Lunch at the Grocery Store

Lunch can sometimes be cumbersome, but I’ve made a strict plan to stay away from drive thrus as much as possible. For the number one reason being that there’s not much options for vegetarian, And as far as fish options they pretty much taste like cardboard. So that basically leaves me with the grocery stores for lunch, like Whole foods, Target and Publix. Though it would be great to always eat at  Whole foods for lunch daily , it does a number on my pockets so i usually alternate from the three. This day was Target’s day, i love going to Target because they have the Starbucks in there. No i don’t go to Starbucks for coffee or lattes , i go there for their hot  green tea. As  crazy as it sounds, Starbucks is the only place that offers hot green  in any food chain restaurant . Any-who,  this particular day i nix the green tea and scooped up a “Lunchable” type snack box at Target and added a Greek yogurt for extra protein and had it with my personal afternoon green smoothie. All of this ended up costing me less than 5 bucks, which i thought  was pretty sweet. If you haven’t tried shopping at a grocery store for lunch, i pretty much suggest that you do. Every week there’s practically a sale going on so you can pretty much get great deals compared to going to a fast food chain. Breaking out 6 bucks for a fast food combo when you can get so much more nutritious food at a  grocery store just make no sense!

Hearty Muffins

The other day while at home, i flipped the channel on the cooking channel and saw the hungry girl making chocolate muffins with canned pumpkin. Which according to Hungry girl cuts down on the saturated fat from the oil and egg. I was so intrigued by this i told myself  i got to get my hands on some canned pumpkin, pronto! So when i went to do my weekly shopping i picked up a canned pumpkin and a generic brand of  banana muffin mix. I knew before hand i wanted to do this as a hearty breakfast muffin so i tweak the recipe a little bit and it came out great. My mother had a box of Pillsbury Nut bread mix so i decided to mix it with two boxes of Jiffy banana mix cause i really wanted a banana taste. I was scared that it was too much flour for the pumpkin , but with a little bit of elbow grease the small can of pumpkin was actually enough. To make it hearty, i than milled raw rolled oats, flax-seeds,  almonds and walnuts in my Nutri-Bullet and mixed it in the batter. I then scooped them in my muffin tin and also in an 8 inch cake pan, I than sprinkled more flax-seeds and dried cherries and raisin on top and baked for about 30 minutes. My family raved about these muffins, they were so  moist and had a sweet banana taste with a rich pumpkin aroma to them . They actually ended up being a great on the go breakfast muffin/ snack, it went great with my morning green smoothie but it was also great with coffee as well. They were such a great hit  that i now decided to make these muffins as one of my go to staples for breakfast. Thanks for the awesome tip Hungry Girl!

Its a Celebration!

October is my fave month of the year not just cause its my birthday month but its also my sister and brothers’ as well. So at our house October is a month of birthday cake and celebrations! First up was my sister’s birthday,we had an all day girls  day of shopping and getting pampered and later went to dinner with the family. That night we went to Grand Lux for dinner, We practically had the whole restaurant to ourselves which for Grand Lux i never seen happened  but it made it that much special. I ordered fish tacos with a goat cheese salad.  While my family ordered Pizza, Buffalo wings, Turkey burgers, and a Chicken& Shrimp platter. Trust me eating dinner with them for a transitioning  vegetarian (pescatarian)  isn’t the easiest but they are supportive of my change and that is all that matters.  At the end of dinner the waiter surprised my sis with a birthday pastry surprise that was just the cutest thing ever.  We than celebrated at home with cake and wine and finished the celebration with watching the Presidential Debate. That’s what i call a great start to a month long of celebrations!

Fish Tacos

Birthday Surprise

The restaurant all to ourselves!

Dinner and a movie

This past weekend, my sis and i decided to go to the movies to check out Taken 2. Knowing it was opening weekend we went to the theaters  an hour and a half before the actual movie showing to buy our tickets. So instead of waiting for the movie, we decided to go grab some dinner and found this neat little place called Elevation Burger around the corner.What makes  Elevation Burger different is that they use Certified Organic Beef  for their burgers and Olive oil for their fries. There’s not much varieties when it comes to the menu but they do offer a veggie and vegan burger. The price point is just about the same as if you went to Five Guys but i would say that this a better alternative. We enjoyed our dinner and went on our merry way back to the theaters to see Liam Neeson Kick some butt once again. In my opinion, Taken 2 was a great sequel to the original but… I’m sticking to the original lol.

The Elevation Burger and Veggie Burger #1