Baked Tortellini

Well I am in Richmond at Maggie's for the last time of the summer. :( This week has been crazy trying to get my sister all organized and packed up! On Monday her and her friends did a scavenger hunt around Haymarket and Gainesville that I prepared for them! While they were gone I had a delicious breakfast of a Kashi waffle topped with 0% Fage and pineapple preserves. And of course some apple, beet, carrot, and ginger juice to go along side.

After they came back I tallied up their scores, declared the winner then ate the most delicious sandwich ever- tomato, basil, mozzarella, sprouts, and feta! YUM!!!!
And now that I am writing this blog I am realizing that I never actually ate dinner Monday night! I headed over to Leesburg to a bible study with a friend from VCU who has just moved back up to the area. We met at a Starbucks so I had an Apple Chai but no food food. Anyways the bible study was great and I'm so glad that I found an awesome group of girls nearby to have a bible study with! Also I found out the school that I will be student teaching at, but still no teachers or grade levels. The exciting thing is that in Fairfax they get early release Monday's so Monday's won't be as stressful trying to get from Fairfax to home then to Leesburg!

Tuesday I woke up nice and late and had some bunny butts for lunch. I don't have a picture but they were the Annie's White Cheddar mac and cheese with some tomatoes thrown in from the farmers market! Dinner was my baked tortellini- as requested by my sister for her last meal at home before college!
Baked Tortellini

1 lb tortellini- cooked
1 jar pasta sauce- whatever kind you like the best, this one was Newmans Own Fire Roasted Tomato and Garlic and it worked great!
1 tub mascrapone cheese (an 8-9 oz tub)
1/2 chopped parsley
2 cups feta
fresh mozzarella

1. Stir together the pasta sauce and the mascrapone until the mascrapone is fully incorporated into the pasta sauce
2. Add the parsley and half the feta and stir together
3. Add the cooked tortellini and stir until all the tortellini is coated with sauce
4. Dump everything into a 9x13 pan
5. Top with mozzarella and feta (I also usually add more parsley on top but totally forgot this time!)
6. Bake at 350 for about half an hour until the cheese is all gooey and bubbly!

Wednesday was move in day for Alicia! We stopped on the road and I got Arby's for lunch (the rest of my family got Hardees- so gross!) We also made a brief stop in Richmond to drop my car off at Maggie's since we were only allowed to bring 2 cars for move in day (one was my sister's that is staying down there with her). We helped her set up all her stuff, get her parking pass, and then left! By the time we got back to Richmond it was dinner so I took my parents to Palani Drive! I got another amazing quesadilla- Smoked Gouda and Veggies! I also subbed the rice for some more of that yummy tabouli!

Then I headed over to Maggie's! Today we both got up early and headed to campus. Today is the first day of class and neither one of us are taking classes this semester- I am student teaching and she has to do an internship- yet we both had to go to campus to get all that administrative stuff squared away! I met with both my advisors so I can graduate in December with my bachelors and masters. So now I've turned in my graduate and undergrad graduation applications and I'm all set to graduate! Yay! We met up with Monica for lunch and she swiped us into Shafer for some free food since she is a freshman! There were long lines everywhere so we all just got pizza because it was the shortest line. It was dining hall pizza, nothing to even warrant taking a picture of! However after lunch and my second advising appointment we went to the TT Lounge!
Oh bubble tea I miss you so much! I don't know why there is no boba tea place in Haymarket/Gainesville/ Manassas but there needs to be! I got a coconut milk tea and it was delicious and extra bobay! Now I'm back at Maggie's chillin for a little until I head over to Sara's for the Project Runway season premiere! And she is also making me a fabulous dinner, because as you should all know by now Sara is pretty amazing and always cooks awesome things (look a couple posts back at all the little cakes and everything she made for her birthday party)

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!

My computer is back!

The fedex man came and brought my computer back today! yay!!!! I missed it so much. Yesterday I was still not that feeling great. I started my day with a Kashi waffle topped with Fage, lemon curd, and a banana. It was delicious!
The pool pump that I picked up on Friday was still broken- now its cracked or something, so I had to take it back to Fairfax- which meant more juice! yay! I got an Apple, Beet, and Carrot juice this time and it was delicious! I think next time I would get this combo with ginger because I loved the ginger in the other one!
yeah I took the picture when I got home and it was already halfway gone haha
Then for lunch I made a quesadilla with leftover taco meat from taco salads earlier in the week and an assortment of all the random shredded cheese we had in the fridge that had very tiny amounts left ( i think I used up the end of 3 different bags of cheese). Topped with a dollop of sour cream and it was amazing!
Then for dinner last night my mom made fajitas and I totally forgot to take a picture! I think it was because I really wasn't feeling good at that point. But they were delicious!

