HLS Day 1: Frito Lay, the Mah-ket & I May Have Tried to Lick the Liberty Bell
PIN IT!HI YA’LL!!! Writing this from the fabulous city of Philadelphia for the Healthy Living Summit! I’m writing this frantically because I’m, of course, running late for the breakfast and kick-off. So if you see about ten thousand ! marks and run off sentences, you know why. Hope you still like me.
So first off, Philly rocks. As much as I love living in the city (well, around it, that counts right?) I’m not really a city girl. I love my own space and get a little overwhelmed by millions of people. BUT, this city has such a great vibe and it’s gorgeous. It doesn’t feel as big as it is.
I began my day yesterday at 4:30am, which, as you know, isn’t really my thanng. BUT, I had a fabulous riding buddy who made the time pass really quickly. We arrived a little past schedule so as soon as we got to the hotel, we had to run up, drop our stuff off and get ready for the Frito Lay demonstration. But, before we get into that, I have to say I REALLY lucked out with roomie selection. I honestly couldn’t have asked for better people to spend the weekend with (and share a bed with, bow chicka bow wow).
Ashley, Lisa, myself and Caitlin
The Frito Lay demonstration was really cool, for a few reasons. One, it was in the market (which I pronounce mah-ket because I like to pretend I’m from Boston) and I got to explore around. Two, we got to taste test some great chip flavors and three, I was asked to do a podcast for them! I’ll soon be gracing the cover of Frito Lay’s blog!
So. much. fun. The demonstration lasted a few hours then we had the afternoon free! Katie, Courtney and myself decided to explore the market. Um, guys? This market is HUGE. It puts Eastern Market to shame, DC folks. It has everything you could ever think of, plus more. Like, oh you know, a huge animal bone for sale.
and tons of creepy fishes.
But, of course, that’s not all. The place is filled to the brim with amazing stuff. I can’t wait to go back and buy!
After the mah-ket, where I had the world’s biggest bowl of chowda (you can see it on my FB page!) Courtney and I decided to hit the streets to see the sights. This city has some of prettiest architecture.
Every building is old with incredible design and personality. Love. The one place we had to go, obviously, was the Liberty bell. Now, before we begin, I have to say that I didn’t actually lick the liberty bell. I mean, that’s gross and I’m pretty sure it’s fairly illegal. I just pretended to lick it. Why? Well, because Barney and Ted did on How I Your Mother and I’m pretty obsessed with that show. (Thankfully Courtney loves the show too!) In addition, I also made sexual advances towards George Washington.
I’m pretty sure ol’ George liked it, though. Don’t let his face fool ya.
I’m now learning about how to write a better recipe, so I better go! If you are at HLS, why, come say hey!
Claire
Tags:attune foods, conference, frito lay, healthy living summit, HLS, philly
My Friday + A Super Happy Hour
It’s my Friday, baby! This time tomorrow I’ll be at the Frito Lay demonstration at the Healthy Living Summit! I’m pretty stoked to play around with potato chip flavors with Frito Lay chefs! 🙂 As you can tell, I’m pumped for the conference, but NOT pumped that I have to wake up at 4:30 am, aka a** crack early, to make the first metro into the city. Although I can’t complain because at least I’m not flying. AND, I am riding in with another awesome DC blogger, Katie from What Katie Said, which will hopefully take my mind off the fact that the sun isn’t even up and I’m traveling. Either way, it’s my first real life blogging conference and I’m so nervous/thrilled!
Speaking of first times (I don’t mean THAT first time), I had my first blogger meet up last night with some of the most fabulous ladies EVER. All of these photos are from Gretchen, because she brought her camera (smart woman, she is!) It was just so nice to connect with people you have something in common with, to talk about blogs without blank stares or judgemental comments. I love my friends, truly love them, but some of them just don’t care about my blogs. They don’t care how I get traffic or what I ate on Wednesday, and that’s FINE! They know me without my blog. But now, as I grow these little babies of mine and work to make them ONE big site, blogging has become a big part of who I am and it’s just so nice to have people who get it and get me!
Erin, Stephanie, Allison, Sarah, Nicole and myself!
We went to the Front Page in Dupont, which is one of my favorite places! The happy hour wine was $2.75, which is UNREAL, so of course I dabbled in a few glasses. It was just SO MUCH FUN, honestly, to connect with other people who love what you love and do what you do!
