Lunch: AWESOMESAUCE

We went to this little hole-in-the-wall Dominican place to pick up a lunch special to go. GOOD HEAVENLY LORD. Some of the best food I’ve ever tasted. You never know when you’ll find a diamond in the rough.

We got Pollo Guisado (stewed chicken), rice and beans, and plantano maduro (fried sweet plaintains…my favorite food in the world).

Dinner: chicken and spinach quesadillas 

Dessert: milkshake!

My dad makes the most delicious shakes! This one has strawberries, bananas, protein powder, milk, and ice cream. Mmmmmm.

I’ve got to get to bed, I have an early morning ahead of me!

Thanks for reading!

-Lauren

Pampering my mom on Mother’s Day…

And just soaking up the time with my family, especially this little munchkin who I’ve missed so much!

I’ll be back to regular posting now and can’t wait to share all sorts of good food with you! Today my mom made some DELICIOUS white mountain rolls that seriously tasted like they were from a restaurant. The recipe can be found on Farmgirl Fare and I would HIGHLY recommend it. I’m getting hungry for another one just thinking about it.

I made shrimp pasta for dinner and we served the rolls and a mixed greens salad on the side.

We also opened a bottle of this Australian muscato. If you like muscato, this is a great choice with a great price!

The bread went so perfectly with everything! I miss being here where they keep real butter in the fridge! Clearly I could keep butter in my fridge in Virginia too, but I don’t because I know that if I have it around I’ll dump it willy nilly in everything. I love my Earth Balance and all but sometimes butter is just perfect. This was one of those times.

Excuse me while I go eat another. With more butter.

Thanks for reading!

-Lauren

We’re leaving for Georgia first thing in the morning, and one of the thing’s we were trying to finish from our fridge is my latest batch of strawberry jam. You can use storebought jam, I’m sure it will be just as tasty! The sweetness from the strawberries and the tartness from the balsamic go so perfectly together and would brighten up any salad.

I had this salad with a bowl of tomato-lentil soup on the side and I just LOVE the flavor of the dressing! I even put some over my veggies at dinner tonight.

You can put the dressing over greens with some fresh sliced strawberries like I did, or you could add it to any other type of salad or heat it and use it like a sauce. Personally I loved the peppery flavor of the arugula with the sweet and tangy dressing!

I have to go keep packing! Thanks for reading!

-Lauren

Breakfast (pre-workout): whole wheat toast with peanut butter and honey drizzle

Second Breakfast (post-workout): biscuits, bacon, egg, strawberries

Morning Snack: almonds

Bargain alert: Blue Diamond nuts are BOGO at Rite Aid right now!!! Snatch them while they’re still there!

Lunch: chili over brown rice with a dollop of plain greek yogurt

Afternoon Snack: protein shake (whey protein powder, Silk coconut milk, frozen banana)

Dinner: chicken parm tenders over multigrain pasta with grilled zucchini 

I have a RECIPE to share with you tomorrow…I know, I know…shocking. It’s been way too long. But this is a food blog after all, and I love sharing recipes with you all. Tomorrow is a good one, I promise.

Thanks for reading!

-Lauren

Jason and I got a great deal on a hotel in Dupont Circle for Saturday night, which happened to be about 2 seconds away from the Dupont Farmer’s Market on Sunday morning! I had never been to the Dupont area before and I really loved it. It’s full of adorable restaurants and shops and just has a really young and vibrant atmosphere. Before hitting up the market on Sunday we went to get a much needed caffeine fix at Dolcezza Gelato right across the circle.

As you can tell from the name, they are a gelato shop. But they open in the morning to serve coffee and other treats. The inside of the shop had beautiful shabby-chic/vintage touches while also being very modern and clean.

They make their coffee the old fashioned way, pouring hot water through the ground grains in a filter, and they make it fresh to order.

I got a soy latté and it was probably the best I’ve ever had it my life. Such rich flavor and perfect foam on top!

Almond croissant on the side!

