Eating my Way Through Seattle

That's right, I said SEATTLE!

I kind of disappeared from Blogland before the trip so I didn't have a chance to let my readers know that I'd be traveling but...well I did! :)


Three of my college girlfriends/sorority sisters and I decided a while back to have a little reunion trip in Seattle, where one of the girls currently lives. Needless to say I was SO excited for a vacation and for a chance to catch up with the girls.


Instead of going over all the details of trip on the blog (which, I admit, I'm too lazy to do) I figured I would just focus on the one area that I typically gravitate towards: FOOD!


Because, vacations are all about the food anyway, right?!


THURSDAY:


We all arrived in Seattle late on Wednesday night so our first real Seattle meal was breakfast the following morning. For that we walked down to Pike's Place Market for a local Russian Bakery called Piroshky, Piroshky for....well, piroshkys!



A piroshky is a handheld, stuffed pie that can be filled with any variety of fillings. My piroshky was stuffed with "Smoked Salmon Pate" or basically a smoked salmon and cream cheese mixture. It was a really tasty filling but my favorite part was definitely the doughy bread...I'm a carbaholic! It was also great that the piroshky was portable so we could continue our exploring while eating.


For lunch later that day we found the food truck called Maximus Minimus, which is shaped like a metal pig!



They're known for their pulled pork sandwiches which are either spicy ("maximus") or mild ("minimus"). I ordered the "maximus" pork sandwich but was disappointed at how non-spicy it was. I'm a Texan, darnit...if you say it's gonna be spicy then it should at LEAST make my tongue burn a little. :) But other than the disappointing spiciness, it was a delicious sandwich!



Chomp!!


They also have cool drink options: Ginger Lemonade or Hibiscus Juice.

I had half of each combined, which was a sweet and tasty combo!


That night we decided to save a little money and cook our own meal! We went to Megan's apartment and cooked Seafood Risotto for dinner.




Yum!! I don't have the exact recipe that we used for this but this one looks really similar. It was actually really easy!


To finish off the night, Megan and her boyfriend Scott took us to their favorite ice cream shop, Molly Moon's.






FRIDAY:


Friday morning we just made breakfast at the apartment (scrambled eggs & toast), which is totally unexciting.


But we made up for it with lunch!



Caribbean Grilled Pork Sandwiches from Paseo, which is simply an open-air food booth located close to the Seattle beach. It doesn't look like much from the outside....





But OH.MY.GOD. do they ever know how to make a good sandwich!!

The pork was sooooo tender and juicy and the toppings made it all come together...grilled onions, avocado, lettuce, cilantro & garlic aioli. Holy crap this was good! I want another one now!


And well just look at this view that we had as we ate:



Yum on two counts: sandwich + view of ocean.


The only downside to this sandwich was that it was SO messy to eat! They totally fell apart on us but we didn't mind....we were too busy scarfing to care about the method of eating.


Friday night we went out to a restaurant called Eva, which specializes in fresh, local and seasonal cuisine.


We started out with an order of the mussels steamed with golden tomato, lime leaves, lemongrass and ginger. I forgot to get a picture of them before we devoured them so this is all you get.

The buttery leftover sauce was perfect for bread dipping!


For my main course, I ordered the Roast Pork which was served with southern green beans and grits.

This was SO YUMMY! The pork was soooooooo tender and juicy. The only thing I disliked was that I wished they had given me more grits. It looks like a lot in the photo but it wasn't nearly enough in real life. :)


Megan ordered the Roasted Quail with Chorizo Bread Pudding Stuffing and Sherry Jus.



Courtney ordered the Filet Mignon with Salsa Verde and a Saute of Roasted Potato, Red Onion and Autumn Vegetables.



And Lindsey ordered the Washington Salmon with Summer Squash Moussaka and an Eggplant Yogurt Sauce.

This was probably the only slightly disappointing dish from the bunch. It was just "eh".


We finished the night with an order of the Warm Apple Crisp with Cinnamon Ice Cream.
There's a pic of all of us with our delicious dessert!


SATURDAY:


Saturday was our "outdoorsy" day. We drove out to the Cascade Mountains and did a little hiking.

It was BEAUTIFUL!


Since we were hiking we kept lunch simple by packing Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches.


On our way back to Seattle we stopped into the Red Hook Brewery for a few brews and a snack.



We ordered a couple "flights" of brews for tasting purposes.



