Wegman's was fabulous as always! While I waited for my sister to be ready I snacked on some cheddar that I picked up at Giant the other day. It was really really good, super sharp! Its not the same as the goat cheddar which they definitely don't have at Giant but I will definitely be getting more of this cheese.
For lunch I loaded up on the hot food bar! I got some shrimp pad
thai, spring roll, some
indian lamb thing that was delicious, shrimp in a cream sauce, calamari, and a
chinese donut to finish it off. It was all really delicious, as expected! The shrimp in the cream sauce is probably one of my favorite things on the
Wegmans hot bar, the shrimp is fried and kind of crispy but then its in this sweet sauce that it kind of soaks up and softens it. So it has a fun texture and it really isn't in a "sauce"
After we ate we did some intense grocery shopping where I got lots of things I wanted (some
ingredients for meals and cupcakes) and was
disappointed when
Wegman's didn't have other things I wanted (
chia seeds, So Delicious coconut milk ice cream bars, organic dried pineapple without the crazy preservatives). After unloading the groceries I made myself a Green Monster to drink while cupcake making in hopes of not eating as much batter and frosting. This delicious Green
Monser contained about
1/4 cup orange juice
1 container Light and Fit Strawberry Yogurt (I find the thin non
greek yogurt works better for these so I use whatever kind my mom has because I usually just buy and eat
greek yogurt)
1 banana
1 1/2 cups spinach
I really love the addition of the orange juice to my Green Monster's! I also have been blending them with ice sometimes so they are colder and more smoothie
esque. Today I had the wonderful idea of using one of the Minute Maid Juice bars instead of ice and orange juice, which would have been delicious if there were any orange ones left in the box. There were only grape which I really don't like by themselves that much and I think would ruin my Green Monster!
Anyways the Green Monster didn't really help the finger from tasting all the different stages
for the cupcakes. The cupcake inspiration came from the Food Network's
Strawberry-Lime Stuffed Cupcakes. I used their cupcake recipe as a base. However I didn't really pay that much attention to the recipe which called for jumbo cupcake tins and put my normal cupcake tins in for the specified time. When I checked on them 5 min before the timer was set to go off they were a little done. They were not burned but they were definitely a little over cooked. Once they were cooled off I cut little holes in the tops and stuffed some of the fresh tiny strawberries we got in Ohio. They were the perfect size to stuff into these cupcakes because normal sized strawberries from the grocery store would have been too big, I guess that is why the recipe calls for jumbo cupcakes!
Now I would have been perfectly happy with just the lime frosting on all the cupcakes, however my mom and sister do not like lime anything. So to make them happy I made strawberry frosting for half of them. Which by the way this made exactly one dozen normal sized cupcakes so I frosted 6 with strawberry frosting and 6 with lime. Both
frostings started out the same way and then I kept adding a little more of everything to get it right, so I can't give you an exact recipe but i can try!
Strawberry Buttercream (all
measurements are very generalized)
3/4 pound of powdered sugar (one box is usually a pound so 3/4 of the box)
1/4 cup of strawberry puree
3 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of shortening
Blend everything together adding more powdered sugar to make thicker or a splash of milk or strawberry puree to thin it.
Lime Buttercream
2/3 pound of powdered sugar
3 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of shortening
zest of one lime
juice of one lime
1 teaspoon of milk
Blend everything together adding more powdered sugar to thicken or more milk to thin.
Mid cupcake making I had to stop and peel up some potatoes to start cooking for dinner. We had a roast in the
crockpot cooking with about half an onion and probably close to a tablespoon of minced garlic. It turned out really good and we had it along side some mashed potatoes (also with garlic of course) and cauliflower. It was delicious of course!
Then of course for dessert we had cupcakes.
We rented New In Town and just finished watching it. That movie was super cute and is
definitely on my need to own movie list. Right up there with all 3 High School Musicals which I somehow do not own, probably because I always would watch them at Maggie's! (Who by the way still has my High School Musical Sing It at her house in Richmond!) The movie also made me want to move to
Minnesota. I love snow and would not mind living in the cold and it just seemed like such a cute small town! Although I really don't know about
Minnesota because I would probably get bored out of my mind, I would love to live in a Gilmore Girls Stars Hollow
esque small town somewhere in New England. A town where everyone knows everyone and has fun things like Fall and Winter Carnivals at the town square. Someday I will live somewhere like that! I am curious to know what kind of dream location everyone else has. Do you want to live in a small town like Stars Hollow or are you more of a city kind of person. And of course you can't forget the suburbs or the country!
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I guess I need to use bigger tomatoes next time. Oh well, they weren't awful but they definitely weren't roasted tomatoes. They almost tasted like sundried tomatoes so I kept them to use randomly.
After diner I took my dog on a walk. I wish it weren't so hot outside because I really wanted to go running but it was entirely too hot outside. When we got back we had a strawberry popsicle for dessert! yumm
Then I read for a while before bed. This morning I woke up and had a Kashi waffle with vanilla chobini and strawberries. It was delicious as usual
Then I laid out by the pool for a while trying to soak up some sun before the storms came! I came in for lunch and made a sandwich. I took some leftover roast from the other night and topped it with some very tiny leftover amount of smoked cheddar but mostly a mexican cheese blend because we have no other cheese. I chopped up a few of the burned roasted tomatoes and mixed them in with a little mayo and added some minced garlic. I put all of it on some soft oatmeal bread and it was pretty delicious, only thing that could have made it better would be some better cheese.
Then I went shopping for some dresses for all of my sister's upcoming graduation festivities and a couple weddings I'm going to later in the summer. I ended up with 2 dresses, one of which is my "teacher dress" that I can wear to student teaching and a pair of shoes for $44. I love Ross! Shopping makes you hungry so I came home and made a Green monster
This was almost the best Green Monster yet (if we had orange juice it would have been even better!) It was the normal banana and spinach, vanilla yogurt, and. . .
. . . a strawberry popsicle instead of ice! It was pretty much amazing!