After our caffeine we walked outside and started exploring the amazing market! I don’t know how many vendors were there, but I can tell you that it’s easily 3 times the size of our market in Williamsburg. So much beautiful local food, it almost brought tears to my little foodie eyes. Just kidding. Sort of.

The PRODUCE–OH, the PRODUCE! I’ll let it speak for itself.

There were also beautiful flowers!

And lots of other goodies…

There was even a chef demonstration and I gladly took a sample of the chilled pea soup that he made.

Delicious. I totally got the recipe.

And we couldn’t walk away empty handed so Jas and I got some bread from one of the bakery vendors. I had another slice this morning as toast, it’s so good!

Thank you SO MUCH ladies for showing us an amazing time! Between the festival, the party, and the farmers market it was pretty much the best weekend ever.

Thanks for reading!

-Lauren

We spent the weekend in DC with my girlfriends! We’re done with finals (thank GOD) but I still have a week of work to. However, I’m in no hurry to do it and we really needed some time away. Plus it was Cinco de Mayo, and we were celebrating two birthdays! DC knew I was coming, and there happened to be a food truck festival going on right as we were arriving into the city. PERFECT.

There were tons of well known food trucks there, and lots of people!

There were dozens of trucks there and so it was very hard to make a decision about what to eat! Our picks included empanadas:

Bahn mi (Vietnamese pork sandwich with pickled vegetables):

Handmade sausage sandwich:

Sweet tea popsicle:

popcorn:

…and ice cream for dessert! I got green tea flavored and Jason got chocolate chocolate chip. Then I was a buff surfer and Jason was a lady.

We all left very full! It was a great time. I think it’s wonderful that food trucks are becoming so popular. It’s a great way support small business and to see all the diverse sides of a city’s food scene. After the festival we went to check out the monuments!

This was Jason’s first time visiting them! I haven’t seen them in a while and they are really incredible. The Lincoln monument is my favorite so the girls took us there first!

The scale of this thing is just amazing and I love the detail in the sculpture. It’s just awesome in general.

We also got to see the new MLK monument, which is really beautiful. And it will be even better when they correct the quote on the side.

From MLK you can see the Jefferson monument across the water! So beautiful.

My friends were real sports taking us around to these places. I know what it’s like to live in a tourist city and have to re-do the touristy stuff every time someone comes to visit, so I appreciate them indulging us!

After doing the tourist thing Jason and I headed to our hotel to get ready for the main event–a Cinco de Mayo party/birthday party for Emily and Katherine!

It was Emily‘s golden birthday this year! 24 years old on the 24th. Awesome. I was 5 for my golden birthday so I will never really experience it! And Katherine’s birthday is coming up later in the month (the big quarter century! ). They did a great job setting up their place for the party! Lots of cute decorations and yummy food!

And drink up we did! We had a lot of fun. Especially with those mustaches.

I want to tell you about our adventures in Dupont Circle, but it will have to wait for another day. I think I’ve overloaded you with pictures enough for now.

Thanks for reading!

-Lauren

Well played Kelly Clarkson. Well played.

I may or may not have sung along at the top of my lungs as I was driving to the law school, suddenly realizing that even if things are hard, don’t work out the way I planned or thought they should…it doesn’t matter. I’m coming out stronger. Stronger than I ever thought I needed to be or could be. And that, my friends, is worth it. Whatever you’re going through is making you stronger, too…it just doesn’t always feel that way when we’re going through it!

-Lauren

P.S.- Don’t even act like my cliché life moments turn you off. You know they happen to you, too. And you know you love that song…even though it appears it’s going to the so overplayed on the radio that I hate you no matter what grave.

8:00am: Sun has just risen and I think I’ve already hit my quota for brain activity in one day. Who am I kidding, that quota was permanently hit like a week ago. Time to eat something.

8:15am: Wish that had taken longer to eat…because now I have to go back to studying…

9:00am: I’ve never been so happy to have workout time arrive!!! Lifting weights > The Clean Air Act

9:40am: shower

10:00am: Breakfast time! How many ways can I squeeze protein into this? Protein powder + greek yogurt + oatmeal = proteiny bowl of goodness .

