Weekly Eats: Monday August 6 to Sunday August 12

A weekly round up: eats, workout, watches, and reads.  Apple Pie edition.

The most exciting thing I have to tell you about this week is that we got our dessert mojo back.  My husband surprised me by bringing a small cheesecake sampler home on date night.  We took a bite and looked into each other's eyes.  I realized that although we keep treats around the house, we haven't been doing special desserts lately (this is a symptom of my misguided dieting attempts).  I can't change the past, but I can change the future, so on Saturday I whipped us up an apple pie. 

This apple pie (crust here, pie here) was my first ever post.  Back in early 2011 I made an apple pie and took a camera along for the journey.  The next thing I knew, I had a blog.

 

I've always used a mix of Granny Smith and MacIntosh apples, but the grocery store didn't have any MacIntosh.  I whipped out my phone to see what the cool kids use in apple pies these days and learned that they're all about the Braeburns, so I added those into the mix.

The pie was a hit.  Look, I'm not going to make a pie every week (though it's easy enough), but I am going to get back on the dessert train.  New addendum to my resolution list: I will make us a special dessert once a month.

Now let's talk about what else we ate this week:

Weekday Breakfasts
Homemade Egg McMuffin with chicken sausage x2

Breakfast burrito x2

Cereal bar, string cheese, fruit x1

Weekend Breakfasts

Saturday: Sheet pan hash browns with roasted veggies from the freezer topped with scrambled eggs. 

Sunday: egg, bacon, toast

Weekday Lunches
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday: Spicy peanut noodles that I made last Sunday. 

Wednesday and Friday: catered lunches at work.

Weekend Lunches
Saturday: the last serving of spicy peanut noodles.
Sunday: snacks


Weeknight Dinners
Monday (family meal): first workday after vacation, I totally left meal planning up to hubs.  We had the classic: mac n'cheese, hotdog, veg.

Tuesday (family meal): another hubs meal.  Grilled cheese and tomato soup.  I can't think of a better way to say I love you.

Wednesday (date night): I came out of "just back from vacation" mode and stepped it up with Gimme Some Oven Korean Steak Kabobs.  I chopped the veggies and started the steak marinating the night before.
As you might know, when you grill with wooden skewers, you have to soak them in water first, otherwise they will burn.  I didn't want to slow down dinner by waiting 20 minutes to soak them.  So this was the scene on my commute home. 

Served over glass noodles.

Thursday (fend for yourself night): leftover Korean Steak Kabobs.

Friday (family meal): Grilled chicken, mashed potatoes, and veg. 

Weekend Dinners
Saturday (family-ish meal): the boys had their friends over so hubs whipped up mac n'cheese and nuggets and set up a kids table.  Then we adults sat down to leftoverpalooza.  I had the last serving of the steak kabobs and he had the last of the grilled chicken.


Sunday: family lasagna.

Food Prep
Another batch of breakfast burritos and lasagna. I have a tentative plan in place for the rest of next week's eats.

Trader Joe's Haul Deets
Staples: Bay Blend Coffee, This Fig Walks into a Bar Cereal Bars, strawberry kefir, garlic, ground chicken, dried basil and cumin, pure bourbon vanilla extract, frozen bell peppers and onions, frozen mushroom medley

Treats: Smashing S'mores (for all of us), Banana Bites Gone Bananas (beloved by stepson #1)

New stuff to try (this is what happens when you go to Trader Joe's on an empty stomach): Joe-Joe's Neopolitians, Raspberry Macaroon Cake, Strawberry Bites Gone Berry (stepson #1 says banana bites are better, I say these are excellent), Cashew Apricot Date Nut Bites, Pistachio Cranbery Bites, Cornbread Crisps, and one bottle of Founder's Dank Wood beer (I'll report back when we try it.  I mainly got it for the label...the kids love their dank memes).

The thing that I really wanted to try that was out of stock: cauliflower gnocci.  I swear that every single blogger that I follow has been raving about this stuff.

Workouts
Oof, I had a hard time getting back into my normal routine after vacation.  I went though the motions, but the combination of darker mornings + all the humidity got to me so I stopped running for a few days and took an extra rest day.  By Saturday I was ready to run and the weather cooperated by not being 1,000% humidity.  Six mile run with these guys.  Dear little deers, enjoyed seeing you but wish you would hang out somewhere away from the city. 

 Today is a rest day and I'm chomping at the bit to hit the gym hard next week.

Watching
From the treadmill: How to Get Away with Murder
From the couch: Halt and Catch Fire and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on date night and I, Tonya on my own (because they were talking about it on Halt and Catch Fire).

Reading
We gotta talk...I finished Big Little Lies.  Someone brought the book into work, and the cover has been staring at me for weeks. 

This book was on my Never Ever Gonna Read It List:

• The author.  I have a spotty history with Liane Moriarty.  On the one hand, she's the reason why I read fiction (hard as it is to believe now I went through a long spell where I didn't read novels and What Alice Forgot broke me out of that.  I still get warm fuzzies thinking about that book.)  Naturally I tried another of her books, I forget which one but wow it was not for me.  I bailed after a few pages.  Later I read The Husband's Secret, which I finished but it was just a meh for me.
• The TV show.  When it came out everyone raved about it so of course I checked it out.  I've liked Reese Witherspoon and Nichole Kidman in a bunch of other stuff that they've done, but I couldn't get into them at all in this.  I didn't buy into the Stepford Bay Area setting.  I bailed pretty quick.

So what I'm saying is that I went into this book with two strikes and ended up loving it.  Did not see that coming, and I finally know who got killed/who did the killing.  My lips are sealed.

Thanks for stopping by.  See y'all next week!