Catching Up

Aaaaaaah!

What am I going to do? I don't have any almond milk! Ugh.

I don't function very well without my oats, and I happened to have a particularly oat-free morning. I went to Target, picked up some bananas, but guess what I forgot?

Then I went to the Farmer's market, got some chocolate Bennett's fro yo, and decided to got to he Whole Foods across the street. Did I remember? No.

This is what happens when I don't have a proper breakfast.

 I actually got a different flavor fro yo, of my own free choice. Creamy, decadent, chocolaty goodness.

 For dinner, we went to this French Bistro at The Grove called Morels. I used to go when I was little for cheese fondue.

Nowadays, I tend to avoid big vats of bubbling cheese. Willpower, my friends, is the name of the game.

 I ordered one of my salads dry with Dijon mustard on the side. This particular salad touted organic greens and tomatoes. I don't like tomatoes, but there were only about four in the whole salad and I don't mind picking around 4 measly tomatoes.

Unfortunately, the salad was only so-so. I'm really not a huge arugula fan, and this was no exception. On top of that, I like leaves to be very chilled, but these kind of an unappealing room temperature.

The Dijon was also way spicy, so I either had the taste of icky ill-tempered arugula, or had my nose burning with spicy Dijon.

The dressing that actually came with the salad was quite good, light with a pleasing flavor. Sadly, I'm not a huge salad dressing person, so that really didn't salvage it. Oh well.

 The coffee on the other hand, was quite different.

I ordered an "Ecuador" French press coffee, with notes of sweet caramel and chocolate. I ordered it with some nonfat milk, and it came in one of the really fun French presses.

 At first, I was really pretty modest with the amount of milk I put in, so to me, the initial taste was slightly a burned one, although the texture was very smooth.

 After adding more milk and getting more used to the flavor, I really enjoyed it. Not too bitter, but not "sweet." It was almost silky smooth and I really got the French Bistro feeling.

I really have been reading too much Julia Child lately. :)

My friend Christine ordered the chocolate mousse, and this pic was taken after it was ever so slightly picked at. ;)

I only had a few minuscule tastes because I wanted to leave with that lovely coffee taste in my mouth. But, the mousse was really good too. It was almost "melt in your mouth," and there was some vanilla mousse in there, too.

So yeah, that might have to be it for today.

I know, this was kinda a boring culinary day, and I was thinking I could share the recipes for the poached salmon and cauliflower mashies I made the other day to redeem myself, but, there are a lot of pictures, which is a lot of uploading time. Maybe tomorrow?

Before I go, I wanted to give a shout out to Angela at Oh She Glows for being amazing, as usual. I gave her an email declaring her awesomeness, and she just responded with such a sweet email. She is sooooo nice and I am so honored to have talked to her. She is a highly acclaimed blogger, and I really respect her. Thanks, Angela!

Enjoy!

-Kelly M.

A Dijon Day

Happy Father's Day! (Well, not anymore...)

I had a quite a day, and I know I'm supposed to be catching up on posts for the pasta few days, but I though today (tonight,) I would actually talk about today. What a concept!

I got up relatively early for a weekend in summer, so i decided to take my mom to yoga for the first time. After going to the wrong place and finally showing up there more than 20 minutes late because (naturally) I got the class time wrong, the nice ladies at the desk decided to take pity on us and let us in anyway.

The class was fantastic. Yoga is great and I really hope to do more in the future! But I read on the website of a local yoga place (I don't think it's the one we actually ended up going to) that I shouldn't eat three hours before the class. So I skipped breakfast.

I survived, but I don't think I'd do that again. So after class, I went to Father's Day lunch with my dad, where we went (by his choice) to a bar-type restaurant called Saddle Ranch.

You can't read the menu, can you?

"Smart Drinks" is legible, but I think that's about it.

Since I did miss breakfast, I did start wolfing my salad down before I snapped a pic. I ordered the Thai Peanut Crunch, and I must've given the poor server a headache with my special ordering. I didn't take notes on the subject, but I think I ordered it without noodles, different noodles, won ton strips, sesame seeds, and with the dressing on the side. Can I also have a side of Dijon mustard? Whew. That sounded long even to me. (Take another look at the pic. That whole bowl was practically filled to the brim with salad. It was HUGE.)

I love ordering salads dry and then dipping my me salad goodies into Dijon. As you can see, I cleaned this bottle out. I wanted my 12.99 worth. (Yeah I know, paying thirteen bucks is probably too much to pay for a huge bowl of lettuce and salad related items. Oh well, it is a holiday.)

