What I Ate Wednesday

Hello! How’s it going? Hope everyone is having a splendid week so far. We just got back from a quick little visit to our college town. It was weird but also a lot of fun to be back in Saratoga Springs (we went to Skidmore college). It seemed to be a lot colder than I remembered, but we made up for it by eating lots of soup and other yummy things. Speaking of food and yummy things, I am here to share what I ate yesterday. Keep on reading if you want to know!

IMG_4169Breakfast: Greek yogurt with pomegranates, banana, strawberries, and granola. I’m so excited that pomegranates are in season! They add the perfect crunch and sweetness to my breakfast. I topped this with the original ancient grain granola from Purely Elizabeth. I love this stuff; it is too good.

IMG_4181 Lunch: Quinoa and kale salad with roasted veggies and chips and hummus on the side. We did some meal prep on Sunday and roasted up cauliflower, carrots, sweet potato, zucchini, and yellow squash as well as making some quinoa to throw into salads for the week. This spicy yellow lentil hummus is super delicious and also super spicy for my delicate mouth. I drank two full water bottles after this lunch because my mouth was on fire!

IMG_4186Snack: Kind peanut butter and dark chocolate bar. Gotta have something to keep the hunger away between lunch and dinner and it’s just an added bonus that it has some peanut butter and chocolate in it 😉

IMG_1512Dinner: Crisp kale and brussels sprout tacos with avocado and white bean creama These tacos are freaking delicious! We’ve had them before – in fact this is an old picture as it gets dark at 4pm here and that means weird shadows and odd looking food. I could eat these tacos for days, the white bean creama is excellent and the brussels yum! I’m already excited to have these again as leftovers.

IMG_4201Dessert: Tea with a cookie. As it gets colder all I want is tea tea and more tea. In fact, not pictured are the 3 cups of tea I drank between lunch and dinner (I have a problem). You’d think I would be too water logged to want even more tea after all that but nope bring on the tea (and pee)! This tea is my absolute favorite and I went on a wild goose chase trying to find it in stores. Luckily once I found it I stocked up. These cookies are amazing. They are chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips in them yum yum yum.

Mmm that is all I have to share with you today. What have you guys been munching on late at night when you know you should go to bed? Anything you love to eat once the weather gets a bit cooler? Do you have any favorite holiday teas you like to drink?  I’d love to know; comment below!

As always, thank you Peas and Crayons and Clean Eats, Fast Feets for hosting!

What I Ate Wednesday 9/16/15

Hi all! I’m here sharing a what I ate Wednesday for you. I thought it would be fun to show you what a typical day of meals for me is. Plus, who doesn’t love stalking what everyone else is eating??

Greek yogurt bowl

Greek yogurt bowl

Breakfast: Plain Greek yogurt with figs, strawberries, blueberries, ground flax seed, and Mamma Chia cinnamon pecan clusters. This is one of my go to breakfasts because it is quick, easy, and filling. I usually throw in whatever fresh fruit we have and top with my favorite granola or cereal – the more the better!

Quinoa salad with a side of grapes

Lunch: Salad with quinoa and roasted veggies with some cotton candy grapes on the side. Lately I have been trying to roast or stem a bunch of veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, zucchini) on Sunday so I can throw them into my lunches for the week. I also have been making a big batch of quinoa on Sundays. Can we talk about something for a second? Cotton candy grapes. Like what? How? Yum? These things taste exactly like cotton candy it is kind of crazy and you kind of need to try them. Okay done rant.

Luna bar

Snack: Luna Protein Bar. I like to have a snack around 3:30/4pm to tide me over until dinner. I had a meeting at this time so I had to grab something quick and this protein bar definitely did the trick. Plus who doesn’t love some cheeky afternoon chocolate?

Cuban salad bowl

Mind the messy avocado..

Dinner: Cuban Salad Bowl from Simple Roots. We love love love this salad bowl. We bought some plantains last week and needed to use them up so we whipped up this delicious bowl of goodness.

