this morning was delicious. Even Iain liked it! He said it tasted like the french toast at Disney World! Here's a shot of it:



For lunch, I simply had a hot dog and some water then a couple of squares of chocolate. For dinner I was going to fix pork chops, brussel sprouts and mashed potatoes but I only got around to the brussel sprouts and potatoes. The brussels were good! I used to despise these things but once I used the Barefoot Contessa's recipe, which involves bacon, I was hooked. I'll post a picture of them tomorrow.

Tomorrow's eats are going to be interesting. My sister and I are meeting up with RinnyBoo at the State Fair and I'm looking forward to having some fair food!

Good night!

Today's Eats

I think we're developing a Sunday morning ritual. Why, you may ask? Well, this morning, Sean went out to Panera and picked up a couple of those delicious souffle's we ate last weekend. They are sooo good! Although, after eating it again today I think it's more of a strata than a souffle. Sean also went to Starbucks and picked up my favorite beverage, a chai latte. While I didn't take a picture of that, I did take a couple of good shots of the souffle:





I ate every stinking bite of that and it was delicious. However the Chai Latte was huge and I only drank about half of that before throwing the rest away. I love that drink so much. It's like drinking gingerbread!

Lunch had me in a quandary. We have tons of leftovers in the fridge but they were all so cheese laden and I didn't think I could handle anymore cheese today. So then, what to have for lunch? I decided just to have a sandwich. A ham and mayo sandwich with pickle slices on whole wheat bread. It was really good!



Now that it's time for dinner, I'm not totally sure what we're having. I put out a London Broil but I don't think it's thawed out yet. If it doesn't thaw, I'm not sure what we'll do. Whatever happens, I'll update you later!

DINNER:

Ha! Dinner was a comedy of errors which I won't dwell on here but it finally got done and we all ate together as a family. Nice! We don't get to do that very often. I made London Broil, a package of Parmesan and Romano Cheese Rice, and baby broccoli florets:



I overcooked the london broil just a tad but all in all it was pretty good. RYan tried it and didn't like it but he did eat the rice and broccoli and a PB and honey sandwich. Iain liked the london broil all right but he didn't like the rice. He thought it tasted like Mac and Cheese, which he can't stand. I'm just happy they both tried something they didn't like. I fixed the leftovers for Sean to take to work tomorrow for lunch so hopefully he'll eat them. He's been eating out a lot and I told him we haven't budgeted for that and he really shouldn't do it every day. We'll see what happens tomorrow!

Good night!

Today's Eats

I got up early this morning and made these beautiful pancakes. If you click on the picture, it will take you to my Flickr page which has a link to the recipe I used. These turned out really nicely and went really well with the bacon I cooked, too. :)

We had a busy day. After breakfast, we wandered out to a Fall Festival, which had been very poorly organized but we didn't let that get us down and we all had a great time. Be sure to go to my unschooling blog tomorrow and check out some pics from that adventure. We were at the festival smack during lunch time and, since I love a good hot dog, that was my lunch of choice along with a Mountain Dew.



It was plain, my usual is slaw and mustard, but the line was pretty long and we all just wanted to sit down and eat!

Tonight, we went out to dinner with my sister and her hubby to a Mexican restaurant that was okay. A little on the salty side but not greasy at least. I got combo number one, 1 taco, two cheese enchiladas and rice. I ate half the taco, one enchilada, 1/3 of the rice. Oh yeah, and a million chips with salsa. Why is it that you can eat a whole basket of those before you realize what you've done??

I got my "studio" partially set up with a table, a lamp, some foam core to try and direct light in the room, and some props to use. The pancakes are the first picture I took in there and I think it turned out pretty well. It's nice to have a dedicated spot to take the pictures because it was getting to be a big ordeal to drag out all my equipment to get the kinds of shots I wanted. See, in order to get my shots really, really sharp, I've started using a tripod. I've been using a higher aperture, a lower film speed, and both of those require a tripod when the light is not totally bright because the shutter speed will be slow and you'll get a very blurry image otherwise. Also, using the ISO 100 gives me a much clearer picture than I was getting at 400 ISO. I'm really learning a lot and am enjoying taking pictures of food. It's inspiring me to cook more and making me step outside of my comfort zone, too. This week I'm thinking about trying a couple of French foods that I love. We'll see!

