It's been awhile since I had a girls weekend with my sisters & mom, the last one was 2 years ago and I wrote about it here. We had one planned earlier this year but weather/being sick got in the way and then life just got busy. Luckily we were able to plan a short weekend in August where we could all get together out in Maryland & Virginia (hopefully next time Sonya can make it!) We packed quite a bit of stuff into the weekend without it being too rushed, it was a good amount of trying new restaurants and exploring new areas. We started Friday with pedicures and dinner at Cava in Baltimore. I've been to Cava a few times and it's one of my favorite restaurants around here, both the upscale restaurant and the fast casual version. They serve mediterranean small plates which meant we could order a bunch of different items and try a little bit of everything. That's pretty much the perfect type of meal for my family since we love to share food and try it all. They also had fantastic cocktails. We spent the rest of the evening hanging out at Brittany and Dustin's apartment relaxing. The next morning we eased into the day with a nice walk around Columbia before getting around and heading to Navy Yard in DC. We found good lunch and dessert options here plus pretty views just walking around. The next stop for our day was in VA. We made a quick pit stop at my apartment then off to Arrowine where we did some wine and beer tasting before driving to Mosaic at Merrifield. We spend the rest of the afternoon indulging in treats and shopping here. We shared affogatos from Dolcezza, shopped at Papersource, Anthropologie, and Target. We ended the evening with dinner at Matchbox, I had only had brunch there so having dinner was a treat and we tried out the pizza which was spot on! We wound down back at my apartment the rest of the evening. Mom and Danielle headed back to Ohio on Sunday but we couldn't send them off without having brunch first. And no trip to this area is complete without Founding Farmers. This time we checked out the breakfast buffet at the Tyson's Corner location and WOW! It was soooo dang good. There were so many options and treats and food and just anything you could want. The amount of food was almost overwhelming but that just means I need to go back some other time to try the food that just would not fit in my stomach! Overall it was a fun weekend with the girls and already looking forward to another one!
I love to start the week off on a good note by prepping my food, and today I prepped like it was my job so I just wanted to share the few things I did today. I'm definitely not this organized every Sunday but I have a pretty crazy work schedule this week and if I don't have good, healthy food ready I know I will make lots of super unhealthy decisions this week! First off I started with some food I already had at home and built some of my meal prep around that. I had some amazing home grown chickens from my parents neighbor/friend Mary Jo that I've been wanting to cook, plus some fun Trader Joe's spice rub, and veggies that needed to be cooked so that was meal # one. Here are the steps I followed: 1) Coated the chicken in olive oil and the spice rub, let it marinade for a few hours 2) Placed quartered red skin potatoes and carrots in the bottom of a foil lined pan and tossed with olive oil and salt & pepper 3) Placed chicken on top of veggies 4) Baked at 375 degrees for a little over an hour until the chicken was fully cooked and veggies roasted and voila! Perfect meal of meat & veggies which should last me a few lunch or dinner meals. I still had potatoes left and some good quality cheddar sausage from Whole Foods so I made up a few breakfast bowls by chopping the potatoes into small squares and sautéing them and the sausage in ghee and then adding a fried dippy egg on top. Lastly I prepped a few other random ingredients to have ready to eat/transform later and the week and to snack on:
1) Cut up lemons and made a pitcher of lemon water 2) Washed figs that will be used in smoothies and to snack on 3) Chopped up and riced a whole cauliflower for future use - I ended up getting 4 bags of 2 cups of the "rice" that I'm freezing 4) Washed cherry tomatoes from the farmer's market to snack on all week 5) Hard boiled eggs to make egg salad. |
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