Tea and chocolate

After dinner treats: Celestial Bengal Spice Tea and some peanut butter chocolate. I love ending my day with a warm cup of tea even if it means I pee 9428 times in the night. I also got to have something sweet to go with it!

I hope you enjoyed peaking into my food life. Comment below what you ate today too!

Thanks Peas And Crayons for linking up!

What We Ate 8/17/15 – 8/22/15

Hey everyone! Just sharing our delicious eats we had for dinner last week. I have to start to figure out what we want to make next week as well. If you have any suggestions comment below!

BBQ chicken Asian salad

Monday: Chopped Asian BBQ Chicken Salad from Half Baked Harvest. We absolutely love this salad! We’ve made it a couple of times before and I always forget how simple and quick it all comes together. Those tortilla chips are sooo good.

Cauliflower rice and sweet potatoes

Tuesday: Spicy Cauliflower Rice, Cinnamon-Paprika Sweet Potatoes & Avocado Mash from Blissful Basil. We recently got into making cauliflower rice and have been trying out different recipes that involve it. This one was simple oh so delicious. The sweet potatoes were probably my favorite part!

Peach pizza

Peach pizza and salad

Wednesday: Peach Pizza with a side salad. This is our go to pizza recipe in the summer – it is refreshing and light. I can’t get enough peaches! Yum!

Thursday: Leftover Cauliflower Rice with Cinnamon-Paprika Sweet Potatoes. Still good leftover!

Friday: Leftover Peach Pizza. It’s Friday so we had to have some pizza to ring in the weekend!

Saturday: Takeout – we were out and about running errands so we grabbed some quick food to go.

What We Ate 7/19/15 – 7/24/15

Forgive us for the lack of posting lately. We have been spending most of our weekends on the Cape, soaking up the sun and waves the best we can. But we didn’t forget about you! We have some projects planned that we want to share shortly so don’t give up on us either! In the meantime, here is our usual what we ate the past week so you can sneak a peak into our daily food routines.

Spiralized carrot salad

Saturday: Spiralized carrot noodle salad. We recently bough a spiralizer so it has been nothing but zoodles all day every day. We made this easy and quick salad by spiralizing a carrot over a pile of leaves and then adding some other veggies and toppings.

Indian chickpea and vegetable soup

Monday: Indian chickpea and vegetable soup. Don’t ask why soup sounded good when it has been a heatwave here recently, but it was what we were craving. We had made a similar soup before but couldn’t find the magazine the recipe was in so we found this one instead. It was easy and quite delicious! And spicy! We added some potatoes to it because why not.

Brussels sprouts salad with walnut sauce

Tuesday: Roasted Brussels sprouts salad with walnut sauce from Veggie Primer. Yum this meal was delicious! The walnut sauce was the best part of the whole dish. I could (and did) eat that sauce on everything!

Wednesday: Leftover Indian chickpea soup. Gotta love having leftovers!

barley mango salad

Thursday: Barley mango salad with avocado yogurt dressing from Running to the Kitchen. We bought some watercress at the beginning of the week, but unfortunately it went bad before we made this salad…  which was a bummer but the salad still tasted good with some romaine under it. I was loving the alfafa sprouts!

Friday: Whole Foods! Friday was a rush and we had very little food in our house so we ended up getting some hot food to go at Whole Foods. It was totally worth it and absolutely hit the spot.

What We Ate 6/21/15 – 6/27/15

Somehow this week we had a lot of leftovers to catch up on. They were all delicious of course, but that meant we didn’t get to try too many new recipes. We also have been trying to go out to eat a bit more to get us out of our usual routine. Since it is summer now it is nice to be able to walk into town and go grab some food you normally wouldn’t cook for yourself or to try a fun new cocktail. Since moving to Allston, we have been able to try a lot of new places to eat and having been loving them all. This week we went to Park in Cambridge and it was definitely a fun place to go and eat.
kale salad

Sunday: Leftover Mexican Brussel Sprout Slaw. We made this last week and it came out great!

kung pao chickpeas

Monday: Kung Pao Chickpeas with some added veggies. We followed this recipe but then added in some cauliflower, broccoli, and peppers then served it over brown rice. This came out really well and we will definitely be making it again!

zucchini boat

Tuesday: Leftover Zucchini boats from last week with a side salad.

