Lemon Raspberry Pineapple Sorbet

This is my last week of summer before I start student teaching next week, so I am enjoying every minute of this last week and relaxing as much as I can! I finally have not only a school but also grades and teachers. I am going to be in first and fifth grade. I am excited about first but I am dreading fifth! I want to teach kindergarten, first, or second grade- I like the little kids not older ones. I’m glad that I have first grade first so I can get myself adjusted to student teaching and get my unit plan out of the way. Hopefully that will make my fifth grade placement a little less overwhelming.

Anyways onto the food! Sunday night when I got back from Richmond I went with my parents to Mimis Cafe. We started out with some bread to share.

And for dinner I had some delicious citrus broiled shrimpies! They had a delicious creamy pesto sauce on top that was so amazing! It came with some asparagus and a small salad. It was the perfect size meal and came with lots of yummy veggies. I love Mimis for exactly this reason- they don’t overload you on food and their sides are actually veggies that I want to eat.

Of course the perfectly sized meal leaves you room for one of their petite desserts! I got a raspberry moose which I’ve had before and is delicious. It is such a hard decision choosing between the raspberry, lemon, or chocolate moose.

I’ve been attempting to fight off the beginnings of a cold, so I dosed up on Nyquil and slept forever! I woke up just in time for lunch. I made a sandwich that looks delicious but wasn’t quite as good as it looks because most of the veggies were at that almost gone bad but not quiet so I used them anyway and they just didn’t taste that great.

For dinner I met up with my friend Janelle at Del Rio, a Mexican restaurant in Leesburg before we went to bible study! I got a combo that came with 2 beef tacos, a cheese enchilada, and a pork tamale. It was all delicious but way too much food and I probably ate a little over half of it.

Janelle got a spinach enchilada with a sour cream sauce! It looked delicious as well and I think that if I go again I might try that!

After dinner we met up with the other girls for small group at Panera! I am so excited that I have finally found a good small group to get involved in up here. There are two of my friends from Intervarsity at VCU and Janelle who I have known forever from church growing up, Young Life, and she was involved with Intervarsity at CNU so I ran into her at conferences and camp over the past 5 years. There are also several girls that I don’t know and I can’t wait to get to know all of them better and spend some quality God studying time!

Tuesday morning I willingly drug myself out of bed at 7:30 in the morning so I could attempt to figure out how long it would take me to get to my school during rush hour and the best way to get there. It only took me about 40 minutes, which isn’t bad at all! I drove one way there and one way back and definitely saw way more traffic going the opposite direction on the way back (the way I would be going to the school). While I was driving I ate a Chocolate Macaroon Larabar- this is probably the best flavor larabar ever. I need to buy a whole box of just this kind.

When I got home I made some very disappointing juice. We were out of apples and I found one lone peach in the fruit basket. I juiced the peach along with carrots, a beet, and ginger. The peach was not really good and that made the juice not very good but I drank it anyways.

Then I headed over to my mom’s classroom to help her set it up. We quickly realized that it was almost lunch time so we ordered from Z Pizza aka my favorite place to order pizza from up here. Not only do they have the best pizzas ever, they now have their rustica pizza’s back which they use to have and then got rid of them but now they are back! The pear and gorgonzola one is so delicious and just the perfect size for one person.

We had to make a $20 minumum delivery fee so we added in chocolate chip cookies! These were so delicious, thin and gooey and amazing!

After doing some work in her classroom, we went to the grocery store and bought lots of yummy stuff to make the rest of the week, so be excited I will try to update my blog lots this week. While at the store I bought some sparkling water so I could make my own sparkling tea, since I’m getting kind of tired of the same flavor and the new berry flavor isn’t at the stores up here yet. So I came home and brewed some peach tea.

Then added some sparkling water. It was okay, I should have added honey to it before I added the sparkling water because it was hard to stir it into the class. I usually like my tea unsweetened or only with a little sweetness in it but I think the sparkling tea needs more sweetness so it can be more like soda.

