Staycation!

The pool has been calling my name all week and I've been listing to that instead of listing to my computer telling me to blog! Instead of updating you on everything I will tell you a few exciting things from the week and then blog about today!

Most importantly- Tropical Smoothie is now open! That is right Gainesville, VA now has a Tropical Smoothie- it is about time! I saw the Now Open sign on my way to babysitting Thursday morning and of course stopped there to get lunch on the way home. I got my go-to favorite smoothie- a Blimey Limey and a Hummus Veggie sandwich. It was even more amazing than normal because I hadn't had Tropical Smoothie in such a long time. My only complaint is that this one doesn't have the combos. I really wanted the half sandwich and smoothie combo but it all worked out because I just ate the other half of my sandwich for dinner that

Another exciting thing was a find at Giant. PINEAPPLE CHOBINI!?!?! If you know me at all you know I love all things pineapple. I saw this and literally was like Oh My God! Of course I bought some!
Dinner last night was this ginormous salmon. My mom bought it at Costco, thus the ginormousness of it. It didn't look this big in the package but when I pulled it out almost a quarter of it had been folded underneath because it was so big it didn't fit in the package. I saw someone else make Martha Stewarts Salmon with an Herbed Yogurt on their blog last week and so of course I tried it with my salmon. It was delicious. It was also super easy, I highly recommend this, especially if you are trying to impress people and have no time! It is literally greek yogurt, dijon mustard, dill, and parsley smeared on top of the salmon before you pop it in the oven. I loved the yogurt mixture with or without the salmon and found myself picking little pieces that flaked off when I put the leftovers away. Try this immediately!
On the side I had some eggplant that I marinated in balsamic vinegar and herbs. It was delicious too!
For breakfast this morning I busted out the pineapple chobini! It exceeded my expectations and I was very satisfied with it. My only complaint is they don't sell it in the big tubs and only in the single serving containers!
I mixed it with some Bear Naked Mango Almond Agave granola. It was pretty amazing, too bad I showed it to my dad and he sat down and ate half the bag. He loves mango and I knew he would love this granola too. The big chunks of dried mango were perfect with the pineapple yogurt!
Then for lunch I made the most delicious sandwich out of the leftover marinated eggplant, some tomatoes marinated in the leftover balsamic marinade for the eggplant, some fresh basil, vermont cheddar cheese, and a "mayo" that I made of greek yogurt, dijon mustard, and dill (essentially the same as the topping on the salmon only I was out of parsley). It was delicious!
Dinner was not as exciting as lunch was. My parents decided to grill hot dogs and I decided to try a veggie dog. I'm not going to lie I was a little disappointed. I love veggie burgers so I thought I might love veggie dogs, but that was not the case. It wasn't horrible it just wasn't that great. I wouldn't buy them again but I suppose I'll eat the rest of the ones I have in the pack. I much prefer my veggie burgers! To go with that I had some Annie's Mac and Cheese and some cherries.
My family is staycationing this week! We are going to go hiking at a couple places nearby, go to a dinner theater, and do other fun things! I was going to tell you I might not be blogging as usual, but I haven't been blogging as usual so it won't be much of a change! I think once summer is over I'll probably get back into a more regular schedule but right now I choose laying out by the pool and reading over sitting inside in blogging! Until next time I will leave you a picture of Charlotte looking ridiculous. I came in from being out by the pool and found her like this.

Lots of Pork!

I hope everyone is having a good start to their weekend! Instead of blogging I've been looking at updating my blog format. I was thinking about changing my blog over to WordPress but then I realized you have to have a paid account to edit the html and everything, so back to blogspot I am! With the help of my dad I hope to have a new and improved blog soon, including an about me and recipe section! yay!

So Wednesday night dinner was pork tenderloin in another one of those awesome Kona Coast Marinades, this time it was Sweet and Sour Plum! It was just as delicious as the Island Teryaki! Along with the tenderloin was some watermelon and corn.
Thursday I woke up nice and late and skipped breakfast and went straight to lunch. I made the most delicious salad ever with an assortment of greens, campari tomatoes, green onions, the most delicious salmon ever left over from tuesday, goat cheese, and a little raspberry vinaigrette dressing. This was the best possible way to use this leftover salmon- it was so delicious!!!
After lunch I laid out by the pool for a little with a book. Then I showered and scarfed down a Green Monster before heading out to babysit. I made this Green Monster with watermelon instead of banana. It was pretty delicious but I think would have been good if maybe I did half a banana with the watermelon.
I got home from babysitting just in time for dinner. My mom pulled out some leftover meatballs and made her awesome mashed potato salad, and watermelon.
Mashed Potato Salad
About 6 baking potatoes
1 tbl Butter
1/3 cup Milk
salt and pepper to taste
4 Hard Boiled Eggs
1/3 Mayo or Miracle Whip (add more if needed)
1/2 Small Onion-chopped or 2 bunches of green onions
1 tsp Mustard

