Thursday, May 29, 2014

The Best Balls Ever

You ever have that feeling around 11am that you're ready to take on the world?  You make all those plans for the afternoon once you get off work, all these killer ideas for that chunk of time before you head hits the pillow and you get home and the minute your butt hits the couch all those ideas literally disappear.  That happens to me, a lot.  I need to get moving, especially since I have a half marathon to do in a few months.

Once you make working out a habit it's so easy to keep moving, once you break that habit it's difficult to get back into.  Currently I am using Miranda Lambert's new skinny minnie body as my inspiration, but the couch is just so comfy!


I've seen a couple of pictures of myself lately and I'm not loving the way I look, therefore it's time to do something.

Now moving onto the better parts of my life.

Last weekend I made probably one of my favorite of Rosie's recipes, the Ultimate Swedish Meatballs.



I may have cut a corner with the meatballs, the recipe calls for free range pork, to save on the calories I did turkey.  End result was still yummy.


Aren't they gorgeous?


Sigh.


I had to put mine into a smaller serving bowl in order to not eat every piece and sip the gravy directly out of the bowl.


Threw some toast in and smeared with some black truffle spread to mop up the leftover gravy.


Pour an Olivia Pope acceptable glass (bottle) of wine and went to town.  These meatballs are my new go to comfort food, the flavors are exactly the pairing you would want.  I even made Rosie's Mash a couple days later to absorb some of the gravy and meatballs, that was ridiculously perfect.

xoxo,
E

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

BFF day

You know sometimes when life gets away from you, and suddenly you haven't seen your oldest friends in 6-7 months, well that has been me.  This past weekend my two oldest best friends and I planned a little Saturday adventure.  C and I headed to the O's game in the afternoon while Cait headed down from Philly.

After a couple of drinks at Camden Yards and a quick stop in Pickles we jumped in an Uber back to C's house to meet Cait and walk over to Canton Square.  Couldn't ask for a more beautiful day so we wanted to sit outside at Mama's On the Half Shell and catch up.  C and I headed in to wait for our table while Cait finished her to-go cocktail outside.





Mama's is this great restaurant seated right on the corner of Canton Square and is a staple of locals for fresh seafood and a killer brunch menu.  They have a small menu of oyster shooter, but seeing as I had already had quite a few drinks I didn't push my luck.




To be completely honest we were more interested in catching up with each other than in the menu, but we ordered a few appetizers to tide us over in between endless talking.  We honestly thought we would want more, but the appetizers we ended up ordering were so bountiful that we were spent after that first round.


The fried calamari wasn't the wimpy, tiny, overcooked calamari you get in most places.  These bad boys we basically the size of an onion ring and tossed in a perfect batter.


Crab and artichoke dip, because it's what Maryland does, and this did not disappoint.


C and I split grilled oysters wrapped in bacon, smothered in hot sauce.  I think they were called Devils on Horseback (cute huh), but they were tiny bites of heaven.  I will eat an oyster in just about any form, I love these little buggers.


We picked at our food, ordered more Orange Crushes, and talked until we could talk no more.  These two have seen me in literally every stage of my life and nothing is like catching up with these two.





Once our drinks were done we stopped into another bar and met a lovely biker gang from our county.  After that drink we headed back to C's place where her boyfriend met us right as I was making my exit to a family get together.  It was a perfect Baltimore day with my best friends, what more can a girl ask for.

xoxo,
E




Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Wax paper is not oven safe

Hello loves.  I took some time off from blogging last week but I'm back with a banger.  Following in my The Londoner recipe series with the Low Carb Pizza.  It was Monday night, I was exhausted but I was dying for some pizza so I whipped up this bad boy.

The trick to this recipe is that you use grated cauliflower instead of regular dough. Yep, I didn't believe it either but just look at this.


Now it was a little adventure getting to this point.  So I threw open my recipe, popped in Pratical Magic into my DVD player and went to work.







Take a closer look at what I threw my "dough" on.  Yes, that is in fact wax paper.  Now if you read the recipe it calls for parchment paper, now mind you I ran into the grocery store after I went on a long run, I was gross and delirious, and I grabbed wax paper.  Now if you put wax paper into the oven your whole oven will smoke.  Now when my kitchen was quickly filling with smoke and my fire alarms were ruining the neighbor's night,  I caught the writing on the box and realized it was wax paper.  Cooking fail.