For dinner I was going to make some pasta but then I realized that we are having pasta tonight (it was tomorrow yesterday haha) and later in the week, so I just threw what I was going to put on my pasta in a bowl. I tossed some diced tomatoes from our garden with some pesto sauce, zapped it in the microwave for about 30 seconds and then tossed in some goat cheese. It was pretty delicious.

Then for dessert I made something that I’ve been wanting to make for a while- lemon, raspberry, pineapple sorbet! It turned out deliciously!

Lemon Raspberry Pineapple Sorbet

1/2 cup sugar

zest of two lemons

juice of two lemons

2 cups pureed raspberries (I bought frozen raspberries in syrup and pureed those if you use fresh ones or ones that aren’t in syrup I would let them soak in some sugar before you puree them)

20 oz crushed pineapple

1. Make a simple syrup by cooking the sugar, lemon zest, and lemon juice over medium heat until the sugar is completly dissolved.

2. Add the pureed raspberries and half the pineapple to the simple syrup.

3. Puree the other half of the pineapple and add it to the mixture.

4. Throw it all in the ice cream maker and let it whirl around until its frozen and delicious!

Anyways it was a delicious way to end a long day yesterday. This morning I woke up and made some juice- I got a big bag off apples at the grocery store yesterday so back to my apple, beet, ginger, carrot juice! And I had some 0% Fage yogurt with pineapple preserves and granola! It was delicious!

Now for most of today I plan on being lazy and catching up on my DVR- I have about a bazillion Top Chef episodes that are begging to be watched! I also want to give a big shout out to my friend Rachel- today is her birthday! She is one of my most loyal readers and is forever getting on my case when I do not update daily. I have known Rachel for forever and our birthday’s are exactly one week apart, she gets to be older than me for one week exactly! She is on a cruise so I don’t know if she will get on the internet to see this today but I’m sure she will see it when she gets back so HAPPY BIRTHDAY RACHEL!!!!!!!!!!

Organized Mess

Well in my last update I just briefly touched on the weekend so we are going to pick up normal food blogingness on Tuesday night! So there is this BBQ place in Manassas called Hogs on the Hill which my dad and brother are absolutely obsessed with. They closed a couple years ago for remodeling or something that was suppose to be a temporary closing but they never reopened. Every time we go by them we would look to see if they were opened yet, but they never were. We had just about given up on them when my dad and brother drove by this weekend and they had a huge Grand Reopening sign out. So of course they brought home tons of barbecue and we've had several meals with it. Also it is run by an adorable Asian man (yes I know super random but they do make pretty amazing barbecue) and this guy actually recognized my dad, even after being closed for 2 years. They give you the plain pulled pork and both regular and hot bbq sauce for you to mix in to your own meat. So I made a delicious open faced sandwich on 7 Grain bread with a little of both of the sauces! Delicious! I don't know if i I would go far as my dad and brother to say this is the best barbecue ever but it is pretty delicious!
Yesterday was a wonderful day of sleeping in, which was much needed after the little amount of sleep I got in Richmond and babysitting the next morning I came back. So of course I skipped breakfast and went straight to lunch. My mom and I went to the farmers market on the local farm by our house and got some awesome tomatoes so of course my lunch revolved around those. Tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil from my basil plant!! (its still not huge but big enough to take a couple leaves off occasionally for sandwiches like this!), and a little drizzle of balsamic vinegar all on 7 grain bread. It was delicious! The only thing that would have made it better would have been some pesto, but I certainly don't have enough basil on my plant to make any pesto yet and I didn't think to buy any at the store!
For dinner my mom made lasagna. My mom was a stay at home mom and we use to get homemade lasagna and other meals all the time. I always took it for granted until she started working and stopped cooking all these awesome things. She started going back to school when we were all school age and actually graduated from college the same year I graduated high school and started teaching the same year I started college. Since she is a teacher she basically doesn't cook during the school year, which is why when I would come home I would always be able to cook and go to the store. Now that it is summer she has been able to cook more, which I think is one of the biggest reasons I'm not as motivated to update my blog as much. I'm really not getting to cook many meals because my mom is home cooking.

