The Blog Post that Almost Wasn’t and a Greek Chicken Crockpot Recipe!

Well here we are again…three months have passed with no blog posts after I specifically wrote in my last blog post (and the one before that, and the one before that…) about how I was going to try to post more. I’m going to specifically NOT write that this time…although it’s still a secret goal!

As it is for everyone, life has been busy and my time management skills are constantly being put to the test. Babies tend to do that to you I suppose. Most of my time is allotted to this sweet girl who is somehow already nine months old.

9 Months

I’m honestly not sure how that happened…science I guess. Amelia keeps me quite busy but we have fallen into a weekly routine which works quite well for us. Her two naps provide me with a respite to shower/eat/clean/do laundry/cook/work from home and occasionally do this. Most days…getting it all done is a distant dream, but we somehow manage to hit all the important parts at the right time. We haven’t yet resorted to wearing dirty clothes or only eating take out.

Amelia eats real people food now which has been a little scary (gagging…ugh), mostly funny (she looks like a squirrel with a nut) and incredibly messy. And although we are still doing our fair share of Hello Fresh for convenience, it has also inspired me to cook more. We started out just feeding her breakfast and lunch but have recently added in dinner. Robert works late so most nights, I feed her random things before he comes home but occasionally, when the stars align (aka when I use my crock pot), we are able to have dinner as a family.

 

Shame on me for forgetting how wonderful a crock pot can be. I can assemble meals during her morning nap and voila, dinner is ready when Robert walks in the door! Now I know why my mom used hers so often when we were growing up. Crock pots are also great when you are feeding a baby because everything comes out soft, which is still necessary for her despite the fact that she has EIGHT teeth already. We don’t listen to the song “Baby Shark” but I imagine it was written about my child, although she seems to be over her biting phase thank goodness.

Amelia

I called this the blog post that almost wasn’t because despite rediscovering a love for my crock pot, I can’t claim to be overly inspired by most of my go to crock pot recipes…at least not inspired enough to share them. Also I think we can all agree that crock pot meals don’t photograph particularly well. This particular recipe was shared with me by my friend Rebecca. I in turn told my sister about it who asked me to share it with her. I figured if I was going to send it to her I may as well write a post (which I’ve been meaning to do for ohh, three months) and send her that instead. I mean a recipe with pictures of your niece embedded is preferable to just a recipe, no?

This chicken recipe is so easy and flavorful. I serve mine over a bed of brown rice to which I add; a can of black beans, a diced and sauteed red onion, a diced avocado and crumbled feta cheese. Other delicious additions to up the veggie factor would be roasted red peppers or even sauteed zucchini.

Chicken

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Super Simple Salsa Crudo

Happy Thursday! How about an easy recipe?

salsa crudo

I’m back in the swing of things after a great week away for spring break. I spent a long weekend in DC visiting my best friend Caite (more on that in my next post!), a few days at home with my mother and sister who came for an all too brief visit and finished it off with a fun final weekend at the annual RBC Heritage golf tournament here in Hilton Head. It certainly wasn’t the most relaxing spring break I’ve ever had, but all the friends and family were well worth the lack of sleep (and lack of warm, sunny weather…hurry up summer!).

It was so fun re-living my trip to Italy and re-capping those posts and going through those old pictures got me pretty excited for our next big trip… Thailand!!

Thailand
I snapped this photo of the plane magazine on the way to our honeymoon

Our tickets are officially booked and we are headed across the globe in June! I am 100%  ecstatic, Robert is probably more like 70% excited, 30% a nervous wreck who doesn’t know what to expect, but he’s getting there 🙂

elephants
We are spending a day here…and I’m so excited I could wet my pants

Since Robert couldn’t take as long as we had planned away from work, my sister is going to join us. She and I are leaving ahead of him and coming home a little after him which should work out great. Our rough itinerary is Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Koh Tao, Koh Samui, but more on that later. I’ll take a brief break from the trip talk and get to the kitchen talk. This salsa crud0 recipe is super simple and dresses up everything from eggs to grilled meats!

ingredients

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Clean out the Fridge Frittata

Breakfast foods for breakfast, breakfast foods for lunch, breakfast foods for dinner. These are a few of my favorite things.

Close Up

I have long waxed poetic on this blog about my love of all things breakfast. I could eat breakfast foods all day long, and some days I actually do. Like today. I had a spinach smoothie for breakfast (spinach means its basically a salad so this could technically be lunch..right?), oatmeal for lunch (Which exploded in the work microwave..bummer), and last but not least I’ll be dining on the rest of this delicious frittata for dinner tonight.

Ingredients

Oatmeal for lunch typically means I’m completely out of groceries and need to make a trip to the store. While I am currently out of groceries, I will not be making a trip to the store any time soon since we leave for Bermuda on Wednesday! I talked about this trip on the blog many posts ago when it was first planned and seemed forever away… well, it’s finally here! Between treadmill falls (which is almost totally healed, hooray!) and a few tough weeks at work, I am more than ready for a few days away with Robert (and the rest of my family too of course :). My aunt and sister-in-law chose the location and accommodations and have done the majority of the planning thus far. They are both fun and have great taste so instead of going into my typical “plan everything to the minute” vacation mode, I’m looking forward to just going along for the ride and seeing what they have up their sleeves! If they need any suggestions once we get there I did happen to find this fun helmet diving activity on TripAdvisor…

Helmet Diving

I’m not sure if her face is screaming “This is TERRIBLE!” or “This is AWESOME!” but either way, I’m in.

Ok, so back to the frittata. Wasting food is a personal pet peeve so when we are headed out of town I try to use up everything perishable in the fridge before we go. What better to do with random ingredients than make a frittata? I mean EVERYTHING goes with eggs, am I right or am I right?

 Crisped Potato slices saute

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