Fall Pureed Vegetable Soup

Ingredients:
1/2 large butternut squash
1 medium yellow onion
2 large carrots
1 medium sweet potato
salt and pepper to taste
3T butter (or butter substitute)
3T minced garlic
1/4tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp rosemary
1 bay leaf
2-3 cans chicken broth
1-2 c. fresh spinach
chopped walnuts for garnish

Instructions:
1. prepare veggies by peeling the butternut squash (with a vegetable peeler- I just learned how much easier this is than removing the skin with a knife) then roughly dicing the other vegetables so that they will cook evenly.  Don't worry about cubing perfectly, you're going to puree it later!  Leave the skin on the carrots and sweet potato.  It's easier and I think it adds nutrients.

2. spread the veggies on a baking sheet that has been sprayed with cooking spray and roast at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

3. sautee garlic and butter until bubbling then add the spices and herbs

4. transfer veggies from pan to soup pot with the garlic, butter and spices and coat veggies.

5. add 1 can chicken broth and allow to reduce

6. add spinach then another can of chicken broth, cover and bring to a boil.

7. puree soup with an immersion blender and add additional chicken broth until the soup comes to your desired consistency.

(I have no picture here because I burned myself trying to take it. My left limb is beginning to look horrible- burn + bandaged finger)

8. serve with chopped walnuts and cracked black pepper as garnish.  I also added some garlic bread (gluten free of course)

Here's my garlic bread recipe:

This is a great alternative to your typical garlic bread.  It has much fewer calories and it takes no effort.

sandwich bread (or you can use something fancy if you have it)
olive oil
garlic powder
salt and pepper

1. set oven to broiler setting
2. place bread on pan and lightly drizzle with olive oil- I make a zig-zag on each piece of bread
3. sprinkle salt (I use sea salt) and crack pepper over the top then dust with garlic powder (if you use garlic salt omit the added salt from the recipe)
4. put in the oven until browned each broiler varies in intensity, but it won't take long so watch it carefully.

Your toast will be crispy on the top and soft on the bottom- it is SO good (and ridiculously easy)!

Disclaimer: I used Instagram to alter my photos a bit.  The soup is not a pretty color like in the photos...the spinach gives it a pea green color...It still tastes really good, but if the color is too much for you, just omit the spinach from the recipe!

Crazy-Good Cookies ( You could maybe call them healthy)!

I don't have a picture of these because we gobbled them up too quickly.  I'll have to say this is a supreme creation (I am patting myself on the back right now). You can try to tell yourself that these cookies are healthy (and they're healthier than your average cookie) but let's get real- they're just good, not healthy.

Ingredients:
3/4 c. softened butter or butter substitute (I use Earth Balance for dairy free)
2/3c. white sugar
2/3c. brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 c. flour (use brown rice flour for gluten free)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
3/4 tsp cinnamon
2 1/2 c. old fashioned oats
1 c. granola (I usually use Bare Naked but now I use Nature's Path Pumpkin Flax Plus- unlike the name implies, it does not taste like pumpkin, it just has pumpkin seeds.  I do not recommend this if you have a strong gluten allergy because it has a disclaimer that it has been made in the same factory as products containing wheat.  If you just have an intolerance for gluten, you should be fine.)
1/2 c. raisins (or 1 c. if you choose not to use craisins)
1/2 c. craisins
1 c. chocolate chips
1/2 c. chopped walnuts (optional)

Instructions
1. preheat oven to 375
2. cream butter and sugars until well combined (maybe up to 10 minutes if you're feeling patient).
3. add in eggs and vanilla
4. in a separate bowl, sift together flour, salt, cinnamon, and baking powder
5. add flour mixture to wet ingredients until well combined
6. turn mixer to low setting to add oats, granola, raisins, craisins, chocolate chips and nuts

drop tablespoon (ish) sized cookies onto an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.

You're going to love these things!

Late Summer/Early Fall Dinner

So, we've been working on this special diet for about 3 weeks and it seems to be doing the trick for Russell We're going to keep at it and hopefully decrease the need for meds!  I'm going to try to get better at posting my recipes that get the thumbs up from both Russell and me.

