The Ritz!

Ritz Carlton

Today we had a lunch at the Ritz Carlton Resort for the boyfriend’s grandmother’s birthday! I hadn’t been there yet and was super excited to go. It was a long drive and situated right up against the mountains.. it was beautiful! Spring is here! The trees are turning green and there were wildflowers everywhere!

wildflowers

The food and service were excellent and we all had a great time.. the weather was perfect! When we got home we looked at our fruit bowl and veggie drawer and decided it was time to juice. I shop once a week and whatever we don’t think we’ll eat before my next trip (tomorrow) gets juiced.

great for composting!

We juiced carrots, celery, a cucumber, a tomato, mandarin oranges, a lime, a few blueberries, and ginger. It tasted so fresh and packed a lot of ziiing! After finishing our juice and cleaning the kitchen we hit the pool to relax and soak up some sun!

Because we had such a big lunch we decided to take it easy and have some of the pasta salad I made Saturday.

In the mix are cheese tortellinis from TJ’s, tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, artichoke hearts, olives, feta, basil, crushed red pepper, and artichoke pesto. I like to make this salad in the summer because it’s a yummy, quick, cool meal perfect for hot days.

I’m off to bed.. have a great week everyone!

birthdays at the office..

.. equal cake!

So much more exciting then my usual hummus and pita chip afternoon snack!

The weekend is almost here!

yummy black beans

Last night we made grilled chicken fajitas with blue corn tortillas and they were so delicious and beautiful but I wasn’t able to get any photos of my plate before I devoured it because the Arizona/Duke game (one of the GREATEST WILDCAT GAMES EVER!) was on and I had my game-face on. I made the beans ahead of time and was able to snap a few pics of them.

I chopped up some onion and garlic, sautéed them in a little Pam cooking spray, added about half a can of Rotel diced tomatoes and green chiles, garlic salt and chili powder. I rinsed one can of black beans and added them to the pot. Brought it to a boil and then down to a simmer for ten minutes. I squeezed some lime on top and served in the fajita with chicken, guacamole, onion and green bell peppers, salsa, and shredded Monterey Jack. The beans were so good I saved the leftovers to bring to work today for lunch.

yummy black beans

Fajita veggies

TJ's blue corn tortillas

vegetarian lasagna

This is one of our favorite meals! It’s simple and fun to make, too!

The veggies are interchangeable and it is a great way to use up leftover pantry items or ‘on the verge’ veggies.

This time we sautéed spinach, artichoke hearts, black olives, mushrooms, zucchini, onions and garlic in a little olive oil. Then we mixed in some marinara sauce and layered the mixture with lasagna noodles and mozzarella. Cover with foil and bake until pasta is tender and serve with crumbled feta on top. So good!

veggies

add marinara

simmer

cheesy

side view

sloppy delicousness

wii tennis and veggies

I’m having difficulty getting my head back to work and school.. I had way too much fun yesterday doing this:

Believe it or not, my arms and shoulders are killing me! This only means one thing.. I must do more!

All our activity got us starved so we stuffed our faces with veggies and yummy hummus!

upside down pineapple cake!

Saturday afternoon I got in the mood for some baking.. after skimming some cookbooks I came across a recipe I had all the ingredients for.. pineapple upside down cake! This cake is one of my all-time faves because of the tartness of the pineapples and the moistness of the cake! My gave me this total 1970′s bundt pan awhile back and I thought it’d make it super easy to bake and flip this cake and it did! I’m pretty sure as long as I don’t start making jello molds (ew!) with it it’s OK to keep around. The cake came out great! We immediately dug in and enjoyed some nice Kona coffee from Hawaii with it!

And because we stuffed our faces with cake in the middle of the afternoon, we took it easy for dinner and had a nice fresh spinach salad with turkey, avocado, corn, cucs, and tomatoes!

 

I love lazy Saturdays!

backpacking adventure recap in pictures

corned beef & cabbage

Happy St. Patty’s Day! I love any excuse to make this dish and making it in a crockpot couldn’t be easier! We roughly use this recipe from Food Network: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/slow-cooker-corned-beef-and-cabbage-recipe/index.html and it turns out great each time! This year we used Rolling Rock for the beer because it’s all we had and it was perfect! The boyfriend chopped away all morning and threw it in this morning because he had the day off (luck of the Irish, I suppose!). We had a couple friends over and it smelled so good we practically all ate it out of the crockpot! We also had some adoreable mini cupcakes I picked up from the store but they went so fast I didn’t get a pic.

He also got this shot of a rainbow in the sprinklers.. and I love it!

But what does it mean????? :)  

grilled chicken and calabacitas

For dinner we grilled up some chicken breasts marinated in a Jamaican jerk marinade/grilling sauce we got at Big Lots for only $2! We added some of our favorite hot sauce for some extra heat.

We served calabacitas along side our chicken.

Everything came out great! I can’t wait to add the leftover to a spinach salad for lunch tomorrow!

drinks

There are so many blogs about what people eat and cook and like and what’s healthy but I never really hear about the drinks.

Some background on me… my mom is a coffee fanatic. Her whole family is. Us kids grew up with warm milk with a little coffee in our bottles! Now, my dad.. he loves his Mountain Dew and drinks it all day. Offer him a cup of coffee after 10am? He declines stating he won’t sleep for week. Try to make sense of that! So put the two of them together and you get me… a full-blown coffee and soda addict at the age of 10. While I was in high school I worked as a barista in a locally owned coffee shop to support my habit. I exaggerate but to be honest I don’t even notice the effect of caffeine unless I don’t have it. I usually will get a headache on day two and realize that I haven’t had coffee and I pull into the closest Starbucks, chug a Grande iced coffee and away the headache goes.

I’m not so worried about my coffee because I’ve pretty much gotten down to one or two cups of black coffee a day (the second if I’m dragging and have class or studying to do). The soda was another story. I’d drink a couple of glasses a day. Then I started to really worry about this neon green liquid full of sugar and chemically engineered ingredients and cut it out. I started mixing 100% juice with sparkling water and then switched to water. It really is amazing what happens when you stop drinking soda. You kind of deflate. It’s been a couple of years now but I’ll have a glass sporadically (movies!) but really can’t stand the sweetness.

So, on a normal day, I have my coffee in the morning with water, a glass of green tea around 10am, and then water the rest of the day until I get home from work then I either have a glass of iced mango tea (TJ’s black mango tea – oh so good!) or a glass of wine. Then it’s back to water until bed. Sometimes a glass of skim milk with cookies sneaks its way in but I can always use the calcium. When we go out to eat I usually have wine (Merlot or Pinot Grigio) or I get a Michelada!

So what do you drink throughout the day?