Last watermelon of the season + weekend recap

So fall kind of came out of nowhere around these parts- last week was in the 90s and today I woke up to temps in the 50s! Time to go boot shoppingggg?

Anyway before we kiss all things summer goodbye, here is a recipe for that last watermelon of the season, one of my favs: watermelon goat cheese salad hallloo!

Prep Time: 5 mins
Cook Time: 0 mins
Servings: 6 (depending on the size of the watermelon)

Ingredients:

• 1 watermelon, cubed
• 1/4 Cup Balsamic Vinegar
• 1 Cup crumbled goat cheese (Trader Joe's has it for a great price, surprise)

Lay out the cubes in a single layer. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and top each cube with crumbles of goat cheese.

That's it and it's the perfect appetizer!

Onto the weekend...My family and I flew to Memphis to visit my little brother and it was so much fun! We did everythinggg.

Drank the local beer (obligatory local beer picture for Nadine - have you had this? I loved it!)

Saw this campaign ad for a senate candidate and got pissed that as a DC resident I don't have a voice in Congress yet the people who DO get to vote choose their candidates based on posters like this?

Spent time contemplating how on earth a restaurant and bar with LIVE DUCKS in it can pass health inspections at the Peabody?

Had a sweet view for a tiny price thanks to Airbnb (even though the apartment itself left a some to be desired...but I knew that from reading reviews and saved hundreds of dollars and stayed in prime location)

Went to a concert at Levitt Shell

Ate some BOMB FOOD ALL WEEKEND (note: the restaurant menus were seriously lacking healthy items. I'm so used to DC where menus are geared towards health nuts. Even the salads were topped with fried veggies/chicken). This Memphis Po Boy was from SoulFish. Highly, highly recommend.

Spent time with my brother and his boo (people always ask if we're twins, do you see it?)

Attended the Cooper-Young Festival (As an avid day-drinker I have attended probably close to 50 festivals. This was the MOST well organized street festival I have EVER seen. I see you, Memphis!)

I stepped into a building in Cooper-Young and saw this AMAZING mural (Lap infinity, still laughing)

Suffered a heart breaking loss to South Carolina due to a matter of TWO INCHES. My man summed up my feelings:

Explored some lovely sites on a morning jog:

Hope everyone has a great week!

The Secret to the Perfect Zucchini Lasagna + Weekend Recap

Hey hey it's already Tuesday! Yay for short work weeks!

First of all- have you ever tried making lasagna with zucchini as the noodles? This is my go to recipe, but it is always suuuper watery. So I did a little research, combined a few ideas, and made an amazing zu-sagna this weekend! I sliced the zucchini strips first, then laid them out over bowls and covered them with coarse sale (sea salt)- about 1/2 teaspoon per slice. I prepared the rest of the ingredients while the salt did its thing, and about 20 minutes later each bowl was full of water from the zucchinis! I rinsed off the zucchini strips with cold water then proceeded with the recipe. 

And now for the weekend recap. This was a good one. A really really good one.

So we have been thinking about getting a second dog, and this weekend did a "trial weekend" with a guy named Ziggy from an amazing rescue group called Pitties & Purrs. Andi had a rough start- only child syndrome- but Pitties & Purrs set us up with a trainer who has been to our house twice and called every day to check in and give us advice- WHO does that?? So with all the support, and the amazingness that is Mr. Ziggy Man, we are keeping him and I am so. EXCITED! Just look at this guy- he's a REAL dog, unlike Andi who I vented about last week:

This is Zig trying to teach Andi how to play frisbee. She does not get it. At all.

Saturday was COLLEGE FOOTBALL! In the morning we went down to Georgetown to tailgate and watch the game (yes, Georgetown has a football team. Harrison played for them in college so it's real).

Saturday evening I went to watch Georgia MURDER Clemson. Afterwards we went to one of my old college friends' apartments and he has the best view. Sometimes I forget to appreciate how great DC is, and how cool it is to live close to so many things that people vacation to see:

Sunday we cooked out at our house. Harrison made a last minute purchase at K Mart (yep, they're still here!) that turned out to be clutch as the skies opened. Something about sitting outside in the rain is just really great.

