Babysitting Oliver

Another fun thing that happened on Saturday was that I got to hang out with my pal, Oliver!

 

Our friends Lisa & Justin have this adorable 8 month old who is very sweet. He is pretty calm and chill! We offered to babysit for them anytime and we were set to sit last night. Unfortunately, Erik has a cold so he stayed home though.

Oliver did NOT cry when his parents left. We played for about an hour and then he went to bed. Probably the easiest babysitting I've ever done. He just wanted to play with his toys and crawl all over.

 Lisa & Justin are also CA transplants and their family is in Ohio. It must be so hard to be parents and have to pay for babysitters all the time. We offered to babysit to just let them go out and not have to worry about any of that. They had a fun night out, so it was a success! I really feel like all of us without family out here just need to look out for one another and help each other out with stuff like this.

He went to bed without too much of a fuss, too. They can definitely call us anytime so hopefully we'll see him again soon!

Summer Season Kick-Off

 On Saturday, we were up early to attend the Summer Season Kick-Off for Team In Training. We went downtown to the SF Marriott for the big event. There was a big conference room set up and a lot of vendors in the hallway to help everyone train for and finish their endurance event this season.

 They had a fun photo area with props, which we HAD to take advantage of!

 There were a ton of people there to kick off the season. It was inspiring to see so many people who have come back to TNT for many, many seasons. One woman has participated for over 40 seasons!! Wow!

We heard a great presentation talking about the season and the difference our team will make in fundraising to fight cancer. We heard from a young cancer survivor, who is now a participant in TNT. We also met more of our teammates. It was a great morning!

Training starts today (Sunday) with a short run on our own. Our first team run is THURSDAY at the track and then Saturday is our first team run. Woohoo!

Eating In

It was a pretty nice day out on Friday so after work, Erik and I walked to The Page for happy hour. We came home though to have dinner - enchiladas. No real recipe there and I don't think this is truly an "enchilada" dish. Here's what we mixed inside the tortillas:

• Quinoa
• Mashed sweet potato
• Ground Turkey
• Cilantro
• Hot Sauce
• Shredded cheese

Rolled up the tortilla. Fit 6 in a dish. Put more cheese on top and topped them all with salsa. Baked for a few minutes and we're done! Delish!

This week, I really tried to meal plan. I realized we make too many runs across the street to this little gourmet, EXPENSIVE, grocery store and buy whatever we need for whatever we decide to eat that night. That, of course, adds up quick. Plus, it's so annoying to have the "what are we going to eat tonight" conversation every night AND decide who's going across the street to get dinner.


Last week, I found a bunch of recipes to make and went to Safeway so we had dinner at home basically all week. We both said how much we like eating at home vs. eating out most of the time. You get a great meal, usually have leftovers for lunch the next day, and save some money.

We already have our meal plan for next week. Hooray!

Do you plan out your meals or just decide what to eat on a daily basis?

Flora

On Thursday night, I had a work dinner at a restaurant in Oakland called Flora. I've never been to this restaurant and always like trying new spots. The food and the service were very good!


For dinner, the three of us shared two salads:

Harvest garden lettuce, toasted walnuts, fuji apples, red wine vinagrette
Blood orange, roasted sunchokes, upland cress, black garlic aioli, pickled okra

For dinner, I had the:
Stuffed chicken breast, chicken sausage, celery root remoulade, frisee, beets, sherry, chile oil

I don't usually order chicken that often at restaurants but this looked so good and it was!

Now, dessert was the true star of dinner - Salted caramel pudding. Oh My. So so good. It was very rich though so just a little bit went a long way. Yum!

Every thing was very good!

Here we come, TNT!

Last night, Erik and I attended a Staff Meeting for Team In Training. It was great to meet everyone and this season seems like it will be a lot of fun! We have our official "Kickoff" this Saturday and our first team workout is NEXT THURSDAY! Ahhhhh.

This season I am going to try harder to stick to the schedule. Last season, I wouldn't follow everything or run as much as the schedule told us to. I  KNOW it will make race day a lot easier and so I'm going to try to stick to it.

I know what shoes I need to wear and still have some life in the Brooks I got last season, so that is great. We know what fuel we like once we hit a certain mileage. We might be pretty set to start the season. Then, there is that whole "we haven't been running because its's cold and dark out" thing....I'm sure the first few weeks are going to be harrrrd to get back into it. But, like always, as soon as you start doing it more and more, it gets a lot easier!

If anyone reads this, are you running any big races this year??

Brown Sugar Chicken

Tonight I tried another Pinterest recipe for Baked Garlic Brown Sugar Chicken. It seemed like it would be so good. Here's the recipe:

Ours did not really look like this...