As always, I'm terrible at measuring so my measurements are usually approximate.

More recipes to come but I'll start you off with these two!

Curried Butternut Squash and Chickpeas with Jasmine Rice and Asparagus

Why this rocks: packed with vitamins and protein and low in calories, this meal is filling and well-rounded.  It's Indian-inspired flavor is exciting and is an easy step away from your nightly "no-brainer"

Ingredients:
1/2 lg. butternut squash
1/2 yellow onion
1 pkg Tasty Bite seasoned Chickpeas (these are already seasoned they are so yummy)
1-2 lg carrots
1T garlic
pinch of salt
1tsp yellow curry spice blend
1/2 can chicken broth
1 c. Jasmine rice
asparagus (however much you think you can eat...this replaces the salad part of your meal)

Instructions:
1. follow instructions to prepare the jasmine rice (I love this rice because it's very light and fluffy and takes half the time to cook as regular rice)
2. chop carrots, butternut squash and onion into bite sized pieces and saute with garlic, when it begins to soften add salt and curry spice blend
3. add chickpeas and stir together with chicken broth.  add chicken broth in small batches so that it doesn't make the food soggy
4. while butternut squash mixture is cooking, prepare asparagus by trimming the ends LIGHTLY coating with olive oil, salt and pepper and putting into a 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes
5. serve dish as pictured, yields 4 servings.

Note: We discovered half-way into dinner that the curry has red pepper in it.  Russell's diet says no pepper flesh.  Keep this in mind if you're supposed to steer clear of peppers.

Grilled Peaches with Cinnamon and Honey

So simple and so delish!!

Why this rocks: This dessert is super easy to prepare and you can put in on to cook right before you sit down for dinner.  It's warm and satisfying- like cobbler without the added sugar and calories!  Not to mention the vitamins you get from the peaches and when you use local honey you're going green and possibly building up your immunity to seasonal allergies!

Ingredients:

1 peach per person halved, peeled and pitted

cinnamon
honey

Instructions:
1. Heat your grill or grill pan to a medium- medium high heat
2. sprinkle the flat side of each peach half with cinnamon
3. place peaches flat side down onto the grill pan.  Do not move them around or flip them or they won't have pretty grill marks.
4. Cook for approximately 10 minutes.
5. Remove peaches from the heat and lightly drizzle with honey.
This dessert can be eaten alone or with ice cream or sorbet.  I thought raspberry sorbet would be a great accent!

Yum!  Eat up :)

...and that's all!

Gluten Free Dairy Free "Ice Cream" Cake

Russell turned 29 this week, or as our friends Peter and Katelyn call it "30 minus 1".  I always make Russell an ice cream cake for his birthday but this year I had to be  a little more creative.  Russell is on a new diet that we are trying in lieu of meds that were prescribed to him that came along with some pretty undesirable side effects. The point is to try to keep his digestive tract working efficiently and limit the number of foreign bacteria in his body.

So here's the diet: no gluten, no dairy, no shellfish, limit red meat and pork, no tomatoes, no peppers, no eggplant, no potatoes, limit eggs, limit chocolate.

"Yipes" you say.  "Yipes" is right, but we're making it work and I plan to blog about my recipe creations throughout this diet trial.

Off I went to Target to get inspiration for this birthday cake experiment...

At target I found a decent selection of gluten free, dairy free products which I was really excited about!  I brought home Pamela's Vanilla Cake Mix, Haagen Daaz Peach Orchard Sorbet, and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter butter substitute (which I'll have to say, I'm really sad about using fake butter...so not healthy).

I created a vanilla cake with peach sorbet filling frosted with caramel butter cream.

Here's the cake story in pictures:

All of the alternative ingredient options- I'll say one thing: this diet is expensive!

The cake mix gives three options: basic, light and fluffy, and dense.  I went with light and fluffy which I recommend, I can't imagine the texture of the other two options but the light and fluffy seemed like a normal cake.  I baked the cake in 2 greased 8" rounds with parchment paper lining the bottom.