Wednesday: Leftover Kung Pao Chickpeas.

Veggie burger

Thursday: Good ol’ veggie burger and a salad. Always good, always hits the spot. Shout out to my bunny grahams!

Friday: Out to dinner at Park in Cambridge. We got a chicken dish with mashed potatoes, peas, and onions. Plus some delicious cocktails. The food was very good just a bit of a more hearty meal, possibly more suitable for the winter months if you catch my drift.

What We Ate 5/25/15 – 5/30/15

Hello again! Another week, another series of meals that we ate and enjoyed. This week was a bit hectic as we were mostly trying to finish all the frozen food/any food we could before we moved. I think we did a pretty good job, we might have left behind a few ice cream bars, which was a pretty sad parting, but that’s okay we will buy more for our new place.

Taco salad

Monday & Tuesday: Taco salad. This is one of our go to meals. It is quick, easy, and absolutely delicious. We sautéed an onion, a pepper, and some ground turkey. Then put that on top of a bed of lettuce and added some tomatoes, corn, and beans. Yum! We also had some chips and salsa on the side because how can you not?

Veggie burger and brussels sprouts

Wednesday: Veggie burger with a Brussel sprout salad. You didn’t think we weren’t having any veggie burgers this week, did you? Well, we still had some in our freezer (I think we still have a box of unopened ones too….) so we made them to try and finish them off. We had a big salad with Brussel sprouts, an onion, and some zucchini as well. I also enjoyed some boom chicka poofs on the side as well.

Quesadilla

Thursday: Quesadilla with a Brussel sprout salad. Weird combination, but we had tortillas to eat and I was craving a big quesadilla so we put some cheese, salsa, corn, beans, and whatever else into them. We also had a package of Brussel sprouts and some leftover salad to eat so we through those together on the side. Nothing like a good quesadilla!

Brussel sprout salad

Friday: Brussel sprout salad and some chicken nuggets and apples. Yep, really trying to clean out the fridge at this point. We had leftover Brussel sprouts and broccoli so we whipped up a salad. We also had some nuggets that we had to eat so we shared those and I cut up an apple for good measure. Random but good!

Saturday: Salad from Sweet Greens. We both had leftover salads from lunch at Sweet Greens so we munched at that for dinner, which quickly turned into munching on popcorn and chocolate and wine for dessert!

Gold Foil Salad Tongs

Salad with tongs

We recently shared one of our go to Spring salad recipes. You might have noticed (or not, we don’t blame you) these pretty gold serving utensils in our Spring salad. Well, we are here to tell you how to make those exact salad tongs. All you need is some gold foil, wooden serving tongs, and a little bit of patience.

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I always swoon over all the pretty gold foil crafts that scatter Pinterest, but have been too intimidated by using gold foil. I don’t know why, it’s just one of those irrational fears. It always looks so hard and time consuming, and ain’t no body got time for that. I like my crafts quick and dirty.

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Plus, I would have to buy even more craft supplies, and believe me our tiny apartment is already bursting with scrapbook paper, stamps, and washi galore. What kit would I buy? Did I need a whole new paint brush just for the foil or can I use one of our $1 ones where the bristle hairs fall off the moment you touch it to paper. These are things that kept me from gold foiling. That and my 0 patience for anything tedious or has a drying time.

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Now that you understand where my irrational fears came from, let me tell you how I overcame them. Well, we were perusing Homegoods (loveit) and came across a pack of wooden serving utensils that just looked so plain and boring. Cue the Pinterest inspiration (pinspiration) forever engrained into my brain and an idea came to mind. Let’s gold foil the ends of these tongs and make them oh-so-cute! This is how my brain works.. anyone else? nope, k I need to get off Pinterest.

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Anywaysss.. this idea lead us to buy our first ever gold foil pack! We used this gold foil kit from who else but Martha. This is our first time foiling so I’m not sure if there are better kits out there, possibly cheaper ones? But, for our purposes this one did just dandy. And let me tell you, it really isn’t as hard as it seems. Okay, it did take a few tries to get used to and Rose had to sort of clean things up a bit, but for a first time gold foil craft I think these came out pretty spiffy.