Have a great night!

yesterday and today's eats - ugh

It's been a crazy couple of days around here. I'm beginning to appreciate how difficult and time consuming it is to maintain two blogs, a household, two kids, and a burgeoning hobby in photography. It's exhausting and frankly all those have suffered a little over the past couple of days.

Yesterday's breakfast was boring. I wanted to make a beautiful souffle or something but just couldn't find a recipe I wanted to use. Instead I just made the Old Faithful, scrambled eggs and biscuits. The picture is terrible, too. I think I did something wrong when I developed it so later on I'll revisit it and put the better version here.



I didn't eat lunch yesterday. Well, I did if you count the 12 raw almonds I ate while walking out the door. Breakfast held me over until almost 3 and then Iain and I had to go out and run some errands while Ryan was at a Kid Mosh. That's what we call playdates because my husband hates the word playdate. Anyway, I ate the almonds and drank some water and we were off.

Dinner. Another missed meal. Unless you count the tiny slice of frozen pizza that I ate. I made Tuna Casserole but I didn't eat it. Don't know what was up with me yesterday...

This morning, I got up and had to run some more errands and when we got back, I had another handful of almonds. It was late and I thought we were having lunch with Sean so I didn't want to eat a big breakfast and get so full that I couldn't enjoy lunch. Well, of course we ended up not going. Sean was really busy and didn't even call me until 12:30 to tell me that we couldn't get together. Oh well. I had the tuna casserole in the fridge so I just reheated some of that. This picture turned out terrible too. I'm not sure what's up with that but here it is anyway! LOL



It's all out of focus. Would you believe I took 25 pictures and every last one of them looked that way?? I was really pissed.

This afternoon I'm going to be spending time setting up "my" room. The boys just combined rooms so I'm taking Iain's old room as my own and am going to set up my own photography studio. It's just so difficult to keep all my camera supplies downstairs so I can get a picture together when I need it. This will be easier on everyone I think.

Not sure what we're doing for dinner. The boys wanted to go out but we'll just have to wait and see. Whatever it is, I'll update and hopefully the picture will be in focus!!

DINNER:

We ate over at my sister's last night and I didn't feel like taking my camera over but I'm going to do my best to describe for you what we had. First, we started with the Pioneer Woman's cheese bread, toasts as we like to make them. This time, instead of using all monterey jack cheese, I used a combo of pepper jack and monterey jack. They were quite good and I probably had 4. Ok, 5. No really, I had 10. They were SO good! LOL Then my sister made her own sloppy joes using a Rachael Ray recipe. INstead of ground beef though Beth used ground turkey. They were better than any Sloppy Joe I've ever had in my life. The sauce was sweet and savory, just perfect! I only had a half of one though since I'd eaten all those cheese toasts. To go along with the sandwiches, she made a caesar salad. It was a really nice dinner, but I did eat a tad too much. Hopefully I won't regret eating all that cheese. LOL!

see you later!

Today's Eats

Well, it was another "early" day here. Really early for me since I was cleaning up doggie presents at 3:15 in the morning but we won't talk about that. I really do love my new fur coat though. Ahhh, I'm only teasing! the pup is just fine. The boys were up at 8am and we hit the ground running because we had a lot we wanted to do today. I did make sure to take time and have a quiet, relaxing breakfast before all the craziness began. I cooked some natural bacon in the oven, a tad too long, my favorite way to cook it. It just cooks so much more evenly that way. I had that along with some organic french vanilla yogurt and my homemade granola. Mmmmmm. So good!



It took me a while to figure out what I was having for lunch. There was some chicken in the fridge that needed to be cooked today but I just wasn't sure what to do with it. I settled on Parmesan Chicken, mashed potatoes, and tiny green peas. For the chicken, I soaked it in buttermilk while I prepared the coating which was panko bread crumbs, grated parmesan cheese (NOT Kraft), hot hungarian paprika, poultry seasoning, parsley flakes, and coarse pepper. In an iron skillet I put 1-2 Tbs of canola oil and heated it up. Once I dredged the chicken in the coating, I placed it in the skillet, seasoned it with kosher salt and browned it on both sides. Then I placed it in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes, while my potatoes cooked. Here is the finished product:



Late afternoon, I decided to go ahead and have dinner. Sean has been getting home so late that it just feels pointless to try and eat dinner with him. Since lunch was so big I just had a small snacky dinner which consisted of a Granny Smith apple, some Danish cheese (which was not so great), and some fancy shmancy garlic crackers. I have to tell you that this dinner was less than satisfying so it will not be repeated. See for yourself:



As you can see, it wasn't very inspiring! LOL I've been combing through all my cookbooks and haven't found anything yet that I'm itching to fix. Maybe tomorrow some inspiration will hit. Oh, one more thing. I have added a quick, 15 minute exercise routine to my day. Nothing set in stone, just 15 minutes of activity. In the family room I have left some wrap-on hand weights so when I'm just sitting around, I can turn on the music channel on TV and dance around with the weights on my hands. I did it yesterday and can really feel it today. It's just something to get me started so I'm not doing a set step-by-step routine. Today the boys and I got out and walked a lot so that was my exercise today. My weight has creeped back up to 191 and I feel that it's because of little nibbles of things I have throughout the day. they don't seem like much at the time but apparently they're adding up. They seemed so insignificant that I didn't even mention them here. That's going to stop though. No more nibbling and more exercise!

See you all tomorrow!

Today's Eats

Not sure why but we were all up at what felt like the crack of dawn to me at 7:15am. The boys got up and came downstairs and we just hung out this morning. I made another batch of biscuits from www.pinchmysalt.com and, in an attempt to avoid the sticky dough from last time, I think I made this just a touch too dry. With butter and jam you can't tell the difference! LOL Here is what my breakfast looked like this morning:





They were really yummy!

For lunch I decided to try and make some fried chicken. My mom told me that my grandma used Crisco so that is what I did today, too. Crisco is not good for you but it sure is good. To go along with the chicken I made a cauliflower au gratin and some haricot verts. Here is my plate from lunch:



Later I munched on some Harry and David Moose Crunch, which is like PoppyCock or Crunch n munch, and I really regret it. I had a major sugar crash this afternoon and was weak, tired and a complete bi-yotch. I'm feeling better now but man, it was rough for a while. Not sure what I'm having for dinner because I'm not really hungry but, if I eat I'll be sure to update.

Today's Eats

Woke up this morning - Late! Well, at 9am anyway, and had to rush around because we had nothing to eat and we needed to get to the grocery store. Once we got out and back, it was almost 11am so I decided to just eat lunch. While we were in the grocery store Ryan had mentioned that he would like to get some macaroni and cheese. Of course, I wasn't buying a box just because it had Spider-Man on it but I told him we'd make our own. Once it was made though he only wanted a peanut butter and honey sandwich so I ate it instead! Really, I don't know why anyone would make the box version when it's just as easy to make homemade pretty quickly. I boiled 1 cup of macaroni and when it was ready, I added a Tbs of butter, a generous handful of shredded cheddar cheese, one slice of american cheese, and a splash of cream. Throw in a pinch of salt and a couple of grinds of pepper and you can go ahead an eat it if you want to. I however wanted to add a bread crumb topping which would add a tiny bit more cooking time. I put a small amount for my lunch in a ramekin and the rest in a larger dish for later. Topped with a tsp of butter and a sprinkling of italian bread crumbs, the ramekin went in a 350 degree oven for about 10 mins. While that cooked, I sliced an all natural hot dog on the bias and cooked it in a skillet with some butter. Here is the finished product:



After lunch I went a good while before I was hungry again and, while there were plenty of healthy things for me to choose for a snack, I instead chose to snack on this:



I spent a lot of time thinking about what to fix for dinner. That seems to be the norm these days because I want to show you something visually appealing but my personal repertoire is quite shallow. At any rate, it's 9:17 as I write this and Sean is still not home so around 7:30 I decided not to wait and just fix something easy. It's not the best picture but it's a record of what I ate! LOL



A couple of slices of natural bacon, 1 egg, 1 buttermilk biscuit, and 3 chopped strawmatos seasoned with salt and pepper. Like I said, not exciting but it was dinner!

Tonight I'm going to cruise though my cookbooks and see what interesting fare I can come up with for tomorrow. Hopefully something better than breakfast for dinner.

Weekend Eats

I'm going to give a quick summary of the food I gorged on this weekend and, I do mean gorged. Right now I feel like an overstuffed pillow.....ugh.