Ingredients
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
4 garlic cloves, minced
4 tablespoons brown sugar
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 500°F and lightly grease a casserole dish.
2. In small sauté pan, sauté garlic with the oil until tender.
3. Remove from heat and stir in brown sugar.
4. Place chicken breasts in a prepared baking dish and cover with the garlic and brown sugar mixture.
5. Add salt and pepper to taste.
6. Bake uncovered for 15-30 minutes

Sooooo....not sure why we had to cook it at 500 degrees. The brown sugar mixture essentially burned the crap of out of the pan the chicken was baking on. The garlic also burned in the mixture so instead of being carmelized, it was more crispy/burned-ish.

The chicken tasted good, it just wasn't delicious. It wasn't in a sauce like I thought it would be. I MIGHT try this again but I would cook this at a lower heat for sure. 

So, not all Pinterest recipes can be winners!

Sweet Potato Burgers

Tonight, dinner was a Pinterest meal and it was great! I made sweet potato bean burgers with a side of garlic peas. They were easy to make but I will say they were very mushy when you are trying to get them from the mixture into the Panko. Here's the recipe:

Sweet Potato Veggie Burgers
makes 7-8 large patties

2 cans cannellini white beans, drained
1 large sweet potato, baked/peeled/mashed (about 2 cups)
2 Tbsp tahini
2 tsp maple or agave syrup
1 tsp lemon pepper seasoning OR Cajun seasoning (or another fave spice!)
1/4 cup wheat flour
optional: additional seasoning (whatever you have on hand - I used a few dashes cayenne, black pepper and a scoop of nutritional yeast)
salt to taste if needed

plentiful Panko crumbs
safflower oil for pan

burgers: avocado, Dijon mustard, grain buns, romaine, onion, olive oil, pepper

Directions:

1. Bake sweet potato. Peel, place in large mixing bowl.
2. Add drained beans to mixing bowl. Mash beans and potato together.
3. Mash in seasoning, flour and any additional seasoning. Your mixture will be quite soft and moist. But you should be able to form a patty. Add more flour or a scoop of breadcrumbs - or dry rice to thicken the mixture if needed.
4. Heat 1 Tbsp safflower oil in a pan over high heat.
5. Form a patty from mixture and coat in Panko crumbs. Thick coating. Then drop the patty in the pan. Repeat until the pan is filled. Cook until browned on both sides. You could also bake. If baking, use less Panko.
6. Transfer cooked patties to paper towel. Cool for a few minutes.
7. Serve on toasted bun with lotsa toppings.

We topped them with some mashed avocado, lettuce, and hot sauce. Erik also had a fried egg on his which he said was delish!

Delicious, NEW recipe!

Homemade Sunday

Hello from Evie! You can tell she is back to normal because she sprinted from the kitchen, up on the couch, and was standing like this on the couch to bark out the window. Look at her looking at me like, Can I help you?

We went to Goodwiill and Storage. We dropped off some stuff and picked up my scrapbooking supplies. Man, I have so much stuff. I'm trying to organize things by year and just get moving.

Also, went to Safeway and got a great deal on this wine. It was $12 on sale for $7. Then I had two coupons totaling $3.50 so I got the wine for a whopping $3. What a steal!!

I made a lasagna for dinner with roasted eggplant, zuccini, and spicy chicken sausage. Deeeelish!

Erik also made something. Do these look familiar?

 Yep! He made English Muffins. They seemed pretty easy to make and they tasted good!

Also, the 49ers are going to the Superbowl! The city was loud after the win last night with people cheering and honking in the street! 

Here's to a good week! We both have to work on Monday ;-(

Oh Lord Jesus, It's a Fire!

Something crazy happened last night but first, I want to share with you a video that I saw earlier in the day and was dying laughing over:

This woman was cracking me up and the remix is so funny. "Ain't nobody got time for that!"

Well, it wasn't so funny when we were walking home from Kezar and smelled fire. We have seen and smelled quite a few apartment fires here in SF and let me tell you, it is super scary. It is one of my fears living here that one day I will come home and our building will be on fire or burning.

We were walking home, smelling smoke, and I said, "I hope our building is not on fire." As we get closer, we saw smoke NEXT TO OUR APARTMENT BUILDING. I started running towards our building and as I got closer, a woman said, "A car is on fire!"

Oh yes. A car RIGHT NEXT TO OUR BUILDING was literally a blaze. It was on fire and the fire was spreading to the bushes in front of the car. I was shaking and running to our building to get Evie. As I was doing so, this girl ran up and asked me to tell everyone in our side of the building because it was spreading to our building! Oh Lord Jesus, It's a fire!

