Tuesday, June 30, 2015

What I Ate Wednesday/Yoga Revelations/Wine


Happy Hump Day!

Welcome to my first What I Ate Wednesday!  I'm such a fan of sharing and reading what others are eating for a few reasons:  A) I'm nosy lol B) I like to get new ideas for healthy meals C) I like to share what I'm eating to give new ideas to others.

Yesterday was a weird day.  As you can tell from my blog's name Serindipity I'm a huge believer in everything happens for a reason.  (FYI For Good and Unanswered Prayers have been playing on repeat)  I woke up feeling kinda wonky (a boy missing a sensitivity chip but what are you going to do?)  and I was just kinda sad.  I went on a 5 mile run to try to ease the wonk/funk I've been in.  Kinda worked.  I ate my favorite breakfast (totally worked) then I went to tutor one of my favorite kids.  I don't know what it is, but whenever I teach, life just gets better.  I forget everything.

Also I found these at Target (Target heals all)…I think Amanda and I need them :)

Cait and I went to celebrate my birthday at Auburn Road Vineyards.  (Full disclosure my birthday is in December, but who wants to go wine tasting in the winter?)  This was my first official wine tasting and I think I'm hooked!  What a cool place!  We had the whole place to ourselves and we enjoyed tasting some Jersey wines and eating copious amounts of bread and cheese.

On our way we saw some bales of hay…Jersey is the Garden State!  We're not all Snooki...
Beautiful display and tasting set up
We got a souvenir glass!
The menu

Auburn Road Vineyards is an amazing place!  Some of the wine is named after the winemaker's love of music and it was cool to try and decipher the musical references.


Couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day :)
Beautiful vines

Some outdoor shots


This place hosts a happy hour on Thursdays and an ordered in brick-oven pizza dinner on Fridays with a live band.  I think that we will be returning :)  The vibe of the place is down-home sophistication.  They have an outdoor seating area where we enjoyed a glass of wine and caught up on life.
The gorgeous trellis  

Cheers!


We sampled reds, whites, roses, and fruity wines.  We each left with 2 bottles of wine, Give Peach a Chance (a Jersey peach based wine) and Blessington (a sweet fruity red).   The price point is about $12-$20 a bottle.

Before...
After...
In the barrel room…yes I wore a wine colored dress because I love a theme!  #dorkstatus


Anyway, after the tasting we headed home and got ready for Pilates.  Our usual Pilates teacher was absent and we had a sub.  Our sub is a yoga teacher and started our class with an intention--figure out what kind of person you are in relationships and make yourself better.  Another intention was not to be passive aggressive.  It was like the yoga spirits knew my exact thoughts and tailored this practice to me.  I love when that happens to me.  Has that ever happened to you?  You get smacked in the face with the answer to your problem…or at least a resolution?


The class was exactly what I needed.  I left the class with a more centered approach to life.  Yoga does that to me.  I don't practice as much as I should considering how amazing I feel afterwards.  Yoga juju>funk

Therapy 

Anyway…WHAT I ATE WEDNESDAY!


Pre-run breakfast cookie:




Breakfast was the usual:


1/2 C Oats
1 C almond milk
sprinkle of cinnamon
spoonful of Farmer's Market PB
blueberries
splash of vanilla



Lunch is a salmon salad with a side of broccoli.



Late snack:  plumcot (new fave summer fruit) and Mexican corn on the cob:

source


source



Dinner:  Season's 52 Barbecue Chicken Salad with my gym friends:

source


Plus a life's supply of water.  Probably 12 glasses of water.

Today I'm linking up with Jenn at Peas and Crayons for a little WIAW inspiration.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Wednesday!  Say some ohms and take a deep breath and enjoy your day!

XOXO,

E





































To The Farmer's Market We Go...

Hey People!

How was your Monday?  Mine was bueno!

During the summers I tutor Tuesday-Thursday and I always enjoy my Monday Off Day.  I slept in and woke up to a text from Deb asking if I wanted to go to the Farmer's Market!  I accept trips to the Farmer's Market like the contestants on The Bachelor accept roses.

I love Farmer's Markets because I love to support local farmers, healthy produce, and cooking!  I love to find new recipes based on what is fresh this week at the market.  This week I bought corn for our Bachelorette Girls' Nites!  I made this corn recipe and I highly recommend it.  It's the perfect combo of spicy, sweet (thank you Jesus for Jersey Corn), and cilantro!  I love it so much!  I used OOVO instead of butter to up the healthy factor.


Turned out pretty darn delicious, eh?


Other Farmer's Market finds:

Local PB!  Could life be better?

Jersey Corn

Did they know I was coming?

Maybe I took a dip (or two) into the jar...

I used the PB to whip up some of Gina's baked breakfast cookie!

Amazing like always :)

Last night's dinner was full of deliciousness!  Since I slept in on Monday, I didn't eat lunch--just grapes!  

Dinner was healthy buffalo chicken lettuce wraps.  Gracias to the chef!

We also had Mexican corn and a healthy garden veggie past salad.  

WHAT HAPPENED TO BEN Z!?  THERE WAS SO MUCH CRYING LAST NIGHT!  I get physically uncomfortable when people cry and last night I was twisted into a pretzel over the level of uncomfortable I was.  Excuse that last sentence's poor grammar…but you get the picture!  So much crying!  It's all gonna be okay you guys.  Also, Ben Z, call me…

Have a Happy Tuesday!

XOXO,

E


Monday, June 29, 2015

Weekend Recap


Happy Oxymoron Day!

Today is a pretty low-key day around the casa.  I slept in until 10:15!  Caaaaraaayzyyyy!  I never sleep past 7 am so this was extra glorious!

Rumor has it that we're going to the farmer's market today.


Later on it will be lifting and Zumba.


