Emeril!

So I'm trying to make up for my slacking last week by doing all sorts of exciting stuff this week- like going to Whole Foods for my first time ever!!!! But that will come later! As I was uploading my pictures from that adventure I came across my lunch from a couple days ago that I forgot to put up here! It was a pretty amazing pasta with the sundried tomato pesto from the pizza last week (or was it 2 weeks ago?), mushrooms, and goat cheese. It was pretty amazing.

So anyways we just happened to have some croissants hanging around my house (I guess my mom got them at Costco to go with the shrimp salad thats in the fridge?). My sister takes the croissants and made us all chocolate croissants! I think she hollowed out a spot in the middle? And then she melted chocoalte and put it in the middle and drizzled more on top. She put different chocolate in all of ours because we all prefer different kinds! Mine had semi sweet and white chocolate.Alicia eating hers! (yes we are sisters even though we look nothing alike)I tried to break mine in half so you could see the inside and didn't feel like getting up to get a knife.So this morning I made sure to get breakfast because Rachel and I were going to go get mani/pedis before going to Whole Foods for lunch and groceries! So I had some Chobini and when I opened the fridge I saw these rasberry preserves from Giant so I decided to put that in too! And I put the very end of the berry granolla, it was pretty good but kind of sweet because it was honey- not plain greek yogurt. Anyways those rasberry preserves will definitly be going in the plain fage I bought at Whole Foods for breakfast tomorrow!

So then Rachel and I went and got manicures, pedicures, and eyebrow waxes at Angelic Nails in Haymarket and it was wonderful! I hadn't had a pedicure since the summer and my nails were so gross and I needed them to be beautiful for the 80 degree flip flop Florida weather!!! After that we drove out to Fairfax to go to Whole Foods!!!! I was so excited because I had never been to a Whole Foods before. So first we went and looked at all the amazing choices we had for lunch! I finally narrowed it down to pizza, but I had to get 2 because it was like 2 slices for like $5.50 and I couldn't decide between the spinach and ricotta or the mushroom and shallots! So I got a slice of both!

I have to say that I liked the mushroom one the best, the ricotta one was good but I think that the my mouth thought the ricotta would be goat cheese because it looked the same, so even though it was good it would have been better with goat cheese!!! Also to drink I got a Synergy Rasberry which was really yummy! I was drinking it thinking it kind of tasted a little alcoholy and then read the bottle where it said due to fermenting it might contain trace amounts of alochol, under .05 percent. hahaha I thought that was pretty funny.
Rachel got rice, beef stir fry, and some veggies from the hot bar and then a turkey ceaser pannini!

yay!

me and my pizza!

So while we are eating we keep seeing these people with like those microphone head pieces coming and talking to people at this other table, I just figured they were going to have a tour because I know they do like group tours. So after we finish we begin grocery shopping and we are getting produce and we look over and see all these cameras. I'm like it must be Emeril!!!! because we saw on their website that Emeril was going to be there sometime this week filming his new show! And then I saw him in the middle of a group of people! It was so cool! And then we were shopping around and I go to walk down the frozen food aisle and there he is blocking the whole aisle with all his camera people!!! This is what it said on Whole Foods website That's right, Celebrity Chef Emeril Lagasse is back this week! Emeril films his show Emeril Green right here in our store and he is back for another week of filming! This week only during the month of March, Emeril will be filming his show Emeril Green for airing on the Cable Channel Planet Green. Anyway Rachel and I played it cool in the store but once we finished shopping and were in the car we were like ahhh we just saw Emeril!!! So we ran back to my house and unloaded the groceries and started my bread for tonight. Then we ran to Target to get my non Whole Food groceries, like diet mtn dew, sea breeze, and such, Target did not have Diet Mountain Dew OR Sea Breeze so we went to Giant which also did not have Sea Breeze! ahhh so tommraow I will go to Wegmans where I should have just gone in the first place!!!

Anyways for dinner tonight I made Salmon Chowder! I for the most part used this recipie from allrecipes. The bread I made was foccacia using my standard foccaccia recipe! This time I made sundried tomato and onion and it was pretty fabulous!!!
Anyways after dinner I got out some of my fun purchases from Whole Foods!!

