It seems like the weekends go by so fast!  I really wanted to sleep in again today 🙁

Yesterday I made shredded zucchini egg whites, a couple pieces of turkey bacon and some fruit – nothing much since I was meeting my Mom for lunch. 😀

I met my Mom at Sweet Tomatoes – the “theme” was lemon – they had a wonderful lemon romaine salad with candied pecans and craisins, a not so wonderful lemon orzo soup, and an interesting sugar free lemon mousse, which unfortunately,  the artificial sweetener was too overwhelming.

gotta love the pickeled jalapenos!

I am going to have to try to recreate this soup – it was just one note – lemon!  Do you have a lemon orzo soup recipe?

And no trip to Sweet Tomatoes would be complete without hitting up the bread!  I had a small slice of sesame bread and a slice of pizza bread:

The best thing I had was a cup of  “Chicago style” chili.  Not sure what made it Chicago style, but spiked with a lot of Tabasco, it was pretty good!

My mom and I then went to an unusual store called the Treasure Hunt.  We think it was almost like an estate sale place – nothing was new and it had tons of furniture.  The best part was the “back room” it had box upon box of unusual things!  It felt like we were going through boxes out of someone’s basement.  Unfortunately, the few things we found to buy weren’t priced yet, so it was a bust.  But this was creepy, they had several pirates!

they almost looked like real people!

Since I had Tony’s GPS, we cound another thrift store.

My Mom found something comfy for bed:

And I found a new doll for Hannah:

is this not the creepiest doll you've ever seen??!!

Thanks for hanging out with me Mom! 😀

Tony and I lucked out with roma tomatoes – only .49 cents a pound!  That meant only one thing: making Baja Fresh Salsa!  It’s funny, it’s one of the first recipes I posted back in September of 2008.  Considering I only had about 3 readers, two of which were my Mom and husband, I decided to post the recipe again.

Have you ever been to Baja Fresh?  It’s a fast food Mexican restaurant and they had the best salsa bar.  One salsa was my favorite – it had little flecks of black in it, which I thought was black beans, but turns out it was just charred tomatoes and jalapenos!

Copycat Baja Fresh Salsa (printer friendly version)

  • 7 firm medium tomatoes, cold
  • 1 small jalapeno
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 tsp. Salt
  • 1 ½ cups water (optional, depends on how juicy your tomatoes are)
  • juice of 1 lime
  • 4 tablespoons chopped cilantro (fresh)

Grill the tomatoes, garlic and jalapeno until charred, but the tomatoes are still a bit firm. Just throw everything in the blender or food processor and pulse until smooth.  You’ll be hard pressed not to dip chips even though its still warm!  I have kept this in the fridge for up to a week, but usually can it in a water bath for 30 minutes in pint or quart size jars.

be sure to toss in olive oil so they don't stick to the grill
I don't like this salsa at all 😀 It actually made about 1/2 a gallon!
you also want to do this at a pretty high temperature - the goal is to char the outside, but not lose the juice in the tomatoes
just put in the food processor - love the cilantro 😀
I call this the "liquor" in the bottom of the bowl - don't throw it out - just mix it in the last batch
be prepared to be addicted to this salsa!

Last night for dinner we had pork roast – we got a deal on this one!  I used 2/3 of the roast for dinner, with leftovers for lunch, and cut off two big pork chops for another meal.

Since the grill was already hot from grilling the tomatoes, this cooked up pretty quickly.

For my side dish I decided to make a cauliflower gratin – and while good, I need to tweak the recipe a bit – Hannah thought it tasted like diet food, i.e. not enough cheese! 😀

first I steamed the cauliflower, then chopped it up in the food processor

I didn’t mean to chop it up so fine, so it ended up looking like mashed potatoes!

I then topped it with a mixture of panko bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese

My plate – about 5 ounces of pork and a cup of cauliflower – oh, I may have put some Buffalo Wild Wings Spicy Garlic sauce on my pork! 😀

I am looking forward to working out today – I haven’t exercised since last Thursday!  And I am looking forward to lunch – Eating Well’s Hot Chile Grilled Cheese with my homemade cream of tomato soup!  It’s a bit chilly today in Chicagoland – but sunny skies, so I’ll take it!

Hope everyone had a great weekend! 😀