S'mores, Poppyseeds, and I AM SORE

We just got back home from a wonderful weekend getaway with some great friends.

We were given the enormous blessing of having this place to ourselves for the whole weekend! 

This group = amazing. 

After breakfast on Saturday morning, we went for a nice little hike around the property.

My friend Sarah and I had the brilliant idea (at the time) to start the hike off with about a 1/4 mile of lunges. Holy soreness, Batman. My running is clearly not working out these muscles because I woke up this morning SO SORE! Thank you, lunges, for reminding me how much I love / hate you.

We also played an intense game of baggo (cornhole? washers? horshoes?) on the beach of Lake Texoma. What I learned from this game:

I have zero depth perception

I hate the word cornhole

Trying to throw beanbags in a hole 25 feet away is incredibly humbling

I hate the word cornhole

I'm really bad at this game

I hate the word cornhole

Ok, moving forward.

You can't have a good retreat without some good grub:

Friday Dessert, 10:00 PM, (we arrive at the cabin) - Chocolate Dirt Pudding

Saturday Breakfast, 9:00 AM - 2 Scrambled Eggs, 2 Slices Bacon, 1 Cinnamon Roll, Coffee

Saturday Lunch, 1:30 PM - 1 Poppy Seed Ham & Swiss Sandwich with Cranberry Almond Salad

Saturday Snack, 4:00 PM - 2 Keebler Grasshopper Cookies, 1 Double Stuffed Oreo, Handful of Chex Mix

Saturday Dinner, 8:30 PM - Beef Chili topped with Cheddar Cheese, a few crushed Fritos, Buttermilk Cornbread

Saturday Dessert, 10:00 PM - 2 S'mores

Sunday Breakfast, 9:30 AM - Small Bite of the Mr's Chocolate Chip Pancakes, Leftover Cinnamon Roll, 2 Slices Bacon, Fruit, Coffee

Whew! So, pretty much I am up to my throat in pork and sugar... nom nom. What's on tomorrow's menu? Waaatterrrr. 

No, just kidding. You're crazy if you think that I could go an entire day on water. I like food way too much. People who don't eat are crazy and just plain dumb.

But out of all these amazing meals, my favorite by far was the Poppy Seed Ham & Swiss Sandwich. So good! It tasted amazing and was such an unexpected combination! You must try these! I don't even like ham and I L.O.V.E.D these!!!

 Now, campfires are an essential ingredient for a successful weekend cabin getaway, and where there is a campfire, there better be s'mores...

Burns so good...

And just in case there wasn't enough food, we each brought our favorite junk food snacker...

The husband brought the Chex. I brought the Keeblers. Elves know a thing or two about guilty pleasures, so it makes sense that they make the best chocolate-laden, pre-packaged cookie. Enter Keebler Grasshopper Cookies and Peanut Butter Patties. Just.so.good.

We also played a rousing game of pictophone. I LOVE this game. You seriously need to play this. It is SO fun and all you need is a few sheets of paper and some pens. See directions here and get playing people.

 I love fall. I love friends. I love food. 

What a great weekend and WAHOO for a two day week next week and then Thanksgiving!!!

What is your favorite Thanksgiving food?

It's all Greek to me...

So, I must confess that last week was the first time I have ever tried Greek yogurt. Yep. People seem to like it, so while I was at Whole Foods last week I decided to pick some up. I went in for plain and came out with Oikos vanilla, caramel, and chocolate! I.love.greek.yogurt.

The caramel one is probably my favorite, but all three flavors are pretty incredible. 

Yesterday's lunch was spicy chicken vegetable couscous

And chocolate Oikos greek yogurt!!!

So yum, SOOO much better than your normal yogurt brands, and chocked full of healthy all natural ingredients!

I am also intrigued by Siggi's Icelandic skyr for 3 reasons:

1) I am obsessed with all thick, creamy dairy products.

2) I am a sucker for cool packaging and I really like this packaging.

3) The word "skyr" is way cooler than the word "yogurt".

It's the traditional yogurt of Iceland and has 2-3 times the protein count of standard yogurt!

Siggi Hilmarsson (above), a native Icelander, decided to whip up a batch of his childhood staple in his little NYC kitchen during Christmas 2004. By 2008, Siggi's skyr can be found in over 100 Whole Foods stores and other health food stores all over the country! They offer a variety of flavors which include Blueberry, Orange Ginger, Plain, Pomegranate & Passion Fruit, Acai, Grapefruit, and Vanilla. All of the ingredients are, of course, all natural and include skim milk, agave nectar, live active cultures, and vegetable rennet.

Sounds like a good stocking stuffer for me, Santa :)

Tiny Boxwoods and Mad Potters

Quick trip to Houston and back for a job interview and some much needed sister time.

