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

VA Beach and Richmond

Alright so as promised here is my post about the beach and Richmond! We left for the beach around 8 Monday morning and after many pit stops (I drank coffee and have the world's smallest bladder), a lunch stop (a quick chicken salad sandwich from 7-11), and getting lost from our google directions we finally made it there around 1ish! It had been raining off and on during the drive down but had been bright and sunny when we started getting closer to the beach. Of course as soon as we changed into our bathing suites, got sunscreen on, and went out to the beach the clouds rolled in. We were out for maybe an hour and half in the cloudy weather before it started raining. It started drizzling and we endured it but then it started raining harder so my mom and I went up and sat under the covered part of the deck. Eventually it stopped raining but it got cold! I sat outside longer debating about going back down to the beach or changing out of my bathing suite. Eventually I gave into the coldness and went in and changed. I was so glad I had packed a pair of jeans to take to Richmond with me because I definitely did not want to put the shorts and a tank top on that I had been wearing earlier. I went out to my car and dug around in my vera until I found jeans and a non tanktop shirt! Then I wrapped my towel around me and went back out onto the deck so I could at least still see the ocean while I was reading!

Once Emily got off work I headed over to her house and then we went out to get Mexican Food at a Mexican restaurant that I can't remember the name of. I ordered Seafood Chimichangas which were absolutely delicious!
We spent a long time talking over dinner, then went back to her house and hung out more, we even ended up talking in the driveway for a while as I was about to leave. Even though we had seen each other a couple weekends ago at Stephen and Mandy's wedding we really didn't get a chance to catch up as much as we needed to, so we had a lot of stuff to talk about! I hate living so far away from my friends and I feel like I never get to talk to them or see them anymore!

Anyways as soon as I got to Richmond I went with Maggie and some of her friends to Sonic where I got an unpictured limeaid chiller. Other than that it was a pretty laid back night!

This morning we hung out around the house for a while and then took Corbin to the River. We decided to have a picnic lunch there so we stopped at Noodle and Company for food to take to the river with us.


It was pretty good. My noodles had pesto, mushrooms, tomatoes, basil, and parmesan. My only thing was this was something I could have so easily made at home and made it better. So even though it was good I'm not sure how I feel about paying for something that I could make better (but I guess I really couldn't have made it at Maggie's because she doesn't have a working stove). They have three different sections of their menu- Asian, Mediterranean, and American. I think if I were to go back again I would definitely try some of their Asian noodles instead because even though all the Mediterranean ones sound good I think they would all be similar to this and would be something I would rather make at home. Oh and the American noodles really didn't sound very good, except for maybe the macaroni and cheese.

After eating we played with Corbin in the river.
Then we stopped at Baskin Robbins on the way home for ice cream. I got a lemon custard with pineapple toppings- yum!!!!! It has inspired me to make lemon pineapple raspberry ice cream sometime soon (the raspberry because Maggie had ice cream that had raspberry and we both thought it would be good with mine.)
Corbin was so exhausted from all the excitement he immediately slept when we got home.
Later we met up with Sara for sushi at Mai Sushi (they don't have a website). This is probably the best sushi place in Richmond (it is in the Village shopping center by Ukrops for any Richmonders). We use to always go to Akida (which is also really good if you want sushi closer to VCU its on Robinson between Grace and Broad) but one time decided to try Mai because it was so close to Maggie's house and we have been hooked ever since. I started out with some miso soup.
Then I tried something new, a tiger roll.

It had shrimp, cream cheese, and asparagus inside and salmon and avocado on top. It was delicious. Shrimp tempura and philly rolls are usually my go to sushi but this kind of combines both of them together and its healthier because it doesn't have the fried shrimp in it!

After dinner Maggie and I played High School Musical Sing It for quite a while and now I am about to head off to bed! Goodnight everyone!

