Wasting Time on Ebay

Well I'm not going to lie, instead of blogging I've been spending all my online time on ebay. I've been bidding on juicers. I thought I was going to win one, but I always get outbid by people bidding way more than I can at the last minute! It is so frustrating, I want a juicer so bad but I really don't have enough money for one right now.

Anyways Saturday some of my relatives that I had just visited in Ohio were at my grandparents house, which is about an hour and a half from us. So we ate some lunch and then headed up to see them! I had some Amy's Soup
This is the first time I tried the Chunky Vegetable and it was delicious as expected, however the Chunky Tomato Bisque is still my favorite (and I think always will be!)
And some egg salad on a slice of soft oatmeal toast!
Once we got up to my grandparents house we decided to head to downtown Martinsburg to check out the local chocolate store, DeFluris. My grandparents buy us chocolate crosses from here every Easter and they are delicious, but we have never actually been in the store. They had lots and lots of delicious looking truffles

I got a Dark Chocolate Raspberry, Peach Brandy, Vermont Maple, Fisher Ridge Wine, a Cape Cod ("white chocolate, tart cranberries and a hint of orange create a wonderful refreshing truffle") to bring home with me! We then walked around downtown Martinsburg for a little, they were having a car show and the streets were blocked off and they had live music and vendors set up everywhere. We walked down to the train station so Braden could look at the old roundhouse because he loves trains! Eventually we made our way back to the cars so we could head back where my grandma had dinner waiting for us! I was planning on saving all my chocolate for later but once we were in the car everyone else decided to try one of their truffles so I pulled out one too. It was the dark chocolate raspberry one.

DELICIOUS! Nothing can compare to a good truffle! While we were in the store you can look through a window into the back where they make the chocolate and I was thinking how fun it would be to work somewhere like that. Can someone please find me a chocolate making job?

When we got back my grandma had a huge dinner for us. I didn't take a picture because we were crammed in, in the dining room and once I sat down I wasn't able to get back up to get the camera! But we had a pot roast cooked with carrots and potatoes (I love carrots cooked with pot roasts, yummm!), tons of fresh fruit and veggies, homemade applesauce (my grandma makes the best!), mac and cheese, and rolls. For dessert she made an angel food cake that is topped with a mixture of coolwhip, cream cheese, and pineapple (she also sometimes makes it with mandarin oranges instead.) Its the perfect light summery cake and was great to finish off that heavy meal with.

For fathers day we headed to Red Lobster after church for my mom's b-day/ fathers day/ my mom got $100 in Red Lobster gift cards from her students on the last day of school lunch. I couldn't decided what I wanted, I knew I wanted coconut shrimp but wasn't really feeling any of the other things they paired it with for the combo things. Then I realized I could order the appetizer version and get another appetizer for the same price as the combos and get the same or possibly more food out of the deal! So I ordered some crab and lobster stuffed mushrooms and my coconut shrimp that comes with the best pina colada type sauce ever!

I ate half of both the mushrooms and the shrimp and ate the other half for dinner! When we got home from lunch I had another truffle, the peach brandy one! Just as good as the others

And my dad got this like homemade twinkie type of thing that had been dipped in chocolate, so of course I tried a piece of that.

It was so nice outside yesterday I grabbed my dog and went for a run. I am so sick of this hot weather, if it would stay in the 70s all summer I would be much happier! I guess I need to move to Maine! I also got my dad to hang up my last shelf in my room and put up my headboard, so then I spent most of the rest of the day cleaning my room some more! It is getting there, I think maybe it will be clean by the time I start student teaching in the fall hahaha.

Today I woke up around 11:30 and skipped breakfast and went straight to lunch at around 12:30 ( I seem to be doing that a lot lately, I am clearly not a morning person like many other food bloggers out there!) I made a grilled cheese quesadilla, with garlic and herb cheddar, goat cheese, campari tomatoes, and spinach on a spinach wrap. It was delicious and the only thing that could have made it better was basil.
I am growing basil, but its not quite ready to eat yet. I planted my basil and parsley a couple weeks ago and its coming along nicely. I've never grown anything from seeds before so I'm pretty excited (I've planted the basil that you buy at the grocery store with the roots and everything and it actually works about 50% of the time haha)

My mom said she was grilling hamburgers for dinner, however she is currently sleeping on the couch so I'm not so sure about that. Either way I'm not having hamburgers so I guess I should go figure out what I'm going to eat for dinner, hope everyone has a great day!

