Photo Dump

I down loaded pictures from my old camera that I took with me over the weekend.  When I got to my Mom’s house last Thursday night, we both realized that I am her first overnight guest! 

The day after she slept over at our house the week before, she left this note for us:

While I had blueberry muffins for her, she had the guest room set up for me!

When we were driving back on Sunday we realized we would have time to stop at St. Joe’s for lunch.  I wish I could have planned better to meet up with one of my favorite bloggers, Nicole of Prevention RD!  She and her hubs just moved there.  She’s from my old home town, so we keep telling each other one of these days we’ll meet!

They had pirates of all kinds in the downtown area.  Not sure why?

The beach area was beautiful!!

We stopped to buy some wine at a vineyard shop, and asked for a recommendation for lunch.  He suggested a pizza place, but after a walk and 30 steps down, we discovered that there would have been over an hour wait.  We decided to eat at the restaurant right near where our car was parked.

All three of us started drooling over one of the small plates:

Panko breaded tiger shrimp with sweet chili sauce.

Six came to an order and these were outstanding.  So light, the shrimp was slightly sweet.  So good.  While I had a burger on my brain, I saw something else that I thought would be just a tiny bit better food choice for me – the seared ahi tuna salad.

Pan seared ahi tuna with fresh ginger-cucumber salad, toasted sesame drizzle and wasabi aioli.

It was delicious – I even got my Mom to try a bit of it.  (It’s okay that I refused to try her perch and walleye though!)

When I got home Sunday night Tony had chopped up some potatoes and carrots and fresh garlic, tossed it with olive oil and salt and pepper and wrapped it in foil for the grill.  We learned a long time ago to always cut out the back of the chicken so that it’s cooked through.  Can’t tell you how many times we’ve made chicken only to cut into it and its still raw at the joints – gross.

I cooked it in a cast iron skillet so the fat wouldn’t make the flames jump.  This 3.5 pound bird took 1 hour and 15 minutes at about 350.

I am sure this beat the frozen pizza Tony ate while I was gone!  These potatoes were out of this world – like buttah!

Okay, now onto Monday!   I was slow going yesterday morning.  Lately our dog, no matter how cool it is in our house, pants loudly.  He could be fast asleep and then all of a sudden he pants and doesn’t stop.  I had already taken him on a walk before we went to bed.  I ended up sleeping on the living room couch, he followed me in and I put the fan on high and then he was a happy camper.

My first thought about what to fix for breakfast was “just pick up a breakfast burrito at McDonald’s.”  I looked at the clock, I had a good five minutes before I had to leave and quickly cooked up 2 eggs and 1 Jimmy dean breakfast sausage.  When I got to work, I made a burrito with some cheese and a flour tortilla I brought.  As luck would have it, someone from my office brought in fresh fruit – score!

With all the walking we did over the weekend, I had no trouble getting any motivation hitting the gym.  I knew I wanted to swim!  The part of my mole they scraped off has scabbed over (hope you are eating breakfast as you read that sentence!) and I could get back to the pool.   And as luck would have it, I was the lone swimmer in the indoor pool.  Just me and my lifeguard.  It’s kind of intimidating having just one person look at you while you swim – and I am not a good swimmer either, so that’s equally embarrassing!

But I muddled through and did 40 minutes of a combined breast stroke and back stroke.  I was huffing and puffing at the end!

For lunch I grabbed a container of broccoli cheddar soup.  But I knew that wouldn’t be enough and I had no other meats or veggies to add.  So I found some leftover pasta from last week, and made a sort of broccoli cheddar cheese mac soup.  This ended up being really tasty!

I still haven’t done a full grocery shop yet, but I knew I had frozen ground beef to make tacos.  A quick stop at my local Mexican restaurant on my way home from work, and for $5 I had accessories to our dinner.

Tortilla chips, refried beans, Mexican rice and salsa.  We ended up having 1/3 of each of those containers, and I’ll use the rest for leftovers later in the week.  My plate:

And guess what?  I have today off from work!  I am meeting Hannah at her college today – its new student orientation.  But for me to make it there by 8:30 in the morning, I need to take the 6:58 train from my house – an express train gets me to Chicago in 60 minutes!

They are having a welcome breakfast, meetings/orientation, a lunch and meetings with your advisors.  I am really looking forward to checking out her new school.  Seriously, if she could start tomorrow she would be so happy!

Have a great day, and if you made it down this far, thanks for reading! 

Question of the Day:  Where did you go to college?