Anyways I can't remember the last time my mom made a lasagna, but it has been so long that I really associate lasagna taste with the frozen Stoffers ones that she would pull out of the freezer when she didn't have time to cook anything else. Needless to say this is 500 times better! I was starving so I got myself a ginormous piece before it cooled enough- thus the lasagna mess all over my plate hahaha. Of course we also had some garlic bread to go with it! It was delicious!
For 'dessert' after dinner I had bought some new tea to try! It was ginger peach green tea and I was super excited to try it.

The verdict? Not that impressed with it, it definitely has a strong ginger flavor but I could not taste any peach in it at all. I will drink the rest of the ones in the packet but I would probably never buy it again. Actually I might buy some normal peach tea and brew them together to get an actual ginger peach flavor, hahaha. If I do that I'll let you know how it turns out.

This morning I ate an Apple Pie larabar in the car on the way to babysitting. When I got home I busted out some more of that lasagna for lunch, I didn't take a picture of it because my camera was upstairs and microwaved lasagna might be delicious but is certainly not pretty because it oozes out everywhere! Much of the rest of the day has been spent organizing the bathroom that I share with my brother and sister who are both leaving next week for college. It was stressing me out and now that I know they will not be here to mess it up I designated all the shelves and drawers for specific things and put post it notes on them so that until they leave they can know what goes where! I'm definitely an organized mess kind of person, things don't have to be spotless, they just have to be where they belong. The best example of this I can give you is that there are random small piles of clothes all over my room. I've got my pjs next to my bed, work out clothes on the floor underneath my laundry bags, and tank tops that I have worn once and might need to wear again before washing hanging on the closet door knob. It might look messy to you but it is where things belong!

So everyone who reads this blog regularly knows how much I am in love with all forms of goat cheese. So head over to Mara's blog for a chance to win some free goat cheese! Yummmmm!

Peach Cobbler

Well its been an uneventful past couple of days but I am back in Richmond again! After posting on Tuesday I made some yummy pasta for dinner! It was basically a white wine sauce with some gorgonzola, garlic, and diced tomatoes. Then I topped it with goat cheese and basil- a mixture of some basil I had from the store and some from my basil plant! Yay it is big enough to use a little for sprinkling on top of pasta but not quite big enough for much else yet. I would post a picture but I'm in Richmond! My parsley plant on the other hand isn't looking quite as good, hopefully it will perk up soon!
For dessert my mom made one of my all time favorite's- peach cobbler! Holy yum peach cobbler is one of my most favorite desserts ever!
Peach Cobbler
2 cups chopped peaches
2 cups sugar
1 stick butter
3/4 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
3/4 cup milk

1. Preheat the oven to 350
2. Add 1 cup of sugar to the peaches, stir, and set aside
3. Put the butter in an 8 by 8 square baking dish and set in the oven while it is preheating to melt.
4. In a separate bowl combine the other cup of sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, and milk.
5. When the butter is melted pour the mixture over the butter but do not stir.
6. Put the peaches on top and again do not stir
7. Bake for 1 hour- the batter rises up over the peaches and will be brown and crisp when it is done!

Also if you plan on doubling the recipe (which of course we do for a family of 5) then make sure you still use two small square pans and don't just throw it all in a 9 by 13 because it doesn't bake the same and your edges will get burned while the middle is still underdone!

So Wednesday we woke up early to go to the eye doctor to get our eyes checked and me and my sister needed to get some new glasses! I had a Larabar on the way over!
So my eyes are actually getting better! My glasses were way to strong which is why I couldn't see out of them anymore and I was getting a headache when wearing them! Yeah its not really normal for your eyes to get better until you are like 50, but the doctor said it is definitely unusual for someone in their 20s. I don't care if it's normal or not but hopefully this will keep up!