Rainy, Blah Day

Today has just been one of those blah days. It has been off and on raining all day, which meant I slept in until almost noon because it was pitch black in my room. I would have slept longer but I knew I needed to get up and go help my mom pack up her classroom. So I got up and picked up some food on the way over there- subway for her and sushi for me. Then I spent several hours helping her move stuff between classrooms because she is switching from teaching 5th grade down to 4th grade so she was moving down to the 4th grade part of the hall. Look at some of the fun stuff my mom got as end of the year gifts,

A huge picnic basket filled with picnic stuff (like plates, bowls, napkins, corn on the cob holders, etc), red lobster gift cards, a box of godiva chocolate along with various other chocolate things, and lots of other cute random things!
The cutest poster ever, its like a little poem and it has candy bars in place of different words. Some of these candy bars I've never heard of!And there were other things from individual students, but those were the main class things. Anyways last night was pretty blah too, salmon for dinner topped with some sort of parsley butter or something that my dad made and corn on the side.
We are seriously running low on food in the house, so we also pulled out some hummus and wheat thins to go with dinner.
And for Charlotte's dinner she got new Rachael Ray puppy food! She got a free sample of Nutrish and loved it!! So I convinced my dad to buy her some because 1) she absolutely loves it 2) it is supposedly healthier for her (i say supposedly because i have no idea what is healthy for dogs to eat and what is not) and 3) it was really only a couple dollars more expensive than the stuff she usually gets! Anyways look how happy she was to get it! If you have a dog you should get them the free sample so they can be as happy as Charlotte!
Anyways today as I said I woke up around noon, so clearly there was no breakfast happening. For myself for lunch I picked up a shrimp tempura roll and a philly roll from Asia Garden on the way to help my mom at her school. I forgot to take a picture because I was so hungry and eating at the school it really didn't occur to me until later. I didn't bring my camera but I could have taken a picture on my phone- oh well!

After I got home from cleaning my mom's classroom I was inspired to work on my own room. I made myself a Green Monster before I attempted to tackle my room! It had blueberry yogurt, a banana, the last of the spinach (about a cup), a splash of orange juice, and some ice cubes. It was delicious!
My room is getting closer to being clean! It is just so hard because I have so much stuff that has accumulated over the years from both Richmond and here at home. I am slowly packing away things I don't need and putting them in a closet downstairs but the problem is there is so much stuff I do need that I can't pack away that I really don't know what to do with! But I am getting there, I got some shelves put up and I am currently working on cleaning out the top of my closets to be able to put stuff up there!

For dinner my mom made shake and bake chicken- gag- so I clearly skipped over that and made a meal of the 'side dishes.' I really wonder what it would take to show my mom that a meal doesn't have to have meat to be a meal. I am far from a vegetarian but the way my family eats is ridiculous, its almost enough to make me want to become a vegetarian. So my mom made Velvetta Mac and Cheese, which I have no idea why she bought when we have healthier and better tasting Annie's in the pantry, but I made do by adding some chopped tomatoes. And alongside that were some sauteed mushrooms and zucchinis.

So we have an abundance of sliced baguettes leftover from my sister's grad party. For the party we used them to make burchetta and to eat with the crab dip. I also made cheesy/ garlic bread to go with dinner one night. Yet we still have more, its like neverending! So tonight I decided to make some bread pudding to use up this bread! Now not only have I never made bread pudding before but I've never really eaten it either. I've had tastes of it from other people, but I would hands down choose a dessert with chocolate or fruit in it before I would pick bread pudding.

Now that being said I searched AllRecipes and settled on this recipe. I read some of the reviews and set the pan inside a 9x13 pan of hot water to make a bath for it. I also cooked it for a lot longer than it was suppose to cook- like prob closer to 40 or 45 min not 25. I then served it topped with the sauce from this bread pudding recipe, because the one I had used didn't have a sauce to go with it. After all was said and done it turned out pretty good. It was a good way to use up some of that leftover bread (and we still have more!!!! ahhhh) but I still would pick cake, pie, ice cream, cobbler, etc over bread pudding. But my mom who loves bread pudding said it was really good and she would want me to make it again, and this is coming from the woman who doesn't believe a dessert is a dessert unless it has chocolate in it. (And I tried to make a chocolate bread pudding and she said no I had to make real bread pudding, I don't understand haha)

I also want to let everyone know of a few fun contests going on!

