Friday Night Fix

By the time Friday night rolls around, I'm ready to indulge in "weekend" food for dinner. You know the stuff - pizza, Chinese, chicken fingers, fries. All the stuff that tastes so good but kind of makes you cringe, too. Anyway, tonight I decided to make my own weekend food.

My homemade version included Morningstar Farms Buffalo Wings - vegetarian "chicken" nuggets, Spanish rice and tiny, fresh asparagus sauteed in olive oil with fresh lemon juice squeezed over it. 

And rather than indulge in chips or some other unhealthy snack while catching up on some of this week's TV, I air popped some corn, spritzed the popcorn with olive oil and sprinkled it with a little sea salt. Perfect. 

And that's Friday night!

Oh hey, it's Friday!

This morning, I treated myself with this:

A grande vanilla latte with skim milk, and a pumpkin spice cookie (okay, two pumpkin spice cookies) from my favorite neighborhood coffee shop.

I pulled over on the side of the road to park my car a little before 10. I felt a twinge of envy for all the people who were getting to enjoy their coffee while relaxing inside, or strolling down the street. It really is a beautiful morning. The sun is shining, you can feel the warmth in the air, and a little green is peeking out here and there. Just more proof that there are always brighter days, especially given the cold, rainy weather we had yesterday.

So last night, I went to my regular ballet class at 6:30 at my gym. I'm starting to feel a little more sense of friendship and belonging with the other people who come to class, even though I don't know their names. I started speaking up, helping others who were having trouble with steps, even after the teacher's demonstration. Then, when class ended, a few of the others in the class encouraged me to come to Zumba with them...so I did! Saying "yes" and going with something new, rather than being nervous about the unknown, has always been a challenge for me. But I joined everyone in the large gym, walked out to a spot on the floor between strangers, and danced my ass off for the next hour. It. Was. So. Fun!

Earlier in the night, when we were doing a choreographed ballet step that took us across the entire floor, my teacher stopped me and said "you have the step right, but I want to see you dance it!" It wasn't the first time an instructor has told me to loosen up. In my 13 years of dancing, I'd definitely heard that one before. So that's what I tried to do during Zumba - loosen up, go with the music, not concentrate so hard on accurately executing every step. Just watch, and dance!

Now...where does all this go? In the end, it's all going to come back to my training work with Charlie, that beautiful beast of a 17-hand Holsteiner. In classical dressage, there is a very important part of riding and training called "let." You can really teach "let," you just have to do "let." It sounds simple - just relax - but it's more than that. It's allowing your hips to open up while your seat and legs melt onto your horse, maintaining a straight yet comfortable back, allowing your shoulders to drop (but don't you dare compromise that posture!) and your elbows to loosely hang at your side. Imagine weights on strings strategically attached to different points of your body, adjusting it into shape. That, is "let."

So, friends, here's to hoping we can all mentally "let" and cruise through Friday onto the weekend!

Oh yeah...and I didn't blow all of last night's hard work with this so-called breakfast...I have a hearty salad for lunch ;)

Homemade chicken soup with pearl pasta

Mmm, my favorite homemade soup! I love this soup not only because it's so delicious and warming on a chilly day, but it's easy to make and doesn't take much time. 

A quick trip to the grocery store, and I picked up a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken from the deli along with a few of the ingredients that I didn't already have at home. 

I cut the ends off a small yellow onion, then cut it in half and threw it in the food processor and pulsed it a few times. I have to tell you...yellow (and especially white) onions make my eyes water and burn something awful, so I try to have as little contact with them as possible. I poured a few tablespoons of olive oil in a stock pot and put the minced onion in to cook while I started chopping carrots. 

Once the carrots were chopped, I put them in the stock pot along with 8 or 10 cups of water and about 2 tablespoons of vegetable Better than Bouillon. I know I've mentioned this stuff before, but it's really great. A concentrated paste than enhances the flavor of your food and tastes way better than any vegetable broth you could buy. And it sure goes a long way. Anyway, back to the soup. 

While the water was warming and cooking the carrots, I pulled apart the chicken and added it to the water. The final ingredients to go in were the leafy tops of a few celery stalks, chopped celery and a few sprigs of fresh thyme. I sprinkled in a dash of salt to bring out the flavors, and covered the soup for about a half hour to cook. 

To go with the soup, I always make pearl pasta or orzo. Put a few serving spoonfuls of the pasta in the bottom of a bowl, add the soup and sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese. Perfect.   

The Annual Death Cold

This past weekend I began coming down with the annual winter death cold - the one that leaves you sniffling and stuffed up at the same time, sucks every last bit of energy you have, makes your body feel like you've been beat up by a gang of people.

