At the dollar store

Look at what I found at the dollar store....what is this world coming to??

ONE YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I HAVE BEEN WRITING MY BLOG FOR EXACTLY ONE YEAR!!

MY HOPES OF WHAT THIS BLOG BRINGS TO YOU:
1)YOU FIND THE JOY IN SHARING MEALS WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY 
2)YOU EAT HEALTHIER 
3)YOU TRY NEW FOODS 
4)YOU EXPERIENCE DIFFERENT CULTURES THROUGH THEIR FOOD


I LOVE WRITING IT AND I HOPE YOU ENJOY READING IT JUST AS MUCH!!

I CANNOT THANK YOU ALL ENOUGH FOR YOUR ONGOING SUPPORT!  

I love roasted vegis!!!!

I made a huge platter of roasted sweet potatoes, yukon gold potatoes and brussel sprouts.  Look how pretty these are!!!

I like to line a baking sheet with non-stick tin foil.  Cut up your vegis (try to make them all around the same size), toss with olive oil, and put them in a 450 degree oven.  Keep an eye on them.  You will need to toss them around 8 minutes into them cooking, to try to get multiple sides brown = crunchy and yummy.  Finish with a toss of kosher salt or sea salt.

Healthy, pretty and yummy.....who could ask for anything more?!?!?

So interesting

Look what I saw the other day.....

On McDonalad's menus at the drive thru, there are calories listed.  I don't know if they are listed inside (since I rarely get out of my car at McD's), but I would assume so.  Really interesting.  I wonder if this will cut into their sales? I know that when I was picking up a soda for our daughter, I was thinking of getting a coffee drink.  All I had to do was look at the calories, I didn't get it.  Would seeing the calories of what you are going to eat influence your choices?  Let me know.....

Wildfish, Deerfield, IL

I went onto my Wedeal account and discovered I had two purchases that were expiring in 1 week.  Both were for Wildfish in Deerfield.  Saturday night I found myself alone....no kids, no husband.  I went there to use at least one of the certificates.  I need to find time to use the other - and soon.

This was a nice place.  Dark but quiet. I went early so that I would be out before the rush and not "waste" a table for one at their high time. The service was perfectly attendant....not pushy at all.

 This was so good.  This was their avocado and tuna salad.  You can see it is served with seaweed salad.  I love seaweed salad.  Don't let the words "seaweed" stop you.  It is so yummy! It is healthy, light and tasty.  It has different crunchy textures due to the seaweed salad, smooth from the avocado and soft with the tuna.  YUM!

This is their Scary Spider roll.  It has black and white rice with soft shell crab avocado and cucumber inside and black and red tobiko outside.  It is a good roll.  Crunchy from the crab and the different rices have two different textures.  The black rice is a bit gummier than the white.  And I love tobiko....snappy and yummy.

Kale salad

This salad is so good that our kids like it, as well as crowds for a party I had made it for.  This is torn kale, shredded parmesan, slivered almonds, dried cranberries and dressing.  The dressing is 1t agave (you can use honey, sugar, artificial sweetner, whatever form of sweet you like), 1/4 cup mango white balsamic vinegar (I bought it was a specialty store, but you can use just regular white balsamic vinegar as well), 1t olive oil.  Sweet, tangy, crunchy.  Don't let the word kale stop you from trying this.

Black bean soup and quesadillas

 Too bad you can't just reach out and taste this soup.  It is SOOOO good (and fast and healthy)!  I went to the salad bar and took a scoop and chopped onions, chopped celery and shredded carrots.  I sauteed these in a soup pan until they were all soft.  Didn't take long.....maybe 8 minutes.  Then I dumped one large can and one small can of black beans in there - along with some cumin (about 1t) and few shakes of ground chipolte pepper.  Let them all heat and and put in 2 cups of chicken stock (I had made some a few weeks back in my pressure cooker and portioned it out into plastic containers and froze them).  I didn't even bother to thaw it, just dumped in the froze lump.  Heated it all up again and then shooshed it with the stick blender.  I left it a bit lumpy this time.  I usually shoosh until it is smooth, but I wanted to try it this way.  We were split on the added texture.  Half of the family liked it lumpy and have liked it smoother.

I added some cheese and non-fat greek yogurt to mine.....for added treats and protein.

Our son made the quesadillas for the family.  He wanted to make sure I took a picture of this one particularly.....he liked how the cheese was oozing out.  I used non-fat flour tortillas that I found at work.  They tasted just as good as the full fat ones and I hope a bit better for us.