More granola, Annies Mac and Cheese (or bunny butts as my sister calls it!), asian noodle balls, almond butter, fage, coconut juice with lime (i also got cocount water and drank it with dinner!), and Vitamuffins!! (those actually came from Target but they were bought today hahaa)
Then as I was putting these away and found more fun things I bought so I had to take another picture!!! The Chobini is from Giant yesterday, and then I got this australian style yogurt? I'm not sure but I'm excited to try it! I got a pink grapefruit and a dark chocolate one! Then a Amy's thai cocount soup and drum roll. . . . . sun dried tomato hummus!!! oh my gosh it sounds so good I can't wait to try it!
I also just realized I forgot to include the Greek style frozen yogurt!!! But I plan on eating it tongiht so I will take a picture then! So as I was putting everything away and getting on my comuter I decided I couldn't wait to try the crunchy almond butter so I busted that open to taste!!
I was definitely not dissapointed! It was everything and more hahaha! Anyways tomorrow I'm going to take my puppy to get her toe nails clipped and then go to Wegmans so I can finally get my sea breeze because I definitly need to be able to pack some of that for Florida!

Snow Days!

Well not much exciting food wise has gone on this past week. Over the weekend I went down to Newport News to visit my brother and catch up with the rest of my family because my sister was going to an open house for CNU. We went out to Olive Garden where my mom called me a food snob because I did not want to go to Olive Garden because it is too chain resteraunty. I thought it was pretty funny. I ended up getting mushroom ravioli after craving it everytime I watched Twilght which was like 50 times last week because it was at the Byrd. Needless to say it wasn't great but it wasn't awful either. On the drive back from Newport News I had to stop at Sonic because there are none in northern VA and I always forget that there is one in Richmond because its in the Southside where I never go (but apparently there is a new one by Virginia Center Commons!!) So anyways I was easily persuaded by the sales guy to pay 30 cents more for the ginormous Strawberry Limeaid of amazingness!Anyways Saturday Maggie and I went shopping where I got some cute clothes that I can student teach in next semester! And some cheap tank tops from Old Navy! And we went to Casa Grande where I haven't been in forever (and I forgot to take a picture!) I got a combo that had an enchilada, a taco, and a chalupa.

So Sunday the blizzard came! It was pretty exciting, it snowed all through the night and into Monday and VCU cancelled for the first time in the 5 years I've been there!!!!! So Grace came over bright and early at 9:30 to begin the snow day! By the time everyone woke up and got dressed it was probably like 11. Then we cleaned off Kylin's car and went to Maymont where we attempted to sled on lids from the big plastic bins haha!

Me waiting for everyone to get ready so I can go play in the snow!!!!

Sledding!!

After sledding everyone came back to our house for hot chocolate! We stopped at a gas station to buy some some milk and also got a cake mix to make a birthday cake for Mike who got to have the best birthday present ever- an awesome snow day!

Bethany enjoying her Ghiridelli hot chocolate!

We decorated Mike's birthday cake with Mike and Ikes and pieces of a Hershey bar because that is what we had in our house!
So Henrico was still closed today so clearly we could not tutor our kids so my spring break officially has started! I am at home until Monday when me and Maggie and Sara fly to Florida!!! I am so excited I can't wait!!!

Back to Richmond

This morning I woke up to snow!!!! I was pretty excited but by the time church was over the snow had stopped! :( I'm sure my kitty was happy though, she did not like being out in the snow this morning! But she refused to come inside, so she was left out in the snow while we all went to church!
So anyways I am now back in Richmond watching NCIS and gathering everything I need to tutor my first grader tomorrow morning. I brought back tons of leftovers and food from home (like always) which means I don't have to spend money on groceries this week but also means that I probably won't update here because everything I'm eating you already saw pictures of when it was first made and who wants to see pictures of leftovers!

