Hello all! I hope you’re having a great week. Popping in to share some fun adventures and eats as of late.
First up: have you ever tried making pizza with the cheese underneath (instead of on top of) the sauce?
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Yeah, I hadn’t either! We were over at our friend’s Katie and Mike’s place for pizza and movie night with the kids, and I was so intrigued by this approach. They were also using sandwich-style slices of cheese vs. shredded cheese (which makes sense because spreading sauce on top of shredded cheese, we confirmed, is a hot mess).
Apparently the recipe is from Serious Eats. It came out great – very yummy!
Plus some salad on the side, and extra sauce for the crust, of course!
Another yummy meal we had recently was some pork enchiladas with a cabbage slaw and salsa verde:
We had them with some shishito peppers that we blistered in a pan with some olive oil, salt, and pepper. Shishito’s are always fun because you never know when you are going to get a super spicy one (apparently roughly 1 in 10 is extra hot, the rest are mild).
I did a little research and found out that apparently the heat level is due to growing conditions. A drought will make them spicier because it will concentrate the capsaicin level of the pepper. Fascinating!
Luckily none of mine ended up being crazy hot – whew! And in case you’re wondering, see those muffins in the background of the photo above? That’s what the kids had for dinner that night (plus some raw veggies + fruit). Sigh. They are so picky right now we’ve kind of given up for the most part even offering them our dinner…
At least the muffins had some protein and fat – they were made using the Simple Mills banana muffin box mix (Amazon affiliate link), and I made them with almond milk (instead of water) and avocado oil and added some hemp seeds, too. Gotta pack in that nutrition for the kids where I can!
In other news, we’ve been trying to make weekends a little more “fun” lately because it raises everyone’s morale to have some sort of a special outing. It’s so easy to just languish around the house/not plan anything because getting two small kids out and about is kind of a pain, and Wes still naps so we don’t have a huge chunk of time to work with for bigger adventures.
That said, we decided to stop making excuses and implement more of a system/routine for outings because I do enjoy a good routine. I came up with the idea to have one morning each weekend be a “family fun morning” where we plan something fun in advance and incorporate the kids in the planning, too. (This will likely be mostly hikes/nature adventures because I want the family fun mornings to be things that Matt and I actually enjoy as well vs. something like an indoor play place which the kids love but is my nightmare. 😉 )
This past weekend we went out to Frying Pan Farm Park to check out some of the animals. I had seen in one of the recent reviews that they had baby pigs right now – how cute! The kids were obsessed.
This turkey was also a huge hit, especially with Riese – he was very intense and kept making gobbling noises and showing off his feathers to let us know who was in charge!
Everyone had fun and we even managed to keep Wes awake in the car on the way home so we didn’t ruin nap time. 😉
Other recent fun is I had a girls’ night out with my friends Jen and Kristin last week – we met when our oldest kids were babies and used to do a lot of playdates back in the day but it all kind of stopped during covid, and now our kids are in school. So, we now just meet up for occasional girls’ nights instead of play dates and I don’t hate it. 🙂
Jen and I both love yoga so we always meet up for a yoga class and then meet Kristin for a later dinner afterward. I love starting girl’s night with yoga to reset from the day and get in the relaxed mindset!
I have a monthly membership to Mind the Mat in Del Ray so mostly only go there nowadays, but I discovered recently that I have some class passes still left on my account with CorePower Yoga (purchased right before the pandemic hit and then I promptly forgot about them).
Jen is an instructor at CorePower so she’s always down to go there! We did a very sweaty 6pm hot yoga class (“C2” is the name of the class in their system – basically a hot power yoga class) at their Ballston, Arlington studio.
For dinner, we met Kristin nearby at a spot called Pirouette Restaurant & Wine Shop. It was a cute place and the food was REALLY good and creative. We got a bunch of stuff and shared, which is always my favorite way to eat out because I love tasting multiple dishes!
A bonus is that you can buy and immediately drink any of the wine from their wine shop if you’re dining in (with no corkage fee). They will even re-cork it for you to take home if you don’t finish it. Check it out if you’re in the Arlington area!
And now, I will leave you with this very adorable photo of the scene I found one day recently when I went into the kid’s bathroom the morning after Matt had given Wes a bath. Apparently they put all the Octonauts (any other Octonauts fans out there?) to sleep using washcloth blankets – isn’t this sweet? <3
Have a great weekend – see y’all back here on Tuesday!
