What I ate Wednesday

Let me start with a shout out to Jenn over at Peas and Crayonsfor continuing the foodie fun!

It's been awhile since I've posted in WIAW. Since I've been out of school I now have to post everything from my phone, which has been a little challenge. 

Since its pretty warm lately, smoothies have been nice. This was a particularly yummy avocado milkshake. I'm trying to replicate the shake from our favorite Vietnamese restaurant, but mine has spy milk and agave syrup instead of sweetened condensed milk. If you've never tried one, don't knock it till you have! I was skeptical at first, but they are sooooo yummy!

I've also been trying to incorporate more tempeh into my diet. If anyone has any suggestions for tempeh recipes, I'd gladly take them! 

To celebrate sensible snacking month, lets. Talk about Snack plates!! Love these In the summer. SG and I had a little picnic in the yard with this plate of delicious!

Finally, let me share this ridiculously easy recipe for apricot tarts. If you've got some frozen puff pastry dough, just roll it out, lie some sliced apricots on the dough, sprinkle with a bit of cinnamon and sugar (I also added some chopped pistachios) and bake! Just follow the package directions

Life lately

Summer's officially here, and we've been having so much fun

Crafting: 

Shrinkydinks!!

Gardening: 

Bluberries!

Going for walks/hikes:

There's a square dancing craze hitting the 'ville right now, so fun!

SG and I had a dance performance:

It was old hat for her, but my first one in at least 15 years. It went really well. I'm so proud of my little one! 

That's it for now. I hope everyone's enjoying their summer right now. I need to do a post about the incredible mural that's being painted in our house right now. Stay tuned!

What I ate Wednesday

Since the semester has ended, I've been home a lot. Which means cooking up some tasty grub. However, it's also been kind of hot, so that means tasty food with the minimal amount of cooking.

For breakfast, a heap of kale greens sautéed with some garlic and olive oil, with a scrambled egg mixed in. Plus a slice of toast with avocado

Then, for lunch...Tostadas! Made with some spicy greens from the farmer's market, black beans, a sprinkling of cheese and some fresh tomatoes and avocados

The beans were cooked with a little of this amazing stuff... I've been putting it on everything, time to get a new jar!

For dinner, in the realm of tasty and very little cooking is a salmon Niçoise salad. Probably my favorite meal, no definitely my favorite!

Broiled salmon, green beans, hard boiled egg, kalamata olives, more fresh greens and tomatoes, and a slice or two of rosemary bread. Voila!

Thanks again to Jenn at Peas and Crayons for the linky love!

Weekend recap: Mother's Day

This weekend was probably one of the very best weekends that I've had in a looooong time!
The wild ladies book club that I belong to decided to go on a cabin retreat at the The Red River Gorge. For those of you not familiar, The Gorge is one of the most amazing things that Kentucky has to offer, besides of course bourbon and horse racing. It's a large national park that has acres of amazing forest,




Trails,








Giant Rocks and the river












It's breathtaking.
I spent the weekend there in a cabin with about a dozen beautiful ladies, absolutely obscene amounts of food, and a hot tub with an incredible view.




We spent the whole time eating, singing, laughing, hiking, drinking and soaking. I got back with my batteries fully recharged!! Couldn't have asked for a better Mother's Day gift!

Of course I got back in time on Sunday to hang out with my sweeties though. My favorite Ice cream parlor, The Comfy Cow was giving free ice cream to moms!




Hope everyone had an amazing weekend!

Friday Book Review: Sad Desk Salad

This week's book is a little out of the ordinary for me. I've been reading a few "fluffy" fiction books lately in anticipation of summer. It's been fun. And this one in particular was really fun.

This is a book about a blogger for a gossip website called Chick Habit (similar to Jezebel). The descriptions of her day to day existence are hilarious enough to justify this guilty pleasure read. She spends her every waking minute blogging on her couch in a muumuu, with breaks to run across the street to the deli to grab her "sad desk salad", only to frantically run back to her crazy cyberboss IMing her "WHERE ARE YOU?" I had no idea working from home could be so stressful! It's an excellent illustration of a life that would have literally been impossible ten years ago.

But the fun really starts to heat up when in one day she both realizes that there is a hate website about her and her fellow Chick Habit writers and she also receives an anonymous tip in the form of a youtube video showing a famous young girl genius snorting coke off her MIT robotics textbook. Conflicted between ruining this girl's life and getting the scoop of her career, she spirals into an insane anxiety filled couple of days. I won't ruin it for you, but there are crazy feminist terrorists, drunk 3am trips to the beach, boyfriend fights, and the ever present question - will she ever get out of her muumuu?

This book is hilarious. If you spend your days writing a blog, communicating with virtual strangers, you will love it. I would highly recommend this for your beach reading this summer!

What I ate Wednesday- catchup edition

I've missed a few WIAW posts lately. Mostly because its the end of the semester, and I have scary amounts of work. But it was also Derby, which, if you don't live in louisville means nothing. But if you do live here you know that it's a two week long holiday. There's fun things going on almost every day. The kids even get a three day weekend!!  I love it. But you came here for the food right? So here goes...

For this WIAW I'm going to just talk about breakfast. I mean, everybody loves it right? Well, I've had some especially good ones lately. Here's my top three:

Third most awesome breakfast was one morning last week we went to dawn at the downs. This is where you can head down to the track in the super early morning hours and watch the derby horses practice. We go every year, and this year I made some tasty bacon and egg English muffin sandwiches to take with us. My friend made a thermos of coffee, it was a lovely morning.