Gretchen is such a trendy little trendsetter with the camera and snapped this photo of me. Normally, I hate photos (I know, vain ol’ me hate photographs) but I just don’t feel like I look good in them. Well, I actually really like this one so thank you Gretchen! A, for the action shot and B, for being creepy enough to do it 🙂
I’m pumped to experience a whole new level of “blogger meetups” this weekend and hope to make some incredible connections! Before I go, I have to shamelessly show off the AMAZING buisness cards one of my besties made for me.
Amazing, right? She’s pretty much the best there is. Her name is Lindsay and she’s getting into stationary/graphic design, so um, HIRE HER. She’s legit.
ESBS: Cream of Mushroom Chicken
Do ya’ll remember how LAST WEEK I said I was going to post an amazing dinner I had like 5 different times? Well, I’m finally posting it. Life has been, um, NUTS, lately so I haven’t had much time to decompress. Which could be why my blog posts are jumbled and take me 6x the normal amount of time to compile them. From that period to what I’m typing now, there was a 45 minute break because I zoned out. I need to get my act together, exhaustion doesn’t look good on me.
Now, cream of mushroom chicken is nothing new, or fancy, or brilliant, it’s just GOOD. Old-fashioned comfort food at it’s best. Somedays you just need something that makes you feel good, ya know? Well, this dish makes me feel INCREDIBLE and that might be due to the fact that I used about 1 cup of wine IN IT, in addition to pairing it with 1 2 3 cups of wine while I ate it. Regardless of the mind altering addition, this dish is just good.
I love the contrast of the soft chicken and gravy with the crunch of the asparagus. Plus, I think the asparagus adds a nice touch of green, don’t you think? Oh, and this only LOOKS unhealthy because it’s actually very low fat. I used fat free cream of mushroom soup, fat free sour cream and extra virgin olive oil. Comfort food dishes like this can contain anywhere from 500-2000 calories and up to 60 grams of fat, depending on how they are prepared! We all need a little bit of comfort food every once in a while, but there is nothing comforting about an extra 2 pounds on your waistline!
Recipe is adapted from Eating Well.
Cream of Mushroom Chicken
What You’ll Need:
- 2 chicken breasts
- 1 cup of dry white wine, like Chardonnay
- 8 asparagus spears, chopped up
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 2 cups of chopped mushrooms
- 1 can (12 ounces) of fat free cream of mushroom
- 1/2 cup of fat free sour cream
- 2 tablespoons of olive oil
- Salt and pepper to taste
How to Make It:
- Heat olive oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add onions and cook unti lightly browned. Add in chopped mushrooms and asparagus nd cook until soft and browned. Take off heat and set aside.
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In the same sauce pan, add chicken and heat until fully cooked, about 8-10 minutes. Take off heat, let cool a bit and chop up.
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Add chicken and asparagus back into the pan to heat. Warm up for about a minute.
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Add in mushrooms, onions, cream of mushroom soup, wine, sour cream and salt and pepper. Stirring frequently, cook dish until fully mixed. Note: It’ll look like a blob of brown gravy goop.
One thing I love about this dish is that you can serve it over mashed potatoes, rice or noodles, or just eat it plain! (Which is the route I took!) The wine really adds such an oaky and delicious flavor to the gravy. Wine really does compliment food amazingly, especially when it’s added as an ingredient!
And I’m not just saying that because I’m a wine-o either.
Nutritional information per 1 cup: 280 calories, 10 grams of fat, 25 grams of protein and 6 grams of carbohydrates.
Lost Creek Winery
Oh, Tuesday. You aren’t as bad as Monday but you aren’t as good as Wednesday. You are like the pet goldfish. No one hates you, but no one really likes you. You just kinda sit there. Tuesday, that’s how I feel about you. However, Tuesday does bring with it some great things, like Tuesday Shoesday. And it is one day closer to the weekend. And in this week’s case, 3 days closer until HLS, one day until DC blogger happy hour and 2 days until I’m reunited with my bff Babaganoosh. So, all in all, this Tuesday is all right.
Now, let’s talk this past weekend. Every once in a while I have an incredible weekend, one for the books. And this one? Definitely one of those. And you know what’s even better? It wasn’t wild, crazy or completely drunken. It was just old fashioned, low-key fun. My good friend Shannon came in from Georgia (which I pronounce JAW-JAH in my best Southern accent) and we just drank wine, watched bad movies (Final Destination 4? Don’t watch it), did some shopping and hit up a winery. No s&*$ talking pimps or drinking out of guitars for this trip. I guess this is what it feels like to be a grown up?
Although the whole weekend was AWESOME, one of my favorite parts was going to a local VA winery. Lost Creek Winery is a cute, secluded winery in picture-esque town of Leesburg, Va. Which, if you remember correctly, was where Eli & Amanda got married! [Somehow we BOTH forgot our cameras, so excuse the iPhone photographs].