We also played some flip cup and, like so many other grand talents, I have lost this one since college. So not only am I now an atrocious flip cup player, I also wake up with killer hangovers from a mere 3 rounds of the game.

I also love Andi's photobomb in this picture:

Monday we sat around and did nothing but play with the dogs, put together wedding registry (all online thanks to advice from Kelly). and I spent a little time sitting in my kiddie pool (another clutch K Mart purpose) soaking up the last summer sun and reading all the fall things. I'm actually so ready for fall- bring on the sweaters and boots and comfiness!

So tell me: do you have tips for cooking with veggies? Do you sometimes forget to love your city?

The Best Breakfast Ever Made + I'm Too Old for Weekends

It's Monday and honestly I need to sleep off this weekend. More about that later. For now: breakfast.

Disclaimer: Harrison made this breakfast on Saturday while I sipped a mimosa and played with Andi. I know, my life is really good.

Servings: 2

Prep Time: 15 mins

Cook Time: 20 mins

Egg Scramble Ingredients:

• 5 large eggs, whisked
• 1 large tomato, diced
• 1 cup of mushrooms, sliced
• 1/4 onion, sliced
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder
• handful fresh basil, chopped
• Salt and pepper to taste

Pour the egg into a large frying pan and cook over medium heat for about a minute before adding in the veggies. Stir them all together the whole time you're cooking the egg mixture and voila- clean breakfast scramble!

Stove Top Sweet Potato Ingredients:

• 1 medium sweet potato cut into chunks
• 1/2 onion, sliced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder (less if you're not a garlic freak like us)
• 1-2 teaspoons Season-All
• 2 tablespoons Olive Oil (or oil of your choice)

Mix all the ingredients well and pour into a frying pan. Cover and cook over medium-high heat for about 15 minutes, stirring frequently. They are great.

Just like this breakfast, this weekend was great but almost too much. 

Friday we went to a Nat's Game...confession: I hate baseball. I love drinking outside and that's about as far as my affection for baseball goes. I had to call it quits during the 7th inning to go the heck home (this was after I arrived during the 3rd inning due to excessive tailgating at The Bull Pen, sorry). It was a great night to be outside though!

Only in DC does everyone get all turned up about presidential mascots:

Saturday we went to Trillectro, DC's hip hop/electronic music festival. 

Rained all day.

I was so confused by a lot of things at this music festival including but not limited to:

• Is everyone's clothes straight out of 1998 Delia's catalogue? 
• Am I so old that this is like when flair jeans got cool and my mom said "I used to wear flair jeans they were so cool when I was younger too!" and I thought she was so lame?
• I am actually a decade older than the youngest attendants at this show?
• My feet and ankles hurt, how do people do this? How did I used to do this on the reg?
• I have heartburn for the first time in my life? Philly cheesesteaks from a food truck aren't my thing? 

I also caught up on a little Teen Mom and as usual am also in a state of confusion re: Leah. When it's not the hair or makeup, it's everything else. 

And Andi had an all out battle with the vacuum cleaner (I hate vacuuming too, Andi) during Sunday Cleaning.

Question: Has anyone else noticed that festival fashion came directly from the pages of Delia's 1998 catalogue? Was anyone allowed to order Delia's? I wasn't because it was too expensive but I studied that catalogue like my grades depended on it.

Linking up with Biana!

Clean Crispy Chicken Parm w/Squoodles + Weekend Recap

Happy Monday! Big surprise this week- I'm on top of my game enough to have a post out on Monday!

We had friends over for dinner the other night and Harrison and I came up with this awesomely crispy chicken parm. I've never been a big chicken parm person but this was good, and we were able to throw it together pretty quickly.

Prep Time: 15 mins
Cook Time: 30 mins
Servings: 4

Ingredients:

• 1.5 lbs chicken breasts, thawed (we flattened our's out with a meat tenderizer then sliced each one into about 9 strips) ($6.00)
• 3 eggs, whisked ($.50)
• 1/2 cup corn starch  ($.40)
• 2/3 cup ground flaxseed (PS I found ground flaxseed at Trader Joe's for the best price)
• 1 Tablespoon Italian seasoning 
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 2 medium sized squashes, sliced into strips with a Mandolin  
• 1 tablespoon coconut oil 
• Salt & pepper to taste
• 2 cups of your choice of spaghetti sauce (I use garlic & basil sauce from Trader Joe's)
• 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Set up your stations: 1 medium sized bowl with the corn starch, 1 medium bowl with the eggs, 1 medium bowl with the ground flaxseed mixed with the Italian seasoning and garlic powder, and a non-stick baking sheet.

