We’ve been shopping and prepping and shopping and prepping some more since Wednesday afternoon for our first catering gig! But the hour is finally here 🙂
If you’d like to see the menu, click here…and wish you were here to enjoy with us!!
Long time…no post!
Dang it’s been a long time! A lot of exciting things have happened to us since Thanksgiving…we’ve still been cooking and we started a new blog. We’re home in MI for the summer and we are now officially Michigan residents again…until we move to Kuwait in August 🙂 Exciting things happening in our lives!
On the food front…we’ll be doing our first catering job tomorrow! Jeff’s mom is the manager of a group of hospitalists. Tomorrow night they are having a going away party for one of the doctors and after last year’s success, we’ve been asked to cater. Except this time we’re cooking for 30+ people! We’ve never done anything like this before and it’s been a challenge planning, grocery shopping & starting to prep. To get a sneak peak at what we’re preparing…check out our pinterest board! Will post the official menu later tonight/tomorrow 🙂
à demain!
We’re moving!
Since we got married 3.5 years ago, Jeff and I have fantasized about living/teaching abroad. This year, many things came into place and we felt like we were finally at a good place to follow our dream. In February we traveled to San Francisco to attend a Search Associates international job fair. We interviewed with schools in Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar, South Korea and Indonesia. After weighing lots of options, we made one of the most emotional decisions in our lives. Kuwait provided both of us with the best professional opportunities and we left the fair with contracts in hand. AIS in Kuwait will be going 1:1 with iPads and we will be helping teachers to integrate the technology meaningfully into their lessons. We never expected to move to the Middle East, but we are extremely excited about the travel & culture opportunities that living there will provide us. With only 3 days of school left and less than 3 weeks left of our lives in South Carolina, it’s starting to sink in and we’re starting to get excited! Today we also confirmed our flights…one step closer! We leave Detroit the evening of August 23rd and arrive in Kuwait just before midnight on August 24th with a long layover in Frankfurt.
We’ll be using this blog to keep family and friends updated on our life and travels. Let the adventures begin! 🙂
Thanksgiving 2011
This year we’re having family and friend for Thanksgiving! Jeff’s parents got here yesterday and Ciji is coming tomorrow to eat and hang out! We’re doing a few different dishes this year…hopefully we’ll have pictures this weekend 🙂
Pad Thai!
We’ve been excited about this recipe since it popped up on my google reader from eatliverun! I’m hoping it’s as good as I ate in Jackson Hole, WY 🙂
I haven’t taken a bite but Jeff says its amazing!!
p.s. In order to (maybe) blog more often, I’m experiementing with blogging from my iPod touch and the blogger app. The picture isn’t awesome, but it’s fun to actually be blogging again!
p.s.s. THIS WAS AMAZING!!!! We didn’t add the shrimp, but that would probably have made it even more amazing. You could also do chicken. AND you can make it as spicy (or not) as you want!
(Healthy) Football Food
Tonight is the Big Game at the Big House. Our House will be quite tense. Once a year our hearts are on opposite sides of the field. We’ve both been fans since we were little so tonight someone won’t be happy. (If you have been under a rock, tonight is the Notre Dame vs. Michigan game. I ❤ Notre Dame and Jeff is a Michigan man.)
One thing we’ve always been able to agree on is what to eat on football Saturdays. Man Dip has been our go to since some friends introduced it to us. It’s 1lb burger, 1lb sausage, a can of Rotel and a brick of Mexican Velveeta. It’s become a tradition in our apartment, but this year I just can’t bring myself to make it. We’ve changed our diet significantly and one of the things that I’ve been enjoying most is experimenting with making healthy versions of food that we would normally eat. When I saw this recipe for Nacho Cheese Sauce, I thought I might just have a winner on my hands. It’s flavoring up in the crock-pot right now. I couldn’t wait so I grabbed a chip and tried it already. We’ll see what Jeff says when he gets home from the cross country meet. Hopefully this will be a tasty, healthy comfort food for us on this stressful day 😉
BBQ Chickpea Pizza
Be mindful of the name here, that’s chickPEA, not chickEN. This one’s a meatless dish, a perfect choice for any of you who do Meatless Mondays. We borrowed this recipe from our friends at eatliverun, a blog that just happens to combine 3 of the things we enjoy doing the most. (Why did we not think of this name, you ask? Your guess is as good as ours. The prospect of the Layman pun was too much, I suppose.)
