Scenes from our Weekend

Friday: Impromptu belated anniversary dinner date night.  Live music.

Saturday:  Michael worked on his deck.  I walked dogs, picked flowers, and prepared Greek Pasta Salad.

And shopped for a flowy new top and found new sunglasses.

Celebrated our lovely friend Jessica’s birthday with deep fried turkey and Mars bars. 

Sunday:  Michael golfed.  I brunched.

And laid on the beach with my friend Charmaine.

Then we took the dogs to the park…where they found it too hot to walk themselves so M took them for a ‘drag’ through the grass.

Another harvest of romaine, red leaf and kale.

All finished up with a grilled burger topped with French brie.

How was your weekend?

Oh yes, Maple Bacon Sticky Buns

I love it when my bacon sits in a puddle of maple syrup alongside my pancakes or French Toast.  In fact, I have been known to order one lowly pancake alongside my scrambled eggs and bacon just so I have a normal reason to have syrup delivered to the table.  Because asking for a side of syrup for my bacon has gotten me some strange looks.

We don’t have any pancakes here, but what we do have is sticky buns.  Sticky Buns which include maple syrup.  Which by my reasoning makes these sticky buns the perfect place for some bacon to reside.  I know you are with me on this.

Whoever decided that baking with bacon was a good idea, I thank you.  We all thank you.  It won’t be long before we start finding bacon bits in the baking aisle.  We should get on that.  But first, we should make and eat Maple Bacon Sticky Buns.  I’m sure you’ll agree.

Maple Bacon Sticky Buns with Apples and Pecans

Yields 15 buns

adapted from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients:

• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 packet active dry yeast
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup butter, soft
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup butter
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup Maple syrup
• 1 apple, peeled and chopped
• 8 strips bacon, cooked crisp and chopped (1/2 cup)
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans
• 1 tbsp cinnamon
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 tbsp Maple syrup
• 4 tbsp butter, melted

Directions:

1. Dissolve the first teaspoon of sugar and yeast in the warm water.  Let stand until creamy, approximately 10 minutes.
2. While the yeast works warm the milk in a small saucepan until bubbly.  Remove from heat and mix in the 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup butter, and salt.  Stir until melted.  Set aside.
3. Attach the dough hook to a kitchen mixer (or work by hand).  In the mixer bowl add the yeast mixture, the milk mixture, the beaten eggs and 1 1/2 cups of flour.  Run mixer on low to combine.
4. Add remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, running mixer on low after each addition to combine.  When the dough pulls together into a sticky ball, remove it from the mixer to a lightly floured counter and knead by hand until smooth and elastic (5-8 minutes).
5. Place the dough in a lightly oiled large bowl, turning the dough to coat.  Cover with a damp cloth and let rise until doubled in volume, about one hour.
6. When dough is ready, melt the 2/3 cup of butter in a small saucepan.  Stir in the 2/3 cup of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of Maple syrup, whisk until smooth.  Pour warm mixture into a well greased 9 x 13 baking pan.  Sprinkle mixture with a few apples, pecans, and bacon pieces.  Set aside.
7. Melt remaining butter, set aside.
8. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured counter, then roll with a lightly floured pin into an 18 x 14 rectangle.  Brush with 2 tablespoons of the melted butter leaving one of the long edges unbuttered.  Sprinkle the buttered surface with the remaining 2/3 cup of brown sugar, cinnamon, apples, pecans, and bacon.  Drizzle everything with the 2 tablespoons of Maple syrup.
9. Starting at a long side, carefully and tightly roll up, using the unbuttered edge as a seem to pinch as a seal. Brush roll with remaining melted butter.
10. Using a serrated knife, cut into 15 even pieces.  Place cut side down into prepared pan.  Cover and let rise until doubled in volume, about one hour.
11. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
12. Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.  Let cool in pan for 5 minutes, then invert onto platter or cutting board.  Scrape remaining filling from the pan onto the rolls (particularly the end pieces).

Serve warm and enjoy!!

Holy moly!  Now I know that looks like a daunting list of ingredients and instructions, but not to worry most of the time is spent waiting on the dough to rise…twice!  Damn yeast baking.  :)  But just make some extra bacon when you start and snack on that while you work.

Conveniently you’ll also have a bottle of syrup handy for dipping.

Not that you would ever dip bacon in syrup.  You’d just make these sticky buns so no one would give you the stink eye.  Right?  Right.

Yoga a la Booty Camp

So I totally forgot to mention that I did a little more Booty Camp DVD action on Friday before heading off for girl’s night.

I actually plugged the DVD into my desktop computer and rolled my yoga mat out in my office to do my workout. I was pressed for time…but I wanted to get something done, so the DVD was a great option. 

Tasha gave the Serenity Stretch yoga practice a great review so I definitely wanted to give that a go…but first I did the Booty Booster again.  Apparently I’m a glutton for punishment because my calves were still super stiff from trying that session on Wednesday!  But doing it again, it was a teeny bit easier.  Burn tushie burn!!! 

The yoga session is about half an hour long and by the time I got to it I was running late so I only did about half…but I liked what I did.  Lots of simple yet effective sun salutations and Sammie’s voice is quite soothing and easy to follow (the only note I would make is that they don’t really spend much time describing the poses so if you are a beginner you would really have to be sure watch the screen…I was going more by voice because it’s hard to watch and perform the poses at the same time).

The yoga totally kept me limber after the booty session though.  Definitely will work on doing them both at the same time in the future.  Yay!

