Strawberry Oikos Review

Well I have been trying to thoroughly enjoy the last few days of summer without stressing out too much about starting student teaching on Monday.  It is really not working, I wanted to spend the last couple days soaking up the sun by the pool but its been cloudy and rainy!  Luckily Thursday wasn’t rainy so we were able to grill some shrimp and asparagus.  I marinated the shrimp in a Basil Shrimp recipe from AllRecipes.  The only thing I did different was use dijon mustard instead of brown and I marinated them for close to 4 hours instead of just one.

 

My dad is the grill master

My dog of course spends her time out on the deck near the food.

The cat was down by the pool- this is the closest to the pool I have ever seen her!

While the shrimp were cooking we went down and picked some tomatoes

These really aren’t the best tomatoes but we have a bunch right now so we will probably eat them!  Of course being distracted by the tomatoes caused the shrimp to get a tad over cooked- but they were still delicious!  I would definitely use this recipe again.

 

Dessert was suppose to be a triple berry pie from Wegman’s but somehow I picked up a blueberry pie instead.  Oh well it was still good!

Breakfast yesterday was of course some Oikos courtesy of the awesome people at Stonyfield.  I busted out the strawberry one to try first.

 

I like that it is the fruit on the bottom kind of yogurt.

 

My opinion?  I love it!  The yogurt itself has a great taste to it, and I think I could even eat the plain kind actually plain without adding honey or fruit preserves to it.  But the strawberries are good too!  The thickness is kind of in between Chobini and Fage and I kind of wonder if the plain or vanilla would be thicker because it doesn’t have the fruit on the bottom.  I think I will bust out the plain one next so I can see.  The downside to the Oikos- they don’t carry it at Gaint which is the closest grocery store to my house.  I love Wegmans but I find myself at Giant most of the time just because it is super close and that is where we go to grab something real quick- which seems to be most of our grocery shopping.  Giant does have Chobini and Fage so I will probably still buy those most of the time unless Giant starts carrying Oikos.  Also in grocery store related news- my school that I am student teaching at is super close to Whole Foods so I might end up stopping by there on the way home to pick up some groceries so I suppose I might get some Oikos from there too!

On to lunch!  It was just some leftover pasta from the other night that I ate while frantically trying to finish the Time Travelers Wife.

Then I continued my lazy day with a cup of spiced tea (it is a blend of instant tea, lemonaid mix, tang, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves that my mom makes) which I drank while taking a fabulous bubble bath.

Dinner was another Rachael Ray recipe- Butternut Bowties.  I saw her making this on her talk show the other day and knew I had to try it.  It turned out pretty amazingly!  I love butternut squash ravioli and this was kind of like that but much easier than making your own ravioli!

For dessert we headed over to Chilis.  I ordered a white chocolate lava cake that I had high expectations for, it was suppose to be a white chocolate molten cake covered with a berry sauce and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.  What I got was a mini bundt cake filled with white chocolate sauce topped with vanilla ice cream so it looked like a molten cake with the tiniest drizzle of strawberry sauce around the side.  I was highly dissapointed.  (I also forgot my camera so this is a crappy cell phone picture)

I slept in today and skipped breakfast- I am going to die next week having to get up between 6 and 7 every day.  For lunch I had some leftover butternut bowties with some added goat cheese.  Basically whenever I have leftover pasta that gets dried out I just add some goat cheese because it melts in and makes the pasta creamy again!

Tonight I am babysitting- I wish I hadn’t said I would babysit on my last Saturday night before student teaching because I really wanted to go out and see the Time Travelers Wife since I finally finished the book- but I need the money and maybe I can convince my mom to go tomorrow afternoon to see it with me!  Also you might have noticed that the entries are formatted a little differently- that is because I am now using Windows Live Writer.  I’ve played with a couple different ways to try to do tags and I was just about to give up but I think I figured out how to do them!  If anyone else uses Windows Live and has any other suggestions for me let me know- I especially want to know if there is a way to center all the pictures.

