Drivin’

Climbin’

Sprinklerin’

Explorin’

Drivin’ some more

Flyin’

Today’s children spend way too much time indoors and in front of the TV or computer screen. The average kid only spends less than 10 minutes of unstructured playtime outdoors, which I find to be first of all crazy(!) and second of all, really sad. There is nothing like running around, free as a bird and exploring the world around you.

Hope your weekend was just as great!

What did you do this weekend?

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The trails took us around the lake itself and through the woods. In the end, we did 5.2 miles in a little less than an hour.

Munchkin had an awesome time and did not mind the bumps and having to be carried over some parts of the trail.

He did love yelling quack quack at the ducks, which I was later informed were actually geese. Whoops, I grew up in the city, so you can’t blame me for not knowing!

The trail also had strength training points scattered throughout it, so we stopped to try the monkey bars and the dip bars. I am proud to say that I was able to get halfway across the monkey bars. Tommy’s little bro said that he will have me doing pullups by the end of the summer and I am holding him to it!

Even though it was in the high 80s, the trail was shady and kept us cool. We really didn’t feel the heat until we returned to the parking lot.

Have I mentioned how much I love Munchkin’s bike seat. It is soo much better than the kind that goes on the back of the bike and I am sad because I know that by next summer he will be too big for it.

After our bike ride, we stopped at The Pit Stop for lunch. Tommy had seen the Pit Stop on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on the Food Network and we’ve been trying to go there ever since.

I ordered the Spaghetti Squash which is one of the thing Guy Fieri tried while there and it was pretty darn good. They ever share the recipe on their website, so if you can’t get there to try it, you can recreate it at home!

Munchkin got a bit tuckered out after our ride and napped on the way back.

Since the weather was perfect in the afternoon, we decided to grill for dinner. We made two grilled pizzas, corn on the cob and baby bok choy in a soy sauce sauce.

I am also in love with my new tray from Target. So summery and fun.

Mushroom and pepper with mozzarella cheese.

Buffalo chicken and blue cheese.

Baby bok choy.

Corn of the cob which turned out great because we grilled it without peeling. It really makes a world of a difference. We ate it without any butter or salt. Yum!

Hope you had a great Holiday Weekend!

What did you do on Memorial Day? What’s your fav BBQ dish?

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Despite the storminess, I had a pretty stellar weekend. I spent all of Friday with my little Munchkin. We lounged around in our PJs, got a workout in, cleaned out my car and made dinner. He is a champ at cleaning. I would spray the Windex and he had a blast wiping down the dashboard. Hopefully his love of cleaning sticks around!

For dinner, I was feeling Mexican, so I threw together something quick, easy and so yummy. Salsa chicken with Mexican style quinoa.

I marinated the chicken breast in some Italian dressing for about an hour before searing it on a skillet with some olive oil. Once the chicken cooked all the way through, I added in a whole jar of salsa that I mixed with about a tablespoon of plain Chobani and let it all stew together.

Meanwhile, I cooked up a cup of quinoa with chili powder and red pepper flakes. In a separate pot, I sautéed some a small onion with a few cloves of garlic. Once the onion became translucent, I threw in a can of well-rinsed black beans, a cup of frozen corn and a can of Mexican style stewed tomatoes.

I let all those flavors mingle before I mixed in the cooked quinoa. Delish!

Munchkin spent Saturday in PA with his grandparents so I could do some studying. I spent all morning and most of the early afternoon in my yard with books and laptop in work mode. Not only did I get through 7 chapters of material, I got a pretty good looking tan going on.

Once Tommy got back from work, we decided to do dinner. We threw some ideas back and forth and decided on our tried and true sushi place, Sakura. We were both feeling a bit of a sweet tooth after dinner, so we ventured out in search of cupcakes. Yelp led up to Brooklyn Cupcakes where I was exstatic to find Tres Leches cupcakes.

I fell in love with Tres Leches cake last year on vacation in Mexico, but haven’t had a piece since.

The cupcake was perfection, especially when served along side my favorite wine, Riesling.

