Weekend Eats- Memorial Day Vineyard Picnic

Hope you enjoyed the Memorial Day weekend! It has been a busy three-day weekend for me, full of fun stuff and great food. I got to spend a lot of time with my family and friends.

On Saturday, I dressed up like a real person and went out for lunch at a Taiwanese restaurant. This is actually a big deal because I usually live in yoga pants, running clothes, or PJs.

Sorry, I was too busy eating to take pictures of the actual food. For dessert, I got shaved ice. This stuff is the ultimate, refreshing dessert on a hot summer day. 

Although I had shaved ice for my lunch dessert, I got froyo for my after-dinner dessert. I can never have too much froyo, and after this purchase, I got a $5 reward on my card (spoiler alert: I already spent it).

On Sunday, my friend and I cycled to Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard for a wine tasting. Emphasis on tasting because cycling while buzzed just doesn't sound very fun. Or maybe it is if I didn't have to climb so many damn hills on the way home.

After a long day of riding, I needed to chill out so I watched Star Trek (2013) on Netflix with a box of chocolates. And no, this box was not full before I started the movie, and it is not empty after finishing the movie. There's still like... half of them left. I swear.

My cycling trip to taste wine at a local vineyard was such a success that I wanted to go again. I decided to pack a picnic and take my family to the vineyard on Memorial Day. They also had a sign that said Fresh Sangria so I had to go back to try it. It was delicious and the perfect refreshing drink for a picnic. Seriously, this stuff goes down as easily as juice.

For the picnic, I brought some goat cheese, a baguette, crackers...

Sandwiches, potato salad, lemonade, and watermelon.

I came back because I wanted to get a few bottles of wine, as well. Mission accomplished.

And of course I had to take a wine bottle selfie :P

After picnicking and hiking up a mountain, we went to get froyo for the second time this weekend. At least I got to use my rewards card.

And finally, I got pho for dinner.

What was the best thing you ate this weekend? Did you do anything special for Memorial Day?

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Weekend Eats- Cupcakes and Carbs

Earlier this week, I made vanilla cupcakes filled with lemon curd and topped with lemon buttercream. I've been eating these all week and I'm surprised that there's one left. Well, I hid it in the fridge and was planning on eating it, but forgot. It's still MINE.

I had my 44 mile road race on Sunday, so I needed to eat plenty of carbs on Saturday. Since I've never raced my bike before (except for a sprint duathlon), I didn't know what to expect and what my fueling strategy should be. I know that riding hard for 2 hours would require some type of fueling during the race, but eating a solid meal the night before will also help top off my glycogen stores. Before every race, it's tradition for me to eat a pasta dinner. I was planning on carbing up at Buca di Beppo, but mid-May is a terrible time to go there since there's prom, graduation, weddings, etc. I didn't make a reservation (doh) and there was a two hour wait. Hells to the no was I going to wait. I was already really hungry, so I had to think of an alternative. I ended up choosing Macaroni Grill, which is a fine substitute. They have good bread, and between me, a friend, my brother, and cousin, we polished off three loaves before the entrees came out. I went with the largest pasta platter, which was a trio of cannelloni, chicken parmesan (over more pasta), and a huge slab of lasagna. I demolished the entire thing. So much salty, carby goodness! 

Well, the carbo-loading worked, and I fueled pretty well. So well in fact, that I didn't even eat a single gel during the race. I only consumed approximately 200 calories from my sports drink.

After the race, I wanted to go to Eden Center on the drive back home. Eden Center is in Falls Church, Virginia and it's a Vietnamese shopping square full of restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries, etc. So much good and authentic Vietnamese food. Unfortunately, I live about 45 minutes away from Eden Center, so I rarely come here. I went to a restaurant called Rice Paper for an early dinner with my dad. We got stuffed grape leaves for an appetizer and noodle soup for the entrees.

I ordered a noodle soup with "duck salad" and I was kind of surprised that it came separately. The soup was in a lightly flavored broth with rice noodles and bamboo. The duck came with a lot of hearts and it was a bit chewy. It also came with a sweet chili ginger sauce that was delicious.

I love Vietnamese food because it comes with so many fresh, colorful and flavorful herbs and veggies. This meal really hit the spot. I only had a Clif bar, PB&J, and a banana before the race!

Of course, I had to get dessert. I went to a bakery and bought a bunch of buns, cookies, and sponge cakes to take home. What I really wanted was THIS.

Not sure what this is called, but it's a Vietnamese dessert that's layered with mung beans, grass jelly, pandan jelly, and taro, sweetened coconut milk, all topped with ice. You stir it together and eat it with a spoon or straw. Kind of like Chinese/Taiwanese shaved ice. There a lot of other toppings, such as fruit, tapioca, red bean, etc. This is so refreshing on a hot summer day. 

