Easter Weekend & Artichoke Salsa

April 8, 2015April 8, 2015 ~ atastytrip ~ Leave a comment

I meant to get this post written Sunday/Monday but you know…life. It happens.

Per usual, it’s been hectic around these parts. Next week is my spring break and my job always seems to gear up and get even more crazy busy than usual before a break. I am definitely looking forward to the time off, as I plan to spend it in Tennessee with my family. My mom is actually flying in this weekend so we can attend the funeral of a good friend’s grandmother. Not the best circumstances for a visit, but I am excited to see her and happy to have someone to make the drive home with! Not that Renly isn’t good company, but he tends to sleep a lot in the car and doesn’t really talk back much.

I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend! My friend Caite got into town late Thursday night and we enjoyed a breakfast date (my favorite!) Friday morning followed by an afternoon spent in our bathing suits on a dock. It was just warm enough to be laying out and just windy enough not to be too hot, heavenly. We followed up our day in the sun with dinner at home and a late night visit to Hilton Head Ice Cream. Ice Cream is my weakness and if you are ever in HHI I suggest you give this place a try. All their flavors are homemade and chocked full of add-ins. Robert considers himself a cookies and cream connoisseur and he has deemed their Oreo ice cream “the best”. Believe it.

Oreo Cake — The birthday cake of a true Oreo lover…

Robert left us Saturday to head to his aunt’s home in Charleston. I was sad to see him go but a girls night with your best friend is certainly not something that happens every day so I didn’t stay blue for long. We took Renly on a long walk around one of my favorite neighborhoods on the water and then took ourselves shopping. That night we tried out a new restaurant in town that’s been on my to-do list, Poseidon. The food was underwhelming but the drinks were good and it was a fun excuse to get dressed up!

Green Renly — Instead of dying eggs, Renly dyed his head green with a roll in the grass

Caite left early Sunday and I had a few hours to get the house back in order before Robert got home and we headed to a late Easter dinner to celebrate my brother in law’s 40th birthday. The kids had a great time hunting eggs and it was nice to catch up with my family since I had missed them over the weekend. As Caite was leaving Sunday we discovered an Easter surprise on the front porch….

Such a thoughtful husband I have, surprising me with wine and chocolate even when he is out of town Love that man.

Since I knew Caite and I would be indulging this weekend I tried to make our Friday dinner at home a healthy one. I found this delicious looking recipe a few weeks ago on one of my favorite food blogs and was instantly inspired. I am not yet a grill master (summertime goal) so Robert grilled up the chicken while I made the sides, ham wrapped asparagus (the only way I like asparagus, I’ll share the non-recipe soon) and roasted carrots (yep, can’t stop, won’t stop). Grilled chicken is pretty ho hum on its own, but a topping/sauce can make it sing. In typical indecisive fashion, I couldn’t decide between trying Kristin’s artichoke salsa or making my favorite creamy chimi churri sauce, so I went with both. They don’t call me the condiment queen for nothing! *Full Disclosure Disclaimer: I just gave myself that nickname, like right now as I was typing, but I do really love sauces so lets just go with it.

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Roasted Carrot Chip Nachos

April 2, 2015April 2, 2015 ~ atastytrip ~ Leave a comment

Happy Thursday! Or for many of us who have the luxury of Good Friday off work tomorrow, Happy Friday! Aren’t long weekends just the best? My best friend from home is coming into town for the weekend and I couldn’t be more excited! Hilton Head is a pretty fun place to be when the weather is nice (which it’s predicted to be!) and visitors always give me an excuse to get out and about and be a tourist in my own city. It’s easy to take the fun shops, great restaurants and most of all, the BEACH for granted when you live here, so a fun visitor in town is a great reminder for me to appreciate this lovely resort island I call home Can’t wait for you to get here Caite!

Robert and I have had A LOT going on the last few weeks so I have done a lot of batch cooking. This week we’ve had several repeat dinners of salads topped with pulled rotisserie chicken (love these in a pinch) and THIS delicious BBQ chicken chili from one of my favorite food blogs. I highly recommend this recipe as it’s both easy and so tasty in a very unique way. It’s different from any other chili recipe I’ve ever tried and is full of flavor, so if you are a chicken chili chick (hellloooo alliteration) like me, give it a go!

Since I haven’t been making anything especially unique this week, I’m sharing a recipe I made a few weeks back that got the thumbs up from Robert. I have been on a roasted carrot kick for a while now. Roasting is not only one of the easier ways to prepare vegetables (besides boiling…barf) but it also really elevates the flavor. Roasting is by and large my favorite way to eat carrots and has given me a totally new appreciation for the little orange guys. Roasting made my view of carrots go from the sad, raw alternative to pretzels/chips on the dip platter, to basically akin to french fries. Talk about a 180.

At first, I was peeling and cutting up the big carrots, then I wised up and realized that although less cost effective, buying the pre-cut veggies was a HUGE time saver. Carrots in particular come in about 6 different shapes, any of which are great to roast, except maybe the shredded ones. I found that a bag of the pre-cut crinkled carrot chips was the perfect amount for Robert and I to share as a side, and also the perfect shape to dunk into yummy dips like homemade ranch or chimi churri, or ketchup if you’re Robert and you get down like that. Eating these carrots as “chips” gave me the bright idea to substitute them for actual chips and prepare some nachos. Robert and I both love Mexican food and typically eat it at least once a week so I was sure this would be a winner, and as usual, I was right

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Lighter Creamy Broccoli Cheese Soup

March 17, 2015March 17, 2015 ~ atastytrip ~ 4 Comments

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I don’t think anyone actually celebrated on the 17th this year, sorry Tuesday, no one really appreciates a holiday falling on you. Our annual parade and accompanying festivities took place last weekend. Robert and I did not partake in any green beer drinking this year as we were busy with wedding festivities for our dear friends Mark and Lindsay. Despite predictions of storms all weekend, their wedding was sunny and absolutely beautiful! Lindsay made a stunning bride and every detail of their ceremony and reception was absolutely perfect, I wish I had taken more pictures!