And a MASSIVE pile of nachos to share.

Totally hit the spot and canceled out all the calories that we had burned during our hiking excursion! :)


Saturday night we went out to a restaurant called Etta's, which is a Tom Douglas seafood restaurant.


We started out each ordering one of their DELICIOUS specialty cocktails.
These were so fun! I ordered the Vanilla Lime Martini but we all tasted each other's drinks and I think the overall winner was the Blood Orange Margarita!

For food we decided to just order a bunch of dishes and split them between the four of us. We started out with an order of the raw oysters.

And Mini Dungeness Crab Cakes.

Then we had the Cioppino (crab, mussels, clams, halibut, shrimp & calamari in a spicy tomato sauce).
The Ciopinno was flavorful and delicious and PERFECT for sharing, since there was a little of everything inside!

We also had the Halibut, which was served with crispy potatoes.
This one was good, but nothing too memorable.

We were too full after all that food so we passed on dessert.

Well that about covers all the food that we ate while in Seattle, but I just have to share some of these photos from our trip before I wrap it up.

Seattle was a foodie's heaven because everywhere you looked there was fresh, local, organic food!

Fresh flowers everywhere you looked...

And one of my favorite pictures from the trip....

Proper British Bacon! For some reason this just cracked me up. I mean, what is UNproper British Bacon??


So have YOU ever been to Seattle?? If not, I highly recommend you visit sometime! It's a beautiful and unique city. And if you visit in September or early October like us, you may get lucky and have perfect weather too!

Jackpot Grocery Trip

I'm pretty excited about a few of my grocery store finds today! I feel like I hit the jackpot!

I know it's weird that I get so excited about food, but that's just the way I am! I managed to find some things that I had been searching for for a while now and that made me super happy! I also just stumbled upon a couple of really cool things.

Thought I'd share a couple of my fave purchases from today with you guys...

First up, DATES!!

I swear I had been looking for these things in my store for MONTHS now and never had any luck. I looked in all the obvious spots like with the other dried fruit (prunes, raisins, etc.) and with the weird "international" food but nothing.

Finally it struck me today as I was getting ready to give up forever to check one more place. Turns out, they were THERE! I seriously about squealed with delight when I found them.

For all you HEB shoppers like me, these dates can be found in the produce section on those shelves where they have a bunch of bagged nuts and dried fruit. (Should have figured this out a lot sooner.)

As soon as I got home I enjoyed one (or two) smeared in peanut butter:

Such a good, healthy, filling little snack! I know a lot of people in the blog world who eat this as a pre-workout snack. It's delicious!

Next up was a random stumble-upon item:
COCONUT OIL!!!

This is another one that I had been searching for but was never able to locate. Unfortunately I'm actually still not sure where it's home is in the grocery store because I actually found this one sitting misplaced on an end cap. Ha! It was like it was put there by God for me to find. :) :) :)

Coconut oil is a great substitute for oil or butter when cooking or baking because it can aid in maintaining cholesterol levels, weight loss, increased immunity, proper digestion and metabolism, relief from kidney problems, heart diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, HIV and cancer, dental care, and bone strength. (Source)

I'm so excited to start using it!

As I was walking through the produce department I spotted this ADORABLE little spaghetti squash:

Couldn't resist that one! It was so cute and compact...perfect for a family of two!

I also spotted these giant Honeycrisp apples in the produce department...
I'm not the biggest fan of apples in the world so they have to be REALLY good apples for me to buy them. Honeycrisp are delicious though and they were on sale so I went for it! I just wish these were available year-round.

The final exciting purchase was La Croix flavored sparkling water:

I'd seen these floating around the health blogger world a lot lately so I figured I'd give it a shot. I got the berry flavor and I really like it! When I first took a sip I was thinking it would be sweet but it's not...it's literally just sparkling water with a slight hint of flavor.

I like that it's refreshing and has the bubbles and flavor for a more fun drinking experience than just plain water. I'm hoping these will help me up my daily water intake, since I'm pretty horrible about drinking enough water everyday.

Have you tried any of the above items? What did you think?

Ethnic Love

I didn't take any food photos at the ranch. It was just the last thing on my mind as we were celebrating such a profound moment for our family. I'm sure you'll all understand.

So let's skip ahead to Sunday evening, shortly after we arrived back home.