Sunday was very rainy. We braved the weather and headed out to the mall to take advantage of some deals ending that day. I had a 20% off coupon for H&M and Loft was having their Friends and Family sale that make everything in the store 40% off. Also, since it was Earth Day, Origins was giving away free moisturizer when you traded in an old container, so I partook in that as well.

Munchkin made off like a bandit at H&M and scored some pretty sweet summer items, including Cars swim trunks. I couldn’t resist!

I got a really cute summer dress at Loft that I cannot wait to wear.

Shopping must’ve worn us out, because when we got home we knocked out for three hours and slept. There’s nothing quite like sleeping on a rainy day while listening to the rain beating down on the roof.

Have a great Monday!

What did you do this weekend? What’s your favorite type of cupcake?

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Friday started out with a great workout, a great sale at J Crew (50% + 30% off!) and a great dinner, which I will save for a post coming up soon.

Saturday consisted of grocery shopping, sandbox buying and BBQing in the evening with great company. We had our first official BBQ of the season, complete with homemade veggie burger. Great friends+great food = perfection. Tommy also surprised me with a food processor! I have been wanting one of these babies for a long, long time. He told me that we needed to stop at Best Buy because he wanted to buy a new game for his PS3, but came out carrying this instead. Best surprise ever!

The weather for Sunday was supposed to be iffy, but Tommy and I made plans earlier in the week that we would take a trip all the way out to the end of Long Island, to Montauk. I have wanted to go to Montauk for a veeeeerry long time, but for one reason or another, I never made it out to The End. I woke up early Sunday morning and saw the sun shining through my window. A quick check of the forecast showed me that there would be no rain happening until the late evening, so I knew we were in for a great day.

We got ready and hit the road around 10AM. The ride out the Montauk is about a 2 1/2 hour drive outside of the city, so we packed some snacks and told each other no stopping until we get there.  Once we caught sight of the end of land, we pulled over to take a look.

We ventured even farther out to sea and explored the Montauk lighthouse. Tommy even climbed to the top to check out the view. Unfortunately, Munchkin was too small to make it up all the stairs, so we stayed on the ground and checked out the exhibits in the museum.

After the lighthouse, we set out to the beach. We parked our butts in the sun on the rocks and spent a good while just taking in the ocean and teach Munchkin to skip rocks. It was perfection.

All that rock skipping worked up quite an appetite, so we headed back into town to get some eats. On our drive out we passed by this little stand and knew that it was where we would be returning to eat.

I got a cup of New England Clam Chowda to start.

And rounded out my meal with a lobster roll and some of Munchkin sweet potato fries.

We finished off our trip with a stop at the outlets where Tommy picked up some shorts for the fast approaching 80 degree weather and I picked up a super inexpensive running top at Under Armor and a sweater at American Eagle. We drove home with nothing but smiles on our faces. Why do perfect weekends end so quickly? Only 5 days until the next one though!

Have a great Monday! Enjoy the 90 degree weather in you’re in my area!

What did you do this weekend? What was the last road trip you took?

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Since it was absolutely gorgeous on Friday, we couldn’t stay cooped up in the house. Munchkin and I headed out to the park a bit after breakfast wearing shorts (him) and sandals (me)! I love going to the park on Friday mornings because it’s a school day and the park crowd is mostly toddlers.

Munchkin even climbed the biiig hill in the park all by himself. That’s him on top with me still only halfway up. The little guy is a brave and adventurous soul and I love it!

Saturday started out with a trip to the supermarket with my dad. No trip in my dad’s car is complete without a backseat photo shoot.

I picked up a bunch of new things to try at the supermarket like wheat berries, a kabocha squash and kale! I have some recipes planned for this week, if I can find the time to make them.

Saturday night was Hunger Games Date Night! I bought the tickets for the movie on Friday and could not wait for Saturday evening to arrive. We picked up our tickets in the theater before heading out to dinner at Shiro of Japan which is in the same mall as the theater. When I first looked up Shiro, it reminded me a lot of Arirang in PA because it was also a hibachi place with a separate sushi area in the restaurant. I was excited to try the place since it had good reviews.