My go-to supplies for something like this are simple. I start with Traditional Medicinals Gypsy Cold Care tea. I buy this at my co-op, but I believe Target carries it and I'm sure Whole Foods would have it, if not something similar. It's a caffeine-free herbal tea made from a fusion of the best cold-fighting herbs. When I boil water in my tea pot, I add minced ginger before boiling. I love making stir-fry, so this is something I always have in a jar or tube in my fridge. Its immune-boosting properties are helpful during a cold - read more about it here. Finally, once the water has boiled and I pour it over the tea bag to steep, I add a squirt of local honey (honey has natural antibacterial properties - especially raw honey - and local honey can help you fight some of those allergy triggers).

This lovely cold also seems to take away any bit of appetite, so I love to have tangerine popsicles in the freezer. I buy the no-sugar-added, all-fruit kind. These give a little boost of vitamin C and put a tiny bit of something in my stomach.

And of course, rest, rest, rest!

Hold up...

Did I seriously go from the end of October to the middle of January without posting a single thing about food? For shame...

Quick, easy, healthy work lunch:

Packing lunches for work can sometimes be a total drag. Every now and then you luck out with leftovers from last night's dinner, but other times you're on your own and starting from scratch. I always seem to find myself without decent options, but last week I did think about lunch (instead of just dinner) before I went grocery shopping, and ended up with some decent options.

At home while I was getting ready for work, I boiled water and made a serving of pasta:

Then at work, I microwaved steam-in-bag veggies I found on sale at the grocery store:

I mixed the two together, put back in the microwave for a minute with shaved parmesan cheese, and enjoyed a delicious lunch!

This would also make an easy dinner-for-two with a baked chicken breast added to the mix. 

I purchased a few of these Green Giant veggie mixes, and was sure to read the nutrition facts before making my selections (since some of them contained seasonings or in this case, a butter sauce). My body reacts pretty harshly to excess sodium (think pudgy hands), but I was happy to see that this particular mix only contained 9% daily value of sodium per serving (entire package was two servings). I think I may need to go back to the store and stock up! Shhh...  

Fun Fact: I took these pictures using the Instagram app on my iPhone. 

Iron Hill Brewery

Hey all! Last night Ashley and I had a date night at the new Chestnut Hill Iron Hill Brewery. There are several other locations in the state, but neither of us have been to one yet. We were particularly excited about this new location because there is a very small selection of places we like to eat in my neighborhood.

There's one local pub that is packed to the doors if there is ever any sort of sports game on TV (and with Philly having a team for all the major sports, that's almost every night). The service there also leaves a lot to be desired. There's also a brewery and flatbread restaurant with a very unique atmosphere, but you can't really show up wanting a big meal, as the food is a little on the lighter side. But anyway, back to Iron Hill.

The first day of business for Chestnut Hill was on Wednesday, January 4. We were thinking about going this past weekend, but figured there would be a long wait on its first weekend open for business. So instead, we made a reservation (they offer online reservations through Open Table) for last night. That was an excellent decision, because when we arrived, the entire waiting area was full and the wait time was almost an hour!

Over the weekend, we took a look at the extensive menu online. Oh my gosh - amazing. I have to say, it was really difficult to choose what to order, especially since there were three meals I really wanted to try: the chicken pot pie, the shrimp scampi linguini and the turkey burger (seriously...you can rarely find a place that serves a good turkey burger). I finally decided on the chicken pot pie, and Ashley chose the Hawaiian spiced Ahi tuna. We also had a small order of buffalo chicken wings for an appetizer (amazing buffalo sauce!) and an apple fritter with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert. Everything was made extremely well with great flavors and decent serving sizes.

And what about the beer? Well, we were seated right next to a window looking into the brewery (cool!). I ordered a raspberry wheat and loved the flavor. I tasted a light raspberry flavor first, finishing with that classic wheat beer flavor. Definitely not an overbearing or syrupy fruit flavor like some others I've tried, and it was a nice light color. Ashley ordered one of the featured Belgian seasonal brews, the Belgian Pale Ale. It has a great flavor - not too strong and not too weak, not excessively hoppy and a light brown color.

The service was great from the hostess to our server. The restaurant is really nicely designed with several semi-divided eating areas that provide plenty of options for the kind of atmosphere you want - quieter toward the back of the restaurant, or in the middle of the buzz up front by the bar. We were close to the kitchen, and saw the unending rush of servers back and forth all night. I think it was just as busy when we left as when we first walked in the door (our reservation was for 7:30 p.m. and we left around 9).

Overall, it was a great experience and I can't wait to go back again in a few weeks with friends!


Sorry for the lack of pictures in this post, but I was sure to provide lots of links to several different sections of Iron Hill's website. Enjoy!