Category Archives: Food LOVE

I know this week is an exception with all the going through closets and organizing to get ready for the Yard Sale we had yesterday, but really, can’t we find an exception any week? Let’s take this week coming up for example. I’ll be working on my orders, playdate Monday, Clearwater Aquarium Tuesday, and other such activities the rest of the week along with needing to begin boxing for our move.

What am I talking about? Meal Planning! The fact that I’m awful at it. I get going good for a few DAYS, not weeks and then it fizzles. UGH. I do have Monday/Tuesday under control for this week, but it’s my typical chicken fall back. Roast one day with veggie sides and use leftover chicken pulled from bone in a chicken/pasta ragu (which is great I might add) the next evening. I so want to get better at this and I’ve tried people, I really have. And I’ll keep trying, that’s really all I can do. Maybe sometime in the future the good DAYS will turn into weeks?

Times Up!

This has been my Sunday 5 minute Stream of Consciousness. Brought to you by all. things. fadra.

Want to try it? Here are the rules…

* Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
* Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spellchecking. This is writing in the raw.
* Publish it somewhere. Anywhere. The back door to your blog if you want. But make it accessible.
* Add the Stream of Consciousness Sunday badge to your post.
* Link up your post at all. things. fadra.
* Visit your fellow bloggers and show some love.

Today I want to share with you links to some super cool stuff!! Enjoy!

Trying to go paperless? Use these PeopleTowels to help.

I loved reading the book No Impact Man, it really helped me to begin living more simply. As a family we are making new strides everyday to reduce our impact on this great planet. You can also watch the documentary which was equally great!

Loving PFMan and I’s oh so yummy and super healthy breakfast concoction.

Toast a good whole wheat or sprouted bread, we use Ezekiel, spread on some Greek yogurt and pile on your choice of greens.  If out of greens I’ve used sliced tomatoes, roasted tomatoes, you could use a variety of other veggie toppings.  Then top with an over-easy egg, shave some yummy cheese, like Parm, a little salt/pepper, if you like, EAT! Enjoy!

Also, a favorite Eco-blog I follow is Good Girl Gone Green.  Always great information!

One more thing, loving this craft idea that uses old magazines and/or newspapers.

‘Live long and prosper” – Spock

Pacific Coast Highway!

This was the first of three locations where we stayed while in California, it was magical! Big Sur is breathtaking, it harbors a vibrant energy that you can feel everywhere you go.  We ate our most favorite meal of the entire 9 day trip here at the Big Sur Bakery & Restaurant.  It was so incredibly simple, a salad of Bibb lettuce, shaved fennel, fresh shaved parm cheese and a beautiful Meyer Lemon dressing.  Sublime!

We choose to use VRBO.com to find a home rental to stay in and we hit the jackpot. On top of mountain, about 1100 ft. up, the view of the coast was amazing and the house… their are no words! No TV, phone, computer, complete peace, just the two of us.

Take a look for yourselves!
Peace!

Beautiful by Sprouted Kitchen!

I’m a blog junkie!  I’m a foodie, I love to perpetually learn new things, I’m ever eco-friendly and evolving.  Today I give you some of the food blogs I follow:

Sprouted Kitchen
Nourished Kitchen
Honey & Jam
101 Cookbooks
Cheever Sauce
Tasty Kitchen

Mangia!

Love road trips, but mostly when there is time to stop along the way and explore. Even when we drive home from the mountains in GA or TN we make time to stop in Peach County GA to visit Lane Southern Orchards. They have the best Peach ice cream and you can watch them package the peaches too!