So last night for dinner I made pizza! Some people think that I don't like pizza, but I really just hate boring chain pizza like Dominos or whatever. I love pizza with lots of fun cheeses and other things not found on your typical americanized pizza. So I bought premade pizza crusts and made 3 pizzas. . .
One for my sister who likes the boring americanized pizza- just a little sauce, there is some fresh mozzarella along with your normal grated mozzarella, cheddar,monterey jack, and pepperonis on half.
One the way I like it with pesto (this time I tried sun dried tomato pesto which was really good but I think I prefer regular basil pesto on my pizza), fresh mozzarella, shiitake mushrooms, tomatoes, and goat cheese!!! I was so excited to eat it I forgot to take a picture before I sliced it up!
And the last pizza was for my mom who wanted normal pizza sauce, fresh mozzarella and shredded mozzarella, a tiny bit of cheddar, tomatoes, green peppers, shiitake mushrooms, pineapple, pepperoni and I think thats it? There was so much stuff on her pizza that it was really hard to cut!
My dad always eats a little bit of my pizza and a little bit of my mom's pizza. And if my brother is home he eats some of my sisters and some of my moms, but he was not home this weekend so no worries! So after dinner my sister went over to her friends to have a double date with Ben and Jerry and watch chick flicks! Totally not fair. I searched the house over and all though it is not the same as Ben and Jerry's I settled on hot chocolate and samoas- the best girl scout cookie ever! Actually I just realized I did not bring any of those back to Richmond with me and I am quite sad!!! The girl scout cookie orders are just coming in but they aren't selling them outside the grocery stores or anywhere yet!
So this morning as you already know I woke up to snow!! I then made a mini cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese to eat in the car on the way to church!After church we went to the newly opened Mimis Cafe in Gainesville. I don't know how long its been open but its already the place to go for lunch after church! It was super crowded but they had a table with nutmeg oat bread and coffee. I didn't think the bread looked very good but I was actually pretty surprised and it was pretty good!When we got seated and saw the menu it was just too hard to decide what to get! I had decided on getting lunch and not breakfast and had narrowed it down to a couple things but then for some reason I decided to look and see what kind of things they had on the breakfast menu. That was a mistake because everything looked so good! I actually ended up getting breakfast because they had a Tuscan Vegetable omelet, that had spinach artichoke sundried tomato dip inside the omelet and diced tomatoes and feta on top. I also opted for the fresh fruit instead of the potatoes thinking it would be a little bowl of fruit but it really was fresh fruit! A huge chunk of pineapple- my favorite fruit in the entire world!!!!, honeydew, a piece of an orange, and some grapes. It also came with your choice of a muffin that they brought out before your meal like they would with a salad for your lunch or dinner. I got a banana chocolate chip muffin. They brought it out and it was huge. I picked it up and it was also heavy!!! I cut it up and gave 1/4 to my sister 1/4 to my mom and then ate the other half. It was super delicious but it filled me up so much that I only ate half of my omelet. I don't know how anyone could eat that entire muffin and then an entire meal. Those muffins were so huge they were a meal in themselves. Anyway my omelet was super delicious and so was all the fruit it came with! I definitely want to go back some other time and try their actual food because their menu looked so good. My mom was the only one who got not breakfast and she got this huge sandwich that I think had chicken or some other thing that I don't like on it but their sandwiches in general looked really good! (yes I did just say I don't like chicken, I know I'm weird haha).

Again I was so eager to dig in I forgot to take a picture until I was done eating haha so these are my leftovers that I can eat tomorrow! So like I said this week I probably won't update much, nothing exciting is going on during the week except that Twilight is still playing at the Byrd this week so hopefully I will be able to go see it again!! In case you haven't noticed I am pretty much in love with all things Twilight. Also Maggie and I may or may not be going to the Outerbanks this weekend to hang out at her new beach house but I'm sure I'll make some sort of update, even if its one about boring leftovers before that!!

It's All Greek to Me

So as promised here are some pictures of the enchilada casserole that I made the other night and ate for lunch yesterday! This is it cold from the fridge it looked much better when it was all warm and bubbly!

