Weekend Eats & Drinks

January 25, 2016January 24, 20164 Comments

Good morning! Our weekend was relatively low-key, but it was filled with some good eats, drinks and restaurant visits so I figured that was worth sharing- enjoy!

Friday

My company always does pizza lunches before big sport games, so last Friday was no exception. I haven’t been in the office to reap the benefits of any of the recent pizza luncheons so it was a nice treat for me this past Friday! I always take a whole plate of salad (if available) and start with that because it ensures I get in some veggies and it helps to subside most of my initial hunger before inhaling 3 pieces of pizza and then feeling sick from stuffing my face with too much pizza!

I had some gift cards to use at Hopsters so we went there for pizza, salad and drinks for dinner… you know it’s a good day when you have pizza for lunch AND dinner! We got the sausage and arugula pizza and the beet and goat cheese salad- both were fantastic!

Saturday

After an incredibly hard yoga sculpt class at CorePower (no seriously, it was so hard!!), I met up with my sister and friend Jessi at Loco in Southie for lunch to chat about my bachelorette party. While the margaritas were awesome, I picked the wrong food entrée. The waitress suggested the burrito so I took her suggestion, but it had too many big potatoes and not enough meat… not to mention it was served WITH potatoes. Thankfully my sister shared some of her burger with me which was really good. We ran into one of my friends from work which was such a fun addition to the lunch!

For dinner, we decided to make some quesadillas. I kept it basic with just peppers and onions and leftover coconut crusted chicken. They were SO good and successfully kicked my Mexican craving that was not satisfied at lunch.

Oh, and bubbly. Snowy nights most definitely call for bubbly… but then again, I’m not sure what nights DON’T call for bubbly 😉

Side Note: We finally started to watch Breaking Bad- have any of you watched that show? So far it’s a little intense for my liking, but I’m giving it a shot! We are only 4 episodes in.

Sunday

In traditional Sunday morning fashion, I whipped us up some healthy pancakes first thing. It was another great batch and we think it’s almost time for me to perfect the recipe and share it with all of you! I added raspberries to some of mine and it was a very tasty addition.

We ended up having RM’s brother and sister-in-law over for the game so I set out some healthy-ish snack food while we waited for the wings to cook. We made two kinds: baked buffalo and then slow cooker honey garlic and I have to say, the buffalo stole the show for most of us! I also made some chocolate chip banana bread bars which were a big hit.

And that about does it! I hope you all have a great week- and be on the lookout for some exciting news that I’m sharing on Friday!

Questions for you: Where is your favorite pizza place? Did you go out to eat at all this weekend? Where do you go for Mexican food? What did you do for the game?

Weekending & Life Lately Catch-Up

June 22, 2015June 22, 20152 Comments

Good morning! I hope you all had a great weekend 🙂 Mine was really pretty great and I actually took pictures so I thought I’d spend today sharing those with you! But, before I get to that, let’s catch up over the past couple of weeks. I can’t believe we’ve been back from Italy for over 3 weeks- seems like just yesterday we were packing up to go there.

I’ve been working out outside a lot- whether in the form of running or bootcamp style workouts. With the nicer weather upon us, I just want to be outside as much as possible!

But, I’m also loving being back in the gym with weights and strength training! Feels so good to leave the gym with jello-feeling everything 🙂

I’m participating in Neghar Fonooni’s Bikini Rebellion challenge this month and am more than obsessed with it. If you follow me on Instagram, then you’ve probably seen some very personal, “leave it all on the table” types of posts, which has been hard, but also really refreshing.
We’ve been loving healthy, light meals. In the heat, it’s awesome to throw something together quickly!

My curly hair is back… BIG and back! I was afraid my curls were going away over the winter, but fear not… it was just the dry weather that made my hair less curly than usual!

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Chicken Taco Salad

May 1, 2014April 29, 20144 Comments

Since my sister’s bathroom was being renovated last week, she ended up staying with me all week. As much as I love living alone, it was really nice to have her with me for the week. I wouldn’t want a friend staying with me for the week (sorry, no offense!), but there’s something different about a sister staying with you… especially when you’ve lived together for a number of years.