Alright these are very generalized measurements. My mom said the real recipe from her mom called for leftover mashed potatoes and she just based everything else on how many mashed potatoes she had. So that being said peel the potatoes and boil them until they are soft. Then mash them with the butter, milk, and add salt and pepper to taste. Then mash in the hardboiled eggs, mayo, onion, and mustard! You can garnish it with slices of hardboiled eggs if you want!


For breakfast this morning I had some cranberry coconut granola with the very last of my 0% Fage. I'm all out of greek yogurt- ahhhh!
In between breakfast and lunch I mostly messed around trying to figure out things for my blog! Then for lunch I made a pizza! I loaded up garlic, green onions, campari tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, goat cheese, and a little asiago, romano, parmesan mix! Yummm it was so delicious!
Then my mom and I went and shopped around Manassas for most of the day! We decided to stop and pick up some bbq on the way home from Old Carolina. We got both the Texas and Carolina style. I ate some of the Carolina kind with a little of the extra Texas sauce on top.

And for dessert later we have an apple pie from Costco that looks delicious!

Also in other news I just won an auction for a Breville Juice Fountain Plus on ebay!!!!! I'm so excited! The auction just ended like a minute ago so I'm going to go pay for it so they can ship it out soon! Feel free to leave your fav fruit/veggie juice combos for me to try out with my new juicer!

Kona Coast Marinade

I've had a rollercoaster past couple of days, I've been back and forth between being happy and then something happens to put me in an awful mood! My parents decided to grill hot dogs Monday night so I pulled out a Lean Cuisine from the freezer.
I was pleasantly surprised to find way more veggies then the picture on the box showed, usually it is the opposite! However they were pretty tasteless and not exciting. The butternut squash raviolis were amazing but the sauce they were drowning in was not very good. All in all I was not really impressed but it has given me inspiration! Maybe I can find some butternut squash ravioli and make my own sauce and throw in some snow peas and maybe some asparagus. Yumm!
Breakfast yesterday was the last Kashi waffle, the second to last bit of the Fage, and the last of the raspberry sauce from my mom's chocolate birthday tart. It was delicious, that raspberry sauce could make anything taste delicious!
The night before I printed out a bunch of pictures so after breakfast I spent some time taking old pictures out of frames and putting some new ones in. I need a few more frames because I have a couple other pictures I want to put up. I'm glad I've finally gotten my picture frames out and some pictures up in my room because it makes it a little more happy, but it also makes me really miss all my friends in Richmond :(

Lunch was a delicious wrap! It had a Morningstar Mushroom Lovers burger, goat cheese, fresh mozzarella, spinach, and campari tomatoes. Yummmmm!
Then my mom and I went to the grocery store because we were almost out of everything (as you can tell from my breakfast where I used the last of everything!) I've been looking at all the grocery stores up here trying to find the Peanut Butter & Co maple peanut butter but with no luck. I'm going to have to pick up some next time I'm in Richmond. So I finally broke down today to try the Cinnamon Raisin Swirl which is at every store up here and I've heard is good as well. When I got home I put it on some Pepperidge Farm Whole Wheat Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Bread. It was delicious, but I like the maple one better! However this is a good substitute until someone up in the Gainesville/ Haymarket area starts selling it!
To go with my snack I made some delicious iced tea! I made some Celestial Seasonings Raspberry Zinger tea and then mixed it with some Minute Maid pomegranate juice blend. It was delicious!
The other day FoodBuzz's featured ingredient was lavender. Well we have an overabundance of lavender in our garden by our pool so I looked through a bunch of recipes. I decided to try out the Lavender Lemon Soda. It was okay, it wasn't awesome but it wasn't awful and I probably wouldn't make it again.
For dinner my dad grilled some salmon and my mom made her awesome Mandarin Orange Salad. The salad has an assortment of greens, mandarin oranges, sugared almonds, celery, green onions and a homemade dressing. It is so delicious! If I can get the recipe from her I might post it later.
And the salmon was marinated in the best marinade that I have ever tasted that has come out of a can. Kona Coast Paradise Pineapple Teriyaki. This was so delicious and everyone should go out and buy it immediately. It is sweet and tangy and citrusy and amazing.
After dinner my sister and I headed to Manassas to see The Proposal. Ahh it was so cute! I highly recommend it. We came out of the theater to a mass crowd of people waiting to see Transformers at midnight. We fought our way through the crowd to the exit and promptly headed to Wendy's for a Coffee Toffee Twisted Frosty!!!!!!! I was pretty excited because I love frosties, I love almost anything with toffee and I love frapachinos and other frozen coffee things! It was everything I could have wanted and more, but now I think I need to try one with the vanilla frosty instead of the chocolate one!
Breakfast this morning was a slice of cinnamon raisin toast with cinnamon raisin swirl PB Company peanut butter! I thought I took a picture but I guess I didn't, however it looked identical to the one I ate for a snack yesterday so you can just scroll up and look! After breakfast my sister and I watched Confessions of a Shopaholic. The Shopaholic series are my all time favorite books, and even though the movie was not a great representation of the book (hello it is suppose to take place in London and everyone should be British that should have been enough of a warning to me!) I still loved it and it has helped me rediscover my love for those books. I plan on rereading them all now and I'm glad this movie just came out just around the time I was beginning to become all about Twilight and Stephanie Meyer and forgetting about the Shopaholic books and Sophie Kinsella!