We had an hour to kill while they put the lenses in our glasses so we went to IHOP for lunch because my sister was dying to go. I'm not that big of a fan of IHOP because I go in and they have these ridiculous sugared breakfasts that I can't not try. How can you say no to pineapple upside down pancakes. They were delicious with warm chunks of pineapple in the pancake and a brown sugar rum drizzle over the top.
And they came with hashbrowns, eggs, and bacon.
It was all deliciously unhealthy.

For dinner my mom grilled some ribs. They were okay- not a big fan of food that makes a mess when you eat it, I'm much more a fan of bbq sandwiches. But we saved all the bones for Charlotte, and I brought them down to Richmond with me so Charlotte could share with Corbin! (yes Charlotte came down to Richmond too!)
And yesterday did not start out so great. I thought I had food poising but my mom said she had a similar stomach bug a couple days before so it might just be something that was going around. I spent half the day in bed and I had to cancel my babysitting job. Eventually after sleeping most of it off I was able to get up, eat some soup, then shower and I felt tons better. So I was able to come down to Richmond after all. Today Maggie and I are going to take the puppies to the river. Hope you all have a great start to the weekend!

Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Fudge Frosting and Strawberry Ice Cream Recipes

I've been in the process of going through my blog posts and rounding up all my recipes so I can make a recipe section for the blog. I've realized that I really haven't posted a lot of recipes! This is for several reasons, 1) A lot of the things I make don't actually have recipes- it is me throwing a bunch of stuff into a pan and calling it dinner (this is especially true with pasta) 2) I use lots of recipes from other blogs or allrecipes 3) now that I'm living at home again and my mom is off school for the summer she has retaken over her kitchen and is doing more of the cooking than I am and 3) by the time I get around to blogging about it I'm too lazy to look up my recipe or in more recent cases my mom's recipe. Well I'm going to try to change that and I have 3 recipes for you today! My mom's birthday was last week and my grandma's birthday is next week so we had a combined celebration for them today so I have a cake, icing, and ice cream recipe (a birthday is not a birthday in my family without home made ice cream!).

But before we get to that let's back up some! As I mentioned before we brought home an apple pie from Costco. I was very disappointed in it! The slices of apples were way too big and not even close to being cooked enough, even after we cooked the pie even longer in our oven. I think my dad is right in the idea that there will never be a store bought apple pie that comes even close to my mom's homemade apple pie.
Another fun thing that we got at Costco that I didn't write about in my last post was Larabars! I was so excited because I have never seen a huge box of Larabars at Costco before, especially with 3 awesome flavors in it.
Saturday I really wanted a Green Monster for breakfast but everyone else in my house was sleeping, so I didn't want to turn on the blender and wake everyone else up. So instead I settled for a piece of Cinnamon Raisin Toast with PB&Co Cinnamon Raisin Bread.
Then a little later I snacked on some Strawberry Banana Brothers All Natural Fruit Crisps (also from Costco). The Fruit Crisps are essentially freeze dried fruit and I love love love the freeze dried pears and apples, and was so excited to try the new strawberry banana ones. The bananas were really really good, but the strawberries were not at all. They were really tart and just overall not very appetizing. I also saw on the box that they have freeze dried pineapples? I have never seen these things anywhere except Costco in mass bags of apples and pears (and now strawberry banana), but I am going to have to find these pineapples ones because I love all things pineapple.I don't know why this picture is so blurry but this is what the freeze dried strawberries and bananas look like.
Then a disaster happened- our cable and internet went out! Ahhhhh! My dad got on 2 phones calling the Comcast internet people on one line and the cable on the other. The cable people answered first and said they didn't know what was going on and then the internet people came on and said it was "scheduled maintenance that would last for 3 hours." Who schedules maintenance that leaves everyone without cable and internet on a Saturday afternoon?