Well luckily I had enough ingredients to whip up another one after my fire alarm stopped screaming at me.  


I chose to throw on some tomatoes and turkey bacon on mine.  Notice the foil this time.



I threw on some basil and let it sit while I threw together lunch for work.



The flavors were fantastic, the substitute for dough was hardly noticed.  Mine was a little more soft then was probably intended so I ended up eating it more with a fork, but it was very tasty none the less.  Trying to eat healthy and get myself in half marathon shape this was perfect for my craving for pizza.

More cooking and recap on Memorial Day weekend later this week.

xoxo,
E



Monday, May 19, 2014

Somethin' Bad

Hope everyone had a great weekend! I spent the better part of the weekend celebrating my best friend's birthday in our little town, followed by a day spent on my couch recovering.

 Last night I caught the Billboard Music Awards because of my love of music and Miranda Lambert.  I've loved this kick ass chick for a long time now, and last night cemented why.  How many chicks do you know make men both shake in their boots and burn their eyes out of their heads with how hot she is?  She performed "Something Bad" with Carrie Underwood, and the performance was everything I love about country music.  It's now officially my summer anthem.


I'll spend the week trying to figure out how I can get blonder, skinnier and tanner.  

xoxo,
E

Friday, May 16, 2014

One love


OK I've written and rewritten this a couple times, I apologize we'll be back to the regular programing but here it goes.

I caught a link on Twitter the other day mentioning Courtney Kerr, who y'all know I love, so I opened it which lead me to the clip of her show in Texas D The Broadcast.  It's a The View type show with local ladies and they were talking about the Michael Sam draft notification caught on ESPN when he kissed his boyfriend (clip).  Then a heated debate broke out, and I was very confused.  One of the very lovely co hosts on the show expressed that she didn't have a problem with Michael (we're bff's it's cool me using his first name) kissing his boyfriend, she just didn't want it thrown in her face.

OK y'all, call me crazy, call me naive, but it's 2014 and we're still having discussions about how two men kissing (attention:it's 2014) is uncomfortable.  Gay people exist!  They exist like air or water.  They exist like you and me.  I'm a heterosexual, white woman, so discrimination ends at blond jokes, but I truly find it puzzling that today people still find it difficult to see two people in love.  Unless it involves you who really cares?

I grew up in a generation where being homosexual was something new and different, somehow I've adjusted.  I grew up not understanding the term homosexual, but always understanding love and I learned.  Would you like it if someone told you it's not OK to love Johnny Depp? I know I wouldn't!  Who cares? My love doesn't ever define yours, my attraction doesn't effect the cute guy I always liked in high school who never liked me, why should someone else's affect me?

Almost every nation on the planet (Russia is always at least 20 years behind) has moved on, people are homosexual, everyone gets it.  Why are we still even talking about it?  I was more concerned about the height difference in the Michael Sam relationship. As a shorter person it's hard to kiss someone that much taller, I've had to do it!  Let's love, open our minds and accept that others can love whomever they want!  Speaking out against homosexuality makes you in the same class as those who believe that the color of your skin defines you, harsh but true.

I'm a small town girl, who grew up just like everyone else, my opinion doesn't get national news, but the message is important no matter how small the audience.  Love who you want, end of story.

(takes a step off the soap box)

HAPPY FRIDAY!

xoxo,
E

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Adventure time?



I find myself searching more than not lately.  I feel like there is something bigger than what I am doing now waiting for me if I could just find it.  Every day life is great, I'm a happy girl, but there's this feeling of a great adventure right out of my reach.  I think this is what happens when life gets routine, I get restless.  I have so many thoughts in my head I've almost washed my face with  my shampoo on more than one occasion recently.  I mean who doesn't do their best thinking in the shower?

I'll let you know what I find, but sometimes I think that searching is half the adventure.  

xoxo,
E


Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Fancy Pants

I'm a single gal (SUPRISE) so cooking for 1 is always a challenge, because I have to cook something I want to eat more than once.  I love cooking, and lately I've been trying to challenge myself to cook things I've never tried before, enter Rosie from The Londoner.