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

Hit and Run

Well I've had a stressful past 2 days. As I was heading to my grandparents house yesterday, I stopped off at the post office to mail out a book someone bought from me on half.com. As I'm walking out of the post office a woman informs me that someone just hit my car as they were leaving the parking lot and then continued on like nothing happened. Luckily this lady and another lady saw it, got the licence plate number, and left me their names and numbers as witnesses. So I then phoned the Haymarket police- since I was practically across the street from the Haymarket police station and at the Haymarket post office. They proceeded to tell me that I was actually not in their jurisdiction and I needed to call the Prince William Police Department! ahhhh!! So I called them and after about 20 minutes of them not finding the address of where I was and trying to figure out how to give directions to the officer for where I was they said "sit tight and we'll get someone out there soon." So there I waited for over two hours until the officer finally came. I called them after about an hour and a half and they told me it was Friday afternoon and nice outside so they were very busy. At this point I am missing the back break light of my car so I probably couldn't drive it up to my grandparents at night (which it would be by the time I figured I would finally be able to do anything). So I give the officer all the info and he tells me that he's going to go to this person's house and can either get them to give me an exchange of insurance and leave it at that or I can press charges. I told him I just want them to pay for it to get fixed so I'm not going to press charges if they do that. So he says I can go home and he'll come to my house after he goes to theirs. Well after being home for about 45 minutes he calls and says he got their insurance info and he got mine and said that he would bring the form over later that evening. So it is now over 24 hours later and he still hasn't brought that stuff over! We called our insurance company and basically there's not too much we can do until we get the other people's insurance info, so I guess I'll call the officer tomorrow or Monday if we still don't have it. All of this is so annoying, and this person who hit my car has ruined my entire weekend!

(luckily I carry my camera everywhere now because of this blog!! I took a bunch of pictures while I was waiting for the police to come. There is more damage on the bumper but this picture didn't have my licence plate number in it because I obviously don't want everyone stalking me!)

Anyways, before I left and all this happened I tried the Buitoni Mushroom Agnolotti. It was delicious! I topped it with pesto like I did with the other kind. These were both really good and I don't think I could pick a favorite. I think next time I would buy both kinds again and mix them together so you could have a bite with both the mushroomy goodness and the creamy cheesy goodness!


Since we were stuck at the house after I got home we ordered Chinese food since we couldn't go out to eat and had no food in the house. We ordered from Asian Garden which actually has Chinese and Japanese food which means they have sushi! And their sushi is actually pretty good (although it definitely doesn't compare to Akida or Mai Sushi in Richmond). I got a philly roll and a shrimp tempura roll along with some miso soup and shared some of the crab ragoons that the whole family got.

Yummmm, nothing beats the unhealthiness of fried crab ragoons hahaha. I deserved to be unhealthy after my stressful day and continued it later with some Edy's Yogurt Blends. I had a huge bowl of the Carmel Praline Crunch and loved every bite of it. I had bought the berry granola flavor before but it was once when I was at home for the weekend and only had a very small amount before I left to go back to Richmond. It was really good but this was even better. It had swirls of carmel and lots of crunchy praline pecans. I was very impressed! I would definitely buy this again.
After my ice cream I spent the rest of the night studying for my VRA's and went to bed early. In the morning I ate a Blueberry Crisp Clif bar. I saw this at Giant and had never seen this flavor before (I feel like every store I go to has different flavor of Clif bars). I was really impressed, and this might be my favorite Clif bar flavor yet. It was full of blueberries and it was super delicious.
I left really early because I didn't know how long it would take to get there from my house. I ended up getting to the school at about 11:45 and we were suppose to check in at 12:30. So I sat in the car and studied some more and ate a sandwich that I had packed yesterday to take to my grandma's haha. It was hummus, spinach, shitake mushrooms, and smoked cheddar. I really wasn't hungry but knew they might not let us leave when we finished and I very well could be stuck in that building until 5 o'clock because it is a 4 hour test!
The test was okay, there were a few questions that I straight out knew the answer to but there were more that I wasn't sure about. There were so many questions that the answers listed all or most were possible solutions and you had to pick the best one. Ahhh it was so stressful, I hate tricky questions like that! Luckily they let us leave when we finished so I didn't have to stay around forever! It took me exactly 2 hours ( I'm so glad I didn't have to sit there for 2 more). When I drove in I saw a Sonic so I promptly drove there for a strawberry limeade and also got onion rings. (it has been a fried onion rings and fried ragoons kind of weekend!)

When I got home I laid around and watched some tv to celebrate it actually being summer now that these VRA's are out of the way. I was watching Keeping Up with the Kardashian's and they rented a monkey for their mom!!?!? How cool/ weird is that! I have never heard of that and I really want to know where they rented it from and how much it cost. Basically you get the monkey for a week and a trainer comes by to bring you the monkey and teach you how to take care of it, and then they leave you and the monkey alone for a week! It was ridiculous, who thinks of these things haha!

