Happy Friday!!! I’m so ready for the weekend – this is our first full weekend home with Maggie, and I have fun baking plans, as well :)
That coffee this morning? Amazing.
Too bad I left my travel mug on the counter :\ I’m really excited to have more tomorrow, though!
Today’s lunch was leftovers for me and Nick and we finished off the mac’n’cheese.
I added extra broccoli to mine again and had a clementine on the side.
These are the best kind of leftovers – pasta is always good!
I loved hearing about your appliances, and have to say…I had appliance envy for all of you that said your Kitchenaid mixer. That’s one thing I don’t have – a stand mixer! It’s on my wish list for whenever we get a bigger kitchen.
What’s one kitchen appliance you don’t have that you really want?
Nick’s been wanting this for a while, and he finally had enough money after getting Christmas + graduation gifts.
It came to the house yesterday, but I left the box for him to open :)
It’s like a pro coffee grinder! This should give us the perfect (and consistent) grind for French press – no more grounds at the bottom or whole beans left in the grinds that never hit the blade.
Of course, Nick made coffee this morning so he could try it out.
I’m not complaining ;)
The coffee went perfectly with my Apple Crisp Oatmeal.
1/2 cup oats, 1 cup water, pinch salt
1 small apple, diced and microwaved for 1 minute with cinnamon
I heated up some of the Annie’s mac’n’cheese combo from last night and added about a cup more broccoli for some more green today.
I also tried these new veggie chips that Nick’s mom gave us last weekend
They were pretty good, actually. Really light and crispy, and I liked that they were all different colors.
After lunch, I took Maggie on a walk around the neighborhood. You know it’s been cold lately when you have a day that’s finally OVER 32 degrees and think it’s not too bad (even though it’s still only 35 degrees).
We took another short walk around the block this afternoon – it felt so nice to get out of the house for a little while! It was still cold, for sure, but not so bad that I couldn’t handle it.
As soon as 5:00 hit, I fed Maggie part of her dinner in her kennel while I did a little peanut butter flow with Polly’s DVD :) Just what I needed. I fell out of half moon on both sides, but it’s still one of my favorites.
Okay, back to dinner.
Last week, I received this cookbook to review and I made my first recipe out of it for dinner tonight!
DOLLARS TO DONUTS: Comfort Food and Kitchen Wisdom from Route 66’s Landmark Rock Cafe by Dawn Welch
I love this cookbook already. It has such great comfort food type recipes that all have a little twist to them – plus, there are tips on how to save money, time, and resources, which are definitely nice to have.
Tonight’s dinner came from this recipe:
I can’t post the recipe, but I only made a few changes:
I cooked my pork in the crockpot today instead of roasting it in the oven.
I used pork loin instead of shoulder since that’s what I had.
I turned mine into a Mexican-type salad instead of just having the pork on its own.
For my salad, I layered:
refried beans
shredded pork
corn
romaine
diced avocado
scallions
salsa verde (from the recipe)
This pork is awesome! Since I did mine in the crockpot, I didn’t actually marinate the meat – I just cooked it in the marinade and the citrus flavors were just amazing. The pork tasted light and bright and went perfectly with the salsa verde.
And you can’t have Mexican without Corona.
And lime.
And football :)
And chips, salsa + queso, which will probably be our football game snack tonight.
That’s right.
Tonight is the National Championship Game – #1 Alabama vs. #2 Texas.
I am extremely excited about it. I think it’s going to be an awesome game, and I’m ready to watch.
But…the night of the championship game always makes me a little sad because I know I’ll have to wait 8 months to watch college football again :( Is that pathetic or what?
