bruschetti !

3 Sep

I will really miss my fresh romas and basil this winter. During the spring and summer we probably have bruschetta at least once a week. Recently Jason hopped on the anti – inflammatory eating style with me, so no bread right now. :)

(yes – no tomatoes either. I have Never Been Able To Give Those Up…).

I have some gluten free (rice) pasta, so I made us a bruschetta pasta.

I made bruschetta from roma tomatoes, fresh basil, extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar:


Prepared the pasta, and Mmm… fresh clean flavors:

These are some of my favorite flavors, fresh tomato and basil.

I made a salad of romaine, peppers and broccoli. We enjoyed it with my raw ranch dressing!

For dessert tonight I made a raw fruit dip. The main ingredient is dates, and I’m having fun thinking of fun names for my new dip. :)

I am still working on it (meaning I need to make it again with the recipe I scribbled down, so I have an actual recipe to share!) :) It is delicious. This one had hemp hearts, which I may not include again, unless I can figure out how to process them to creamy.

What is your favorite pasta?

What would YOU name a raw dip made with dates? :)

*Only a few more days to contribute to The Lunch Box Project, and get some tasty goodies also! Please pass along! and again a HUGE Thank You to those who have participated. :) You are Very Much Appreciated!

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endurance food

2 Sep

I cannot usually call cold cereal breakfast, even though I love it so. I always buy it (there are SO MANY gluten free cereals that are so tasty!), and usually have it as a snack. It just doesn’t have the oompf, you know? ;)

Recently, though, I have been eating cold cereal for breakfast!

This lovely turn of events is because of a new awesome product that I have been eating every day.

A product that is billed as Endurance Food for Athletes, Outdoor Enthusiasts, and the Health Conscious.

Behold – Rokit Fuel !

Rokit Fuel are take anywhere pouches of energy. The actual instructions say to add liquid directly to the pouch and eat. Jason and I have both done this, and it’s great. I have also used it as a topping for cereal, oats and yogurt. I mixed it with hemp milk and heated it – awesome!

I love this stuff!

Rokit Fuel comes in four flavors – look at the awesome ingredients!!

Spice Cookie: (19 Whole Foods)     ROLLED OATS, RYE FLAKES, PURE CANE DARK BROWN SUGAR, RAISINS, PECANS, DATES, SUNFLOWER SEEDS, FLAX SEED, AMARANTH, OAT GROATS, WHOLE WHEAT, BARLEY, ALMONDS, SESAME SEEDS, WALNUTS, GINGER ROOT, CINNAMON, BEE POLLEN, SEA SALT, GOTU KOLA, MACA ROOT, NUTMEG, CLOVES.

Pumpkin Chocolate: (16 Whole Foods)     ROLLED OATS, RYE FLAKES, PURE CANE DARK BROWN SUGAR, PUMPKIN FLAKES, FLAX SEED, DARK SEMI SWEET CHOCOLATE CHIPS, PECANS, DATES, SUNFLOWER SEEDS, OAT GROATS, WHOLE WHEAT, PEARLED BARLEY, ALMONDS, SESAME SEEDS, BEE POLLEN, CINNAMON, SEA SALT, MACA ROOT, GOTU KOLA, NUTMEG, CLOVES.

Holy Pinole! (13 Whole Foods)     ROLLED OATS, WHOLE GRAIN WHITE CORN, RYE FLAKES, PURE CANE DARK BROWN SUGAR, FLAX SEED, CHIA SEED, PECANS, DATES, SUNFLOWER SEEDS, GINGER ROOT, BEE POLLEN, CINNAMON, SEA SALT, GOTU KOLA, MACA ROOT, CLOVES.

Stud Muffin: (17 Whole Foods)     ROLLED OATS, RYE FLAKES, PURE CANE DARK BROWN SUGAR, FLAX SEED, RAISINS, DATES, OAT GROATS, WHOLE WHEAT, PEARLED BARLEY, SUNFLOWER SEEDS, PECANS, FIGS, WALNUTS, ALMONDS, SESAME SEEDS, BLUEBERRIES, TART CHERRIES, BEE POLLEN, SEA SALT, GOTU KOLA, MACA ROOT.