Time for the frosting!  In a medium saucepan melt 1 stick of butter with 1/2c. (ish) of brown sugar, 1tsp cinnamon, 1tsp vanilla and 2 cranks of sea salt.  Stir throughout while cooking over medium-low heat until sugar has dissolved.  In your mixer, add room temperature butter (or fake butter) with 1-2tsp vanilla and 1 c. powdered sugar start mixer on low setting and increase to med-high setting.  Be patient, it looks like the butter and sugar will never come together but it will. Once it begins to form butter cream substance, continue adding powdered sugar in 1/3c. intervals until it forms a stiff paste kind of like fresh playdoh.  You want this mixture to be stiff because you're going to add in the caramel sauce next.  Make sure you cool your caramel mixture to room temperature before adding it into the butter cream.  If you pour it in warm, it will melt the butter in the frosting and pretty much ruin it.  Slowly add in caramel mixture.  If frosting becomes too thin, add more powdered sugar.  Sorry for my lack of a perfect formula.

Once cakes are done, remove them from their pans and let them cool on a baking rack.  Once they have cooled, layer them into a spring form pan.  The smallest spring form pan I have is a 9" but I didn't want to make a cake that size so I made 8" cakes, cut them down to 6" cakes by using a bowl for a stencil and used the leftovers to make my spring form pan smaller.  Once I put in the leftovers, I put plastic wrap in to form a barrier then began layering my cakes.  I used about 1 1/2 pints of sorbet for the filling and then topped it with the remaining cake round.  After all of that, I covered it with parchment paper to prevent sticking in the following step.

Now it's time for the cake to set.  I placed a dinner plate over the top of the cake to weight it down and then put frozen fruit bags on top of that (mostly because I didn't have another place to put it).  You should probably let it set for about 2 hours but I didn't have that long so I let it set for 40 minutes. 

To remove the cake from the pan, I just lifted mine out with the plastic wrap that I placed in before.  If your cake is actually the size of the spring form pan, just release the spring and slide the cake out of the pan.  I placed the cake on a cold glass serving plate to prevent melting.

Since I didn't have time for my cake to set as long as it should've in the freezer, there was a little bit of sliding while I frosted it as you can see from this picture...oops!

Here's the finished product! It's actually pretty and trendy with it's neutral color combination :)

I'll have to say for a non-dairy, non-gluten, non-chocolate cake, this was pretty darn good!

Filet o' Finger OR My Trip to the ER

Well ladies and gents, it has finally happened.   I have gotten my first stitches ever.  That's right- ever.  Now I know you may be surprised because I am the clumsiest person I know.  I guess you could call me lucky.  I wish I had an exciting story to tell you like "I saved my dogs from near death by jumping in front of a car" or "I was helping a senior citizen with her groceries and fell" or "I was running into a burning building" or just SOMETHING cooler than this:

"I was cutting an avacado."  Yep, that's it.  I was just trying to prepare a healthy lunch and I couldn't remove the pit of the avacado so I tried to stab it.  It rolled, and I stabbed/sliced my left pointer finger.  There was a lot of blood and I was pretty ticked...and home by myself.

As I examined my filet o' finger I decided I probably needed to go to the hospital so I made a compress and called a dear friend.  Emily answered the phone and I calmly start the conversation with,

"Hey!  What's up?  Are you at home?"

Emily says "I just got to Partners lunch" are you coming?

Me: "I don't think I'm going to make it.  I just cut myself and I'm bleeding a lot" (all in a conversational tone)

Emily:  "Hmm.  Do you think I should come now?"

Me: "Oh, you don't have to.  I can call someone else" (as my apartment begins to look like a murder scene)

Emily: "Do you think you need stitches?"

Me: "Yeah, I think so, but I'm not sure."