Do you like Vietnamese food?

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Weekend Eats- a Mother's Day Meal

The weekend was off to a great start with delicious pizza from a local pizzeria. The restaurant makes one of the best wood-fired Neapolitan style pizzas in the area. I try to go at least once a month, always on Fridays. This time, I splurged on the special: porcini cream, mozz, cherry tomato, and ramps. It was mainly the ramps that caught my eye. The earthy, savory flavor of the porcini gave the pizza a nice depth of flavor, though I thought the ramps were a bit lackluster. And it was kind of hard to eat it off a pizza. I still inhaled the entire pizza.

For Mother's Day, I had a special dinner planned for my mother and my aunt. Earlier in the week, I had told them that we were going to a nice restaurant that I got reservations for. For the afternoon, my dad kept them out of the house by taking them shopping while I cooked. They got home right at dinner time, and what a surprise they had when the "restaurant" turned out to be in our own dining room! I got my younger cousins to help, and they played the host and waiter. They also helped pick out flowers, cards, and presents.

We started with some hor d'oeuvres. I made caprese salad stacks with tomato, mozzerella and basil, as well as cucumbers topped with cream cheese-filled smoked salmon.

We had a huge cobb salad with asparagus, radishes, avocado, strawberries, peas, and egg, tossed in a lemon-balsamic vinaigrette. The meat dish was steak stuffed with mushroom and bleu cheese.

For dessert, I made a lemon chiffon cake filled with lemon curd and frosted with lemon butter cream. I actually just added a bit of curd to a standard buttercream recipe, and it worked perfectly.

How did you celebrate Mother's Day?

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Weekend Eats- Eating around Boston

This past Thursday through Saturday, I took a trip up to Boston. We arrived Thursday night and headed to Chinatown for dinner. I heard that the Asian food in Chinatown is very good, and we ended up choosing a Malaysian restaurant called Penang. I've tried Malaysian food before, but I hadn't been to a Malaysian restaurant. The flavors are typical of Southeast Asian cuisine, with some Indian influences.

We ordered a fish head curry, malaysian stir-fried noodles, and an Indian flat bread with this curry/soup dipping broth. The fish in the curry was very delicious, and both my dad and I really enjoy fish. The noodles were also very flavorful, and we finished everything.

I got recommendations from friends to try Flour Bakery, and I'm glad I did. I went to the Back Bay location and got the "Twice-baked brioche" and an iced coffee with soy. The pastry was delicious! This was my second breakfast on Friday morning.

Being in Boston, I was on a mission to eat a lobster roll. After spending a few hours looking at apartments, we went to Summer Shack for a late lunch. The restaurant is touristy, but I heard the lobster roll here was good. Lobster right now is really expensive, but I bit the bullet and spent over $24 on the roll. Not sure if it was worth it, but it was very tasty with large chunks of lobster meat, lightly dressed with mayo. The roll itself was also delicious; lightly toasted and buttered, which perfectly complemented the lobster. I also sampled the mussels, which had a very flavorful sauce. I would recommend this place for good seafood!

Around dinner time, my dad and I made our way to Faneuil Hall, a large market square with restaurants, little shops and stands, and a lot of food counters where you can grab a quick bite to eat. There were a lot of food options, from seafood to Greek, Chinese, sandwiches, gelato, ice cream, etc. I was a bit overwhelmed by all the delicious-looking food, but I wasn't very hungry. Instead, we decided to sit down for a beer and have a snack. My dad really wanted fried calamari and I wanted raw oysters. Raw oysters are always such a treat since I rarely eat them.

The beer and fried food was enough to satiate my hunger, so I didn't end up getting food from the market. We shopped around for a bit, and then decided to walk to Chinatown to take a look around. I bought a taro bubble tea, since I didn't feel like eating a real dinner. However, we ended up at a dumpling restaurant, where my dad and I split a small order of soup dumplings. They were delicious, even though I was pretty full.

On Sunday, I got back from my long bike ride later than I expected, so I went out for a late lunch. I was cycling from 8:40am to about 1:45pm, with a few breaks in between, so I needed real food ASAP. For nutrition, I brought two gels and a Probar, which was just barely enough to keep me from bonking. I decided to go out for Thai with the family. We got marinated pork skewers and corn fritters for appetizers, and I got a rice noodle soup in a sour "pink" broth. It was topped with fried tofu and wonton skins, squid, fish balls, and white fungus. Very interesting and different. I ate most of it, as well as some food from my family's plates. We always like to share food so we can try different dishes.

And even though I was stuffed, I felt like I had room for more food about an hour later. There was a froyo place nearby, so I got frozen yogurt as well! All that food definitely made up the calorie deficit from my big ride.