For everyone wanting to try Rokit Fuel, I have a 10% off code that is good through September 5th – so you have a couple days to get some endurance food – and they tell me the coupon is unlimited, so it can be used as many times as needed in the next couple days! :)

Coupon code –> 10offRockitFuel

My favorite flavor is Stud Muffin, and I really like the Pumpkin Chocolate also.

this bread, is bananas,

2 Sep

B-A-N-A-N-A-S !

I cannot eat these. I would add them to my spinach smoothie, or freeze them for soft serve. I can only eat a banana if it has no brown spots and I’d like a little bit of green in the peel! The flavor is SO different.

I saw these four bananas. I started to come up with ways to use these bananas, and WAIT!! I know!

I quickly checked Jessica’s blog for her recent Peanut Butter Banana Bread. How many bananas? Four bananas! Huzzah!

I got those ‘naners into a bowl immediately.

Basil loves bananas, and helped with the dish washing:

The only change I made was yogurt instead of heavy cream, and that is only because I didn’t have any. I also used gluten free flour.

This bread? SO amazing. I love Jessica’s creations (really – sit and read her blog  a while- you will not be disappointed!), and this bread is genius.

Oh. I also used butterscotch chips, because again, I didn’t have any peanut butter chips, and I wasn’t going to the store! :)

The butterscotch chips worked well.

It was cold and rainy yesterday, a perfect day to bake. The house was cozy and smelled delicious!

Yep, this is my new banana bread. Thank You Jessica!

Do you like peanut butter and bananas together? What is your favorite thing to bake?

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the power of twitter

31 Aug

…and the fun of blogging and meeting new friends!

While reading the HLS recaps, I saw that some people went on a Frito Lay tour. While I don’t eat chips a whole lot, I would have wanted to tour the Frito Lay factory – I’m interested in pretty much all aspects of running a business and going behind the scenes.

I discovered that Frito Lay has some new regional products. One that caught my attention was the Garden Tomato and Basil chip. Wow – what?? Two of my favorite flavors… well, I had to get me some At Once.

Hmm. Apparently I am not in that region. What is an innovative girl to do? I hopped on twitter and offered to send a bunch of goodies in bloggie exchange if someone would send me some of those chips! :)

Oh, the power of twitter! I was inundated with replies, and picked the first two that offered. However, like I said, I’m not a big chip eater, so I told the lovely person #2 that I LOVE bloggie exchanges and would love to do one with her, just don’t send chips!! :) So I was able to have fun with TWO bloggie exchanges – I LOVE sending fun things just as much as I love receiving! Especially with bloggers I love reading already!

Also, the lovely person number two, my friend Jessie, is having a great Mary’s Gone giveaway… go enter!

So, lovely person #1 was Amanda, of the awesome blog Vegacious. I love her blog, I love that she is vegan and also very open – obviously, to send me non-vegan potato chips!! :) She is from Ames, Iowa (Amanda, are you the one and only vegan there?), and really seems like someone I would be friends with in real life. I like that. :)

She sent me some awesome loot!

Yes, one of the chip bags already has a clip on it. Don’t judge. I opened it immediately. You would too.

Amanda has a beautiful business card for Vegacious. I am once again impressed. :)

Amanda sent me some great things local to Iowa. I cannot wait to try these:

This was SO fun, thank you SO much to my new friend Amanda! I was so excited to get these goodies! :)

…Now, if someone is in the region of the Balsamic Sweet Onion chips, lets talk! ;)

So, you’re aware of the phenomenon that is the Shake Weight? (Or you have seen the hilarious parody from Saturday Night Live…)

Well, there’s a new fitness fad in town! Having a father who is from Hawaii and spending much time there myself, I could not ignore this, and I may want one…

Behold, the Hawaii Chair!

Crazy stuff.

