Foodie Saturday

Completely forgot to post this yesterday!  Oops!  Notice the new look?  I spent last night trying to figure out how all this blog design stuff works.  It's getting there, but I still want to change a few things.

Two recipes to share this week.  The first was a meatless dish from Southern Living, Black Beans & Rice.  Good, but not great.  I feel like a lot of our meatless recipes are falling into that black beans/Mexican category.  So while it was good, we've had other meatless Mexican recipes we prefer.

Ok, it's not often that Cameron and I truly hate a dish, like don't even want to eat it, start considering what else we can whip up fast...but this is one!  I have been on the hunt for more recipes using ground beef.  After a successful hunting season, we have a large amount of deer meat in our freezer.  We tend to keep the backstraps for frying then grind the rest.  This year we gave a lot away to friends too.  Any recipe that calls for ground beef, I tend to substitute ground deer, unless it's burgers or meatballs.  Venison is so lean it doesn't stick together well.  But it's hard to go through a whole deer just using it for tacos & spaghetti, so when I found the recipe for Beef and Noodle Casserole on allrecipes.com with good ratings, it seemed promising.  I was thinking it would be a little Hamburger Helper-ish, but without all the preservative taste.  I don't write reviews often, but I did for this recipe saying I would rather eat Hamburger Helper!!  Definitely a no-go in my opinion, but here's the picture anyways.

Not a very successful week as far as recipes go.  Better luck next week!

~Heather

My Saturday

I have officially completed my first race!  Cameron and I ran the Azalea Trail Run in downtown Mobile this morning.  He completed the 10K in 57 minutes and 57 seconds.  My time for the 5K was 38:23.  Certainly not fast, but I finished!  It was such an amazing feeling to cross that finish line.  I have to admit that I had to walk some, but I expected it.  Now my next goal is to actually run an entire 5K.  Baby steps.

So after a ChickFila sandwich and a Michelob Ultra at the finish line (What?  Aren't you dying to have a beer at 9:30 in the morning after completing a run?), we headed off to enjoy a beautiful Saturday. 

First stop was Academy Sports where Cameron treated me to some new running clothes. :)  After relaxing at home for a bit, we decided to take the dogs to the dog park.  This was Hank's first visit.  He played well with others, but was oblivious to any commands to come.  He was definitely the star of the show.  I think he may actually run faster than Lola!  We had so many comments on what a beautiful dog he is and I tried hard to find an adopter, but no luck!

 When Hank starts playing, he turns into a bucking bronco.  

You can see the people to the left laughing at him!

Lola can be a brat when it comes to new dogs.  We call her a mean girl.

This poor dog just wants to play, but she wants none of it.

Then she runs off to play with her brother & sister instead.

The kids had a great time playing, but came home filthy.  

I was too late to get the picture of Hank laying right in the middle of a mud puddle.  Awesome.

After baths for the pups, we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the back porch enjoying the weather and these:

Mint Juleps

All in all it was a great Saturday!  Tomorrow I will be spending the day in a classroom for a veterinary CE meeting, while Cameron enjoys a day of fishing.  Not exactly fair, but he is taking me to see the Hunger Games tomorrow night!

~Heather

D-Day

It's finally here - the Azalea Trail Run.  The 5K starts at 8:15 tomorrow morning.  While I am very excited to complete my first run, I'm a little nervous.  I had hoped to be running the full distance a couple weeks ago, but I had some setbacks from being sick/busy/etc.  Oh well, that's life!  I'm just not promising any stellar times!  I'll let you know how it goes!

(No recipes to share this week.  We had lots of repeats.  Sorry!)

~Heather

The Avett Brothers and a Late Foodie Friday

Giving up the internet at night has made a dent in my blogging time! I completely missed Foodie Friday.  But I do have a reason. This weekend, the Avett Brothers were playing at the Amphitheater at the Wharf in Orange Beach.  If you haven't ever heard them, I highly recommend them!  They are hard to classify, but I would call them folk country-rock.  Cameron and I were definitely going to the concert and decided to make it a beach weekend with some friends. The Avett Brothers put on a great show. 

 Unfortunately for us, the guy behind us liked to express his enthusiasm with stomping, but was not blessed with the Avett Brothers' rhythm.  Nevertheless, we still had an awesome time! :)

On Saturday and Sunday we took advantage of the beautiful Gulf coast weather and hung out on the beach.  It was so weird on Saturday because the fog rolled in just on the beach.

 

 The rest of Gulf Shores was bright and sunny.  I think it was because the water was so cold still and the weather has been so warm?  It was very strange to be sitting on the beach with the sun shining and warm, but yet you couldn't see very far down the beach.  The fog broke for a couple hours in the middle of the day and we enjoyed every second!  We definitely enjoyed our taste of spring on the last weekend of winter!

As for Foodie Friday, I do have a couple things to share.  I never got around to making those cookies!  For our meatless dish we tried grilled portobello mushrooms.  This was a stretch for both of us.  Neither of us are big fans of mushrooms when they get slimy.  Much to our surprise, this was delicious.  You grill the mushrooms then add chopped tomato, fresh mozzarella, & basil with some olive oil.  So good!  I think next time though, we will use a whole slice of mozzarella and melt it on the mushroom while its grilling.

To go with the Portobellos, I made another one of Giada's recipes - Creamy Orzo.  We may be going meatless for a night, but certainly not carb-less.  I have to have something to fill me up!

We also made Teriyaki Chicken Bacon Skewers this week.  I found the recipe on Pinterest, although it's not really much of a recipe.  Basically, you marinate the chicken in teriyaki (I made a basic marinade from All Recipes, good but makes a ton!!), wrap with bacon, then alternate on the skewer with pineapple and grill.  Pretty simple and good, but it does take some time to wrap the chicken pieces.

That's about it for this week! 
~Heather