At that point, I didn't know if the fire was truly spreading or what. I just wanted to get the dog and get out of there. The Fire Dept showed up in minutes and put the car fire out. The fire did NOT spread, it just looked like it was happening because the smoke was going up and over the building. 

Here are the firemen putting the fire out. The hood of the car was on literally melted. The cars parked next to this one were NOT damaged at all. Turns out it belonged to a guy in our neighborhood who came out and was talking to the SFD. SO scary. 

We were going to go out and meet up with some friends but we stayed home. After all that craziness, it was too late AND I was still trying to calm down. 

The car was towed and here is the aftermath this morning...

Pile of charred car parts

 Burnt Bushes

Broken glass where the car was

This just hit TOO close to home. What if it was our building!!?? Where the heck would we go. We have some great friends who would take us in, for sure. We wouldn't have any clothes or anything. Too awful to think about....

Everyone is safe. We are now saying how crazy it was that we were laughing over the video and then we had a Fire. Ain't nobody got time for that! I'm going to start thinking about finding money on the sidewalk and see if that comes true. haha

Cole Valley Walk

It was SO nice out on Saturday. The weather was back up in the 60's where it usually is. We are finally thawing out after our few weeks of 30's and 40's weather. Our electricity bill definitely felt the extra heat we used this month, that is for sure!! It was sunny, warm, and Evie and I went on our walk WITHOUT a coat which is amazing. 

We did about a 2 mile hilly walk through Buena Vista Park and Cole Valley. She did great although I think she was a little tired at the end. 

 We snapped a bunch of photos of plants and flowers on this walk. Starting with some clovers growing in our very own urban garden that Erik planted out back.

Hmmmm what season is it? There were yellow leaves falling off some trees and buds blooming on some others!

Also saw a funny sign outside a cafe for brunch, referring to the whole Lance Armstrong debacle, that said "Bacon has been taken off the banned substance list. Thank you Olympic Committee." Funny stuff.

After our walk, I got a mani pedi at a new place near by. They were super nice & it was only $25!! I will probably be going back since it's closer than my usual spot.

We went down to Kezar Pub to watch some NHL. The NHL is finally off their strike and the games are back on. We met up with some of Erik's hockey friends for some drinks and hockey. Fun time, as it always is!

Our night took an exciting turn on our walk home though.....

Funny Friday

To start our Friday night, I hit up IKEA to pick something up for my new project. As I previously mentioned, I want to learn how to sew and get back into scrapbooking. To do this, I need some type of dedicated space. The reason the scrapbook stuff has been in storage for approximately 4 years is because there is no room to put those supplies so that I can easily take them out & put them away when I feel like using them.

I decided to get rid of this little chair in our bedroom and get a desk/table situation so IKEA was the best place to go. I looked everything up online and knew what I wanted so the trip was short and efficient! I got my desk and a little chair. I am soooooooo excited! I'll show you what it looks like soon!

Once we got home, we ordered some dinner and I started going through the old scrapbooks we have here in SF. Most are still in CT at my parents house (the REAL good photos starting from the late 90's). Out here we had 2006, 2007, 2008...Found two funny pics:

Erik and I - Halloween 2006

Evie and I in 2007. This was just before we left for CA!

 After eating and laughing over photos, we ended the night like this:

Very excited to go to Goodwill to drop off that chair and also to Storage to get some of my scrapbooking stuff. I realized that my old scrapbooks are missing something ---the story! The pictures are in there and I used to say, "I'll journal the details later." Well, If I don't journal soon, I will forget the story. There are some funny things I want to capture so I realized that scrapbooking is fun and worth it to look back on all the good times in your life. I think I'll start with 2013 and work my way backwards to catch up. Woohoo!

Evie X-Ray Update

 Today, Evie and I headed up to Mill Valley for another check up x-ray. She now can do unlimited physical activity and her bone is healing nicely BUT it's not 100% yet. It's a solid bone at this point, but the doctor still sees some area where the bone is fusing together. So, we'll be back in another 8 weeks. I have a feeling we will be doing this until August, which would be one year to her surgery.

I told the doctor that she is a little stiff in the AM and he recommended she start taking fish oil from here on out. We bought the fish oil pills at the office but he said she can have any brand that is for humans, too. 

Here is Evie on the ride home, resting her head on the arm rest of the car. Tired for her drive back over the bridge...

Traffic light photo. She was happy we were out of the vet and heading home. 

Evie's birthday is coming up on Feb 1st (yep, we made up that exact birthdate). She is turning 7 years old!!! We just found out her Auntie Kimmy will be out here in Feb for a weekend visit so she will get to be at Evie's family birthday party :-)

Potato Growing

Back in August/September, Erik grew his own potatoes! He actually bought this special bag to grow potatoes in where you fill it with dirt and they grown in the dirt. He put the bag on our apartment building roof and checked on them frequently.