Anyways the lack of tv and internet certainly helped motivate all of us to get showered and ready unlike we usually do on a Saturday morning/ afternoon! I then went in search of a quick lunch so my dad and I could go shopping for my mom and grandma's birthday presents. I decided on an Amy's Spinach and Feta Pockt
Amy's never fails me!
I actually got called for a last minute babysitting job for parents that ended up getting free Rascall Flatts concert tickets for that night. So after shopping I ended up eating a quick dinner at 5 so I could head over to babysit. I made an egg sandwich with cheddar cheese on oatmeal bread.
I ended up babysitting until midnight and then came straight home and crashed so I could wake up early for church today. I ate an Odwalla Berries GoMega bar on the way to church.
Then after church my grandparents came over for crab legs! Charlotte patiently waited under the table for us to come eat, and hopefully drop some for her.
We like to fill ourselves up with crab so we only had a small salad to go with them.
My first of several bunches of crab!
You should notice that we eat crabs enough to change into 'crab shirts' after ruining many shirts by butter dripping on them.
And for dessert I made a chocolate cake, but ran out of time before babysitting last night to frost it. So my mom frosted it, she said the ice cream was for her and the cake was for grandma. She made my grandma's chocolate fudge frosting, which essentially tastes and is thick like chocolate fudge. It works really well on one layer 9x13 cakes, and we used it on the layered cake but you have to put it on at the right time because it comes out of the pan melty and really spreadable, so it can slide off the cake, but as it sits it starts to 'harden' and gets to be a more fudge like texture.

Chocolate Cake

3/4 cup butter, softened
1 2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
2 1/4 cups flour
1 1/4 cups water

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and grease and flour 2 9 inch pans.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in the eggs and vanilla until fully combined.
4. Add the cocoa powder, salt, baking soda, and baking powder and mix well.
5. Add the flour and water a little at a time, alternating between the two until everything is combined well together.
6. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake for about 40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Chocolate Fudge Frosting

3/4 cup or butter
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/3 cup milk
1 1/2 pounds powdered sugar (most boxes are 1 pound)
1 tablespoon vanilla

1. In a saucepan combine the butter, cocoa powder, and milk and bring to a boil.
2. Boil for about a minute (it might look separated but that's okay)
3. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla.
4. If you are frosting a 9x13 cake in the pan just pour it on and spread it out and you are done! It will cool and 'harden.' If you are doing a layered cake you might let it sit a little before you start trying to do the middle and sides of the cake so it doesn't just ooze off as soon as you put it on.

Of course what is a birthday cake with out ice cream to go along side! My dad made the strawberry ice cream last night! We make ice cream for every birthday, my grandpa has the best vanilla ice cream recipe that is delicious all by itself but also is a great base for any kind of ice cream! I'll go ahead and give you guys the vanilla recipe and then you can make just about anything from that!
Papa's Country Vanilla Ice Cream
4 eggs beaten
2 ¼ cups sugar
3 cups whipping cream
6 cups half and half
4 ½ tsp vanilla
½ tsp salt

1.Gradually add and beat sugar to the eggs
2.Beat until mixture is very stiff
3.Add remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly
4.Pour into gallon freezer and freeze as directed

For Fresh Fruit Ice Cream
-Substitute 4 cups puree sweetened fresh fruit or 3-12 oz packages frozen fruit, thawed and mashed for 4 cups of half and half in recipe. Reduce sugar in the recipe to 1 ¾ cups and use only one tsp vanilla.

I am babysitting tomorrow, Tuesday, and Wednesday so it will be a kind of busy next couple of days, I hope everyone has had a great weekend and has a great upcoming week!

Hoedown Throwdown!