Then it's Bachelorette Monday with the girls!


I wanted to share this pic with my TCNJ friends, because the caption on this FB post is 15 Words to Eliminate From Your Vocabulary to Sound Smarter and the guy in the picture is wearing a Rider sweatshirt haha :)



This weekend was crazy busy!  I loved every minute of it.


Weekend Frenzy kicked off on Friday with the Tall Ships Festival in Philly.


But FIRST!  A MIRACLE!  There were Clif Bar representatives who gave us samples of a dark chocolate, almond, and sea salt energy bar.  I won't be eating these on the regular because they're pretty much glorified candy bars.


Samples!

That's a Tall Ship
Ships from all over the world came to Philly

Parentals at the Festival






The Jersey Side of the Festival




Arcade Game Box Cars 

Distrito Taco Truck!  Unfortunately it wasn't open :(

Big Chair!

We may be getting kayaks to ride in the river!


Free Pudding!
For lunch, we ate at The Plough and the Stars on 2nd Street.  I've never been there before.  It's a cool Irish pub, but inside it still has that colonial charm that Old City is known for.  

Inside the restaurant  


Irish Curry Chicken with broccoli and Jasmine rice
Irish Curry Chicken is the same as curry chicken but it has mango puree in the mix.  Daaaalish!

Later that night I met up with Cait and we went to the Toritalla Press Cantina in Maple Shade.  It was also a double win because we got to see our Pilates instructor who works there.  I was still stuffed from lunch, so I only had a cup of black bean soup and tortillas salsa and black bean dip.  All was fabulous!

After dinner drinks

The strangest thing happened at drinks!  We were literally sitting at a table and Cait's shoe quit!  The bottom of her wedge just fell off the sandal part!  FELL OFF!  I've never heard of a shoe quitting while sitting!

Waffle Shoe?
Saturday was fun and chill.  In the am I went to the gym for a fun sweat session triathlon:  Zumba, Spinning, Pilates, and Pound.  

Cara and I had plans to go Princeton for dinner, but torrential down pours changed our plans.  We wanted to go to Farmicia for dinner, but there was actually a wedding going on so the restaurant was closed to the public.  We ended up walking 2 blocks in the rain to Cuba Libre.  I've been to Cuba Libre for a birthday party before but never for dinner.  Cuba Libre is a Cuban restaurant in Old City with live Latin dancing Saturday nights.  It's gorgeous inside!  It looks like a street in downtown Havana.  

Cara and I at Cuba Libre!


Sunday started with a long 9 mile training run.  I got up at 5:30 and looked at the weather.  It was not raining when I first woke up and I looked at my weather app and it said that there was only a 30% chance of rain in the 6:00 hour.  I was like 30%?  No problem!  It won't rain.  Well…guess what?  It down poured.

I felt like I was Forest Gump and it was raining sideways, up, down, all over!  I was worried that my iPod was going to break, but luckily it didn't.

One of the reasons I love running is the community of runners.  It's always nice when you're running and you give a quick little runner's wave.  I so admire other runners who are running to work on becoming healthier and happier people.  Running is my therapy and I can't help but smile when I see other runners who are working on bettering themselves.  I always wave because I know that running alleviates the stress of life and that everyone has their own stuff going on and the running wave is a nice way to say I acknowledge the crap going on in your life, and you acknowledge the crap going on in my life.  

To further prove my point, I was running and these two women runners stopped me and told me about some down wires on a neighboring street.  It was so nice to have someone care enough about a complete stranger to warn them about dangerous things up ahead.

This is my last 9 mile run, next week begins July and therefore it is a 10 mile run!

After church, we went to Old Navy and TJ MAXX and I shopped for some new workout clothes.  Old Navy had an awesome sale and I got workout capris and a tank top for $13.00!  Score!  TJ MAXX always has a great work out selection and I got a sports bra, sports socks, and some new Pilates shorts for $30!

Food shopping was next.  I love food shopping :)  Wegman's samples were awesome on Sunday BTW!

Sunday night was awesome!  My girls and I went to Dierks Bentley, Kip Moore, Maddie and Tae, and Canaan Smith.  There's something magical about summer country concerts :)

Pre-concert we held a classy tail gate at my house.  I made a pear, greens, pine nuts, and goat cheese salad.  Kate brought roasted red pepper hummus with multigrain pita chips.

Salad
This stuff tasted like Buffalo Chicken Dip!
Goofing off by the pool.  I heart the flamingos…NOT

We usually take the train into Camden, but sometimes serinidiptiy gets in the way.  Apparently a train car got stuck between two stops and we were rerouted via bus to the next available stop.  

When you're on the bus/train/plane/automobile and you're bored, what are 4 friends to do? 

source


  


So much fun!  Hanging with girlfriends is fabulous because you can be completely yourself and let your hair down!  After the hour and a half train ride/bus ride fiasco, we finally arrived at the concert.

Jess and I went in search for our mutual crush, XTU's radio personality Crockett!  We try to get a picture with him at every concert.  We thought we were the only 2 people who had a crush on him, but APPARENTLY, there's quite a few of us who have Crockett crushes.  

Crockett!
The whole group 

After 1,000 attempts, we finally got a good one :)

After the first few acts, we got upgraded from the lawn to the inside of the venue.  

Upgrade pix!
Kate's first upgrade :)

All the performers were so talented and we could not have had a better time!
Dierks' backdrop 




Dierks and Kip


 I loved this weekend!  It was everything I could have ever wanted from a weekend! I really could not have asked for anything more from this weekend.  Good friends, good food, and good music!  All of my faves!

Who is looking forward to Bachelorette tonight?!  We're having a leetle party tonight like usual and I can't wait to watch tonight!

Enjoy your day!


XOXO,

E