Hi everyone, happy Sunday! I have a few updates for you all on the blog front. I've updated my recipe pages to include all of my latest kitchen creations. I also updated my workout page, which now includes a new section for my hiking spot posts. Lastly, I added a 'travel & fun' page so that all of my travel posts, restaurant and winery experiences, as well as random adventures are in one place. Fun stuff! And now onto food - banana pumpkin muffins to be precise... After a morning yoga session, running errands, and going hiking with my hubby and puppy yesterday, I came home and decided that a bit of baking was in order. Since I had an open can of pumpkin and some ripe bananas ready to be eaten in my fruit basket, and I've been loving muffins lately, I whipped up some tasty banana ... [Read More]
dessert
Honey Baked Pear with an Oat, Date and Almond Topping
Guess whose a happy girl? After a week of wearing the dreaded cone, Harley's rash has healed and I was able to take the cone off of her. In true Harley style, having the cone on was anything but easy. Besides her being generally miserable and refusing to eat for the first couple of days, there were 2 particularly annoying parts of the cone: 1.) The first night she had it on, Harley walked around whining and pacing my bedroom the entire night. You'd think she would tire herself out, which she would for 20-30 minutes at at time, but then she'd be back at it. It.sucked. 2.) While driving with her in my backseat, I had the window cracked for her. Harley took it upon herself to put it all the way down (yes, she just pushes the button), and just as I was telling her to get her head back in the ... [Read More]
Vegetarian Living in Austria
Happy Friday! I am SO happy it's the weekend. I've been feeling so crazy busy and tired since getting back from my trip and am really looking forward to relaxing and resting up a bit over the next few days. Today's post is about my eats while in Austria. Let me start by saying that one of the reasons I love California is because it's so easy to be a vegetarian here. Both areas I've lived in in this state, San Diego and now the Bay Area, are wonderful for a girl like me who is into healthy, meat-free living and real food. I can go down the street to a farm and pick up some fruit & veggies, and mostly every restaurant has at least one thing that's vegetarian. I anticipated the cuisine of Germany & Austria to be dominated by meat, but what I found there was that nearly every ... [Read More]
My New Favorite Dessert: Wine-Baked Peaches
This week my favorite nearby winery, Clos LaChance, was having a sale on a bunch of their wines. Naturally, I felt the need to stop by the winery yesterday to nab a couple of bottles on my way to the gym. Can't let a sale of yummy local wine pass me by! Besides buying bottles of grenache and pinot noir, I also got a bottle of their sweet late harvest semillon nectar white wine with one thing in mind: dessert last night. I had a couple of ripe peaches hanging out in my fruit basket ready to be eaten, and had the brilliant idea of baking them with some of the nectar wine, sugar, and cinnamon - because I love to sprinkle cinnamon on nearly everything - then pairing them with vanilla frozen yogurt. Oh.my.gosh. It was SO DELICIOUS and such an easy dessert to make. First I sliced the ... [Read More]
Dark Chocolate Drizzled Strawberry Cheesecake Graham Cracker Mini Pies
Happy Easter! Hope that everyone had a great weekend and holiday. Boy, do I have a fun dessert recipe to share with you all... One of the best parts about California living for a foodie like myself is all of the local produce that's available. As you may recall, living in San Diego I frequently talked abut weekend Little Italy farmers' market trips. And now, living in a small town outside of San Jose, little farm stands are plentiful. I'm obviously loving it! The idea of a dessert featuring strawberries first entered my mind upon spotting cartons of the fruit at a market last week. Strawberries are one of my favorite fruits, and I can almost never resist getting them. My original thought was to do parfait cups with a cream cheese dip, drizzled chocolate, and graham cracker crumbs, but ... [Read More]
Chocolate Bark with Pistachios & Dried Cranberries
Hi friends! This Friday night in my household is totally relaxed. I am still under the weather with an upper respiratory thing, and my hubby had a tooth pulled earlier today, so we both felt like being couch potatoes. Our evening has consisted of me making us a dinner of homemade tomato soup, getting some fro yo, and now we're currently watching a college football game. Even Harley's joining in on the laziness and has been snoozing. Between a workout first thing this AM, work, a long walk with Harley, and physical therapy while feeling crappy, I think I've earned some chill time tonight! ;-) Before officially moving forward from the holidays, I want to share one final dessert I made during Christmastime - chocolate bark with pistachios and dried cranberries: I found the recipe on ... [Read More]