This is my sister. She is two years older than me. This picture pretty much sum her up. Beautiful, stylish, super duper fun, and incredibly sweet, selfless, and loving. Spending time with her is like eating hot buttery pancakes with warm maple syrup on Christmas morning while sitting with socked feet at the kitchen table while it snows outside. She's like home.

She has also been raving about this restaurant in Houston called Tiny Boxwoods. It is a shop/nursery/cafe and is SO cute and whimsical. Perfect for a late night sister dinner. 

She ordered the italian sausage broccolini pizza and I ordered the chicken portobello mushroom pizza (below). The pizza is cooked in a wood-fired oven and the crust is super thin. Almost like a cracker. YUM YUM YUM!!!

We decided to take a nose drive into the dessert menu and ordered the chocolate chip bread pudding with vanilla ice cream and the salted caramel cake with pistachio ice cream. Both were to.die.for. So THANK YOU sister for 1. Introducing me to what may be one of my new all time fav restaurants and 2. Providing me with fabulous company and a very full belly. 

If you are ever in Houston, don't pass up this little gem.

After dinner, we headed to Mad Potter for some ceramic painting and conversations that produced tears from laughing so hard. I really got in to painting ceramics in college and it became a form of therapy for me. This was my first time to paint again since about a year and a half ago, so I was a little rusty. I decided I would paint a bowl. After painting it, they fire it in a kiln to set and darken the paint while giving it a glossy shine. This process takes about 3 days after painting.

Blank Canvas:

Painted!

Appropriate...

I also helped Hannah out a little bit with her border...

Sistertime = Bliss

Starvin' Marvin

And when I say Marvin, I really mean me...but I couldn't think of any synonyms for starving that rhyme with Emily. Nevertheless, that's exactly what I was today.

I started the day with meeting my friend Dana for breakfast at Cindi's Deli. I ordered the #1 Egg Special which consisted of 2 scrambled eggs, 2 slices bacon, 2 sliced toast, and a side of strawberry jam and cottage cheese. All of this for only $5.50! Great deal. And, of course, a bottomless coffee cup.

Everything was going great. Great breakfast, great company, great conversation...and then I spilled the coffee pot ALL OVER the table. People, it was 7:30 AM. Fail. Luckily we didn't get any on us, so we were able to laugh it off, clean it up, and continue enjoying our breakfast. (Sorry, no pics of the breaky).

I was SO full after breakfast, but come 12:00 I was ready for lunch! It was peanut butter jelly time with an organic 'nana on the side.

I LOVE pbj's but they never keep me full for very long. Come to think of it, bananas don't really either. So at 2:00, I was hungry again. Sheesh. I was satiated with a White Chocolate Macadamia Luna Bar. Perfect little snack.

I got home around 6:00 and started on the desserts that I will be bringing to our bible study tonight. Chocolate Chip Cookies and Sopapilla Cheesecake Pie (both recipes can be found on this blog)! I started on dinner while these were in the oven, but I didn't get dinner on the table until 8:30 :( In hindsight, I probably should have just made the desserts after dinner. 

Dinner was Spicy Chicken Vegetable Couscous!

Couscous - The food so nice they named it twice. (name that film!) :)

There was much more chopping involved in this dinner than I anticipated, but it was worth it because this little jumble of goodness was de-lish! I always have a bunch of veggies in my fridge, so every now and then I just dump them into one big pot of healthy so I can use them all while they are still fresh!

For this meal, I threw in sliced yellow squash, sliced zucchini, sliced onion, minced garlic, sliced carrots, 2 fresh chopped jalapenos, sliced chicken breast (sauteed in olive oil with the garlic and onions), mushrooms, whole wheat pearl couscous (cooked in organic chicken broth), and cannellini beans. Topped it off with feta cheese, chopped sundried tomatoes, chopped green and kalamata olives, and chopped smoked almonds. Seasoned with a little bit of salt, pepper, and herbs de provence. All organic and all good!!! And those fresh jalapenos really gave it a nice kick!

Sorry about the bad pictures today. Had to use my iPhone. Better pics to come!!!

More Wiches and More Momma

I love sandwiches, but sandwiches with Mom?? Ugh, I really don't think life gets any better :) My incredible Mother came to Dallas this weekend to visit and as always we had a blast. Lots of yummy food, laughs, tears, great conversations, and snuggles. I think Nova got more snuggles than I did though...