Look at all the dressing the gave me on the side! When you think about it, it would probably take that much to coat a salad like that. So I guess I don't need to feel so bad about cleaning out that jar of Dijon, should I?

There were also peanuts, edamame, carrots, and cucumber in there. Yum! (But I was soooo full.)

I tried to get my dad to go on that bull (to no avail. Maybe next year?)

Check out these guitar dudes that hang around the tables playing for customers for tips.

I think this sign is pretty funny.

So after that, I went to go see a movie at The Grove with my mom, and we took a detour to Sur Le Table, that amazing (and kinda overpriced) kitchen supply store.

I love this place.

By the way, I'm taking a teen summer cooking class here in this very Sur Le Table kitchen. I'm not sure they'll let me take pictures, but I'll try my best to fill you all in afterwards.

More kitchen. Eventually I had to ask my mom to drag me out of here before I put us in the poor house. (Thanks, Mom!)

So at the Farmer's Market...Yes, yes this is chocolate pasta. I think the sample would've been better if it had been cooked, because raw pasta typically isn't overly appealing.

I just wanted to hop in a start basking in the fruit bath. (But that might've looked weird. Just maybe.)

So I swiped (but not before paying :) ) some seedless grapes, a package of strawberries, a mango, and three bananas before continuing on our Farmer's Market journey. 

To any gluten free readers out there, check these out! The man at the counter said they guaranteed you'd love it, or your money back. (Cool!)

Ahhhh, choices.

So on our way out, we stopped at this awesome ice cream/fro yo place called Bennet's, where I order some nonfat and no sugar added blueberry cheesecake fro yo. 

Yes, for calories, that actually says 50 per half cup. I'm  not really sure that's right, but, oh well, the blueberry frozen yogurt was DELICIOUS!

I think I'm smiling behind my fro yo. :)

Oh look, I am! (That's my fro yo smiley face.)

A nice man offered to take a picture of me and my mom. (It can be fun to have people think you're tourists.)

Ok, so I'm kinda obsessed with popcorn. I usually pop up an 100 calorie bag, but they can be laden with unpronounceable ingredients, and, because I have I probably have a bag a day on average, I decided to pop my own! I sprayed a large, heavy pot with nonstick spray, and put in two tablespoons of Archer Farms (Target) brand golden popcorn (only one ingredient, popping corn, which is a whole grain, and it only has 70 calories per two tablespoon unpopped, about 4 cups popped, serving!) Cover the pot and let it be until you start to hear popping. (I wouldn't take the lid off. Patience! It took a few minutes, but it did happen.) Once the popping slows, take the lid off and check on it. I

I'm ashamed. My two favorite popcorn topping are I Can't believe It's Not Butter! spray and Kernal Seasons popcorn salt. It's a habit to be broken, I know.

So by the time I got to dinner because of when we got home from the movie, I just had it in my mind to feed myself something pretty decent.

My Mishmash Egg Hash

1 cup frozen hash browns (Yeah, I know, this is probably not considered "health food." But the ingredients aren't that scary and there's some serious convenience there.)

1/2 cup liquid egg whites (or 4 actual egg whites)

1 onion, diced or chopped or however you like to cut your onions

a few pieces of celery, chopped

about 1/4 teaspoon salt (omit if you are a serious salt avoid er)

I literally just through this in a skillet sprayed with nonstick spray and stirred it around until it looked done. If anyone cares, I think I put it in in the skillet in the order the ingredients are listed, and let them cook for however long it took me to get the ingredient ready. 

At the end, I stirred in some Dijon mustard for flavor, and plus, I think I must've been in some kind of Dijon mood. It may not win the pretties dinner of the year award, but it was pretty darn good given the circumstances.

So for a before bed snack, (doesn't that bring back memories?) I made some of my stove top oats. Why? Simple, a day with oats is sorta like a day without sunshine. So I stirred in some Whole Foods white chocolate chips, and topped it with coconut chips, (got them at Whole Foods,) banana slices, some white chocolate almond butter, (hang on for the recipe,) and some frozen blackberries. I've topped my oats with frozen berries lately because it's kinda like topping your oats with chunks of fruity ice cream that won't melt all over everything immediately (although that might taste awesome.)

I think I might be done rambling on for today. Thanks for reading!

Enjoy!

-Kelly M.