Dip each chicken strip into the corn starch, then the egg, then the flaxseed/seasoning mix, then set on the baking sheet. Do this for all the chicken strips. Bake for 25 minutes. While chicken is baking, cook the squoodles . After 25 minutes, remove from the oven and glob 3 spoonfuls of the sauce onto each chicken strip, then sprinkle the mozzarella cheese on top. Put it back in the oven for another 5 minutes.

Top the squoodles with the chicken. We served it with my friend Allie's caprese salad and it. was. banginnnn.


So on to  the weekend recap. If you read this blog you may or may not have picked up on the fact that I am nerd alert central: I get my rocks off crunching numbers in Excel, making charts and graphs, learning new statistical methods, reading studies, and all things NPR. So when I found out that you can go on TOURS OF NPR'S HEADQUARTERS I booked that immediately. We did it Friday and OMG:

When you're listening to Morning Edition and other national NPR programs, this is where the producers sit:

We got to sit in the actual sound studios, put on headphones, play with microphones, nerd out big time. Fun fact: NPR listeners on the West Coast hear the best quality shows because of the 3 hour delay- producers can go back and fix little things they don't like by the time it airs in California, but here on the East Coast we have a mere 3 minute delay so there's not that kind of time. Crazy huh? Or is that just me?

We hit up the Building Museum to see the giant human maze  and I had a panic attack just looking at it:

That evening we went to Jazz in the Garden, then tried out a new restaurant rooftop called 1905 for a friend's bday (def recommend- food menu looked good and great beer and cocktail options):

Saturday I went on a Boomerang Tubing Tour (we decided to do a redneck theme for our party) for a friend's bday we loaded a coach bus with booze and food and rode 2 hours to the Shenandoah valley..beautiful and so fun!

Nothing says redneck like temporary tats and lime-a-ritas. I don't even want to talk about how hard I scrubbed my arm to get my tats off before church the next morning...

Sunday we hit up a new DC brewery called Right Proper Brewing Company and they had this super funky mural that I am obsessed with:

Linking up today with Biana- come play!

Clean Eating Sweet Potato Crust Pizza + Weekend Recap

Ohhh hayy, Monday! You came back so fast! This was one of the first weekends all summer that I've been in town with NOTHING I HAD to do and it. was. amazing. But first, a clean pizza recipe that I made with SWEET POTATOES. YALL. The crust was crispy and not soggy at all and I am def def def making this once a week for pizza night because OMG.

Servings: 3 (same size as a medium pizza so depends on how much people normally eat)
Prep Time: 10 mins
Cook Time: 15 mins

Ingredients:

• 2 mashed sweet potatoes (I just poked holes in mine and microwaved them for 8 minutes and scooped the mash out of the skin)
• 1 cup oat flour (old fashioned oats in the blender)
• 2 Tablespoons ground flaxseed
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder 
• Toppings: I used Trader Joe's Garlic Marinara, Mozzarella, fresh basil, mushrooms

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Mix the mashed potato, oats, flaxseed, baking soda, Italian seasoning and garlic powder well. I had to use my hands for this part. Heat in the oven for 15 minutes, add your toppings, pop it back in for about 5 minutes, and enjoy this amazzzing pizza crust.


Onto the weekend! I had the day off Friday so I lounged around fora while then hit up the Target clearance sale where I picked up these $11 sandals, these $12 sandals, this v neck T ($12), and this floral open back dress ($17!!). Success. I felt a little crazed as I was just throwing things into my cart in every size:

 Friday night I ventured out to Arlington (the suburbs) for a dinner at Rustico with high school friends and their spouses/significant others where I drank lots and lots and lots of delicious beers and not enough water.