Things we would do differently:
– Substitute chicken for chickpeas on a day other than Monday
– Go easy on the barbeque sauce, as it easily overpowers the rest of the dish
– Cook the crust beforehand so it gets a little more crispy. The BBQ sauce made it a bit soggy.
That’s about it. This dish was awesome the way it was. We made it on a wheat crust because we were feeling extra healthy, but I’m sure it would taste just as good on a regular one too. If you have to pay extra attention to anything, do so on the carmelized onions. Make sure they’re good and carmel-y.
Today is my day off of running this week, and it’s too hot outside to live. Guess I better go eat!
Caprese-Kind-of-Mood
Just like we anticipated…life has gotten crazy! We’re now working 10-11 hours a day…I’m just working and trying to stay caught up, Jeff is crazy with his new job and coaching cross country. I’m also training for our 5k at the end of September and taking an online graduate class the ENTIRE semester. We crazy…and we know!
We made these when we got back from our amazing summer away. We were quite obsessed with the caprese theme for awhile and have the pictures to prove it! Needless to say we were quite excited when we saw this sandwich. We don’t have a panani press, but improvised with a grill pan and baking stone 🙂 We happened to have most of the ingredients in our fridge but we did sub mozz for feta and used this pesto. These sandwiches were A-MA-ZING! We would definitely make them again…and again!
Before:
During:
After:
A little (healthy) dessert
Tonight is the last night before our summer is officially over and we have to report to school…so you’re getting 2 posts 🙂
Before my 4-week cleanse with Rooted Wellbeing, I loved having baked goods around. In my humble opinion, Ghirardelli brownies are the best box of brownies you can make. On average, I used to make them every other week. Even though we have incorporated a lot of foods back into our diet, we have tried to be even more conscious of what we eat. Sugar is one of the things I have tried my hardest NOT to go back to because I know how addicting it is. Needless to say, I have been missing baked good and CHOCOLATE! Lucky for me cookie dough balls have been a huge hit lately on the blogs I read. I decided to try this one because there is no sugar (pure maple syrup is used instead). I also used fresh ground organic peanut butter from Earth Fare (love this store) and Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips (60%). I whipped these up super fast and then put half in the fridge and half in the freezer. These are the perfect little snack anytime you are craving something chocolatey! And Jeff liked them as much as I did 🙂
Hurry! Go make them before you have to go back to school tomorrow! 😉
Epic Fail & A Success
We now only have 1 day of ‘freedom’ left! Jeff has been busy getting ready for 600+ students and teachers to receive and effectively use iPads in the next 2 weeks while I’ve been…shopping 🙂 I bought 4 pairs of shoes in 3 days. I think this means it’s about time to go back to school so I can’t be tempted!
As we’ve been exploring more with recipes from other blogs and tryin
g to be more conscious of what we eat (i LOVED my 4-week cleanse with Katie at Rooted Wellbeing), we’ve consumed quite a few amazing meals in the past week. Tonight, I’m sharing on of those meals along with a failed meal. Good news or bad news first? How about bad…
We were really excited when I found this Gazpacho recipe! I have been reading Jenna‘s blog for a couple months now and featured one of her meals last week. She has recently started blogging for the PBS Fresh Tastes Blog. We had almost everything in the fridge for this recipe and it has been HOT lately so we thought it would be perfect! Not so much 😦 The first bite was quite tasty, but the more we ate the stronger and more overpowering the red onion became. We put our soup back in the blender and added more lemon juice, V8 and anything else we could think of. Unfortunately, the leftover soup is still in our fridge until I’m brave enough to try it again. Jeff already had an aversion to red onion and this may just have sent him over the edge! So if you like red onion (lots!) or if you play around with the proportions, this could still be a good one for those hot summer nights. It’s pretty and tastes very fresh!
We definitely didn’t lose our faith and tried another of Jenna’s recipes. This time we were not disappointed! I love when I come across a new recipe in my reading and realize we have almost everything for it. This one was no different and we highly recommend this quesadilla for all occasions! We made a few small changes – fresh sauteed peppers and onions with spinach. Next time, I would add more chili powder…I like it spicy! But I think the pictures speak for themselves…
Enjoy!
Living in Laymans' Terms 