We started out with Incredible Tuna and a Salmon Sundae for our appetizers.

The Incredible Tuna was tuna tataki with spicy tuna tartar served with ponzu and miso sauce. It lived up to it’s name – it was pretty darn good. The tartare was very spicy which I liked. The Salmon Sundae consisted of crunchy, crusted Peanuts and layer of fresh Spicy Salmon, topped with Avocado, sliced Salmon, and Balsamic Vinegar. I liked the Salmon Sundae even better than the Incredible Tuna, but I prefer salmon over tuna any day so it wasn’t really a fair fight.

Since it was out first time at Shiro, we didn’t really know what their portions were like. For our main entree, we shared the Sushi/Sashimi Combination for 2, which turned out to be bigger than we had expected.

Along with regular soy sauce, our waitress brought out two more kinds of dipping sauce and recommended which fish to dip in which sauce. The fish was super fresh and tasty and we ate it all up. Needless to say, we weren’t going into the Hunger Games hungry.

Even though there was still almost an hour left until our movie, we headed over to the theater, where a line had already formed.

Luckily, we didn’t have to wait for long because we were let into the theater fairly quickly. We snagged some great seats and waited patiently for the movie to start. I really enjoyed the movie, and Tommy did too. I read the books last summer while on vacation in Mexico and totally fell in love with the story. I thought the film was very well-made and Jennifer Lawrence kicked major butt playing Katniss. Even though I knew what was going to happen next, the film kept me on the edge of my seat waiting for the story to unfold. Even though it was over two hours long, it really felt like it flew by. I tend to suffer from popcorn brain and get bored during long movies, but this was not the case at all.  It really did the book justice in my opinion and I cannot wait for the next one!

Sunday was spent with Tommy’s family for their family Easter party. There was lots of good food and great company and Munchkin left with 40 chocolate Easter eggs because Tommy’s aunt is nuts and spoils Munchkin whenever she sees him. Luckily for me, Lent is not yet over, otherwise I know I would’ve broken into his stash already.

This weekend is definitely one of the best I’ve had in a while. Hope yours was great too!

What did you do this weekend? What’s the last good movie you saw?

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I just finished Workout A of Week Three of the Best Body Bootcamp, and it was no joke. I kind of slacked off last week and didn’t exactly follow the training schedule, but I did get in a lot of time outdoors walking and running after Munchkin.

This morning’s workout was lower body supersets with cardio circuits in between. So basically I did three back to back sets of two lower body workouts followed by 5 minutes of cardio, followed by more supersets. The exercises that Tina designed are really great. The girl makes you work every muscle, even muscles you didn’t know you had. I’m kind of excited for the upper body supersets because upper body workouts are my fav!

Enough about working out, I wanted to share something that I stumbled upon on a random Tumblr and looked into further. I never paid much attention to the little produce code stickers on my fruits and veggies when shopping, but apparently what the number looks like can tell you a lot about your produce. I always thought that the numbers were there for the supermarket to be able to enter them into the cash registers, but the numbers actually tell you how the produce was grown. Produce with:

• a 4-5 number code starting in 9 is organic.
• a 4-5 number code starting in 8 is genetically modified.
•  a 4 number code starting in 4 is conventionally grown
• a 4 number code starting in 3 is irradiated.

I am going to be making sure that none of my produce is genetically modified from now on. The whole subject of genetic modification of food makes me a little uneasy and I try to avoid it when possible. Unfortunately, our government doesn’t think we need to know how the food we put into our bodies was grown.

My delicious breakfast is almost ready, so I’m going to run. Keep an eye out for something really yummy tomorrow!

Have a great Tuesday!

What’s the last good workout you had? Do you pay attention to how and where your produce it grown?

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On Friday, Munchkin and I had a mommy/son date. The last time we were at Walmart, he was really interested in the little fish they have for sale, so where better to go than the New York Aquarium.