Saturday I got up on a MISSION. After the last few weeks of traveling and having a combined 5 minutes of alone time, I was determined to sit in a pool and unwind with zero human interaction. Thank you, K-Mart for being the only store with kiddie pools left (I guess no one knows K-Mart is still alive and well- my little secret). This was enjoyable for the 15 minutes I had until a sudden burst of rain came, but I did feel like the neighbors were probably like "that new girl is so odd" and I felt a lil insecure about that.

Saturday night some friends came over and we ate pizza (real pizza oopsies) and binge watched New Girl. Sooo was no one going to tell me about New Girl? I think I like it so much because I spend time with people who are veerrrryyy eerily similar to characters in the show. I just love love love it.

Sunday after church I had brunch at Veranda with some friends. They had cute jelly, and everything was downhill from there. The food was suuuppper average and they were out of PANCAKES. How does a brunch restaurant run out of pancakes?!?!

Spent the rest of the day cleaning and hanging out with this lady:

And I just have to share this incredibly romantic meme Harrison sent me:

So tell me: have you tried sweet potato crust before? What did you think? And do you watch New Girl??

Linking up with Biana- come join!

I'm baaackkk with Pesto Squoodles & Weekend Recapsss!

Oh hey yall! Remember me? I used to blog here until Wedding/Binge Drinking Tour 2014 took its toll and I slept for a few days then hopped on a plane for ATL for my college BFF's wedding. If you followed on Instagram you saw how awesome and beautiful this wedding was, but just in case you don't I'll photo dump below haaa.

I gotta confess, I have been eating about as dirty and eating can get. And not exercising. But I guess a cool thing about being this age is that when I realized my clothes fit differently there was no meltdown or anything, I was like "welp that's what happens, I've pulled it together once I can pull it together again!"

So here I am trying to pull it together. This is the squasta with homemade pesto:

Prep Time: 10 mins
Cook Time: 20 mins (for the sausages)
Servings: 3

Ingredients:

• 2 Squashes (squashi? squash?) ($3.00), sliced into "squoodles" with the mandolin or knife
• 4 clean chicken sausages (I use Al Fresco from Wal Mart) ($5.00)
• 1 cup mushrooms, sliced ($1.50)
• 2 large tomatoes, diced ($2.00)
• 1/2 onion, sliced ($.50)

For the pesto:

• 2 cups fresh basil 
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup pine nuts
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/3 cup fresh parmesan

Cook your squoodles. Cook the sausage as according to the package (I grilled mine) and slice into bite size pieces. Saute the onion slices for about 5 minutes, then add in the mushrooms for another 3 minutes. The mushroom/onion concoction with tomatoes and sausage.

Combine all the ingredients for the pesto in a blender or food processor. I use the $20 Oster 6706 6-Cup Plastic Jar 10-Speed Blender from Amazon and blend until saucey.

Toss all the ingredients together and enjoy!

And now for my weekend photo dump:

Before I left for ATL I went to an ON POINT happy hour at 14K! Look at all this delicious food! I had DUCK TACOS. YES.

Said bye to Andi and hit the road (skies?) for ATL!!

The first night we went to Sweetwater Brewery where you pay $10 for 6 beers. SAY WHAT? I loovvvve the 420 and the summer blueberry beer (Nadine help me out- what is that called? I know you know!)

The best man sported this all weekend:

Rehearsal dined at Wahoo Grill in Decatur (YUM) and I died over this groom's cake. Can I have Andi as a wedding topper for my cake?

Hair appointments started at 7:30. We are so fortunate that the groom's mom lives right by the church in a beautiful condo:

We took pix at Piedmont Park and could not have asked for a more beautiful day! This is the only picture I could find from the photoshoot (the groom got all his groomsmen matching undies that have a zipper pocket for a flask):

I successfully did my own hair thanks to this youtube tutorial (any other curly haired people out there HATE getting their hair done because they always straighten it and it frizzes out in 5 minutes?):

The reception was held at the Trolley Barn in Decatur. Beautiful.

And we rode around the city for a few hours in a trolley with the wedding party. It was a blast and I want to figure out how to do something like this at my wedding!

So tell me: how do you get back on track after you've fallen waaayyyy off track?