This morning I was feeling much better and I started the day with a Kashi waffle topped with some vanilla chobini. It was definitely amazing! I wasn't super hungry and this was the perfect breakfast.

Then for lunch I made some bunny butts! Rotini and 4 Cheese with some chopped up tomatoes! yummmm I love Annie's!

After lunch I made Scotcharoos for my mom. They are super easy and super delicious! Melt together one cup of peanut butter and one bag of butterscotch chips. Usually about a minute and a half melts them together. Then stir in 6 cups of rice krispies. Then press it into a 9 by 13 pan and stick them in the fridge. In an hour or so you have rice krispies only better!Then I went to take my car in for an estimate for the insurance people who finally called me yesterday! Its going in next week to get fixed so yay! In other news my sister's car is now also broken. Her car wouldn't start and actually had to be towed to the place to get fixed! And my brother is still driving on a spare tire and has yet to get that in to get fixed hahah. I predict my mom's car will break next!

Anyways when I got back from getting the estimate for my car I took my dog on a nice long walk. A cold front has come through and it would have been perfect running weather yesterday and today except I felt like death yesterday and although I feel better today I didn't feel good enough to go run. When I got back my dad made some spaghetti and I topped mine with goat cheese! And I had some mixed veggies and garlic bread on the side. I'm not the biggest fan of spaghetti, especially because in my family spaghetti sauce isn't spaghetti sauce unless it is overloaded with meat but I put some goat cheese on it and it made it much better!Now I think I'm going to go have a bowl of ice cream and then read some more! I'm going to Ohio on Friday for an extended weekend with my grandparents and cousins! I'm so excited! It is all kind of a random last minute thing but I'm so excited!

Richmond Whole Foods

So yesterday Maggie and I went to Whole Foods in Short Pump! It was my first time visiting this one and I have to say I was very impressed! The hot bar was much much better than the one in Fairfax! I definitely overloaded on stuff from there and a couple things from the cold bars too. I got a mushroom quesadilla, tabouli, moussaka, some sort of dumpling thing, and some sort of artichoke thing hahaha. It was all really good but the mushroom quesadilla was probably the start of the entire thing. It was so good! I ended up eating only half of it though because my eyes were bigger than my stomach, so I brought the rest home to eat later!



And I got a strawberry koombucha to drink! It was really good I like the strawberry one better than the raspberry one.When I got home I made some egg salad so I could make a sandwich to bring to eat in between my 2 night classes.
However I ended up not eating this because I went Erica, Jamie, and Danielle to Bodillaz in between classes. What is Bodillaz you might ask, well as Erica says it is like subway for quesadillas! hahha and it was! You order your basic quesadilla and then you tell them what kind of cheese and vegetables you want. I got a steak one with the mix of their cheese and with tomatoes and onions. It was really good but also huge. So I didn't take a picture then but I have the leftovers to eat tonight and I will take a picture of them for you!

When I got back from classes I busted out one of my new Whole Food purchases to try! So Delicious mini ice cream sandwiches made with coconut milk ice cream. Umm this was probably the most amazing ice cream sandwich I have ever had. I can't get enough of this So Delicious coconut milk ice cream, it never disappoints me.
Then I also had to try a tiny piece of these chocolate. It is dark chocolate with crystallized ginger in it which sounded absolutely delicious and I just had to see what it tasted like. It was really good but I wish it had a little bit more ginger in it.
So this morning I went and tutored and then we had our midterm during the second half of class, even though the middle of the semester was like a month ago. Next week is Henrico's spring break so that means no tutoring class since there will be no kids there to tutor! yay I love how I get 1 and a half spring breaks this semester. So next week I can sleep in every day and I only have to go to class Monday and Tuesday night! Then I can head home Tuesday night for a nice long Easter weekend!

Anyways when I got back from class I ate my leftovers from Whole Foods and then snacked on one of these cookies that I bought yesterday. umm Double Fudge Brownie?!?! They were so good hahaha.
So now it is my weekend! And I really need to work on this paper that is due Tuesday. So I guess now that I have blogged as a form of procrastination I should probably get started on that.

Oh and I almost forgot to tell you about two contests going on in the food blog world!
Graduate Meghann is hosting a contest for Erin Baker's Wholesome Baked Goods Website. They make these breakfast cookies that look really yummy and they are giving the winner the chance to pick out whichever product from their website that they want. So go comment on Graduate Meghann's blog for a chance to win!

Also check out La Fuji Mama for a chance to win some really awesome looking magnetic measuring spoons.

ok now I'm really going to work on my paper
n