Emily: "Ok! I'm coming now"

After we hang up the phone, I call Russell.  Bless his soul, Russell doesn't always do well in emergencies.  Luckily he is on his lunch break so he answers his phone.  I try to stay calm while I hold the compress on my finger and tell him that I will be heading to the hospital.  He offers to come meet us at the hospital but I tell him I'll just keep him posted (I envision Russell puking when he sees my finger)  I expect him to ask me if he could bring me a beer (that's his solution for all ailments) but I can tell he's genuinely worried...looking back I think my voice was pretty shaky.

Now it's time to wait on Emily.  I'm starting to get nauseated and feel faint so I unlock the door as I am sure Emily will find me passed out in the floor.  I start trying to distract myself so as I hold my hand over my head still in a compress, I start reading the new Restoration Hardware look book.  It's pretty good- if you get one you should really take some time to read it.

Emily arrived and I ask her if she wants to see it.  She sees the massive amounts of blood in my kitchen says "could you see some whitish yellow in your finger?" I say "yes" and she says "nah, I trust you.  Let's just go to the hospital."

Off we went...with no idea where we were going!  Emily quickly realized that we weren't sure where we were going so she mapped the closest urgent care- note to all those living in Alexan: there aren't any close urgent care clinics.  We ended up going to Duke ER and I think that's the best decision we could've made.   I don't have much ER experience but I'm pretty sure Duke may have one of the best ER facilities around.

1) they have free valet parking

2) I was triaged within 3 minutes of walking in ( twice...once by a nice nurse and once by a humorless old guy who gave Emily a talk-to-the-hand gesture and told her to pick up our purses and get out of our way...he was the only negative to the whole experience.

3) after my 5 minutes (or less) in triage, I was sent back to the waiting room long enough for my bottom to touch my chair and then I was whisked back to meet my doctor.

4) My doctor rocked (and loves his dogs as much as I love mine)!  He was friendly, conversational and knew what he was doing!

In trying to keep my long story short-ish so I'll tell the rest of the story in pictures.  Be prepared, these are graphic:

This is me right after meeting the doctor and getting my finger cleaned up. Look how happy I am.   

This is my barf pail.  I told the doctor that needles make me nauseated and he wasn't taking any chances.

Here's the doc working his magic.

In the words of Rachel Ray "Yum-O"  This is finished product- 5 stitches later.

The sweet nurse who bandaged me up is a long lost best friend.  In the time we had to converse I learned of her love for J.Crew.  I know for sure we have matching barrettes, and two cardigans that are the same and we both use their personal shopper service.  She was awesome and SO NICE! She did a great job teaching me to bandage my finger and gave me the best tetanus shot I'd ever had.  That's right.  I didn't even know she had given it to me.  Ask my mom- I turn into an irrational baby when I get shots and I didn't even bat an eye when I got this one!

Now, I have to spend a little more time telling you about the awesomeness of Emily.  The only way I could've gotten through this incident in such good spirits (I didn't shed a single tear) was with Emily at my side.  Emily was with me every step of the way.  We started talking when Emily showed up at my apartment and we didn't stop talking until she walked me back inside of my apartment.  We talked future jobs, blogging, clothes, dogs- you name it we chatted about it.  I can't say it enough Em- you made my day!!!  It meant so much to me that you would sit through surgery, keep me comfortable, miss your lunch (poor thing was probably starving) AND take pictures of the whole ordeal.

Finally the real kicker- I accidentally let my health insurance lapse in the summer and my new health insurance plan activated on (drum roll please).......September 1.  The day I cut my finger.

...and that's all!

My Birthday Rocked!

Last week (now almost a week and a half, this blog took awhile to write) I turned 27. BORRR-ring.  Except for that I had a million birthday celebrations and it was awesome!  I love birthdays, not just mine- everyone's!

I started my birthday celebration a little less than a week before at my grandparent's house.  Details are given in my previous post- nothing is better than a traditional birthday celebration with family!

photo courtesy of Faith Weber

I continued my birthday in Memphis at the Polo Club with my new family!  So much fun and I also talked about this party in the last post.

On we went to Birmingham where we again acknowledged my birthday :)

Get ready for the big one......Russell rocked out my birthday with an awesome gift!  As I've said before, Russell believes that he is not a good planner and not good at giving gifts. However, after our super-fun anniversary and the present coming up, I think Russell is becoming quite the gift giver.