As a thank you, she went shopping and got ingredients to make us taco salads. I ended up cooking since I was home from work a lot earlier than she was, but I appreciated the fact that I didn’t have to go out and buy the food!

We used ground chicken, sautéed veggies and I even made my own taco seasoning! I was talking to a coworker and she said she makes her own since the ingredients in those packets are less than stellar. And, you know what?! It was so easy and so good… and I liked that I knew exactly what I was putting into the seasoning. I adapted a recipe from Iowa Girl Eats and can now never go back to store bought seasoning packets.

To help cut back on calories and carbs, we decided to serve the meat and veggies atop spinach (with a little quinoa/rice mixture). But, let’s be honest, I only did this so I could justify having extra chips on the side 😉 Regardless, the “mix” that I came up with would be good atop a salad, in a wrap or even on it’s own. It was a quick and easy weeknight meal.

Ingredients

1lb. ground chicken
1-2 cups of cooked quinoa or rice (we used a bag of the Uncle Ben’s 90 second rice things)
1/2-1 cups green pepper and red pepper, sliced
1 medium onion, sliced
1 cup corn (I used frozen)
1 cup black beans (rinsed)
Romaine lettuce/spinach
2 tbsp EVOO
2 cloves of garlic, minced
salt, pepper, other herbs/seasonings of your choice (and wine- I always sautee veggies in wine)

Seasoning Ingredients (from Iowa Girl Eats)

2-1/2 teaspoons chili powder
3/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon paprika– I didn’t have this so I skipped it
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon onion powder– I didn’t have this so I skipped it
1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/8 teaspoon dried oregano

Directions

1. Cut up your peppers and onion. Heat a pan with 1-2 tbsp EVOO and add in the pepper and onion and minced garlic. Add in herbs/seasoning/wine as desired. Additionally, cook the quinoa or rice according to the package.

2. While the veggies are cooking, prepare the seasoning and set aside. Once the veggies are done, remove from the pan and brown the chicken. Once the chicken is almost fully browned, add in the seasoning mixture. Mix well and then add in the cooked peppers and onions, as well as the rinsed black beans and corn. Sautee until everything is warm.

3. Put a serving of quinoa or rice atop a bed of spinach and then place the taco mixture on top of that. You can also serve it in a wrap or taco if you wish. I topped mine with a little cheese because, well, cheese makes everything better 😉

We were so happy with the results of this quick and easy weeknight meal! It was so flavorful and healthy- a win, win (side note: I originally typed in “wine” instead of win… is that a problem?) in my book.

We both enjoyed leftovers throughout the week- she made a wrap for dinner and I ended up having another salad exactly like this!

Questions for you: Do you like to eat taco salads, wraps or plain ol’ tacos? Have you ever made your own taco seasoning?

Boston>Dallas>Chicago

November 12, 2013November 11, 20139 Comments

Few! Hi everyone! How’s it going? I can’t believe that a week ago today I was packing up and heading out to Dallas. After making a detour through Chicago for a long weekend vaca, I finally made it back to Boston last night, just in time to jump into my car and head to Watertown to sub a kickboxing class. Not the brightest idea, but I wanted to help a fellow instructor out and I was itching to teach (it’s crazy how much I miss teaching when I haven’t taught in a week+.).

Let’s catch up, shall we? I am going to get to my Chicago recaps later this week, but I wanted to share some things I did and learned about while I was in Dallas. We are required to take certain classes at my company, one of those classes being a Business Writing Course. I’ve never been a terrific writer, and blog writing is veryyy different from business writing, so I was actually excited to take the course.

I got to Dallas on Tuesday night around 7 and immediately met up with a few coworkers (some taking the course and some just work in Dallas). We went to Pappadeaux and I ordered a glass of Chardonnay to quench my hunger thirst. I don’t know what it is, but as soon as I travel for work, I feel like I am on “vacation”, which means I tend to indulge in more alcoholic beverages than usual (on a normal week, I don’t drink at all Sunday-Thursday).

For dinner, I ordered the Seafood Skewers which were delicious! It was a mixture of salmon, shrimp and scallops with an assortment of grilled veggies sandwiched between. The plate was HUGE, so I barely made a dent in the meal- always a shame when I’m traveling and can’t take leftovers home.

