This morning musing is coming to you a little late. After a whole week of not sleeping very well I finally crashed out last night and slept in this morning. I feel so much more alert now!

Brefkast of a nanner topped with Justin’s chocolate almond butter. I can never bring myself to buy a whole jar of Justin’s nut butter. I mean it’s really good, but I’m not sure if it’s $10 good. And yet I’m sure with how many of these little packets I’ve bought I could have spent less on a jar for the same amount.

I’ve been shaking things up with dinner lately. For the past few months I’ve been kind of uninspired to make new dinners so we’ve been having a lot of the same stuff every week.

Last night I made a pork tenderloin with garlicky smashed yukon gold potatoes and a sour cream and mushroom sauce.

So good.

I’ve found the best way to cook a pork tenderloin is to season it and sear it in a pan with olive oil then wrap it in an aluminum foil packet and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. I then let it rest for 5 minutes before slicing it up.

The mushroom sauce is easy too. I just saute the shrooms with some scallions in the same pan I cooked the pork in. Then I add salt, pepper, and the leftover juices from inside the foil packet that the pork cooked in. When it’s all cooked down and saucy, I stir in a little dollop of sour cream to make it creamy.

I also threw a few garlic cloves in with the pork while it was cooking so that I could use them to smash into the potatoes. Good stuff.

We both crashed out with one of these afterwards…

Decatur is now allowing the sale of growlers, which is practically the best news I’ve heard all year.

We picked up a growler full of Fuller’s Pale Ale from Ale Yeah!, a local craft beer purveyor, and chilled out with Netflix.

This weekend stands to be pretty chill.

June 18, 2011 Alayna Discussion 5 comments

Thanks so much for everyone that had nice things to say about my new haircut. I didn’t mean to be negative, but sometimes it just feels so good to whine! I’m sure you know what i’m talking about. I’m glad that I let my emotions about it out so that now I can really move on. (BTW, I’ve had the chance to style it myself a few times now and while I still don’t love it, I can deal with it until it grows out.)

Yesterday I had a very green lunch. Another salad, this time with creamy avocado, and a side of yet more avocado smashed on sprouted toast with seaweed flake. It occurred to me recently that maybe not everyone is sprinkling seaweed flake on everything like I do, so I think soon I’ll need to do a post on this stuff to extol its virtues, cuz it really is a wonderful and delicious thang.

Last night’s dinner was incredible.

I made a spicy pineapple pork dish over jasmine rice. This was kind of half-way between sweet and sour pork and some sort of Hawaiian dish. Jeff and I both swoon for hot pineapple, so this was much enjoyed by both parties.

I made it by first adding some sesame oil and red pepper flakes to a wok (pan is fine) and then sauteing the red peppers in the spicy oil. When those were half-way cooked, I added the pork pieces and let them brown on both sides. Then, in went the pineapple cubes and chopped scallions. To make it a little bit saucy, I crushed some of the hot pineapple pieces with the back of a spoon, then added a swish or two of fish sauce and rice vinegar. The whole thing got a small sprinkle of salt and black pepper and was done!

It takes more time for the rice cooker to finish making fluffy rice than it does to make that dish. Super easy.

This morning, I thought that I would be really clever and make green tea and blueberry pancakes for breakfast…

I wanted so badly to draw a smiley face on this one, but I restrained…

As usual though, any time that I think I’m being really clever with a recipe it kind of fails. While these were totally delicious and filling, I couldn’t really taste the green tea at all. I’ll try ’em again sometime and up the matcha addition quite a bit.

This afternoon was gorgeous out. 85 degrees but breezy, can’t argue with that! We took the open morning to start house-hunting in the area. We are not on track to buy for at least another year, but we’d like for our next rental to either be a single-family home all to ourselves or a nice condo really close to or in downtown Decatur, so that we can enjoy this town to it’s fullest.

After an hour or so of driving around and writing down numbers to call for rentals, we parked the car at home and walked into town for a relaxing afternoon beer break.

(Love that thermos!) We parked ourselves at the bar in Leon’s and spent some time drinking good beer and talking about the next few things we need to do to make RipeTrack better. SO much work left to do, but all worth it.

This weekend has felt long, and for that I can’t complain.

This next week is going to be tremendously busy. My brother-in-law’s wedding is Saturday so I’ll be baking and decorating the wedding cake for he and his fiance from Tuesday on. Yeah, it takes several days to put a wedding cake together, yeesh. I cannot wait to show you guys my mad cake-baking skillz!

What do you have mad skillz at?

April 10, 2011 Alayna Discussion 11 comments

What a weekend.

After Jeff’s car incident on Thursday we spent most of Friday dealing with paperwork and other business to speed along the process.

But not the whole day. After all that nonsense we needed to unwind, big time.

This may or may not be the third pitcher of margaritas we’ve gone through in just this month alone.

Don’t judge me.

We spent the rest of that evening just relaxing and talking and munching.

Jeff and I love that car, we were both pretty stressed out by the wreck. I’m just glad he’s ok.

Saturday was a bit of the same. We were determined to enjoy the weekend despite the car problems so we decided to walk into Decatur for drinks and snacks to lighten our mood. We ended up at Leon’s, as usual, and just enjoyed the breeze sweeping in from the patio.

I had a Hitachino White. I love Hitachino’s beers and I was sad to hear that their sake distillery was severely damaged during the earthquakes.

Jeff and I snacked on some fries before splitting a sandwich and zucchini casserole.

That casserole is so insanely good. It sits in a puddle of thick onion jam and is accented nicely by the fresh arugula dressed with lemon and coarse salt. I could eat a few of those and call it dinner.

We didn’t go too heavy on the alcohol that day though because I had to get up really early Sunday to volunteer with Decatur’s Mile 13 hydration station for the Publix Georgia Marathon.

I woke up at 4:45 and got myself clean and dressed and snuck out the door while Jeff was still sleeping. I chomped down a Larabar while I walked into downtown Decatur to be there by 6am. It was so peaceful and beautiful walking through town in the quiet of the early morning when no one was around.

I got there and helped set up tables and move boxes, then all 35 of us divided into teams of 3 and spent the next hour lining up and filling cups of water or gatorade while others sliced oranges and tidied up the place.

I had so much fun helping out with the hydration team. It was exhilarating to wait anxiously for the first runner to make it down Clairmont Rd. He reached us just after 8am with a time of 1hr and 14 minutes for 13.1 miles! We didn’t see anyone else for 10 minutes or so after him, so he must have been flying!

I really enjoyed handing out water and cheering on the marathoners. Seeing them out there made me really want to be one of them some day. After my 5K this weekend I’ll officially be in training for a 10K. I haven’t selected one to run yet but I really want to get one under my belt so I can push ahead to possibly trying a half marathon later this year!

Check out the schwag I got for helping out.

This past weekend may have started out poorly, but it really turned around for us. Now I’m ready to finish up my last few training runs and rock it out for my race this weekend. Wish me luck!

March 21, 2011 Alayna Discussion 8 comments