I think this is an appropriate time to talk about my love of gifts.  I don't really care if gifts are expensive.  I just really want them to be thoughtful.  More than getting gifts, I love giving gifts and I put a lot of thought into the gifts I give.  I'll also say receiving gifts usually stresses me out.  I hate when people are waiting for my reaction or judging the look on my face.  It is a known fact that I have terrible reactions to excitement.  My excited face usually looks negative or fake so for those of you who want to surprise me in the future, just know that when I look you in the eye and say, "Thank you, I love it." (yes that is followed by a period not an exclamation mark), I truly mean it and I am thankful for the gift I have been given.

Ok, now that I've left you in suspense about this awesome gift I've gotten from Russell.... he surprised me with a trip to the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta!

taken from rockandwaterscape.com

I know what you're thinking- isn't that something that a 10 year old would want for her birthday?  Well, I would've loved it when I was 10 and I love it now!  I have a fascination with aquariums like some adults have fascinations with fast cars and amusement parks.  I love aquariums because I love learning about all of the crazy stuff that aquariums have.  I mean, how many opportunities do you have to see a whale shark or a giant sea horse, or beluga whales, or penguins, or lion fish, or giant eels?  I always walk away learning SO MUCH from the aquarium!  Now that you have confirmed your suspicions that I am in fact a nerd, let's continue on with this great gift...

Not only did Russell plan to take me to the aquarium, he also booked a hotel and found daycare for the dogs!!  He did a fabulous job and we had a wonderful time!

Sadly, we didn't take as many pictures as we should've but here are some jellyfish :)

Albino alligator- what?!

...and here are some of my favorite things at the aquarium that we didn't take pictures of ourselves:

otters!  taken from www.pba.org

Beluga Whales!!! taken from projects.accessatlanta.com

Starfish!!! taken from thornsaddculture.com

Not only did I LOVE the aquarium, we ate some AMAAAZING food!  Atlanta is a very dog-friendly city and Genna and Hattie were able to join us for breakfast and dinner both days!

Here's a rundown of our vacation:

We stayed at Hotel Indigo in Midtown which is a chain of boutique-like hotels.  I'm going to have to say, we can't recommend this one!  I've stayed at the Hotel Indigo in Nashville and I loved it.  The Atlanta Indigo indicated that they were in the middle of a lobby remodel.  It was nothing like we had pictured.  Imagine this: visquene (I know that's spelled wrong) everywhere, a makeshift restaurant, closed regular entry, and a teeth-rattling drilling sound that began at 9am and lasted for most of the day.  We stayed on the dog-friendly floor which was on the 3rd floor and did not lend itself to the greatest view and the room was very European (read very small).  The positives: no extra charge for pets, very clean room, great location, good soap and shampoo (Aveda).

picture taken from theatlantatraveler.com

After we checked in and unloaded our cars (I don't know if I've said this yet but we had to drive by ourselves all the way back from AR.  We were thankful for all of the stops we made!), we were on a mission for dinner reservations.  We needed dog friendly, covered patios (it was raining) and somewhere open on Sunday and we found just the place!

picture taken from atlantacityvoter.com

Anis (that's pronounced aNISE) Bistro: This yummy French restaurant is in Buckhead.  It was raining this day so we were happy that their patio is covered.  They warmly welcomed us even though we were last minute diners and they loved our pups!


We began the next morning with a walk to breakfast:

taken from www.dailycandy.com

Bakeshop: This is a hip bakery in Midtown Atl where we visited when we were in Atlanta for Michael and Meg's wedding in the early spring. It was great then and it was great now!  They've got cute little homemade dog biscuits that Genna and Hattie enjoyed for breakfast.  Russell had a gruyere and ham  croissant and I had a fruit, yogurt, and homemade granola.  A perfect start to a perfect morning!