So yesterday was very busy!!! I woke up and didn't feel that great but I forced myself to eat some cranberry orange toast with almond butter because I knew I would feel worse if I didn't eat. I had to go meet with my group for my special needs class to work on our group presentation for next week. So I also made up a wrap to eat because I didn't know how long we would be working on it!
Then after we finished that I came home and packed up some more of my kitchen stuff and then went to go see the Hannah Montana movie!!! ahhh it was beyond cute! I love Hannah Montana but the movie really wasn't too much like the show but it was adorable! Anyways after that I came back and packed some more and did homework. Then somehow I got talked into going to see Benjamin Button! There is this new movie theater opening in Chesterfield and all this week they are showing like new on DVD or almost to DVD movies for $1 and they also have $1 sodas and popcorn. So I really wanted to see Benjamin Button but it wasn't until 10! So I finally decided that for the price of going to the Byrd I could see the movie and get popcorn and I really couldn't pass that up. However at the time I didn't know the movie was 2 hours and 45 minutes long!!!! ahhhhh but once I found out I still decided to go anyways because I figured I could always nap after tutoring today! So I showered real quick and ate some Trader Joe's tomato basil soup. I didn't take a picture because I was rushing! Anyways it was pretty good but not as good as the Amy's Chunky Tomato Bisque!

So after eating I drove to Maggie's and we drove to Sara's then we went to the theater. The movie was good but really too long, they could have cut out the middle and nothing too important would have been lost. The end was good- Maggie and Sara cried haha.

Waking up this morning was not fun. But I did it and brought a Chocolate Coconut Cream larabar to eat during the break between tutoring and class. This semester is almost over we only have one more week of tutoring left and then the next Monday we are having a party for the kids!
When I got back from tutoring I made another pizza for lunch! Once again with the spinach tortilla wrap thing, tomatoes, onion, sprouts, asiago, and also this time some goat brie and some shredded italian blend of cheese that I found in the fridge that I had forgotten about! It was really good!
So for the rest of the day I am going to pack up stuff into my car and do some homework and then I'm headed over to Maggie's to watch Lost!!! And then tomorrow I'm headed home again because I have a wedding to go to on Saturday!

Busy Easter!

Yesterday was busy busy so I didn't have time to post anything! Yesterday I woke up and had a piece of the most delicious bread ever- Pepperidge Farms Cranberry Orange Bread topped with almond butter of course.
And of course I got an easter basket filled to the brim with chocolate and candy!


Then we headed to church where my pastor gave an awesome Easter service about hope. After church we headed home where we set the table and stuff while we waited for my grandparents to arrive. Once they came we put a couple things in the oven and then my dad opened his birthday presents! He got some stuff from bass pro shop, and lowes, and the his big present was an ipod! So of course after dinner we had to teach him how to use itunes.Then we had Easter dinner!!! Here is the pretty flowers that my mom picked to make a centerpiece.
And here is the fruit salad my grandma brought- I love pineapple!!!!!!!!!!! It is my favorite fruit!
The deviled eggs that I made
The place settings! My grandparents brought chocolate crosses from this chocolate store up in Martinsburg. And then the wrapped thing are our "easter eggs" which had a russel stover egg, a dove egg, and $20!

Here is the lemon mold that my mom made!
And more deviled eggs!
And my dad cutting the Honey Baked Ham
And homemade rolls from my mom!
And the best ever potatoes from my grandma! They are cheesy and delicious!
Here is the whole table!
From the other side haha

The ham, which I didn't eat bc I'm not a fan of ham
My plate!
And for dessert my grandma always makes the most delicious white chocolate cake ever! It is so good and it has the best white chocolate frosting! And it would not be complete without the cross because Easter is not all about the food it is about Jesus's sacrifice to us and how he did not stay dead on the cross but rose on Easter!
And my slice of cake!
After dessert I drove back to Richmond where I finished up everything for my tutoring and then cleaned my room a little bit because someone is coming today to look at it and see if she wants to move in when I leave!

So this morning I woke up super early because I had to meet with my teacher before tutoring to tell her how it was going. I snacked on a coconut cream pie larabar- my second favorite (key lime is definitely the first place one)
So my teacher did not show up early to meet with me and ended up not showing up until 45 minutes later, which was 15 min after our class was suppose to start and when we were suppose to go get the kids for tutoring. She had popped a tire and had to take a cab the rest of the way to the school. We were able to meet during the break though so that was good. Now that I'm all caught up I'm off to find some lunch and catch up on the blog world and then do some homework before my class at 4!