Keeping with the theme of twitter, here is an observation I had this afternoon:

:)

Also! Today is Tuesday! If you are on twitter and are free this evening (9:pm East Coast  - 6:pm West Coast) come join me! Tuesday evenings I participate in a tweet chat called FitBlog.

It was started by Katy Widrick, and is mediated by a different blogger each week. It is an hour long, and there are generally 4 – 5 questions / topics to discuss. The best way to follow along is to LOG IN here:

http://tweetchat.com/room/fitblog

I have met many of my blog friends through fitblog, and I look forward each week to the fun and inspiring chat.

You do not have to have a blog to join, just a twitter account. First timers, it goes fast! You get used to it, and it is really a great time! If you follow via tweetchat, you can slow it down. Come join us!

Have a great night!

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new eats, yum treats

31 Aug

So this is what a package of gluten free oreo style cookies looks like in our house.

I may have been overzealous in opening the original packaging, as I’ve been craving these cookies for a while.

Don’t judge. These are delicious. ;)

I was also able to find these, after craving them since Alycia taunted me talked about them:

These are as good as I expected them to be! Made from lentils, they are gluten free!

These went perfect with my raw ranch dip! I made another batch of my raw ranch dressing – small changes to quantities, making the consistency more of a dip:

This is gloriously good! :)

Continuing on our trend to have some type of taco at least once a week, this was our latest taco night:

Soft corn tortillas + sauteed pinto beans / peppers / onions + brown rice + chopped romaine. So delicious.

My next day’s lunch was leftovers. But these leftovers were Very Exciting!

I made a bowl of brown rice, pintos + peppers, lettuce and one other topping. Guesses?

Daiya vegan ‘cheese’! I just cannot get over how delicious this is. After this lunch bowl, I had dessert:

Daiya is amazing. It’s almost buttery in flavor, and melts great. Seriously, Daiya folks? Make a goat cheese and a brie, and I am forever indebted. :)

So good.

I wanted to share a couple more photos from the collections I saw at the Street of Dreams tour last weekend:

I wish I had this when I was a full – time accountant! :)

I’m a 10 – key WHIZ.

My dad would like these as much as those old radios:

I’m making one last plea for The Lunch Box project. I am *so close* to my first goal, and I would very much like to donate the additional money I have pledged if I meet these goals. Please pass this on?

A HUGE thank you to those who have participated! I appreciate you all! :)

Happy Tuesday!

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I Won Dessert

30 Aug

We have a long – standing  joke with our friends in Austin. We travel there each spring for SXSW, and have a great week with our many friends who live there. One evening many years ago, we were watching my favorite band and drinking crazy cocktails out of beakers and test tubes, and I sang through a megaphone until a friend confiscated it (then forgot where he hid it). The next morning, I declared that while I felt like I failed SXSW, I totally WON that night. :)

It has turned into something we say a lot. Each year, a specific night or a person will win SXSW.

Last week Jason and I went to dinner at my favorite restaurant,
Ten 01. You may recall – we went there for Jason’s birthday earlier this summer.

This time, when ordering our dessert, Jason said he wanted the sorbet trio. I ordered the peanut butter bread pudding. Our server immediately said to me “You win dessert”.

Huzzah! :) We laughed about that for the rest of the night…

I am still feeling weird about bringing my big DSLR into a restaurant, especially a nice one like Ten 01. I snuck photos with Jason’s phone camera, but none of them really turned out very good. Dinner was exceptional, as always. Everything always tastes amazing.

I will instead share with you the lunch we had this weekend at our neighborhood place where we are known regulars, McMenamins Pub. There are many in the area, and we love the one close to our house.

This time we sat outside on their patio, and brought Basil along. Although he barked more than once, our server loved him and brought him a dish of water and a couple pieces of bacon.

IPA for Jason.

Grey Goose and soda for me.

Jason ordered the Grilled Chicken Caesar Wrap:

McMenamins tops their house salad with pickled onions – so yum.

I loved my Spicy Salmon Caesar Salad:

The dressing on this was a caesar smoky chipotle mix – it was amazing.

Lunch was perfect, I was starved!