After breakfast we trusted the good ole' GPS to take us to the doggie daycare that would be keeping Genna and Hattie occupied for the day.  We had committed to walking as many places as we could while in Atlanta and lets just say we were glad it was daylight and we had two dogs on our walk to daycare.  That walk took us through some sketchy scenery only to find out later that we could've stayed on Peachtree for most of the way (a much safer alternative)!

taken from barkatl.com

Bark ATL: If you live or work in Midtown Atlanta, I highly recommend this place.  They were happy to accommodate our pups since we were traveling through and didn't have time for a trial day.  Our girls had fun and more importantly, they tolerated Genna's poor behavior i.e. jumping the 5ft barrier wall and unlocking the door locks!  They separate the dogs by size to keep everyone safe and have puppycams so we could check in on the girls throughout the day.  When we picked them up, the girls were happy and tired and the staff was very complimentary even though we knew Genna was a handful.

Off to the aquarium!  See pictures above :)

We took a quick lunch break to go have sushi.  That's right, sushi.  What else would you be craving after looking at sea life for two hours?  Some may say it's an odd choice but I say it's logical :)  We ate at...darn I can't think of the name of it but it was REALLY good.  We both had cucumber salads and split the chefs sushi special.

Back to the aquarium we went to see the dolphin show. I loved the dolphins but the actual show was not for me.  I see what they were going for- dolphin musical- but the man in the light up cape saving the sea from monsters by summoning the dolphins wasn't really doing it for me.  It would have been much cooler if they went for the SeaWorld educational type production.  All in all- I was pumped to see the dolphins.

taken from www.designingzoos.com

We then went through the shark tunnel which was super cool!  This is a video (snaps for me for figuring out how to put a video on my blog)

taken from www.georgiaaquarium.org

And off to the 4D adventure.  It was a cute little 3D movie ripped from finding Nemo.  What makes it 4D you ask?  Well, you actually get splashed and some things jump out from under your seat. It was pretty cute and I would've begged to see it over and over again if I had been seven.  By now the aquarium is closing so it was off to pick up the pups!

taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/aubreywilliams/page4/

After we picked up the girls we headed to dinner at TAP.  Outstanding beer list and exceptional gastropub food.  It was a perfect night for eating outside and the dogs, being exhausted from daycare, calmly sat or slept while we ate dinner.  The staff is friendly and knowledgeable and the atmosphere is outstanding!  This was one of our favorite meals for sure!

The next morning we packed up and navigated through the construction to load up and head out.

taken from www.duchessfare.com

We ended our Atlanta vacation at Highland Bakery.  Since we were on our way out of town, Russell and I were in different cars and parking was a bit tricky.  Russell found parking first and grabbed a table.  Genna and I had to park a bit further away, giving her plenty of time to do her business in discretely, but she chose to poop right in front of the restaurant manager (or possibly owner) in a small flowerbed by someone else's table.  Thanks a lot Genna.  I was given a waste bag and nicely asked to dispose of Genna's business in a trashcan far down the street.  Enough about that disgustingness and on to the food...

Russell and I were going back and forth trying to figure out if we wanted breakfast or lunch.  We both chose lunch and split french toast for dessert.  This was an instance where we should've split our entrees but we didn't.  Luckily, sandwiches keep well in the car and we were able to eat our other halves later.  I'll say the sandwiches were superb- fresh bread, premium ingredients etc. but the star of the show was the french toast.  It was made of challah and it was the most perfect consistency of egg and milk and cinnamon.  Y-U-M.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

(picture taken from ilovehatemycity.com)

This is it! The awesomeness that is challah french toast!

Then we were off for a long trip back to Durham with an hour and a half detour to repair the bike rack that was threatening to throw our bikes into the highway...this is a whole blog post in itself so I will spare you the details.

Last leg of birthday celebration:

Double birthday party for me and my friend Kate.  That's right- Katie and Kate the Kappas turned 27 on the same day!  We hung out at the apartment grill and had sliders and sides with the star of the show being this awesome birthday cake by Lara Hussary.  Pictures below:

photo courtesy of Kate Thomas

(more pictures coming soon)

So that's it folks.  An awesome birthday filled with friends, family, and fishes.  What more could a girl ask for?