Stonyfield Fairy

The Stonyfield fairy paid me a visit yesterday! So some of you may know that a couple weeks ago was the Healthy Living Summit in Boston. I wasn’t able to go and during that weekend I tweeted (follow me on twitter!) about how I was sad that I wasn’t in Boston at the Summit. Well lo and behold Kristina at Stonyfield, who sponsored the Summit, saw my tweet and sent me coupons for free Oikos- which is their greek yogurt, a way cool reusable bag, a magnet with nutrition facts for their products, a Food Inc flier, coupons for other Stonyfield products, and a really sweet handwritten note- I love that Kristina took the time to actually write something to me instead of just printing out a generic typed up letter! Anyways I am super excited because this is the first product I have been sent to review on my blog (or sent free coupons for because it is hard to ship yogurt!). So of course when I finished babysitting I went to Wegmans to get some Oikos!

But before we get to today lets back up to yesterday.

I dug into the freezer and found some Amy’s cheese pizza snacks to heat up for lunch. I’m trying to use up all my oven heated things because starting next week lunch will have to be heated up in the microwave in the teachers lounge.

While I waited for them to heat up I had some Sargento string cheese because I was starving.

I ate them with a little Buitoni pesto. Buitoni is probably my favorite premade pesto. These were delicious! They are like bagle bites only better! I love these, especially with the pesto. The best part is this was only half the box, there is still another serving in the freezer!

Dinner was a recipe courtesy Rachael Ray- Veggie Not-sanga. I pretty much followed her recipe except I left out the roasted red peppers because they are not my most favorite thing. It is basically lots of veggies, ricotta, and pasta! It is delicious!

On to today! Today was my last day babysitting, well for these kids I am babysitting on Saturday for someone else. I had an Apple Pie larabar on the way to babysitting.

They live right by Wegman’s so I stopped there on the way back to use my Stonyfield coupons! I also picked up some sushi for lunch- BBQ Philly Roll- it was pretty much amazing.

And I got an Honest Tea that I busted out as soon as I got back in my car- it was pearfect. No I’m not being corny it was named Pearfect White Tea and it was pearfect hahaha

And look at all the Stonyfield stuff I got- free Oikos, a plain, vanilla, strawberry, blueberry, and honey. I also had coupons for some money off other Stonyfield products so I picked up some of their normal yogurt and yogurt smoothies. I’m pretty stoked about the smoothies because they will be perfect to take in the car with me on the commute in to student teaching.

I haven’t tried any of them yet but I will do a full review on everything as I try them! Hope everyone has a great day!

Technorati Tags: oikos,stonyfield,greek yogurt,amys,buitoni,pesto,sargento,string cheese,rachael ray,pasta,honest tea,sushi

A Bazillion Books!

Today has been busy busy! My mom and I went to the grocery store and bought lots of stuff! We went to Harris Teeter because thats my mom's favorite grocery store- she doesn't like Wegmans can you believe it!!! So I'm a little sad but my sister and I have a Wegmans lunch date planned sometime this week so I know I'll get to go later! So as soon as we got back I started making dinner- Spinach and Mushroom Lasanga Roll Ups with a Gorgonzola Cream Sauce which of course I got from Rachael Ray!!! They were super easy and fun to make! Its basically cremini mushrooms, onion, garlic, spinach, and ricotta on the inside rolled up inside the lasagna noodles and covered with a sauce made from chicken stock, gorgonzola, cream, and I also added tomatoes!
Then you top them with mozzarella and put them under the broiler for a little bit until the cheese is all melty and bubbly! Also they didn't fit in my pan laying down so I stood them up but I do think that it would have been better laying down because the cheese would be all over the shell instead of just on the top.

Yummmmmmm! these were so good and I will definitely be making them again! Me and my dad loved the gorgonzola sauce, I would probably just use this sauce with the tomatoes and put it on pasta and it would be wonderful! However my mom didn't like it so I said next time I would try it with fontina or gruyerecheese for he. Also I added a little parmesan, asiago, and romano mix to the filling and next time I think I would add some of the mozzarella too!

After dinner I spread out the bazillion scholastic books that me and my friends ordered from my mom and sorted them out! And there were definitely a lot! I wish I had taken a picture as they were spread all over the floor but they are all organized in bags now.

Now I'm watching Lost and snacking on a fruit tart that my mom got from Harris Teeter. It was okay, not that great. My mom makes an awesome fruit pizza and it is 500 times better than this.
So just when Lost was starting to make sense they have to do something crazy and confuse me even more! I can't figure out who is dead and who is alive and why the dead people are alive all of a sudden on the island! There are about 5 minutes left so maybe something will make more sense but I seriously doubt it!