Anyways for lunch was more of my cinnamon raisin bread. I made an apple and brie sandwich and it was delicious!
And I had a peach on the side- which was not so delicious, it had like no flavor!
For dinner we are having a pork tenderloin in another Kona Coast marinade which tasted good on my finger so I'm excited to see how it tastes on the pork!

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

Mimis Cafe

I am done done done with school! Only student teaching next semester stands between me and being done with VCU forever! In between my 2 finals I went and got Tropical Smoothie and brought it into five guys with everyone else! I had another Pineapple Twist Green Tea smoothie- my new favorite! And a Hummus Among Us half sandwich!

yummmm! After finishing our finals we went out to celebrate at Baja! They had pink wristbands and $5 margaritas for Cinco de Mayo- what could be better!
And Erica got a $5 beer bucket lolAnd later we got Scooby Snacks!
This is the organism! Jamie, Erica, Bridgit, and I! Our science teacher last semester referred to us as the organism one time and its stuck ever since!And here is a group shot of everyone minus Megan who left a little earlier! Today I slept until 10:30 and then just lay in bed catching up on blogs and facebook and just doing nothing! It was wonderful to not have any school stuff to do! For lunch I ate the rest of my bunny butts from yesterday and added in some mushrooms that I cooked up a few days ago. I'm trying to use up all my perishable items before I move Saturday.
It was of course delicious! Then for the rest of the day I mostly packed up my room! I stopped midday for a snack of the last of my hummus and triscuits!
Once Ashley got off work she came over and we chilled until Courtney got off work! Then we headed out to Mimis Cafe for dinner so that Josh could be our waiter! It was delicious- I've been there for brunch before but I've always had just the breakfast (which is amazing) but today I learned how amazing their non breakfast is too! They had these 3 course specials which is what we all got!

Ashley started with grilled cheese sticks which were not mozzarella sticks which made Ashley sad. It was literally a grilled cheese sandwich cut into strips served with marinara sauce lol. It was tasty but I could have easily made that at home.
Courtney opted for the french onion soup which I didn't try but looked delicious!
And I got a yummy caesar salad! It had perfect croutons- they were crunchy but soft enough that you could spear them with your fork and eat them with your salad. I hate when croutons are so hard they break when you try to get them on your fork!
For the main course I opted for the Honey Dijon Salmon. And so did Courtney! Oh my gosh this was so delicious! The fish was cooked perfectly and had the most amazing sauce I've ever had on fish. It was a dijon cream sauce and it was the perfect tang to go with the salmon. The asparagus were also delicious and cooked perfectly and I suppose the potatoes were good not anything special and I'm not a big potato person.Ashley got maple glazed pork which I didn't try but looked delicious!
And I can't believe I forgot to take pictures of our deserts!!!! So sad! I got their delicious Chocolate Moose (which I've had before and was amazing as always). Ashley got the apple crisp and Courtney got the bread pudding both of which looked good also. I love Mimis! And I love having Josh as a waiter haha, too bad he doesn't work at the Mimis in Gainesville! Anyways tomorrow will be more packing and Friday my parents are going to drop off a moving truck and then go down to CNU to help my brother move out then back up here to move me out! Ahh so much to do and pack up tomorrow!