Gold foil tongs

How we did it was we used the adhesive anywhere that we wanted the gold foil to stick (duh). We liked just the tip to be foiled and then played around with some stripes once we got the hang of it. You let the adhesive dry for about 10 minutes or so and then gently lay the foil on top. Here is the tricky part, and we learned that it is best to do smaller sections at a time instead of trying to wrap the whole sheet of foil around. It helped to actually pre-cut the foil into strips that were about the size you wanted to foil, that way you could lay them smoothly down. Once the foil is on just let it sit like that for a few hours. Or, if you are like us, forget about it for a few days and come back to it (oops – I told you I don’t like things that have to dry). Gently press down and smooth the foil onto the wood. It may tear, but that is okay, you can do more than one coat of foil. Continue this process of putting the adhesive on then the foil for all 4 edges of the wooden tong. It might be delicate but hey, you can always add an extra layer of foil to cover up any big imperfections. We ended up doing two sides at a time just to make sure it wouldn’t be wrinkled. The final step is to use a food safe sealant to make sure the gold leaf will stay put and not tarnish.

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Rose was better at laying the foil and did a wonderful job cleaning up my mess. But, I got over my gold foil phobia! Now I can foil the world! Sorry Rose..

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Simple Spring Spinach Salad

Spinach saladOh, hello there Spring! I hardly noticed you with all the wind and rain happening. I’m glad you have made an appearance and I am equally glad you were able to melt all that snow winter left behind. Flowers are blooming, dresses are flowing in the wind (albeit a little too much sometimes), allergies are in full force. Oh what a glorious time of year! I joke, I do truly love spring, especially before it gets too too hot.

Fresh green saladOne thing I look forward to the most in Spring and Summer in general is the abundance of fresh fruit. We buy certain fruit like blueberries and strawberries all year round, but there is nothing like biting into that perfectly ripened in season berry. Yum! I will eat the whole carton of blueberries in one siting if Rose doesn’t stop me.

Spring spinach saladThis simple salad incorporates and welcomes all the beautiful in-season berries that you could imagine. Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, oh my! I have to keep adding in more and more fruit because I pick it out as I’m assembling the salad.. sometimes I just can’t wait!yellow placemat

We like our berries to rest on a nice bed of spinach, but any lettuce will do. We also cut up some carrots, snap peas, and tomatoes to add in some extra veggies and crunch.

veggie spring saladAside from all the juicy berries in this salad, I also love how adaptable it is to whatever taste you are craving or what is in season. Sometimes we add chicken, sometimes we add in some mango, sometimes we even add in some sesame sticks or croutons – I know, living on the edge. Dress it up with a quick toss in extra virgin olive oil and some balsamic and you’re good to go.

spring saladAt the first sign of Spring I always start making this salad and bringing it for lunch or having it on the side of dinner. It is refreshing and simple to make, which is what I crave in the warmer months. Do you guys have any go to spring/summer meals?

crunchy spinach salad

spring saladSpring Spinach Salad

What we ate 3/15/15 – 3/21/15

Happy Spring everyone! In the same week that winter turned to spring, we broke the all time record of snow fall in Boston. Needless to say this snow ain’t going anywhere anytime soon. Although it might not look quite like spring yet, it is certainly starting to feel like it. Stores are selling swimsuits, the sun is out longer, I’m craving fresh fruit by the bucketful (seriously though). We’re excited to start eating spring fruits and veggies in our dinners each week. Plus we have some fun spring treats to share with you all soon so fellow Bostonians keep your heads up, the snow will be gone soon, and everyone else keep checking back for new recipes, crafts, and more!

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Sunday: Leftover enchiladas from the previous week. Still good!

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Monday: Breakfast taco with Brussels sprouts and an orange. We threw together random bits for this dinner and it came out pretty good if I say so myself. The breakfast taco had scrambled eggs, avocado, spinach, cilantro, and some swiss cheese (and ketchup…).