And I warmed it up in the microwave and topped it with sour cream because who eats Mexican food without sour cream!So last night I decided to make a yummy Greek dinner!! I made Mousakka and it was pretty good- not as good as the one at the Crazy Greek but it was the first time I ever made it so it was pretty good for that! I got the recipe here from all recipes and then just changed a couple of things. But basically it is just potatoes then eggplant and then zucchini and then the yummy ground beef mixture then feta and the white sauce! My mom and I decided that next time we would prob not use the potatoes or at least not use as many and add more tomatoes into the beef mixture.And to go with the mousaaka I made a greek salad with some iceburg lettuce, cucumbers, campari tomatoes, and of course lots of feta cheese! Nobody in my family really likes olives so I left them out. The tomatoes were so juicy, sweet, and delicious which was really surprising considering it is February. Campari tomatoes are definitely my favorite tomatoes and they are the perfect size for salads you just cut them in half or quarters and throw them in! I also made a dressing of evoo, red wine vinegar, mustard, and lots of spices! Itwas pretty much the best salad I've ever made.So last night was pretty chill, my sister and I watched twilight on my computer and then psyc on tv with my parents. We finished off the triple berry pie from Wegmans! This morning I woke up around 11 so I decided to not have breakfast and just wait for lunch! And for lunch I made a pretty amazing sandwich! We had some leftover roasted eggplant from last night so I put it in a pita with some roasted garlic hummus and feta cheese! I would have added some tomatoes too but these were really small pitas and mine was already breaking because I stuffed it too full. It was kind of messy because it was breaking and falling out due to the overstuffing but it was so delicious!


So for the rest of the day I'll prob hang out around the house and work on some homework. I really really want to go see Confessions of a Shopaholic but I don't know if anyone here will go with me!

Home for the Weekend

Hey guys!!! I am at home for the weekend. Since I have an amazing class schedule where my weekend comes on Wednesday at 11:20 I was home by 1:30 Wednesday afternoon! I sat at home for like half an hour then went with Rachel to Fair Oaks where she looked for a job and I got bubble tea and a sideways license!! The guy at the DMV didn't understand why I was getting a new license when mine doesn't expire for 2 more years. I told him I wanted a sideways license and he said I would just be back next week to get another new one because I would loose it in a bar. I wanted to be like I am 22 and the lack of sideways license has only prevented me from buying alcohol in Roanoke at Ashley's wedding where they have some crazy rules.

So I got home and tried to catch up on my Top Chef episodes. Then my mom called and was like can you cook dinner (this is what happens when I am home). So I made some amazing spinach mushroom risotto from Wegmans and mixed up a topping for the tilapia. Then my dad came home and cooked the fish because this is his awesome recipe. Its basically a couple tablespoons of butter, a couple tablespoons of mayo, 1/3- 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese, and some spices- i threw in some basil, oregano, and garlic. This was sooo good! I think I would add some other kind of cheese into it to and it would be even better (like maybe feta!!!!)

Anyways it was pretty delicious and when I took a picture my dad said I better credit him for the amazing fish hahaha. So after dinner I watched Lost and Top Chef (where they kicked off Fabio my absolute favorite and I was so sad!!)

Yesterday I woke up and ate some cereal and then made a grocery list so I could make dinner for the rest of the weekend. Then I waited for my sister to get out of school so we could go get lunch and groceries at my favorite place- Wegmans!!!!!!! Wegmans is so amazing and you better believe you will hear more about its amazingness in the future of this blog! So Alicia was super disappointed because all through school she had been imagining the cream of crab soup that she was going to have for lunch. Well when we got to Wegmans at 2:30 the crab shack was closed because it wasn't "lunch time". So she was very disappointed and settled for some clam chowder instead. I got some shrimp and egg rolls from the hot bar with a sweet and sour sauce that had chunks of pineapple in it! It was so good I put it on everything! Then me and Alicia split an amazingly delicious chocolate chip cookie! Then we went grocery shopping and got all sorts of fun stuff!