Maple Peanut Butter is probably my favorite kind of peanut butter ever. So if you want to win some head over to Erin's blog and enter her contest!


Over at An Apple A Day there are several contests going on,
Win some Once Again Nut Butter or Win Some Element Bars or Win Some Earthling Organic Bars

Graduation Festivities Begin

Sorry again for the lack of updating! Starting last night was the beginning of a week of graduation festivities for my little sister! Last night was the baccalaureate service, but before we get to that. Wednesday night we had a wonderful dinner. It was suppose to be a pork tenderloin in the crockpot with bbq sauce. However it was so tender that when we tried to cut it, it just shredded apart. So instead we made bbq sandwiches sans the sandwich part! I like it better that way anyways! It was really good, I have no idea what kind of bbq sauce my mom used but it was really good, tangy not smokey- just the way I like it (but usually not the way my parents like it, so I was surprised). On the side were some leftover zucchini and mushrooms.
Yesterday morning I woke up and had a green smoothie for breakfast. This combo was vanilla yogurt, 2 cups spinach, strawberry fruit popsicle, and a handful of mini strawberries. It was really good, I was worried because we were out of bananas and fruit yogurt and the strawberries we had were really not good but the strawberry popsicle makes all the difference!
Then for a quick lunch I had some leftover Moroccan Cous Cous
with a side of this awesome garlic and herb cheddar cheese. Holy cow this is seriously some of the best cheese ever! It is so good!
Then I had plans of making cookie dough cupcakes for after my sister's baccalaureate. I mixed up the cookie dough and rolled up half of it into balls and then was going to make cookies with the other half. However our drawer that holds the cookie sheets has been stuck for about a week. Luckily my dad was working at home and I told him that if he wants cookies he has to get the drawer open. We couldn't see what was stuck so we stuck my camera in the drawer and took a picture and found thisHahahah, my dad somehow got it open and the circle pan was very bent but at least we go the drawer open! So I was able to make these mini chocolate chip cookies- from the recipe on the back of the Toll House chocolate chip bag. This is my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe, it never fails.
After my cookie dough balls froze I made some cupcakes. I used this Four Egg Yellow Cake Recipe. The cake itself was really good! I highly recommend this recipe, however the balls were so ginormous that to get any cake in there I had to overfill the cupcake tins, so they kind of overflowed while baking. And I topped them with purple buttercream because my sister's school colors are purple and black. The buttercream was one box of powdered sugar, 1/4 cup butter, 1/4 cup shortening, splash of vanilla, and 3 tablespoons of milk. And I also made some chocolate graduation hats to top the cupcakes with. They were so cute! Oh and I almost forgot, I was piping the frosting on and my tip totally just fell out, so I just piped the rest of them through the hole cut in the bottom of the bag, thats why they look kind of ghetto!
For dinner my mom made some tilapia topped with a parmesan herb mixture. I was still busy frosting cupcakes and cleaning the kitchen so I ate mine straight up off the pan.
Then we went to my sister's baccalaureate.
After my sister's baccalaureate service we came home for cupcakes!
She loved the little chocolate graduation hats!
And here is a picture of the inside with the cookie dough filling. It didn't really work as well as I was hoping for. I think if I made these again, which I probably won't, then I would definitely make much smaller cookie dough balls and freeze them overnight. The recipe's that I found online said freeze them for about 2 hours, but that was definitely not enough time.
Now I'm off to go find something for lunch. I hope everyone has a great day!

Crepes and Nutella

I feel like today has been productive even though I really haven't done too much! I started out the day with some strawberries and vanilla chobini along side a kashi waffle topped with strawberries preserves. It was a perfect breakfast!