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Tuesday: Pretzel Crusted Chicken and Roasted Parmesan Ranch Cauliflower (and carrots). Both of these recipes were super simple and very good. We skipped out on the parmesan on the chicken and used what spices we had on hand but they still came out great. They were good as leftovers in lunches as well.

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Wednesday: Mango Lentil Salad with Cilantro-Lime Dressing by Love and Lentils. This recipe was simple to make and we had cilantro and mango that we needed to use up so it was perfect. We added a red pepper to ours and some avocado, ’cause yum.

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Thursday: Leftover mango lentil salad over kale and springtime blood orange margarita (recipe coming soon!)

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Friday: Zucchini Lasagna with lentils from Eating Niagara. This recipe was ahhhmazing. The recipe was a little confusing to follow but it came out delicious. Mind the cheesy-gooey mess of a picture…

brussel sprouts and garlic bread

Saturday: Brussel sprouts with homemade garlic bread and fresh strawberries. We grabbed a demi baguette at T.Joe’s and popped it in the oven with smashed garlic and butter then served it up with brussels sautéed in olive oil with some salt, pepper, and a dash of lemon juice. One of my favorite meals!

What We Ate 2/8/15-2/14/15

Hello!

I hope everyone had a good week and aren’t buried in snow like we are here in Boston. Anddd we are only expecting more this coming week as well. I don’t think there is anywhere left to pile snow up anymore. We shall see Boston, we shall see.

Here is what we munched on for dinner last week. We had pre-planned what we would cook each night so there was no wasted time figuring out what we wanted each night. This is especially helpful if you work till 5 and still want to get a workout and/shower in before dinner; every minute counts!

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Sunday: Whole Living Lauren Tomato, Chickpea & Sourdough Bread Soup. With the snow already starting to fall outside, this was a perfect meal to end the day with all curled up on the couch to watch the Grammy’s. We used less broth than the recipe called for as we didn’t want too too much leftover, plus I don’t know about you but I like more stuff to broth ratio in my soups. We had some crusty, crunchy bread we ate on the side of this. Also, as a side note, we had plain pasta we added to this for our lunches and it was a delicious addition.

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Monday: Leftover pizza. It was National Pizza Day so naturally we had to have our leftover pizza we made on Saturday of last week. It was just as delicious leftover as it was when we first made it. I like my second-day pizza cold (is that weird?) so there was no need to even heat anything up!

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Tuesday: Pinch of Yum’s Lentil Curry Bowls. This was delicious! We had another snow day on Tuesday so we had plenty of time to make this meal; having time to make it was what worried me when we picked it for the week. But the snow gods prevailed and we had all afternoon to slowly cook the lentils. Yum yum yum. Definitely going to make this again. We skipped out on the rice because we thought lentils were filling enough for us but we did add some avocado and piled on the cilantro cashew sauce. We also roasted some zucchini with the carrots as we had some lying around.

Wednesday: Leftover Lentil Curry Bowls. Which was good because yet again we were both stuck in crazy snow traffic after work. By the time we were home we were starving so went straight to the fridge and pulled out our leftovers; still delicious.

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Thursday: How Sweet It Is Winter Chopped Salad with Roasted Sweet Potato and Blood Orange Vinaigrette. This salad was amazing! We’ve been loving blood oranges lately so we decided to try this salad out and it did not disappoint. The sweet potatoes were scrumptious as was the blood orange vinaigrette.

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Friday: Molly’s! We drove home to my house in Hanover, NH. Once we got there it was late and we were craving their barbecue pizza so we ordered one to share and a “kale” salad that turned out to not be kale or that good for that matter. The pizza didn’t disappoint though! Olive was itching to steal a piece or two.

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Saturday: Homemade sweet potato skins and a side salad. We cooked dinner for my family and were both craving sweet potatoes. We were going to do the same salad as Thursday but thought my family would need something a bit more hardy. We made potato skins topped with sautéed onion, pepper, corn, and white beans on top. They topping mixture was seasoned with chili powder, paprika, garlic powder, salt, and pepper.