We went to one of my favorite places for lunch today, Cafe Brazil. It was 11:30, and at 11:30, I either want coffee and breakfast (eggs, bacon, toast, fruit, the works) or water and lunch (usually a sandwich). I normally lean more towards breakfast food at this time, but today I was completely torn! So I ordered coffee and a chicken salad sandwich with fruit! I LOVE the chicken salad here. And Cafe Brazil makes all of their own bread, so the salad comes on this delicious, light, buttery hoagie roll that is also to die for. And I think they use yogurt instead of mayo in the chicken salad, which makes it really creamy and delicious! The coffee here is also out of this world. It was actually a nice little combo! I may start drinking coffee at lunch more often!

We were sitting outside, and it was beautiful but a little chilly, so Mom ordered the candy cane latte and a bread bowl full of delicious...chili! (no picture of the chili) So good and such a perfect little holiday meal!

After lunch we ran over to the mall so I could get these!

New oven mitts! I had a little bit of spending money for this weekend and I was in desperate need of new oven mitts, so I thought the red striped ones from Williams-Sonoma would match my kitchen the best!

Later on, I went over to Beth's (my super awesome, cool, unique, beautiful, hilarious cousin) apartment to see her new furniture and cute house accessories (accessories? Is that the right word??). She has GREAT style and a nack for interior design, so her house is always an inspiration to me :)

And I also wanted to see her new SNAKE!!!

Ugh, doesn't it just give you the willies??? It does me...

I later took pictures of the little baby mice that she fed it for dinner but I won't post those. It's a little sad. It's like a car accident-you don't want to look, but you just can't pass by it without looking. So now I have like 10 pictures of little pink fuzzy mice sitting in a snake tank...disturbing, I know.

Well, I'm off to probably dream about delicious chicken salad that my husband brings home from his hunting trip while wearing oven mitts that my mom made while my dog feeds mice to the snake that my cousin Bethany found under her new fabulous couch while sipping a candy cane latte...Night!

All Wiches

Since the husband is out of town this weekend (deer season), I took advantage of my time alone by catching up on some reading, wandering around the mall, and eating lots and lots of sandwiches. Husband LIKES sandwiches but he does not LOVE sandwiches. I.love.sandwiches. In college, I ate sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and I still would if my better judgement didn't require me to feed myself and my husband more variety. 

He goes deer hunting, she goes to Which Wich...

No shame here people. I didn't even go to the actual WhichWich sandwich shop. I went to the food.court. Yep! Pure bliss. The mall food court is surprisingly a pretty quiet and lo-key place to go to at 8:00 on a Thursday night. I sat there, did some people watching, and read a little bit in this book I am currently obsessed with, Crazy Love by Francis Chan. It is all about my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and His deep, unconditional, undeserved, sovereign, everlasting love for you and me. Really, really, really good stuff. I highly suggest you read it. 

After my reading and eating, I only had about 30 minutes to walk around the mall before they closed, then drove home full stomached but empty handed (probably a good thing). Now I am just going to catch up on my blogs, snuggle with my little buggy (aka our golden retriever Nova) and go to sleeeep! Can't wait for the Mr. to come home tomorrow!!!

She even ate the roast beast!

After letting my oatmeal settle for about 30 minutes, I hit the pavement for a run. It was sunny and around 40 degrees outside...how could I not run?? 6.5 miles today with minimal knee pain! Woot! I probably would have had zero knee pain, but the cool weather+hills+having to stop and go a few times to cross busy intersections=inevitable knee pain. 

Came home, took our golden retriever, Nova, for a quick walk, straightened up the house (Mom is coming to visit today!) and hopped in the shower! While I was in the shower, my stomach started growwwwllinggg...roar. I finished getting ready and made lunch!

Lunch today was a roast beef sandwich and some Honeycrisp apple slices.

I've never considered myself a roast beef eater, but husband L-O-V-E loves him some roast beef. So we always have it hanging around. And husband is hunting right now...so I ate his roast beef :)

I would say I am officially a roast beef eater now. maybe. I don't know.

Mom just arrived, so we are about to head out for some shopping and a Whole Foods run! Then dinner with the family tonight!

Oatmeal Morning

I am a big breakfast person. It crazy how much it affects my mood when I don't have it.

(You are never too busy to eat breakfast!!! It's SO important that you do!!)

99% of the time, that breakfast is oatmeal. And I'll be honest, 97% of those oatmeal breakfast come from a box of some kind. I always buy the organic, all-natural varieties, but lately I have been getting a little bored with my prepackaged oatmeal and also inspired by my fellow bloggers homemade oatmeal breakfasts.

So here is my pledge! I will finish off the last 3 packaged of oatmeal that I currently have in my pantry and THEN, helllooo homemade, delicious, upgraded oatmeal! Keep me accountable people!!

Here is this mornings oatmeal. Organic Maple Spice (Whole Foods brand) with a few hunks of organic Honeycrisp apple (sorry, I ate a few before I took the pic!)

Looking forward to jazzing things up in a few days!