I busted out some of these that I stole from the pantry at the ranch:

TastyBite Madras Lentils

I feel a little bad about stealing them but I couldn't help it! They looked interesting and delicious and who knows how long they had been in that pantry all lonely.

Basically it comes in a pouch and you just squeeze it into a bowl and heat it up in the microwave or the stove.

The consistency of it was a bit more soupy than I expected. I would have liked more thickness and more lentils/beans.

Then I dumped in some cooked brown rice and chowed down.

My overall review: Eh. Just okay.

Honestly it reminded me a lot of canned chili, which isn't necessarily a good thing when you're wanting an Indian dish.

I ate all of it though, which goes to show you that I didn't hate it. And by all I mean the whole box (plus rice)...which is supposed to be "2 servings".

I would probably buy it again but I might try a different variety next time to see if it's less "chili-like" and more "Indian-like". :)

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Tonight we made Peanut Shrimp for dinner:


I bookmarked this post over at Carrots 'n Cake when she blogged about making Peanut Shrimp.

She basically just made this Rachael Ray recipe for Peanut Chicken with shrimp, which is what I did as well.

When we finished cooking it I realized that there was a ton of extra sauce so we stirred the steamed broccoli that we were planning on eating on the side right into the dish. It was a great addition!

We also added about a teaspoon of this to up the flavor and spice:

Almost out! Need to restock.

I thought it was really good but Hubs actually said he thought the peanut buttery-ness was a little overwhelming (which is saying a lot since he is a peanut butter FREAK).

He said next time he would decrease the peanut butter to about 1/2 cup. Fair enough.


Oh one more thing, I have no idea why Rachael calls for 1/4 cup of oil to cook the chicken/shrimp in. That seems a little ridiculous. So we decreased the oil to about 1/8 cup or 1-2 tablespoons.

We served the Peanut Shrimp over brown rice, which is a must with all the extra sauce that this recipe made!

I just realized that the past two dinners have been very ethnic. First, Indian....then Thai. Probably my two favorite types of ethnic foods! I think it's the spice.

Do you enjoy ethnic food? What's your favorite kind?

Best Laid Plans

You know what they say about best laid plans....

Wait...what do they say?

I think the gist of it is that the best laid plans don't always work out. Right? Right.

Tonight's best laid plans of a delicious Mahi-Mahi dinner did not work out. Why, you ask?

Well, without boring you/whining about my no good, horrible, very bad day I'll just tell you that it was....well a no good, horrible, very bad day. Stressssssful day at work, to say the least.

Which was topped off by a commute home in pouring sheets of rain in which I couldn't see a damn thing and some LOSER almost t-boned me because he was an IDIOT and then proceeded to honk at ME. WTF?!

{Road Rage much??}

I walked in the door feeling mega-stressed and decided to scrap dinner plans. I came this close to giving in to a major craving for a Sonic cheeseburger and tater tots....but I resisted.

Actually, I'm not gonna lie, that cheeseburger probably would be in my belly right about now if it weren't for the aforementioned pouring sheets of rain that discouraged me from going back out.

So we scrounged for dinner instead:



It included such gems as this frozen twice baked potato that I rescued from the depths of my freezer:

Healthy? Nope. Satisfying? Yep.

And a Morningstar Spicy Black Bean Burger on a sandwich thin with mustard:
{Shout out to my vegetarian BFF, Emma, for introducing me to these burgers last summer. I can't get enough of them!}

And some of these new Beanitos chips that I impulse purchased at the grocery store the other day:

Beanitos Black Bean Chips

These were surprisingly delicious!! Even Hubs gave them the thumbs up. They're lighter than normal tortilla chips but still super crispy. They have great flavor too! I may even like these better than normal tortilla chips...GASP!

But what really sends these chips over the top is the nutritional info:


Look at that ingredient list!! All things I can pronounce! Amazing.

And chips with omega-3's, fiber, AND protein?? YES please!


All in all it was a very random dinner, but it worked. In case you're wondering Hubs did not eat what I ate.

He made some sort of odd Tuna Croquette-ish things which he drenched in balsamic vinegar. No, not vinaigrette...VINEGAR. Ewww.

Yet again, a perfect example of how WEIRD guys are!

Do you ever crave a certain fast food meal? Do share! I used to think I didn't like Sonic's food but recently I basically had no choice but to eat it and the cheeseburger just hit.the.spot. So now that's pretty much my biggest fast food craving. YUM.