So Saturday morning I got to sleep late and so I skipped breakfast. We went out to eat for lunch and I had two slices of cheese pizza. Not very exciting. Later on, we dropped the kids of with my parents for a sleepover and went crazy! Oh, it was so invigorating to be out and about without worrying about whether everyone's needs were being met. Sean took me from store to store helping me try to find things for me to use in my quest to become a cooler food photographer. You will see in a moment an embarrassingly bad shot I took trying to be all artsy but hold onto your britches, it's be here soon enough. So we went to Garden Ridge, Tuesday Morning, TJ Maxx, all on a quest for cool plates and kitchen items. Sean did try to get me to test drive a car but I wasn't having it. It starts with a test drive and 12 hours later your eyeball deep in a 72 year car loan. No thanks! After we wore ourselves out with shopping, we wanted to go somewhere hip to eat. You know, somewhere cooler than Ronald's Maison de boeuf. (mcdonalds for those who don't parlez francais) We settled on a brand new restaurant downtown called Rim. The name alone caused Sean to go into fits of 12 year old toilet humor. It was really good though! A tapas place, the offerings were not innumerable but they were absolutely divine. We started out with Marcona Almonds (peeled and roasted in sunflower oil) and Flash Fried Calamari. Next we ordered Tuna Tartare, Curried Lamb Meatloaf, and Hoisin Haricots Verts. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Everything is sized to share and perfect for two people. Next we ordered pork, cabbage and ginger potstickers. God, they were so good, I thought I was going to embarrass myself in the restaurant while exclaiming my satisfaction with the meal. Here are the things I remembered to take pictures of:


Hoisin Haricots Verts..see the black and white sesame seeds?



Curried Lamb Meatloaf with a cucumber sauce, oh god this was too good.


Tuna Tartare, this was spicy and mustardy, just plain delicious. It was served with a pickled tomato watermelon relish. Sounds weird but it was damn good!

After dinner, we ventured on down to Ganache Bakery for our over the top dessert of the night. Here is where the embarrassing photo comes in. See, when we got home had all these cool plates and cake stands that I'd bought and I wanted to get a cool, fantabulous shot of my cake to post here. Well, I overthought it just a tad. Here is the best shot I got and you'll see that's not saying much:



That picture is so terrible and I wouldn't share it with just anybody! LOL

We came home, watched a movie, went to bed. When we got up, we wanted to take advantage of the peace and quiet and grabbed some reading material and went out for breakfast. It was a major decision trying to figure out if we should go somewhere and get a big breakfast or just go somewhere small for pastry and coffee. Small won. We headed over to Panera and I had a Turkey Sausage and Potato Souffle with a Chai Latte. Chai Latte is my favorite! It was great too because we were able to sit outside. Sean read the paper, I read my cookbooks and Sur la Table catalog. For an hour. It was glorious!!



We picked up the kids and then headed home to get some things done before the beginning of the week kicked us in the ass. For lunch I had Shepherd's Pie leftovers which I won't bore you with another picture of that. Then my sister called and offered to buy us dinner in honor of my b-day. Cool, I can get down with that. We ended up ordering appetizers from a local place and I had some wings, some chips and dip, and some nachos. The only thing I got a picture of though was the wings. Here you go:



No cake tonight, baby! I was full after eating all that and here I sit feeling like a complete glutton but happy at the same time. It was a really nice weekend. I hope you all had a nice weekend too!

Yesterday's Eats - Birthday!

One might think that celebrating a birthday without a cake is a bad thing but I'm here to tell you that you can recognize your birthday without a cake and live to talk about it!

Yesterday morning I got up and opened my gifts which included some new camera and computer gear. I also received a birthday present I ordered for myself which was a book on digital photography. I've been incredibly inspired by some of the photos over at Flickr and really want to improve my skills so I tried something new when shooting my breakfast images. I couldn't really tell a difference but I'm trying! Breakfast was quite simple, two buttermilk biscuits with a touch of Bonne Maman cherry preserves. I adore cherry jelly, especially on biscuits...



This held me over for a long time, surprisingly and later I had some leftover Shepherd's Pie for lunch.