The winery is only a short drive from the outlets (because what goes better with spending too much money than a wine fueled guilt trip?) and is situated around a few other wineries as well so you can winery hop your Saturday away. We just chose to go to one and I am SO glad we picked this one. Minus the rain, it was a perfect way to spend the afternoon!
In addition to a cute venue, the people who work there are REALLY sweet and VERY knowledgable. Plus, the wine is really good. As somewhat of a wine snob, I am pleasantly surprised at how good the wine they offered is. Not overly sweet or overly dry, each variety has it’s own taste and texture and the flavors were perfectly balanced.
Unlike many wineries, we were able to taste every single wine they made! My favorite is the Chambourcin, a dry red that has a crisp, pepper after taste. We liked it so much, we decided to take a bottle home to have with dinner!
If I had to pick a runner up, I’d say it was the Rosè. Typically, I don’t like Rosè’s because they are REALLY sweet, but this one is perfect. It’s light, flavorful but still has a bit of dryness to it. Although the wine is the main attraction, the rest of the atmosphere is just as great! They had a live musician (who looked EXACTLY like one of Shannon and my comms professors) playing old rock n roll and only ONE drunk bachelorette party! Hayo!
Aren’t they pretty?
It is, seriously, such a cute little place. We would have stayed much longer but they were preparing for a 125 person wedding later that evening so they politely asked us to leave.
We got some fancy cheese and bread to go and continued the party on the way home.
Seriously, if you live in Virginia, check this place out!
Disclaimer: This is NOT a paid review, these are purely my own opinionsfrom personal experience. Although, payment by wine is always nice. 🙂
Claire
Tags:Chambourcin, Leesburg, Leesburg wineries, local wine, Lost Creek Winery, Va, virginia winery, weekend, wine, winery
Eat Skinny Be Skinny: Whole Wheat Blueberry Banana Pancakes
Although I’ve had a mean craving for pancakes lately, I don’t usually make them unless it’s a special occasion. There’s no rhyme or reason for this, I just don’t usually exert that much effort on my weekend morning meals. E and I are scrambled eggs people, through and through. However, my darling friend Shannon was in town this weekend so I knew I had to whip up a very special Saturday breakfast. Plus, we needed some filling food because we had a full day of shopping and wine tasting to do!
Enter these ahhhh-mayyyyzing whole wheat blueberry banana pancakes. They were soft, flavorful, delicious and filling while still being incredibly healthy. The bananas were a last minute add in and I’m SO GLAD I decided to throw them in, they really complimented the flavor perfectly. Served with a hot side of bacon, this breakfast was exactly what we needed to keep up our shopping stamina.
You see how I mentioned bacon up there? We didn’t get a picture of it though because I’m pretty sure it was gone by the time the photos were taking place. I think I need bacon rehab. They have rehabs for everything these days, so it would not surprise me to know that certain obsessed individuals like myself are being sent to bacon rehabilitation.
I’m pretty sure that alone would kill me, not the pound of processed pig fat I keep shoving in my gullet. Plus, I offset it with healthy pancakes and 4 hours of shopping cardio, so it all evens out, right?
Now, a special shout out goes to Shannon for being my photography and shoot assistant. She man-handled the camera while I set up the shoot and props. Although I have fun snapping/styling on my own, it makes a WORLD of difference when you have someone there to help you! She was paid in pancakes and bacon, which I think was a pretty fair trade off.
Whole Wheat Blueberry Banana Pancakes
What You’ll Need:
- 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 egg
- 1 cup 1% milk (you can use skim or 2% as well)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla
- 1/2 cup blueberries
- 1 ripe banana, mashed
How to Make Them:
- Sift flour and baking powder together into a small bowl, set aside.
- In a medium size bowl, mix egg, milk, sugar, vanilla and salt until fully mixed. Slowly mix in flour mixture and blueberries, careful not to over-mix. Add in mashed banana.
- Grease a medium skillet with cooking spray. Over medium heat, cook pancakes for 2-4 minutes on each side, or when the batter begins to bubble.
- Serve with extra blueberries and fresh maple syrup and enjoy!
Hands down, these are my new FAVORITE pancakes. Not only are they healthy and good, they are a cinch to make from scratch. Why buy store bought, overly processed, bleached out mix when you can make your own in about the same amount of time?
Plus, when you have whole wheat pancakes, you can offset the absurd amount of bacon you eat. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
Nutritional information per pancake: 140 calories, 3 grams of fat, 6 grams of protein and 15 grams of carbohydrates.