We actually got quite a few potatoes out of the bag! It was pretty cool to see & actually eat them. 

Farmer Erik was at it again! The potatoes were really good and it was fun to eat something that he grew.

Wipe Out

Something nasty happened to me today. I was walking out of the parking garage to head into work and....I FELL!! I slipped on something and literally was sprawled out on the sidewalk. The contents of my bag were all over the place. A nice woman asked me if I was Ok, which I was. I did cut my finger somehow but that was it.

I got into work and realized something horrible. I think I slipped on homeless person pee. I re-checked it out as I was walking back to the car later on. I was in that area near the signs. I thought it was dried car oil or something. I didn't even THINK about what it could be...

I didn't think about what it COULD be until I got into work and said, What is that smell!?? Ick!!!!!

I went home an hour or two later to get out of those pants!! Yuck. So, I worked half the day at home which was nice. Evie could not sit still all day though, which was a pain. 

Ohhhh well. I organized a bunch of stuff in the bedroom today and posted a chair on craigslist. I want to get rid of it and get a small table so I can craft again. I think I want to pick up scrapbooking again AND I want to sew. I want to get a sewing machine and figure out how to make some simple things like pillow covers. I keep saying that I'll wait until we move to a bigger place but why wait!?

Tomorrow, we go to Evie's surgeon for what is **Hopefully** her LAST x-ray. Yippeeeee!

Lemon Chicken Orzo

Work was so busy for both of us today. I was in meetings all day and so tired when I got home. Erik rushed home and went off to do something fun - a Home Brewer's Meet Up! It was a group meeting of a bunch of SF Home Brewers where they shared their beer with one another. They meet once a month to do this together and also have professional Brewers come in to speak. Sounds fun!


Tonight, I made a yummy dish called Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup.  I used about double the orzo and double the chicken. Mine came out less soupy, but I prefer it that way. It's more filling! We had a lot of leftovers for lunches tomorrow too which is always great.

So good!

All You Can Eat and Costco

Yesterday after work was SUPER fun. Kelsey, Tiffany, and I went to an all you can eat salad buffet AND Costco. I drove out to Pleasant Hill after work and we went out to dinner. I have heard about Sweet Tomatoes and heard it was an all you can eat salad place. Ummm, yes please!!

In addition to the salad bar, they have a hot bar of soups and another one of pizzas and macaroni & cheese. They also have a dessert bar and self serve ice cream. I had two plates of salad, it was soooo good. Also some turkey soup. And a few bites of mac & cheese. And a piece of corn bread. Haha. I would totally go there every week, if we lived closer!!

After dinner, Kelsey & I went to Costco. I have been wanting to go and check out prices. We eat a LOT of certain things and while it's just the two of us, it might be cheaper at Costco. We got a bunch of stuff and shared a car. Look how big it got:

Haha. We got those two packs of pillows for $10!! I got 30 rolls of toilet paper for $15!! 5lbs of oatmeal for $10!! I got some really good deals. I came home to compare some prices I found to Amazon and Soap.com. They simply do not compare - Costco beat those two sites for every item I looked into. 

We are going to get a membership to hit up Costco every few weeks or so. Yippeeee!

Fun way to spend a Monday night!

Inspiring

Erik posted this video today and I just think it's so awesome. How inspiring that this 9 year old has more sportsmanship than most professional athletes have!

Low Key Sunday

Sunday was another low key day for us. It started off like this....

Evie loves to cuddle up RIGHT next to you after she wakes up in the morning. She has her breakfast, goes the bathroom, and then wants you to sit on the couch so she can snuggle buggle. She usually likes to put her head ON your lap so you can't use the computer, too!

Our self portraits together

 Got the laundry done, Erik surfed, and then I went downtown. I had lunch at the mall at my fave spot, Buckhorn Grill. The roadhouse salad is the best! I specifically went downtown to go to the mall to get my 2013 wall calendar

I know we have a lot of calendar technology but I just LOVE filling out my calendar for the year and seeing it all hanging up. I also love paper planners. haha

After the errands, we took Evie out for a walk. Erik came with us, which we always enjoy!

We had an impromptu dinner last night at Nopa. We were in the mood for burgers and figured this hot spot restaurant might not be that bad of a wait if we got there quickly. We walked over 5 minutes prior to them starting to seat guests with dinner reservations. We easily grabbed a seat at the bar. It was perfect!

From Foodspotting

Nice way to end the weekend... Here's to a good week!