Then I showered and such and pretty soon it was time for lunch! I made a delicious wrap! It was filled with a Morningstar pizza veggie burger, some super sharp cheddar, tomatoes, spinach, and hummus!
Then I made some iced tea out of some Celestial Seasonings Raspberry Zinger!
Then my mom and I went to Manassas to pick up some things! First we went to Wal-Mart and got some flowers to plant by the pool and I got some Basil and Parsley! I'm pretty excited especially for the basil! Then we went next door to Home Depot and got some corner shelves so I can put up all my little knick knacks! After that we went to Costco to pick up a couple things and put in an order for my sister's graduation cake! And on the way out we both got Berry Smoothies!!!! yum
When we got back I started on dinner- Jenna from Eat Live Run's Fettuccine with Mushroom Chardonnay Cream Sauce that was featured on The Mushroom Channel.
It was really good! The only thing I would change is I would probably use yellow onions instead of shallots and probably top it with some feta or goat cheese! Everyone liked it, except my sister who wasn't home and doesn't like mushrooms at all. My mom and brother complained that it had no meat because they are basically carnivores that think it can't be a meal without meat in it. But even though they complained they still liked it!

After dinner we ran out to Manassas again to the Verizon store and were about to get phones but they didn't have all of the ones we needed so we came home and bought them online. And for dessert we made crepes! We bought premade crepes at Wegmans and then we filled them with Nutella and Strawberries! And topped with some whipped cream and strawberry puree!

I thought mine was pretty but my mom insisted hers was prettier and told me to take a picture of hers too!
And now my brother and I are watching Bedtime Stories which I rented from the Red Box but apparently the rest of the family has already seen it! So they are downstairs watching Bride Wars which I already saw and my brother had no desire to see and we are upstairs watching Bedtime Stories. So far its super cute but it took a long time to get it to work because the DVD player is broken up here! We had to hook up my old dying computer and got that working but then the sound didn't work. So we had to unhook some speakers from the desktop computer and hook them up to the laptop and then it finally worked! Now I'm going to get back to my movie and I hope everyone has a great Sunday tomorrow!

Random Pasta

Today has been almost the same as Monday! I wasn't at all hungry when I woke up at 10:30 so I skipped breakfast. I caught up on facebook and blogs and read some more of my book. Then around noon I ate the rest of my bunny butts from yesterday.
After lunch my sister and I went to Fairfax- again- to pick up the pool pump- again. And of course I stopped at Robuks and got juice! This time I got an apple, beet, carrot, and ginger! It was delicious! My sister got a strawberry banana smoothie and she really liked it- but she said she didn't like my juice :(
Then I came home and finished reading the Pact by Jodi Picoult book. This was my first book by Jodi and it was really good! I need to get My Sister's Keeper next so I can read that before the movie comes out! After I finished my book I started packing for Ohio! I'm so excited! My grandparents are calling it a long weekend but I could very well be gone for a whole week haha. I'm heading up to my grandparents house in West Virginia tomorrow evening and we are heading to Ohio on Friday morning. We are staying until Wednesday and depending on what time we leave they will either bring me all the way back to Haymarket or I will stay at their house and they will bring me back Thursday which will be a whole week! I also didn't realize until yesterday that this is Memorial day weekend so hopefully we won't get stuck in tons of traffic on Friday- we are going the opposite direction of the beach so hopefully everyone else is going to the beach?

For dinner my brother was making chicken so I made my own dinner! I sauteed up some zucchini, squash, and mushrooms for them to eat with their chicken. I took some out and added some onion and garlic, tomatoes, and made a sauce with some white cooking wine (which was not very good but it was all we had because my parents don't drink wine) and some of this manghego sheep milk cheese!
Then I tossed in some leftover spaghetti noodles from last night and topped it with some goat cheese and fresh basil! It was pretty awesome! Pasta made from whatever is around is pretty much the best kind of pasta ever because its always different!
Now I'm watching the American Idol season finale. I haven't watched it at all this season -or any other season- but sometimes watching the finale is interesting. Anyways I decided that I liked Chris because 1- he's a Christian, 2- he actually has a good voice, 3- he looks normal (actually he is pretty gorgeous), and 4- he plays the guitar and piano. And to top all of it he just played a duet with Keith Urban who is hands down my favorite singer ever!

I'm not sure when I'm going up to Ohio tomorrow but I'm not too sure about the internet situation up there so I'm not bringing my computer because I don't want to lug it around if there is no internet! So I might not be updating for a week but I'll post a big update when I get back! I hope everyone has a great memorial day weekend!