The weather on Friday was probably the worst it was all week, just my luck, but we had a great time anyway. Munchkin also loved jumping in all the puddles which made the day even better for him.

We got to the aquarium right in time for the feeding of the bigger outdoor animals. We got to see the seals do some tricks.

Munchkin loved the penguins.

We moved into the indoor section after the feedings and got to see tons of different fish and aquatic animals. My favorite fish was this neon yellow guy. He lived in an anemone with the clown fish. Any friend of Nemo is a friend of mine.

Jellyfish, but no sign of Spongebob and Patrick.

Munchkin was a fan of the four eyed fish. This fish has two eyes, but each eye has a section through which they can see above and below the water to protect them from predators. Pretty cool.

And no trip is complete without attacking the penny crushing machine. We had to get on, of course!

Now it’s time to get back to life, back to reality. Not only do I have a whole day of work, I have to go to school afterwards. Luckily were only less than two months of school left before summer vacay! I think I can survive.

Have a good Monday!

What did you do this weekend? Have you ever been to the Aquarium?

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Not only was yesterday a good day for weather, it was also a good day for my belly. When I got home from work, I was starving. I only had an hour before I had to go to school, so I wanted to make something quick but yummy. That’s when I remembered that I picked up these bad boys over the weekend. I am a total sucker for wings, so I had to get these.

I made myself a big salad with spinach, tomatoes, brocoli and red peppers. I topped the salad with the chickenless wings and made a hot sauce dressing by mixing about a tablespoon of Greek yogurt with Frank’s Red Hot Wing Sauce. Soo good!

Tommy drove me into the city for school. Since we had some time to kill before I had to be in class, we stopped at Jamba Juice for some smoothies. Tommy wanted something raspberry and I got something pomegranate, but we switched because we liked the other one better. Typical.

When I got home after school, I found that my mom made some delicious Twice Bakes Stuffed Potatoes. Even though it was late, I couldn’t resist.

The potatoes are baked until fork tender, the insides are scooped out and stuffed with black beans, broccoli, black forest ham and topped with cheddar cheese. They go back into the over until warm and gooey. I can’t wait to have another one of these for lunch today!

I’m off to work! Have a great Thursday!

What’s you favorite kind of smoothie?

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Since it was close to 60 degrees on Saturday, Munchkin and I were wilderness explorers.

We set out for a long walk and instead of jumping into his stroller as soon as we got out of the cul de sac, Munchkin marched on, up and down the hills, for at least a quarter of our 2 1/2 miles. He also enjoyed the crunchy leaves on the sides of the road which should be covered up by snow at this time.

On Sunday, my parents gave Munchkin his birthday present. They got him a fancy power wheels car, but all he wanted to do was push it around instead of ride in it.

We also did some shopping on Sunday evening, and I got almost all the needed supplies for Munchkin’s party. The house will be Cars-ified on Friday night. I can’t wait!

While we were out supply shopping, I also picked up some great new items that I wanted to share with you guys.

I stumbled upon these babies over New Year’s weekend and had to repurchase them. I love English Muffins with cream cheese and jam, but since these already have cranberries baked in them, you can skip the jelly. I am also a sucker for things that are labeled limited edition and have to repurchase if I see them becuase next time I’m at the supermarket, they might be all out. Marketing trap I tell you!

I also picked up another carton of Silk Almond Dark Chocolate Milk. Munchkin and I are both huge fans of the stuff and it makes my morning coffee taste like a mocha. Win!

The last interesting thing that I got over the weekend are Tofu Shiritaki Noodles. They are a low carb and low calorie Japanese noodle which Hungry Girl uses in lots of her recipes. I’ve never seen them in my supermarket before, so when I saw them I decided to give them a shot. I’ve heard both good and bad things about them, so hopefully they won’t be a dud.

I’ve got a bunch of errands to run today. I feel like this last week off from school is going to zoom by because of Munchkin’s birthday party. I don’t want to go back to school!

Have a great Monday!

What did you do this weekend? Make any supermarket discoveries lately?