Second awesome breakfast was with a friend at hipster coffee shop Please and Thank You. Seriously hands down the most amazing baked goods in the city! This breakfast was especially fun because I and skater girl had just attended a Nia class taught by my friend and then we went out for breakfast afterwards. We had eggs and cheese (jalapeño cheese on mine) on fresh baked brioche. And a side of fresh fruit.

But my top favorite breakfast of all was a seed swap brunch that I hosted! People brought plants and seeds to trade, and a dish to share. It was tasty and super fun. I made mini quiches

Fruit kabobs

And people brought all sorts of goodies!

I also made "dirt cupcakes" but sadly, these were eaten before I had a chance to get a picture!
I'll leave you instead with the mint julep cupcakes that I made for derby. Boozy goodness. Mmmmm... Enjoy your week!

A Day in the Life

I've been inspired by some day in the life posts around the blog world, here's my addition. Hope it's not too boring!


6:00 am: alarm goes off. The Oak Man gets up and turns it off. Sometimes he comes back to bed, sometimes he gets up. I stay in bed.

Our yard on a sunny morning!

6:30-7:00AM: Someone wakes me up. Sometimes it's the cat, purring very loudly if no one has fed him. i don't think he understands what purring is for. Sometimes it the hubs coming back from whatever it is he does in the morning (meditation? yoga? websurfing?), sometimes it's skater girl climbing into bed with me. Sometimes it's both, and they make a sandwich with me as "the peanutbutter" I love them, but I really hate being the peanutbutter, because I hate being woken up. At this point, I am defeated, and I get up.

Mr. Tubbs requires food, right. now.

7:00AM: Shower, hopefully alone. Some mornings the hubs joins me. He is a cheerful morning person, I'm not. I'd prefer to shower alone. (I realize I'm sounding like a total B right now, but I just need some quiet time in the AM!)  Nonetheless, he is un-phased  by my gloomy mood, he sings 80's songs with made-up lyrics and asks me things like "why do you shave your toes"? and makes the ridiculous attempt to have a conversation with me, every. time. When he does hop into the shower with me, I try to get out as soon as possible because he will start doing his neti pot, and that shit's gross!!

7:20AM: make sure the kiddo is up, get dressed. I generally have a hard time with this. I'm not great at picking out work clothes. Sometimes I'll go the full routine and put on make-up and dry my hair before breakfast, sometimes I don't. As you may be starting to see, my life generally lacks routine.

7:30AM: hubs gives us kisses goodbye. I'm finally happy to see him and he's leaving. Oh well.

7:30- 8:00AM making breakfast and lunches for both me and the kiddo. We usually eat the same thing for breakfast, like maybe yogurt and granola or fruit, but for lunch I usually pack us different stuff. She eats meat and I don't and I have access to a microwave. So she usually gets a turkey and cheese sandwich, some kind of snacky thing and some fruits and veggies. I'll maybe take some leftovers from the night before or some variation of salad.

I'm ready for my second breakfast now

<< interjection, Skater Girl's has her own morning routine, now that she's ten, I am realizing this as I'm reading other mom's day in the life posts, that it is soooo awesome that she can get herself ready in the morning! She mostly plays loud dance music, and brushes her hair a lot, I'm not sure what else she's doing>>

She definitely has her own sense of style!

8:00-8:15AM: Frantically run around for 15 minutes gathering up everything we need for the day, putting on jewelry, finish drying hair if I didn't already, can't find my keys, skater girl doesn't have shoes on ect... then we are out the door.

8:45AM: drop SG off at school

going to school

I'm a fabulous chauffeur

9:15AM: get to work.

9:15: my schedule depends a lot on my teaching schedule for that day. For example, this semester on Monday and Wednesday I had classes at 11:00 and 12:15, so I had a little time to chill in the morning when I got to work. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I was teaching at 9:30AM, so those days were always a little more hectic in the morning. My day at work generally goes like this:

• teach for an hour
• spend a few hours prepping for class, grading, reading eating
• teach for an hour
• repeat
•  (we'll pretend it's a Wednesday - on T/Th I don't get home from teaching until  6:30pm) 

sad desk salad

3:30 go pick up SG from school

4:00 take SG to dance class (hip hop)

4:30 pick up some groceries (the grocery store is in the same shopping center as her dance studio, so it's very convenient!)

5:30 head home

6-6:30: grab a bite, read for a bit, change into yoga clothes and head back out to the yoga studio

7-8 yoga! (the hubs and I trade off evenings going to yoga)

This man is addicted to handstands

8:30: finally get to see family, but hubs is usually tired by this point. Now it's a role reversal of the morning routine, I am chatty and he's falling asleep :) We hang out with SG for a bit, we might talk about her day, help her with homework, practice dance moves, whatever.

9:30 SG goes to bed

9:30 - 10:30 hubs and I have couch cuddle time. We might watch the daily show or something and most nights he rubs my feet because he's awesome. 

Hubs usually falls asleep first, and I'll be honest, sometimes I stay up as late as 12, even though I really shouldn't. But I'm a night owl, and depending on my mood and if I'm reading a good book, sometimes I'll just stay up.

And that's it!


one of the things I love about being a professor is that my schedule changes a lot. I actually really hate routine. Right now, I'm finishing up my semester and then I'm off for the whole summer. So my day in the life post will read something like:

• wake up whenever
• swim
• eat 
• do other stuff

I can't wait!