For dinner I made an enchilada casserole which was nice because I didn't have to roll up the tortillas to make enchiladas which I am always really bad at! I just layered it all in a pan and it was pretty good. I've made a taco casserole with tortilla chips and I think I like that better. I forgot to take a picture but I'm going to eat leftovers for lunch so I'll take a picture then! So then for dessert during the Greys/ Private Practice crossover event we had. . . . . . . . . . . WEGMANS TRIPLE BERRY PIE aka the most amazing pie you will ever buy at a grocery store!!!I don't even know what to say to describe how delicious this pie is. My dad loves pie and really dislikes almost all store bought pies but even he loves this pie! So if you have a Wegmans near you- you should probably go buy it! It is worth every penny! So after I finished my pie I did my taxes- which was super hard because my dad was busy doing work and didn't want to help me! So I think I finally figured it out and should be getting like $270 back and I think it might actually come before spring break which means I can use it to spend in Florida!!! I am so excited for spring break and its only like 2 weeks and 2 days away!

So then for breakfast this morning I used the leftover tortillas from the enchilada casserole to make a breakfast quesadilla! I scrambled up some eggs and put them in the tortillas with cheddar and monterey jack!So the rest of the day will be spent doing homework because I've procrastinated enough! And then I'm cooking an amazing greek dinner tonight so I'm pretty excited for that too! So I will leave you with this picture of my puppy who was getting jealous of all the pictures I was taking of the food and not her!

Valentines Day and more!!!

So I love to cook and everytime I'm at home in Haymarket I think that I should start a food blog to show the world all the awesomeness that I cook when I'm at home cooking for my family. The problem is that when I'm in Richmond at school I have no money to buy fun things to cook and not a lot of time to cook things! But I decided that I didn't care so I figured what a better time to kick off my blog then the weekend after Valentines Day!

I have to admit that I did not make that amazing dessert pictured below or any of the food but Sara did an amazing job making appetizers, dinner, dessert, snacks, and cocktails for her Valentines party!!!So this amazingness was dark chocolate brownies with ghiridelli chocolate chips cut into hearts then topped with whipped cream with rasberry extract and a heart made of royal icing! It was pretty much my favorite thing of the night!

So after Sara's party I went back to Maggie's with Jess and Monica and slept there and proceeded to spend half of Sunday hanging out at Maggies. I ate my delisious cheescake factory leftovers which are not pictured because I ate them before I thought about it!!! But it was leftover spaghetti with a garlic sauce and mushrooms, asparagus, and roasted tomatoes. And then of course I had some leftover cheescake because what would a trip to the Cheescake factory be without cheescake! I tried a slice that had a chocoalte coconut macaroon crust and coconut cream cheescake. The actual cheescake part was only okay but the crust more then made up for it and I probably would have eaten just that and been completly happy.

Then later that night Maggie and I went to the TT Lounge which is my new favorite place for some Boba tea! I am almost ashamed to admit that I've been there 3 times since Thursday. On Thursday I had my first boba experience with a coconut milk tea. I was immediatly hooked and went back on Saturday to try a pineapple slush which was also amazing. Sunday I got a peach slush and Maggie and I took our boba to the Byrd to go see Twilight! It was the first time I had seen it since reading midnight sun and it was even better then the first 2 times I saw it ahahaha. Anyways Edward Cullen made a great end to a great weekend.

Today I didn't have my tutoring class because Henrico didn't have school because it was Presidents Day- so I got to sleep in!!!!!! Basically I did homework all day and cooked some mac and cheese for lunch because I need to use up my milk before it goes bad! I made it with mushrooms and onions and garlic and cheddar cheese and it was fabulous. I also ate the leftovers for dinner so yeah not very exciting.

So since I had no pictures of anything I cooked this weekend I will leave you with fun things that I've made in the past so you can look forward to something!!!

italian cheese and carmalized onion foccacia

This year for Christmas instead of making a birthday cake for Jesus I made red velvet cake balls dipped in chocolate!!! they were pretty good and I think there might be more still in my freezer that I might bust out when I go home this weekend!So finally a peanut butter kiss cookie snowman. I'm pretty sure this was made one summer when my sister and I decided we wanted Christmas cookies so I made one into a snowman hahaha.

Recipes

This will eventually be recipes