Wednesday morning, I headed to the gym for a cardio and light strength workout and then went to day 1 of the training course. One of the best things I learned throughout the 2 days was how we have been taught to use big, filler words rather than using smaller, stronger words. I think some of you can agree that when typing business emails, a common sentence may be “Attached please find a word document with responses pursuant to your earlier requests. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.”, right? Well, in this course, we learned that no one likes to read emails with “filler” words that are used to try to make the piece sound fancier than it is. We want to read things that are quick, short and things that we understand. We were encouraged to re-write the sentence above with removing unnecessary words: “The answers to your questions are attached. Please let me know if you have questions.” Much easier to read, right?

I could go on and on about the course, but in attempt to not make this post ridiculously long, I’ll stop there. 😉

Wednesday night, my coworker and I grabbed Mexican at Chuy’s which is a restaurant our team went to the last time we were in Dallas. I splurged and ordered a margarita to start… It was SO worth the splurge!

I ordered one of the “lighter” chicken dinner options since I consumed my weight in chips, salsa and queso and was no longer very hungry.

We grabbed a glass of wine at the hotel bar before calling it a night. I was happy to have some earlier nights during this leg of my trip since I knew I would be staying out much later while in Chicago.

After the course ended for the day on Thursday, I headed to the Dallas airport. I mentioned on Instagram; that I had planned on eating healthier and not drinking, but what did I end up doing? Sitting at a Mexican bar drinking wine and eating chips/salsa. Ugh. I wasn’t so mad about it, though, because there were a few cute guys sitting next to me so chatting with them was a good way to pass the time. 😉

I got to Chicago around 10pm and headed to the hotel where my sister was staying. I was so excited to see her and start “vacationing”. We caught up for a bit and then went to bed. I had to work a bit on Friday morning so I got up early to work out and start my day. I usually rest on Friday’s, but I knew I likely wouldn’t work out over the weekend so I wanted to get something in.

Around noon, we headed back to the airport to take the Blue Line into the city. Our room was ready, so we checked in, dropped off our bags and quickly headed out. We stayed at the Sheraton in downtown Chicago and I highly recommend it if you’re looking for some place to stay. It was super affordable (I used points for 2 nights, but it was still affordable even without points), very clean/nice, had a great gym and was in a great location.

I’ll catch you up on the rest of Friday night in a later post… this one is getting quite lengthy!

Questions for you: What is your favorite Mexican restaurant or meal? Do you like margaritas? If so, what kind?

Dallas, Y’all!

March 10, 20133 Comments

Howdy! (sorry, I had to!) Sorry for being a little MIA this week (I tried to keep you entertained with some facebook updates, photo’s and workouts, though), but from the time my alarm went off at 5am on Tuesday from the time I walked in the door Thursday night at 10:15pm, I had literally zero free time. It’s a good thing that I like my coworkers so much:)

I am not going to recap everything, but I will say that there were some very funny videos, terrific speakers and lots of laughs! I kept Tuesday night fairly low-key since I knew I had to be at the hotel for my professional photo at 7am on Wednesday morning. I lead a very small boot camp workout (big thanks to JP and Doan for showing up!) before meeting up with the crew for a Mexican dinner. Check out the size of this gym!!! Amazing. I was in fitness heaven:)

We just did a quick 25 minute workout- 5 minute warm up & 2 10 minute circuits of 10 moves done for 60 seconds each. I did a similar workout in my hotel room on Wednesday morning, too. Even though I had to get up so early, I knew I wouldn’t regret the workout!

Wednesday night was the awards dinner. I knew I might be in trouble when we had a happy hour that lasted, ohhh like 2 hours. Whoops! (note to self, there is really no need to double fist when it’s an open bar all night.)

Post dinner, more drinks and socializing, we managed to round up the troops and head to Sfuzzi’s. Enter: more drinks, loads of dancing, and a push-up contest. Yes, you read that correctly.

Sonja took a video, but it was too dark and blurry. I will say, though, that I won the contest haha

Anyway, I love that I have lots of fun work friends, it’s just a shame that we work in offices across the country. Maybe that’s why things get so messy when we get together?