We had spent the morning in the Skyline Neighborhood – walking through the Street of Dreams homes. Each summer there is a Portland neighborhood with newly – built homes open for viewing.

(Before traditional college I went to art school and worked at a paint store. Through this job I was able to be a designers helper for the Street of Dreams that year – so fun!).

While the houses are almost all in that out of reach price range ($800,000 to $1.3 this year), it is fun to see the beautiful decor and find design inspiration… and dream! :)

I brought my camera, but only took a couple photos of some interesting collections.

These made me think of my dad, who has his own old radio collection:

My dad would love these.

…and these…

He probably has some of these!

In other news, it snowed today in Central Oregon! :) August 30!

I used to live at Sunriver Resort, and I recall skiing Mt. Bachelor in July, but that was half day with leftover winter snow… and it was a little weird. :)

Do you have any collections?

What’s the weather like in your neck of the woods?

Also, these videos made me smile today… go look at them if you need to smile… :) *Thanks Aimee* !!

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ranch tofu salad

27 Aug

I have been craving fresh veggies lately. I’ve also been wanting to make more raw recipes. Remember my cashew tomato dip? I made another one that was raw, and while I was making that I had an idea I’ve thought about for a month or so…

Ranch dressing. Raw ranch dressing.

1 1/2 cups raw cashews
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup cold-pressed olive oil
1 clove garlic, finely minced
5 chives, finely chopped
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon oregano
sea salt

Pulse cashews in food processor to fine powder. Add onion powder, oregano, sea salt – process. Add acv, olive oil, garlic, chives – process until thoroughly combined.

Yum.

I pressed some tofu. I am patiently awaiting the arrival of my tofu press; until then, this is my method:

Ha! It works. I cannot WAIT to use my tofu press! :)

I then coated my pressed tofu with my raw ranch.

Baked tofu for 17 minutes at 375.

Our salads contained:

chopped romaine
chopped iceberg

(I love my new lettuce keeper… I want two of these!)

chopped red bell pepper
broccoli
Daiya cheese!
marcona almonds

Salads topped with warm baked ranchy tofu. Paired with raw carrot crackers from Pure Market Express:

This salad was so very tasty. I love this ranch, I love baked tofu, I love warm toppings on salad, I love marcona almonds! I *finally* found Daiya cheese, and it is as tasty amazing as everyone has said – almost buttery in flavor. Daiya needs to make a goat cheese and a brie, and I could possibly be completely dairy free!

Salads:

Basil loves his broccoli, also!

He likes my envitote, too… :)

Happy Friday!

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saffron salmon

25 Aug

Sunday morning we woke up early and went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium. This place is amazing. They have an exhibit called Passages of the Deep – and it is an almost 360 degree underwater view as you walk through acrylic tubes:

This is also the area where Free Willy used to live! :)

There are rays, all kinds of fish (reef cod, halibut), and sharks.

This dude swam right by me, giving me side eye the whole time…

This one swam across the top, right above me.

We were there the one day a year the local diving club gets to come in – I talked to this guy’s wife walking through the tube:

More overhead swimmin’

Jellies!



Jason wouldn’t touch these.

He has never seen them, and is skeptical.

Have you ever seen an anemone?

How about a King Crab?

Honestly? I have only seen the legs before… please don’t let these two know that:

This is a world – class attraction. State of the art – I was super impressed and it was extremely interesting. There were many things I didn’t take photos of – a whole aviary of birds. Pythons and boas. Alligators, turtles and pirañas. Pirañas look like toothless grumpy men. :)

______________________________________________________________________________

We had an amazing dinner while in Newport, at Saffron Salmon. It is located at the west end of the pier, with a great view of the bay.

It was our anniversary. :)

Jason had the grilled salmon filet with wasabi cream, seasonal veggies and a potato galette. The salmon was perfect, and I need to recreate that wasabi cream…

I chose daily special, which was salmon over orzo with beets and goat cheese. It was as delicious as it is beautiful!