The kids and I leave in the morning on our two-day road trip to NY. They are staying with the g-parents for a couple of weeks and PFMan and I are flying to N. CA next Thursday. On our road trip up to NY we will stop in Savannah, GA and Virginia Beach. I think it’s kinda absurd that I’ve been in FL most of my life and here in St. Pete for 11 years and I haven’t yet been to Savannah. It’s only 6 hours away!! I would love to stop at Mrs. Wilkes Boarding House for lunch. They are only open M-F from 11-2, so the goal is to leave early enough to get there in time. Mrs. Wilkes is known for the best in Southern eats! They always have a super long line to get in, it’s served family style. Here’s the description from the website:

Inside Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room, four generations of the Wilkes family have worked the ground-floor, keeping the restaurant’s tables laden with platters of Mrs. Wilkes’ legendary fried chicken, beef stew and biscuits. Friends, family and fellow diners pass bowls brimming with her butter beans, collard greens, mashed sweet potatoes and banana pudding.

Hello!  I’m there!  I love to eat regional food while I’m traveling and the kiddos love to try new things too, yay!  I want to live like a local everywhere I go.  I mean really,  stop eating at the chains and seek out the local eats!! 

I haven’t figured out V Beach yet. Probably just tool around the boardwalk, head to the beach, Chesapeake Bay, etc. I’m actually more excited to cross the Bay Bridge-Tunnel, it’s known as one of the seven engineering wonders of the world.

Ciao!

Galway City

The Luck of the Irish that is.  We just returned home from our family trip to Ireland, kinda piggy-backed on PFMan’s yearly trek out there to broadcast live for St. Patty’s Day.  This would have been his third year in a row and I was not letting him go without us this time!

We flew out several days prior to the broadcast, finding our way by car to Galway City where we called home for our first four nights.  We stayed at the Kilcullen House B&B which is about a 10 minute walk outside of the City Centre, close enough to enjoy the city, but a distance from the noise.  Many times while walking in Galway I felt as if I were a character in a Dickens novel or a miniature in a Christmas Village scene.  I love that, the old worldliness of it. 

Our favorite food in Galway was hands down found at Ard Bia in the Spanish Arch.  It’s located in the Arch which is very medieval in style, but once you walk inside, it’s the small, cozy and very eclectic eatery.  It was love at first site.  The menu is so creative, using local and sustainable produce and meat sources, which I love!  My favorite entree was the St. Tola goats cheese & pistachio cracked wheat cake with wilted greens, garlic yogurt & muhumara.  I will crave this until I return! Honestly we couldn’t decide what to order so we had them bring us the two most popular starters and mains.  We were NOT disappointed.

Other places we enjoyed eating: McDonagh’s, O’Grady’s on the Pier (actually in Barna on the coast near Galway), and Griffin’s Bakery! McDonagh’s is THE place to go for your required Fish n’ Chips, with many different fish types to choose from you can’t go wrong here. O’Grady’s was recommended to us by Emer and Russel, the Inn keepers at Kilcullen House. It’s located in the tiny coastal village named Barna, just outside of Galway. Located on the pier, great views and the BEST chowder I’ve ever had in my life, no kidding! Griffin’s Bakery, originally founded in 1876 also recommended by Emer & Russell. OMG, we each picked a pastry and thank goodness we got four, they were all DELICIOUS. Again, the BEST scone ever. I could have died happy.

I have to stop here, with the food, I haven’t yet mentioned the PUBS, or the Irish Countryside or our time in Dublin or…. So, you’ll have to stay tuned and for now, enjoy the pictures.

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Eating Clean lunch

Wondering if we’re still Eating Clean, me too!! So, truth be told we’ve been struggling with it lately. No big surprise, it’s March 4th and most of us have fallen back into our old routines statistically speaking. I have a ton of excuses of course, we travel a lot, life’s too busy, etc. You know them. However, since I’m not one to simmer over the negatives, let’s discuss what amazing new habits have been formed from our time taking Eating Clean seriously.

1) I’m off coffee completely. Not because I ever had too many cups, I was a one cupper. I just couldn’t drink, wouldn’t drink it without lots of cream and sugar, so I’m an Herbal tea drinker now, sweetener free, hard core! And you know what, my kids like a nice cup of nicely flavored decaffeinated herbal tea with me now in the evening too:-) – Bonus!

2) We use hardly an salt. Eating Clean calls for mostly NO salt. So we had completely cut it out of our diet for a while, got used to food without it which has allowed us, mostly me, to add it back in very small amounts.

