Monsoon Day

This morning I woke up to beautiful sunshine ♥, I came home through flooding, black sky and heavy rain 😦

But that’s ok I am not going to let it get me down 🙂

This morning for breakfast I had Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Waffles with Sugar Free Syrup, Banana’s and Blueberry’s:

Very yummy and super filling. Twitter was a buzz this morning with Caitlin from The Healthy Tipping Point appearing on the Today Show to  talk about Operation Beautiful. I do not know Caitlin but it was great to see a fellow food blogger on national tv and speaking about such a great cause. She did an amazing job!!

With such motivation knowing that someone my age has made such an accomplishment and followed a dream, it left me in a great mood to carry out the afternoon (despite the rain!).

For dinner, since it was rainy and grey out I decided to brighten things up with a pizza. The pizza featured local tomatoes and onion. Other toppings included New York Cheddar Cheese, goat cheese and garlic.

Now I am going to use up some of the local peaches in the fridge and make a peach cobbler 🙂

Jersey Shore is on tonight!

Peaches and Cream-

Elizabeth

CSA Dinner

One thing that I truly enjoy about being a participant in a CSA is the fact that you are forced to eat local produce, at least I am. I am not going to spend the money to let the food go to waste. This has centered many of my meals around local produce and makes me be a little more creative. However because the food is local, I often have similar ingredients week after week.

I had some red skin potatoes that I needed to use as well as some corn. I didn’t want oven baked potatoes and didn’t feel like making a casserole type of dish, so I settled on garlic mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and toquitoes from Trader Joes.

The final presentation:

I realized after I plated that I could have used more color on my plate 🙂

In other news I went to the chiropractor today and found out I have 3 pinched nerves! No wonder why I have been in so much pain/having a hard time sleeping. I have been icing my neck all afternoon and I am going to do some stretches and try to catch a couple of yoga classes this week.

Have you ever pinched a nerve? What did you do to help it?

With Corn-e- Love,

Elizabeth

West Elm and Cantina 1511

Usually Monday evenings involve realxing, watching tv and cooking a meal. Earlier in the day I was talking to a friend on IM at work and was telling her that there was a West Elm store in Charlotte (sometimes those of us that live up in Lake Norman do not get to Charlotte as much as we should). She hadn’t heard of West Elm, but after reviewing the website she decided that we should go that night and make a trip to Cantina 1511. Who could turn down that offer?

So at 5:30 I headed down to her house and her, her husband and myself started our big “roadtrip” to Charlotte. I really enjoyed what West Elm had in the store, I had only ever seen a cataglogue so it was great to see the quality up close. So many fun items in one place is a brain overload! They had very cute weiner dog mini plates, I really wished they had a fuller size version becuase they were so fun, but I may go back and purchase them anways.

Next it was on to Cantina 1511 🙂 !

I usually order the chicken tacos when I go there, I decided to try something different and I am glad that I did. I had the chicken chimichanga’s:

I highly recomend Cantina 1511 if you are ever in the Charlotte area.

**Also Today I am going to be featured on Healthy Tipping Point for my Operation Beautiful Post!**

Peaches and Cream-

Elizabeth

Dinner #fail

Eating clean is not always easy or fun, but it is often both. Cooking clean is not always easy either. I wanted to use up a bunch of my produce from my last week’s CSA box because tomorrow I get a new batch of produce 🙂 I decided to make a stir fry ie cut everything up and throw it in a wok. That went pretty well but I had too many vegetables that were sweet and nothing to balance it out (like peppers).

Anyways, here are the ingredients:

Here is a pic of the food cooking:

I do not have a picture of it plated because I was too disappointed 😦

I did manage to go to the gym and use the elliptical..then I came home and made peach cobbler..it’s in the oven now – yum yum! Hopefully the brother will eat most of it and I’ll just have a tad.

Peaches-

Elizabeth

A Southern Dinner

In the continuation of camera problems (just ordered new usb cord!) I have been lagging on some of my posts. A few nights ago I made a “Southern” dinner. My brother asked what made the dinner southern, I replied because it contained fried chicken 🙂

Doing this a little backwards, because I showed you the meal plated, and now I am going to show you the preparation.

I wanted to use some of the fabulous produce that was included in my CSA box and I decided on the garlic, onion,  zucchini and yellow squash. First I cut up the garlic:

Then it was time to cut and cook the onion, zucchini and squash:

Shot II:

And some asparagus:

This meal was amazing. I am beyond happy with the quality of food I am getting from my CSA (www.knowyourfarms.com).

I also have been watching my co-workers dog all week,  say hi to Diesel:

Lovin’ Lettuce:

Elizabeth

Brainstorming Session

So I bribed my friend Katie to come over tonight to help think of ideas for the big blog redesign. I bribed her with cooking a meal. The meal consisted of many local foods including: white corn, tomatoes, lettuce and butter from Calico Farms. The non local parts of the meal included: turkey burgers, buns and french fries (baked of course). We then headed over to the new frozen yogurt place in Mooresville. I’d love to share with you pics but my camera is dead 😦 and I STILL cannot find the cord. I think I may need to break down and buy a new one.

Forever Corn-

Elizabeth