You may think I ordered this because it is pink. I really had no idea, but it’s pretty, no? :)

I would definitely return to Saffron Salmon and recommend it to anyone visiting Newport.

We had such a fun weekend. I want another one, right now…

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Going Rogue

24 Aug

Remember the Yaquina Bay Bridge from my last post?

Guess what is on the other side of that bridge? (Nichole, want to guess?)

We could not visit Newport without going to the World Headquarters of Rogue Brewing, or “The Roguesonian Cultural Heritage Interpretive Center and Beerquarium” :

The front entrance… you walk in and you are in the middle of the brewery! They have a pathway to walk through the actual production areas to get to the pub and restaurant.

I didn’t see any pup, but how cute is this?

Table with a waterfront view = Perfect.

First taster – Northwestern Ale. A little hoppy for me, but Jason loved it – he ordered a pint.

I ordered a Mocha Porter. That’s what I’m talkin’ about:

I love Rogue.

We also ordered a sampler.

Left to right = Yellow Snow IPA, I2PA, Double Mocha Porter, and my favorite, Morimoto Soba Ale.

I didn’t even try the Yellow Snow – I could tell by the smell it was too bitter for my liking. The I2PA (Imperial India) is one of their ‘XS’ beers with high alcohol content (XS = excess??). I tasted it, because although it is bitter extreme, I wanted to know what a beer that strong tastes like. :) Kinda like there was a shot of vodka dropped in it. The Double Mocha was the same way – tasted like my pint – creamy chocolatey richness with a shot of vodka. ;)

My favorite was the Morimoto Soba Ale! Rogue has a signature series, and this is one of them. It was created for Chef Masaharu Morimoto (of Iron Chef fame!) and made with soba (buckwheat). This is deliciously crisp and flavorful, and I made Jason promise me that our local market does in fact carry the Mori Soba…

I would have bought a case otherwise. ;)

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“that’s Johnny’s granddaughter…”

24 Aug

We just returned from a few days at the beach. My grandparents, aunt + uncle and cousins all lived in Newport (Oregon) while I was growing up, and I know it like the back of my hand. I’ve not been back for many years, so it was fun to visit and show Jason around.

We stayed at The Embarcadero – my favorite place in Newport. Our family would get rooms there every forth of July, and we would spend the holiday crabbing, playing cards and having fun. We stayed in one of the bay facing rooms – my favorite because you can see the boat dock and the Yaquina Bay Bridge.

We saw some great pink sunsets…

The Embarcadero is on the east end of Bay Street – the “front” street along the harbor. It is a fun street to walk – many great shops and restaurants, and waterfront views to watch the fisherman come in. You can also see (and hear!) the sea lions…

These guys are SO cute. They are way down on the south end of the harbor, but we can hear them “arp arp arp!” from our balcony. :)

They lay around sunning themselves on the docks. They swim and flip in the water. When one jumps up on the dock from the water, the sunning guys all jump up and start arp arp arping. Sometimes that’s enough to make the sea lion jump back into the water, but there was one that just barged his way in the crowd – sliding around on top of everyone until he squeezed into a spot of his own. Assertive sea lion for the win! :)

They have cute faces! I think they sort of resemble Basil, which is probably why I think they’re cute…?

We also went by the golf club where I learned how to golf, and learned how to drive a cart. In the summertime, my Grandpa Z and I would wake up early every day for a round of golf. Even though I was only six or seven, Grandpa Z would let me drive the cart. There was river running through the course, and at one point there is a bridge on the cart path. I was scared to drive over the bridge, so I’d drive up to it, stop the cart, Grandpa Z would drive over the bridge and I’d get back in and drive off.

One morning Grandpa Z just sat there. “You have to learn sometime,” he said. I said no (my stubborn ways come from him!) and got out of the cart. He just sat there.

Hurumph. I finally got back in, slammed my foot down and floored it. The cart went flying over the side of the bridge and landed in the stream. Oops! ;)

I remember sitting in the clubhouse once, and a man walks in and asks, “Who is that little kid zipping around the course so fast?”

That’s Johnny’s granddaughter.

:)

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