3) I love Steel Cut Oats now and eat breakfast every day! I was NOT a breakfast eater and I know it was terrible for my metabolism, but now every morning I fit it into my routine.

4) Bye-Bye sour cream, hello Plain Greek Yogurt! Even the kids!

5) Well adjusted to Whole Wheat Pasta, Yay!

6) Ezekiel Bread products are the only bread products we buy now! They are made with Living Sprouts, they are incredibly yummy & so much better than regular bread. We love their English Muffins!

There are more I’m sure, but these are the biggies, so there is always a positive and we haven’t given up completely, it just isn’t happening at every meal. Things I really need to work on: Well, exercise is at the top of that list:-)!

Well, somehow we survived the cruise. I’m not saying we stuck to our new Clean Eating program, we did not. But we didn’t go nuts either. I continued my herbal tea drinking, yes I gave up coffee to eat clean. You see, I was never an avid coffee drinker anyway, just my one cup in the morning and it had to loaded with cream and sugar. Well, no cream & sugar = no coffee, so done with that. I’m really enjoying the herbal teas, I have at least two a day, one with caffeine in the morning, at night a soothing herbal tea blend. For breakfast on the ship, we continued eating our egg white omelet filled with veggies, salsa on the side. I also found a wonderful whole grain bread I topped with lox, capers and a smidge of cream cheese (at home I use Greek yogurt cheese), squeeze of lemon, OMG, so yummy!

I tried to stick to a large salad most lunches, well, except those we spent on the islands when we ate local cuisine, I insist!

Here at the home front we are continuing to educate ourselves and experiment with healthy foods, super foods.  We have found that we all (PFkids included) really love some of the new items, and of course there have been those we don’t.  We are cleaning our produce upon arrival home from the CSE pick-up or grocery store and placing them up front & center in the fridge for easy grabbing.  The PFkids love ants on a log in their lunch, along with the Chobani yogurt.  Ezekiel bread products are a staple now, made with living sprouts, loaded with flavor and good things for the body.  We spread on a mixture of Chobani Greek yogurt combined with yummies like scallions, capers, sun-dried tomatoes, or herbs/spices, top it with sliced tomato and a side of egg whites scrambled with peppers and onion.  Or we load up our Steel Cut oats with cinnamon, warm skim milk and honey, maybe raisins or diced apples.  These are just examples of breakfast.  The kids are enjoying an Ezekiel English muffin with natural peanut butter, banana and honey.

Continuing to eat 5-6 small meals a day to keep our metabolism on high:-), lots of water with lemon and I just started a capsule a day to help cleanse my liver of toxins.  Gotta love your liver, it’s a work horse for you.

We’ll have to cover Mid Meals, Lunch and Dinner another time.  For now… Mangia!

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Over the holidays I wanted to present a nice spread to nosh on and also save on time.  I was in need of an Olive Tapenade, so I sifted through my recipe resources and realized I didn’t want to work that hard or have to buy so many individual ingredients.  I was going to trash the idea all together when Britt & I spotted this jar of marinated Olives at the grocery store.

So, easy peasy:-). Take the jar, strain out the liquid (reserve the liquid). Pull out the pepperoncinis, then use a food chopper or food processor to finely chop everything else. Done. I added back in a tiny bit of the reserved liquid and a tiny bit of EVOO as well then served with crostini, crackers and other antipasto items.

Viola!

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Merry Christmas!  This is a cherished ornament that has been passed down in my family!

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This is our Kahlua Cake.  It’s a Trifle and is sooo easy and delicious!!

Make two boxes chocolate pudding, one box chocolate cake.  Bake and cool cake, cut into squares, this is the first layer.  Sprinkle some Kahlua over cake pieces.  Mix Kahlua, to your liking, into pudding and spoon over cake.  Repeat layers, top with large container Cool Whip and sprinkles….  HELLO~!!  YUM & HAPPINESS!!:-).