For dinner, Sean asked the boys where they wanted to take me and they, of course, wanted Mario's Pizza. However I wasn't in the mood for a big greasy slice of pizza so instead I had a big greasy burger at Fincastle's, a diner downtown. LOL



It wasn't greasy actually. We hadn't eaten there before but the menu looked like fun, Cherry Crush, baby cokes with peanuts, fried pickles. I didn't have any of that, though I was sorry I didn't order a Cherry Crush because I loved those when I was a little girl. The burger was really tasty. A lot of places do not season their burgers and this one had a great combination of pepper and salt. Really good. I ordered onion rings as my side because I'm a total sucker for them:



These were good, too but they could have used a touch of salt. It's hard to beat the flavor of a salty onion ring dredged in ketchup. Mmmmmm, that's tasty!!

After dinner, Sean wanted to take me to our most decadent local bakery called Ganache. They have the most incredible cakes and are the only game in town to go to when you have a special occasion and you want to get something other than the standard cavity-inducing fare offered at the grocery store. They made our wedding cake and that was to die for! Anyway, I was so full after dinner though I decided to wait until tonight to get some cake. The kids are spending the night with my parents so maybe Sean and I will head over to Ganache later and enjoy something gorgeous with a cup of coffee. Here's what my plate looked like at the end of dinner by the way:



After dinner, we headed over to my favorite book store and there I was able to buy $250 worth of books for $84. I love the used book store! I picked up The Joy of Cooking, How to Bake, and The New Basics Cookbook. Also got a couple of books on parties, a Celtic activity book for kids (super cool), a Marvel Encyclopedia and a photography book. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

I didn't miss the cake one bit. It was a great birthday!

Yesterday's Eats

An exercise in junky eating! Ryan had to go to the dentist yesterday to get some fillings and couldn't eat before he went so, in solidarity, I decided to abstain as well. His appointment wasn't until noon either so we both got there hungry. After the appointment, I promised I would take him to MCDonalds for a Happy Meal. Well, my resistance was low due to the fact that I was starving. I ordered this and told myself I'd only eat half:



That didn't happen...I ate the whole thing. At least I ordered an unsweetened tea and saved myself some agony on that score.

Later on, when it was time for dinner I began making Shepherd's Pie and it was late, probably around 7:30, and I still hadn't heard from Sean what time he was planning to get home. While I cooked I snacked on a couple of cookies, a handful of peanuts and a couple of spoonfuls of mashed potatoes. Then Sean got home around 9:30 and I just didn't feel like having dinner! So this is what I made:



But this it what I had around 10:00...



Good stuff, huh? Well, today is my birthday and I plan to celebrate by treating myself well. Check back later for an update on today's eats.

Today's Eats

Woke up this mornin' and had a hankerin' for some biscuits. Hot, soft, fluffy biscuits. My mom used to make homemade biscuits every weekend when we were little and I would pile mine up with butter and cherry jelly. Cherry is still my favorite today. So when I was roaming around a website called www.pinchmysalt.com and saw a recipe for buttermilk biscuits, I knew then that a plate of these were in my future. My very near future. So, am I repeating myself too much when I say that baking isn't my thing? Baking and my laissez-faire attitude just don't mix because baking requires precision and many times I just don't have the patience for that. The biscuits turned out great it's just that I added too much buttermilk to the dough so they were too sticky to roll and cut out so I had to make drop biscuits. It didn't affect the flavor at all though. Check this out:



I'm going to be honest. I had two of these lovelies because it had been a long, long time since I'd had a homemade biscuit that was any good, and these were GOOD. The biscuits along with a small glass of creamery fresh whole milk held me over until 3:00 today.

Lunch was light. I decided to have a salad and topped it with some black beans, tomatoes, salsa and sour cream mixed together with some salt and cumin. Along with that I fixed myself some more of the olive cheese bread but I fixed it on rounds instead of the loaf halves. It was really good!



Here is the salad.



Here are the toasts.

I think for dinner tonight we're going to have breakfast: eggs, sausage, and biscuits. Sean will be home shortly and I'll be sure to update after we eat!

DINNER

I'm embarrassed to post this picture because it's terrible but it's a record of dinner so it's going on here anyway:



It's a biscuit with a tiny bit of butter, a fresh sausage patty, and a scrambled egg. It was a good dinner just not exciting! Sometimes breakfast for dinner is soooo good! Just overlook the really dark part on top of the biscuit. My oven cooks really hot and I forgot to check on them. LOL

See you tomorrow. Have a great night!