Sunday was a day of recuperation and chores, nice and necessary all at the same time. I would likely have forgotten St. Patrick’s day was coming up if it hadn’t been for all the corned beef recipes popping up as I planned our meals for the week. I love corned beef, but I typically only make it once a year (now) and when I do I use my slow cooker, so it’s not much of a recipe worth sharing. Luckily, I DO have another recipe worth sharing, and it’s green!

I found this recipe in my last issue of Cooking Light and decided it was the perfect green detox dinner after a weekend of wedding festivities. I have made several different broccoli cheddar or cream of broccoli soups in the past and liked those recipes, but this one intrigued me as it used cooked brown rice blended with chicken broth and milk in place of heavy cream/butter/flour. Strange as it sounds, it worked beautifully and I can’t wait to experiment with it in other recipes.

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Slow Saturday Breakfast: Cottage Cheese Pancakes with Mixed Berry Compote

March 9, 2015March 9, 2015 ~ atastytrip ~ Leave a comment

Happy Monday! Hope everyone had a great weekend! Mine was full (as always) but fun! I had the pleasure of hosting a baby shower for my sweet friend Annie on Saturday. Robert and I met Annie and her husband Ben at church two years ago and they have quickly become some of our very best friends. When they told us they were expecting back in October I immediately started mentally planning the baby shower I wanted to throw them. I love to entertain and while planning this shower I was finally able to convinced Robert that we needed new living room furniture, double win! It all came together nicely and I can’t wait to meet their baby girl! I forgot to take pictures (such a bad blogger) but my mother in law snapped a few on her phone, excuse the poor lighting!

Annie and I — With the cute momma to be!

On Sunday we got a reprieve from the cold (finally!) which was so nice. Robert and I took full advantage of the time change and slept in, had a late breakfast and then took Renly to the beach for the first time in months.

The tide was so low that we were able to walk for miles and Renly found an Australian Sheppard who may or may not be his new best friend. They chased each other and romped through the waves for almost an hour, hence his wet sandy ‘do above.

Pancakes are a given after sleeping in on a Sunday, and they were on my mind the moment I woke up. Since I had random leftover ingredients from the baby shower, I decided to throw together some impromptu protein pancakes and they came out surprisingly great! If you are thinking “cottage cheese in a pancake? GROSS!” I get it…. but hear me out. I know it sounds weird, but ricotta cheese pancakes are a thing (and a yummy one at that) so making the jump to using cottage cheese instead doesn’t seem quite so out there. Cottage cheese is also lower calorie and lower fat than ricotta, although protein content is the same.

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Lentil Sausage and Kale Soup

February 24, 2015February 24, 2015 ~ atastytrip ~ Leave a comment

Happy Tuesday! They announced that school was cancelled last night due to forecasts of “freezing rain” this morning. It has rained most of the day, but it certainly doesn’t appear to be freezing and my drive to the gym this morning was perfectly safe and uneventful (thankfully). I guess the district would rather be safe than sorry and hey, I’m ALWAYS up for a (faux) snow day, especially when it’s announced the night before so I can prepare to sleep in appropriately

I’m not the only one who was excited to have the day off, Renly also enjoys any and every excuse to sleep in. Especially if he is lucky enough to do it in our bed.

In addition to cuddling with Renly since it’s too cold to play outside, I’ve spent my day at home packing, finishing laundry and preparing for the rest of the week. I also FINALLY uploaded our California pictures so those recaps will be coming soon! I leave tomorrow after work for the South Carolina Speech and Hearing Conference in Myrtle Beach. Although the prospect of a solo road trip is not the most heartening, I am excited to learn something new during the sessions and even MORE excited to catch up with my girlfriends from graduate school who will be in attendance. I will return from the conference late Friday evening only to turn around and leave again on Saturday for a wedding. Whew, I’m a little tired just thinking about all that driving!

Anytime I know I will be out of town for a few days, I go on a mission to empty our fridge to the best of my ability. This means I bought limited groceries this week and am making good use of our freezer contents. Robert tends to eat out when I am away unless I leave him leftovers. Since I hate the thought of him eating a sad fast food burger three nights in a row I decided to thaw out some lentil and sausage soup I made a few weeks ago. A few years ago Robert would have turned his nose up at the mere mention of lentils, probably because he wouldn’t have had a clue what they were. Thanks to his green food loving wife (ahem me) his tastes have broadened considerably and he raved about this soup when I made it. This recipe was a “throw everything in the fridge into a pot” experiment that turned out very very right. Fortunately, I jotted down the ingredients after tasting it, unfortunately, I didn’t take any step by step photos because I wasn’t sure it would be share-worthy. But I’m not sure you really need any pictures of diced onions or chopped carrots, those should be pretty self explanatory. If you REALLY need a visual for torn kale, Google image search has some nice options