Her recipes on her blog are easy to follow, use fresh ingredients, and usually something I would never think to make myself.  She has become somewhat my Julia Child and I feel like Amy Adams in Julie & Julia skimming through each recipe on her website and rushing to the grocery store to plan out my meal.  This week it was her Lamb Verde and her Carb Free Garlic Butter Mash.  I'm not going to break down the recipes here because she does a much better job at walking you through the steps but I will share my favorite steps.


The recipe calls for a rack of lamb, however my local grocery only had the grass fed lamb in chops in stead of a rack so instead of buying the regular lamb I splurged for the grass fed and dealt with it.  I left the lamb to marinate overnight and was so excited opening my fridge in the morning making my coffee and seeing those beauties waiting for me.

The big night I popped open my bottle of wine, lit my favorite candles and put my babies into the oven to start cooking.




While my kitchen filled with the smell of deliciousness, I threw in Eat Pray Love for a little travel inspiration and impatiently eyed the oven timer.


Once the lamb had cooked in the oven, I pulled them out, snapped a few pictures, took a huge inhale of the babies and covered them with foil to let them rest.  Fun fact, you have to let the lamb rest for almost the same amount of time you cooked it, learn something new every day.


While I continued to impatiently wait for my lamb to be done, I began on the mash.  This was significantly easier and tastier than I imagined it would be.  I've heard about substituting cauliflower for potatoes in the past, but I love my mash so much I was scared to mess with it.  Boy was I happy I threw caution to the wind (dramatic?) and gave this a whirl.


 After what seemed like an eternity (40 minutes tops) my little lovelies were ready for the world.


I can't even tell you how awesome my house smelled at this point.  I got out my favorite pasta plates, plated everything and stood back and admired my work.




Ain't she pretty?!


One of my favorite things about being a single girl is the ability to eat every meal on my couch and having no one judge me for it.  I trucked my wine, water, laptop and meal to my couch and got ready to tuck in.  It was amazing!  The meat was cooked to perfection, thankfully it seems Rosie and I like our meat cooked the same way, and the mash was a perfect compliment.


I collapsed onto my couch after with a tummy full of good cookin and felt proud of myself, I did something I didn't think I could do, and it worked!  I refuse to be that single girl who heats up a Smart One's or Lean Cuisine every night and settles for that kind of food.   Eating should be something you enjoy and not just something you do. 

 Please, please, please if you can buy natural, organic and/or grass fed meats, I didn't believe the hype either but there is such a difference in the taste and the feeling you have after you make then eat something that isn't pumped with hormones, I promise.

I'm scouring The Londoner looking for my next big recipe, I promise I'll share at some point, if there are ever any leftovers I'm willing to share.  And go check out Rosie's blog, not only is it visually stunning but the food pictures alone are worth the visit.  Everything I've made has been so yummy, with the exception of the Low Carb Bread but I blame myself for that one and am going to retry that again this weekend.

xoxo,
E

Monday, May 12, 2014

Mother's Day

I hope every one had a beautiful Mother's Day, I don't know where you are in the world but it was a gorgeous day in my neck of the woods.  I was lucky to spend Mother's Day all weekend with my mommy.  Saturday my sister bought us all tickets to go to our local winery, Boordy,  for some outdoor music, fun and wine tasting.

 My mother packed a picnic of about everything you could imagine of course and about 10 minutes after we got there the skies opened up and it started to pour.  Everyone started to huddle into the barn to wait it out.



My mommy and her Manfriend

My sister


My sister and her boyfriend Matt in a serious conversation about what wine to get next.



Once the skies cleared up a little I headed back out to explore a little.






The rain wasn't about to be denied so it returned, I ran back under cover again.



Mom loves having her picture taken

We headed out later, little more pep to our step with the wine consumption and out feet a little more wet thanks to the rain.  I had never been to Boordy before but had always heard rave reviews of the atmosphere.  Though the rain put a damper on the whole atmosphere, the grounds are lovely, the staff is very helpful and the wine is pretty darn good.  I'd love to go again in the summer to one of their outdoor concert events, which I heard sell out pretty quickly so I better figure it out soon.

I love having a day to celebrate my mom, she's my hero.  I love being able to pamper with with things and just being able to dote on her.  

xoxo,
E