10:30am: It appears as though I’ve run out of my pills at the worst possible time. No choice but to take the half hour drive to go get more…all the while thinking about how I really should be studying. Will regret this later. Oh well, Starbucks will help me feel better.

12:00pm: Back home…back to the grind.

1:30pm: My stomach is yelling at me…time for lunch! Leftover soup and a salad it is. With my book.

4:30pm: Jason’s not home and there are not nearly enough distractions from my impending doom…snack time it is.

7:30pm: My brain can’t take any more environmental statutes…switching modes to the paper for my other class that’s due on Friday. Might as well have some nuts while I’m at it.

9:00pm: Thank goodness for dinners that require only a few minutes of my time. Veggie burgers and fries! Jason turns Modern Family on while we’re eating. Bless that boy.

10:00: Now there’s REALLY nothing left to do but come to terms with the impending doom. Oh wait, there’s that blog post to write! Muahaha take that, doom! 

And there you have it…ending the day just where I started it. 10 more hours until the exam. You best believe that means I’ll be studying for the next 10 hours. You know what they say, you can sleep when you’re dead! What’s that you say? That’s just an idiotic and completely untrue excuse for people that are too “busy” to rest? Oh well. It’s the only thing I can think of.

Thanks for…reading? I don’t even know…that was such nonsense I don’t even know what you call it. I should say: Thank you for paying attention to me while I write a blog post that’s the equivalent of a goldfish that fell out of its tank in the few seconds while it’s flailing around looking for water before it…well, you know.

-Lauren

P.S. Forgive any typos. Forgive me in general. Thank you.

I was matched up with Athena, who doesn’t have her own blog yet but is a blog reader! She sent me an AMAZING box of fun and interesting food, and almost all of it has been devoured by me at this point.

Inside the box were these rice sticks (eaten by me very quickly, loved the berry flavor!), Tuscan flavored nuts…

CHOCOLATE, every girl’s best friend (I’ve been savoring those little coconut creme ones…just had another two a couple minutes ago actually!)…

some pumpkin spice oil (so cool! I’m thinking of using it in pancakes!)…

chocolate hazlenut spread (can’t wait to try this because I adore Nutella)…

spinach and artichoke dip (who doesn’t love this stuff?)…

..and GRITS! I was SO excited to see these. Never thought I’d get a bag of grits in a foodie penpal box and it really made my day. I had JUST run out too–how did you know, Athena?!

Thanks so much Athena for an amazing box! I really loved everything!

To check out what I sent my foodie penpal, Kim, go to her blog Real Life for the New Wife!

And to get more information about how to become a Foodie Penpal yourself, or to check out the link party with all the other penpals (there’s hundreds now!!!), check out the wonderful Lindsay at the Lean Green Bean.

Peace out, guys…I have to go fry my brain some more. 3-hour final tommorow and an 8-hour one the next day. Now that’s what I call fun.

-Lauren

It reminded me of a Southern pound cake (like the one I made here), but without all the heart attack butter! So I thought it would be perfect to make for Soul Food Sunday. And boy, am I glad I did.

I eat a ton of Greek yogurt and love it’s nutritional value (and delicious taste!) but I’ve never really baked with the yogurt being a primary ingredient. Guys, really. Vive la France! It made an AWESOME cake. It’s soft and moist and sweet without being ovch, my jaws are hurting sweet.

And as an added bonus, the use of Greek yogurt not only knocks down the calories and fat, but it means there’s 6 grams of protein in every scrumptious serving. Awesome.

Like most of my recipes, this is really fast and simple to make. You’ll have a baked cake in front of you in under an hour! So worth it.

My gears are already turning thinking of all the variations I can make from this recipe. I think next time I’ll try subbing in applesauce and/or banana for the oil and see how it holds up! It would also be delicious with fruit, nuts, or chocolate mixed in.

The French were definitely onto something here…though I find it ironic that a traditional French cake is one that actually uses another ingredient in place of butter. Anyone else confused by this? No matter, I don’t care who came up with it–it’s delicious. And it’s making child custody law a lot easier to swallow right now.

Thanks for reading!

-Lauren