Gelato

Using up one of my previously baked potatoes from last weekend, I scooped out the potato from half of a baked potato and scrambled that with egg whites and baby spinach.  Then when I got to work, I stuffed the scrambled eggs back into the potato half, topped it with two thin slices of hot capicola and a piece of Swiss cheese and broiled it for 10 minutes.  So cheezy good!

I knew yesterday was my rest day.  Working a double on Friday is enough of a workout to me.  I had some errands to run for work and picked up some soup and salad from the salad bar – it’s probably the most vegetables I’ve had all week!

Mariano’s has about 8 soups daily – I like that they give you not only the nutritional information, but the ingredients as well.  Of course, the vegetarian chili won hands down because it had NO ONIONS!

This was quite good, although it didn’t really have the thickness of a chili, more like a soup – but for 90 calories a cup, I’ll take it!

I also got a bag of these chips – so good!!  And only $2 a bag – blue corn tortilla chips – super thin and crunchy – I love all the textures of quinoa and flax seeds in these chips. I think it’s funny that they have to put a disclaimer on the bag stating that the chip on the front of the package is enlarged just to show texture and detail. 

While our winter never seems to end, I enjoy seeing signs of spring in other places in the world.  That’s why when I saw Fran’s latest pics of her walks, I LOVED this one and decided to make it my screen saver – thanks Fran!  So I get a view of Holland while sitting in Chicagoland!

So I’ve told you that my boss has a SIL that also has a food blog – A Life From Scratch.   As luck would have it, my boss was taking her oldest son back to his house for a sleep over and I got to see Courtney just as I was leaving to head to work.  I wish I would have thought to take a quick picture of us!  Courtney, next time we’ll have to meet for lunch so our visit can be longer!  Hope you had a fun girls night out at ZaZas!  You can check out my vlog of me eating mussels for the first time at ZaZa’s for Tony’s birthday back in 2011.

Since it was the opening weekend at the restaurant I was prepared to be busy!  What I wasn’t prepared was getting a 7 table station – gah!  I think one of my best attributes as a server is talking about a food, and when I have that many tables, it’s hard to give the personal attention I want to give.  But it went okay – I walked with $190 and was home by 11:30, so not too shabby!  One of the special appetizers last night was a crab cake stuffed shrimp with lemon butter – this one got rave reviews!

And one of the special desserts last night is salted caramel gelato that’s mixed with chocolate chips and Garrett’s hand crafted caramel crisp popcorn.  Zeal is the only restaurant licensed to sell their popcorn, so it’s a pretty big deal.  I didn’t have time to take a picture of it, but I kept telling Tony that I was going to bring some of that salted caramel gelato home to him, but kept forgetting.  So a couple weeks ago when I was at the grocery store, I bought a small jar of salted caramel gelato home for Tony. 

Holy shizz.  This stuff is the real deal.  We both could not stop eating this gelato and Tony kept saying “your diabetic and shouldn’t be eating this! “  I think he just said that so that he could get the rest of it.  I bought a second flavor and this was amazeballs too!

But we quickly decided that we shouldn’t keep this in the house – it’s just too tempting.  Oh, and about 220 calories for 1/2 a cup!   But when I was at Mariano’s, I had to text this picture to Tony – the mother lode of Talenti Gelato!

Although I may have to bring home some of the fruit gelato – do you think I can make that a serving of fruit??!!

I have to thank Tami for my newest Corning Ware!  I won this on her blog a few weeks ago – I love that it has a travel/storage lid too!  Thanks Tami!

I’ve had a pretty lazy day so far.  We slept in this morning, and then Tony made me one of his amazing breakfasts – this was a ham, shredded potato egg hash with sausage on the side – yummers!  This is breakfast and lunch though.

With the rain we had earlier in the week, it melted most of the snow off the deck so now the squirrels can find their food.  Lyle was very happy once I brought out the peanuts and bird seed for him – he’s getting fat!

I hope tonight is just as successful at the restaurant – I will have to say when I left there were so many people in the bar area that they had to bring tables into the foyer so people had somewhere to sit!  I just hope I don’t get a 7 table section again though.

Enjoy your weekend!