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This morning we headed out relatively early to meet friends for Sunday breakfast at Athen’s.  Can’t go a whole weekend without some bacon and eggs!  :)

My usual scrambled eggs, bacon, multigrain toast and pan fries (they changed their breakfast potatoes again…they are better now)…

With a pancake stolen from FH…

Camille enjoyed her chocolate chip pancake!  :)

I also brought along some cupcakes for Mark, Coco and Camille…

Red Velvet, Black & White, and Root Beer Float!!

Obviously Camille totally wanted the Float!  :)

The rest of today consists of baking the cookies for the Bake Sale for Haiti, cleaning my office, looking for a pork roast recipe, and hitting up the 5pm warm yoga class.  I love Sunday.

What are you doing to relax this weekend?

SundayMonday

If I post yesterday’s pictures along with today’s maybe you all won’t notice that I didn’t post last night?  :)

After playing BRB until the wee hours of the morning, we slept in and had a fairly lazy Sunday.

Greasy breakfast at The Armview…

Dear Armview:  it’s total crap that I couldn’t order a side of pancakes instead of toast.  Making me order the whole pancake meal in addition to my whole bacon & eggs meal is so uncool.  Had we not been starving I may very well have left because of that ridiculousness.  In the future, I think Athens may see a lot more of our Sunday morning money.

Ran a few errands, got a latte, got a few movies, then tucked back into the house for the afternoon.  Cleaned up mucho dirty dishes from dinner party, did my nails, and made coooookies.

Dinner was fend for yourself with the mass quantities of leftovers…

Hers:  two stuffed shells, 1/2 Italian sausage, big plate o’ salad

 

Day off from working out, although I’m hoping to start filling Sundays with yoga to help alleviate the stiffness and aches from Fitnessista’s upper body torture workout.

Ended the evening with a cookie taste-test and a few tears for My Sisters Keeper.

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Fast forward to this morning >>

Devoured 1/2 Larabar in the car.  Tummy was very hungry this morning.  So hungry it ate the camera and everything. ;)

Mondays are now cardio day, so gym workout included:

• 10 minutes rowing machine (to loosen up sore back/shoulders)
• 40 minute treadmill run (4km, 5:1)
• 3 x 12 crunches & reverse crunches
• long, luxurious stretching

Came home for hot shower, hot coffee, hot oats.

Chocolate Banana Coconut Oats to be exact!

In the pot:  1/2 cup unsweetened chocolate Almond Breeze, 1/2 cup water, 1/3 cup Scottish oats, 1/2 frozen banana, 2 tsp flax meal, 1/2 tbsp flaked coconut…

On top: 1/2 tbsp flaked coconut, 1 tbsp mini choco chips, splash cream…

We have a winner!!! Deeeeeeeeeeelish. Held me over 3 hours too. 

Until lunchy time when I raided the fridge for more leftovers. 

FH made an extra large batch of filling while putting together the stuffed shells the other night, so we now have a pretty hefty container of leftovers.  I think he plans to make a lasagna for next weekend.  Nom!

I decided to try some on toast.  3 wedges of ciabatta schmeared with the cheesy ricotta-spinach mixture heated in the oven and broiled for a few minutes…yum.  With salad of course.

After which I ventured out in the SNOW (#@?*) to pick FH up. Blech.

Now I’m happily working away on another bigass cup of water and snacking on grapes.  I wanted cookies, but cookies are for after dinner.  :)  Grapes are like cookies right?

Camera Happy Note:  I got a great photo tip this weekend.  For the 50mm lens I was told to set the Rebel to Av mode and then crank the aperture down as far as it would go.  This created a pinhole lens and you get a really crisp shot of whatever you are focusing on.  You can tell by today’s photos that this totally works!

And just like that…

…it’s just me again.  :(

Well, me and Stoopy!

FH and I tried to make the most of the day today, but mainly we ran errands.  The problem with FH not being approved for this course before he left for his last sail is that he had absolutely no opportunity to prepare.  This course is more Army based so he had lots of gear to go through, sort, pack and assess…and several bits and pieces needed to be picked up.

We did start with breakfast though!  Our beloved Armview had a line-up and since we were pressed for time we decided to head up the road and try out Athens Restaurant instead.  They moved a while ago and we hadn’t been back since.  Two thumbs up on the new location!  Much nicer room…bigger and classier…with big windows and deep, comfy booths.

The brunch menu is still the same as far as I can tell…and it seems that the prices have only gone up a smidge.  I chose the Standard Breakfast (which is also listed outside as their special)…eggs, bacon, toast and hashbrowns…including coffee for only $5.49. 

We agreed that the food actually seems better now.  Especially the hashbrowns, which are now big slices of fried potatoes (previously they were frozen cubed things).

We’ll definitely bump Athens back up our list for go-to weekend breakfasts. (And I suppose we should try out dinner at some point too!)

Ate, ran errands, finished packing, went to airport.  Fastest 24 hours EVER.  Booooo.

I made myself feel better with a stop at a farmers market on my way home.  Some people eat chocolate, I shop for butternut squash.  :)

For dinner I finally incorporated some leafy greens…possibly for the first time since the Lobster Boil if I remember my menus correctly.  Sad but true.

Just some baby lettuces with red onion and chopped tomato. Dressed simply with grapeseed oil and s&p.

Served with Amy’s Tomato Bisque…

And a few slices of leftover baguette and cheese from date night.  One havarti, one brie, one cheddar.

Deeeeelish.  Comfort food.  Love it.

Completed the evening with some decaf tea and a few Love Cookies while watching Amazing Race.  Is it just me or is this season just not as exciting as usual?  I kept zoning out.  Maybe I’m just in a zone out kind of mood…

I feel a reasonable bedtime coming on.  Night all!