Earth Day weekend

Happy (belated) Earth Day fellow hippies!

We had such an awesome weekend.  The sun was out and we got together with lots of friends and for those reasons (and many more), we were all so happy.

Low key Friday lunch because I didn’t feel like anything real.  I believe this is called intuitive eating??

Friday’s dinner was LEGIT the best thing I had all week.  I know I was kinda struggling with snack (and food in general) inspiration last time I checked in, but you guys knew just what to say to make me feel good about the future.

We had a birthday party on Friday night and I didn’t feel like party fare at all.  I knew it was going to be pizza as the main course, and I just wasn’t in the mood to test my gut with wheat and dairy after a week of blah eating.  So everyone else ate there and then when we got home I fed myself dinner.  The best part was Kyle had gotten home from his work trip a few hours beforehand, so he did bathtime while I ate in peace.  Ahhhhh…

So this salad.  It was a take on the kale Caesar from Choice Health Food in Maui.  If you’ve been ignoring my last few weeks of posts you may be unaware, but basically I made myself a local at this raw vegan place on our trip to Hawaii.  I loved the addition of capers and sundried tomatoes in a Caesar salad.  It was stellar.  So I basically added that to romaine and cashews with Tessamae’s Caesar dressing that I love so much and topped it all with heaps of nooch.

This might be the Spring salad that takes over my life.  Stay tuned??

Everyone else was quite content with pizza.  Can you believe this is his life now????

OIT for the win.

Saturday was Picnic Day here in Davis, which is incredibly fun. I’ve missed it the past two years due to my sisters’ various pre-wedding events and have been distraught over it (as much as you can be without drawing attention to it and making your family feel bad about fun things you are supposed to be celebrating).

Anyway, picture parades and crafts and animals and bands and farm exhibits and police helicopter demonstrations and face painting and food and SO MUCH MORE taking over the city’s downtown and UC campus.  It was bananas.  In a good way.

Here they are on a fossil dig, just before we went over to eat freshly popped popcorn after getting the kernels shucked from the cob right in front of us!

Fruity faces.

Sun suits us. 🙂

We did come home for V to nap (and for the adults to eat).  I had packed the kids’ lunches so we could stay as long as possible but once V was snoozing away I made myself a salad.

I knew I was making a dinner salad with avo so I held off on adding avo to my lunch salad too and in it’s place added smoked salmon.

Lovely.

In the afternoon we found a shady spot to watch the battle of the bands.

The beach ball was a big hit, P wanted to be as close to the music as possible.

 

I had everything prepped to assemble fiesta bowls as soon as we got back.  It was a looong day with lots of walking so we were all totally exhausted.  It was nice to have dinner ready to go.

I had thrown some half thawed chicken breasts in the instant pot when we were home and shredded them once they were done.  Talk about a perfect last minute save.  I had no meal planned for the day but since we were so busy Friday and Saturday I had to come up without something because there was no time to get to the store.

Frozen chicken to the rescue!  Add to that some frozen corn, canned black beans, and romaine and we were half way to a meal!

Luckily I also had cotija cheese and cilatro in the fridge. Things were taking shape!

To season the bowls I had home-made salsa (the last of the jar from last year’s tomatoes) and home-made Ranch dressing (which I added BBQ sauce to).

Fiesta Bowls

Ingredients:

• 1 head romaine, chopped
• 1 cup black beans
• 1 cup corn
• 1/2 cup salsa
• 2 chicken breasts, cooked and shredded
• cotija cheese
• 2 avocados
• 1 cup ranch dressing + 2 tbsp BBQ sauce
• 1/4 cup cilantro leaves

Directions:

Cook and shred the chicken (I made extra for leftovers throughout the week).  I used the instant pot but mine were partially frozen still.  Add a pinch of salt and pepper and 1/2 cup of water and cook for 26 minutes at high pressure and let the pressure release naturally.

Meanwhile, combine the beans and corn and salsa and stir.  Prep the rest of the stuff – chop lettuce, stem cilantro, crumble cheese, and make the dressing.  I used the Ranch dressing recipe from Celebrations because I already had some made, but use whatever you want.

Build your bowl!

Starting with the lettuce, add on the chicken, the corn/bean/salsa mix, the cheese, and the avo.  Then top with cilantro and dressing and dig in!

Oh!  And don’t forget the chips!

Sooooo many chips.

Thank goodness Kyle is back in town so we can continue our Sopranos binge watching.  🙂

I have SO FEW photos of the next day because I left my phone at home.  Woops!  Kyle got a new phone though so I did steal some of his birthday party photos from the afternoon.

First off, I had a peanut buttery bowl of granola (I added more granola after taking the pic just so you could see what was going on under it).

I needed extra fuel for volunteering in the kidzone at church.  I was with P’s age group and it was a blast  (I know most of the kids because they also go to Pre-K with him or are church friends’ kids).

After that we busted out allllll our grocery shopping (TJs and Nugget Market).

I bought so much butternut squash (because I fear the end of the season is in sight) that the checker actually commented about it wondering why so much squash?  (I bought a bag of frozen squash and two pre-cubed containers because there weren’t any of the actual squash at either store).  No shame in my squash game.

Check out our first harvest from the garden!

The kids were awesome helpers, bagging up the chard and kale, and eating a bunch in the process.  Which is the goal of course.

Gotta get those beans on the window sill planted!

The greens are in the new raised bed (the one “we” built last year) along with tomatoes, thyme and chives. The other raised bed has strawberries that we planted two seasons ago which keep multiplying.  I am baffled that they survive the freezing winter nights, let alone thrive and make more, but there are now about 10ish shrubs with some green berries forming.  I’ll take it!  We also just got basil plated in the same bed.   And I think there are even a couple of zucchini plants coming up from seeds that somehow didn’t germinate whenever they were planted initially.  We’ll see what comes of that…

Anyway, for now, the garden is kicking out some awesome stuff.  The colors on the chard stems is magical 🙂

Party time!

We spent the afternoon at my bestie’s celebrating her girl.  We had way too much to eat and then they started grilling burgers so we just kept piling the food on our plates.  It was a perfect day, hanging with friends for a long time (and actually getting to talk because the kids were playing with each other independently!) in the gorgeous sunshine.  Spring seems to be here to stay at long last and this was an awesome way to kick off the season.

It was late by the time we got home, but I still had to make a dish to bring to MOPS the next day, so I quickly made a banana baked oatmeal thing and got myself to bed.

Restorative weekends make Mondays more manageable no?