What was the best thing you ate this weekend? Do you like Thai food?

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Weekend Eats- Cookies, Carbs, and Cake

This Weekend Eats doesn't sound so healthy, does it? Let's start with this huge batch of cookies I made on Friday to sell at my charity yard sale. I made about 7 dozen sugar and chocolate chip cookies. I still have some left over, since they didn't sell very well.

After baking cookies in the morning, I went to yoga and was running errands, so I didn't get to eat lunch until 2pm. A great way to spend over $10 on salad is to hit up the Whole Foods salad bar when you're really hungry.

Since I had my Pikes Peek 10K race on Sunday, I ate my traditional pre-race pasta dinner on Saturday. I always eat pasta before a race, regardless of whether I need it because it's tradition. My brother, cousin, and I went to Buca di Beppo. We made the mistake of ordering only a small seafood pasta and small eggplant parmesan. All three of us can put away a ton of food, and we demolished ALL of it. Plus two bread baskets. And only one of us was racing the next day!

Monday was my brother's birthday, so I spent the day making him a carrot cake that he requested. I frosted it with cream cheese frosting and decorated with buttercream frosting.

For his birthday dinner, the family went out to celebrate at a steakhouse. We started with a basket of freshly baked bread, fried shrimp, and parmesan asparagus for appetizers.

                                             

                                  

I got a 16 oz T-bone steak, medium rare. Only ate about half it and most of the baked potato. I like steak on occasion, but I'm not a huge fan of eating huge slabs of meat. This will go on top of a salad for lunch tomorrow :)

Dessert was the birthday cake, even though we got free dessert at the restaurant. There's also about 3/4 of the cake left, as well as leftover cookies from the yard sale. So many sweets! Send help.

What was the best thing you ate this weekend?

Do you usually go out to eat for birthdays? What is your favorite birthday meal?

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Weekend Eats- Eatin' and Relaxin'

Saturday was the fifth and final day of my Disney World Vacation. You can read about my days at each of the theme parks:

Magical Kingdom
Animal Kingdom
Epcot
Hollywood Studios

I had a wonderful time at each of the parks, but it is really tiring to walk around the parks all day. Who knew having so much fun could be so exhausting? The last day was spent at a slower pace, and we took our time in the morning to sleep in (relatively) and eat breakfast. Of course, I wanted to go for a run, since it was the last day I could run around with this kind of a view:

For breakfast, I got mini Mickey waffles that came with applesauce and strawberry topping. It was actually a kid's meal, since I wasn't feeling very hungry.

We bought the "Water Parks Fun & More" option, which included admission to all the water parks, DisneyQuest (an indoor theme park), the ESPN complex, and mini golf. This deal is worth it if you go to at least two of the minor theme parks in Disney World. We decided to go to Typhoon Lagoon for half the day.

The water park had a large wave pool in the middle, surrounded by "beaches". It was so nice to lie down in the chairs and soak up the sun. Gotta get my beach tan on.

I swam around the wave pool, swam with some fish and sharks, chilled in the lazy river, and went down a couple of water slides. A couple of hours playing in the water was enough for me, and I just wanted to relax on the "beach" with a cocktail in hand for the rest of the time ;)

Got a chicken wrap, chips, and a beer for lunch. What the hell, I gave up trying to eat healthy at Disney World. It was my last day of vacation.

We headed to Downtown Disney for the rest of the afternoon and evening. We should have went earlier, since there was so much to do! I've been to Downtown Disney in the California Disneyland, but this one was about three times bigger. So many restaurants, shops, and entertainment centers. I could spend a whole day there.

I got one of the famous Disney character caramel apples. I chose Minnie Mouse, and shared it with the family when we got home. Way to make something healthy unhealthy, Disney! It was delicious.

We didn't go to Planet Hollywood for dinner. I just took this picture because I thought it looked cool.

I highly recommend making reservations for any of the restaurants in Downtown Disney. It gets so crowded and I imagine the wait times are ridiculous. I made reservations to Paradiso 37 for dinner. It was "Americas" themed, and the flavors were more Latin/South American. There was steak, burgers, burritos, and tacos among many other options on the menu. 

We started with a trio of dips and chips: guacamole, queso, and chili. I ordered a sampler platter for my entree, which included chicken flautas, skirt steak with chimichurri, chorizo, and cilantro beans and rice. Everything was delicious, but I think the steak was my favorite. So flavorful and juicy.

Dessert was a flan, and even though I was really full, I managed to eat most of it :P

Today, we left Disney World and came back to real life. Time to get back to my normal routine. Boo.

Do you go all out when you're on vacation, or do you exercise moderation?

I tend to do the former, as you can see...

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