For dinner my mom made BLT's, haha I know the unhealthiness continues, it has seriously been that kind of weekend, hopefully tomorrow will be better! My BLT also had a C with some smoked cheddar. And on the side was some pineapple and watermelon.
After dinner I worked on my room some more. I think I have most of my school stuff out of boxes and it has filled up an entire bookshelf. One shelf of "classroom library" books (actually its two books deep on half the shelf). One shelf is all my resource notebooks from various classes. And the last shelf is books, spirals, and other various school related things. I feel like I accomplished something with getting all that stuff put away but I still don't even know where to begin on the other parts of my week. Hopefully I can finish it this week, especially since I probably won't have a car at some point this week while it gets fixed! Oh and to add to that my brother's car got a flat tire a couple days ago so it is running on the spare until we can get it in for a new tire. I'm just waiting for my parents and sister's cars to break too! But during the week its just my brother and I while everyone else is at school/ work, and neither one of us have cars- wonderful!! Actually my break light is tapped up so I'm still driving it around until it needs to go in to get fixed hahaha.

Home!

I have to make this super short because I'm about to go to the grocery store with my mom! It's been pretty busy the last couple of days! During movie night I got this yummy chocolate chip cookie from Shields Market!
Then for lunch yesterday I went to Mai Sushi with Maggie and Sara. I got a philly roll and a fried oyster roll- haha i couldn't resist trying it and it was really good!
Then I loaded up a bunch of stuff in my car and made another wrap- this one had cheddar, tomatoes, sprouts, and asiago.
Then I headed to class for forever! I got home around 11:30 last night and then unloaded my car this morning!

hahaha also waiting in the mail for me was barney butter samples! I can't wait to try them!
Well I'm off to buy lots of stuff so that I can make lots of fun stuff while I'm at home! Rachel and I are having a baking extravaganza so be prepared for that haha!

Trader Joes!!!

Happy Palm Sunday everyone! This morning I went to Commonwealth Chapel for the first time in forever because I am hardly ever in Richmond on the weekends! And it was really fun because everyone that usually comes off and on came and we packed 6 people into Grace's car! So on the way to church I snacked on a Key Lime Larabar- probably my favorite kind!

Then after church Melony swiped all of us into Shafer hahaha! I was excited for free food until we got there and I remember how gross Shafer is! Especially on Sunday's they have "brunch" food so basically at the station that changes out food they just had eggs sausage and bacon- well last time I ate Shafer eggs I got pretty sick so I was not about to do that again! Then there was the hamburger station that just had greasy gross hamburgers that looked like they had been sitting out for hours! I decided against that too! So I went to the Vegan bar and made a semi wrap, they only had super tiny wraps so it ended up being more like a taco since i couldn't actually wrap it! I put on some hummus and sprouts and lettuce and tomatoes. They really didn't have much else to put on it but it was pretty good even though it was kind of boring! I also had an orange on the side that took more effort to attempt to peel and segment apart then it was worth.

After Shafer I took a much needed nap!! When I woke up I snacked on a Vermont Sharp White Cheddar cheese stick and then worked on some of this take home midterm for my tutoring class and started writing some fake journal entries for my ethics class since my teacher decided she wanted to look at our journals that we have supposedly been keeping haha. Then when Kylin came home we went to Trader Joes! It was so exciting and I bought way more then I should have but I only spent $30!!!! So when I came home I had the teriyaki shiitake mushroom sushi that I got from TJs! It was pretty much amazing!
And for dessert I of course had a so delicious ice cream sandwich!
I think now I'm going to work on my take home test a little more! I think I'm going to try and finish it before I go home on Tuesday for Easter so I don't have to bring it with me since I have enough other things to do that week! Also the more work I get done before I go home the more time I have to bake all sorts of fun things! I've realized that my tagline at the top of my blog says I love to cook but I hardly ever cook things! Most of my posts are food from restaurants or real quick fix things! Well when I'm in Richmond I really don't have the time or money to cook as much plus I know that I won't eat all of it! When I go home my mom gives me her credit card and tells me to go to the store and buy stuff to cook for the family so you should all be very excited to see all the fun things I'm planning on making later this week!