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On Wednesday, we hit up the supermarket early to avoid the crowds and so I could get started on my baking. When we got home, Munchkin napped and I managed to get both my Pumpkin Cheesecake and Carrot Cake done while he slept. I also ripped up the bread for my stuffing. I have to share the recipe with you guys, because it is so good and was the only thing that did not leave leftovers. After Tommy got home, we went to Toys R Us to buy birthday gifts for Arianna, Tommy’s goddaughter, who turned one on Turkey Day!

We woke up on Thursday ready to cook.  I brined my turkey on Wednesday morning in a mixture of water and apple cider with spices, fresh garlic and bay leaves.

Before the bird went into the oven, I spread a mixture of butter and spices under the skin to make sure it didn’t dry out during baking. I also basted the crap out of the bird and I have to say, that I think it paid off becuase the meat was juicy and delicious. We also had mashed potatoes with mushroom gravy, green beans with pumpkin seeds, pearl onions with peas and carrots, sweet potatoes, butternut squash with spinach, craisins and mandarins, mushroom stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce with ginger and a pinapple glazed ham.  Basically all the foods that will lead you to laying down on the couch with a food coma shortly after. For dessert we had my Pumpkin Cheesecake and Carrot Cake along with some cakes that my cousin brought from the bakery she works at.

My favorite thing on Thanksgiving it the stuffing, so I’m going to share my recipe that I’ve used for the past few years.

Mushroom Stuffing (adapted from Rachael Ray)

• One and a half 1-pound loaves white bread, cut into cubes
• 1  bunch of celery with leaves, coarsely chopped
• 3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter
• 2 onions, chopped
• 2 8 oz. packages white mushrooms, sliced.
• 3 tablespoons poultry seasoning
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 large eggs, beaten with 2 tablespoons water.
• grated Parmesan cheese.

Preheat the oven to 250°. Scatter the bread cubes on a baking sheet and bake, tossing occasionally, until dried but not browned, about 40 minutes. Let cool. Increase the oven temperature to 350°.  In a large, deep skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook until translucent, about 10 minutes. Mix in the celery and mushrooms and cook over high heat, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes. Stir in the salt, pepper and poultry seasoning until thoroughly combined. In a large bowl, toss the bread cubes with the beaten egg mixture. Add the vegetable mixture and toss until well combined. Spoon the stuffing into 2 buttered 3-quart casserole dishes, top with Parmesan cheese and bake, uncovered, for 40 minutes.

****************

Friday was Black Friday, so of course we had to do some shopping. We didn’t stay up all night or get up at the crack of dawn, but we did manage to get some awesome deals anyway. We started off at Kohl’s and hit up Toys R Us, Sears and Burlington before calling it a day. I got a Rachael Ray Casserround, some towels, gifts for the kids from next door and Alex’s babysitter, and a pair of new flats for myself. I also left with $60 in Kohl’s cash, so I’m planning on going back to get a new coffee maker.

After shopping, we got home and rested a bit because we had a big party to go to on Friday night, Arianna’s first birthday! They had the party at an Italian Restaurant and the food was amazing. Munchkin also discovered a love for calamari. I put some on my plate and went to get him a mozzarella stick, only to find him chowing down on the calamari on my plate. His food choices never cease to amaze me. He couldn’t wait for the cake to come out and almost died when he had to wait for them to take pictures and cut the cake.

Saturday and Sunday were relaxing days. Since the weather was gorgeous, we went to the Long Island City peirs on Saturday night so Munchkin could run around and play at the playground. We also found a great Mexican place, which I think may just become our go to Mexican restaurant.  Vamos al Tequila is a traditional, family run, little hole in the wall place in Greenpoint.

The portions are huge too, so we had enough to take home and have for lunch on Sunday.

We finished off our Sunday watching Pretty Woman and eating edamame and Coldstone Ice Cream, but not together. It was a great break from real life, but now I have to get into lockdown mode and start studying. Finals are less than two weeks away and I need to kick some butt.

Have a great Monday!

How was your Thanksgiving? Did you get any good Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals?

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