Morning, friends! Today is my birthday, and I’m really excited because we are leaving for a lake house for the week with family! It’s nearby in Virginia which will be nice to not have to do a long drive, and we are really excited for some lake fun, hiking, kayaking, stand up paddle boarding, and relaxing!
Breakfast in bed this morning for my birthday per tradition. 🙂
I have a new recipe scheduled to go live on Wednesday (Watermelon Glazed Chicken – it’s so good), and on Friday check back in for part 2 of my books I’ve read lately posts, featuring non-fiction and memoirs. I’ll share some of our lake adventures when I’m back next week!
We had beautiful fall weather this weekend, so we kicked things off on Friday with a cozy cool weather meal: pasta with meat and veggie sauce. Plus some basil from our herb garden – it’s still thriving and is getting massive again even after we used a ton of it to make pesto!
The sauce had ground beef, tomato sauce, peppers, onions, shallots, garlic, chopped fresh basil, and baby spinach. It was delicious – always one of our favorite simple throw together meals!
I froze the leftovers so we can enjoy them later – we made enough sauce for one more meal.
Saturday morning was my morning to get up with Riese (Matt and I alternate), and she helped me make her favorite banana egg pancake. She’s getting good at mashing the banana, whisking in the eggs, and stirring in the ground flaxseed without spilling it!
We usually have the microwave version because it’s faster, although it’s less pretty.
Plus some lattes (just frothed milk + cinnamon for her, of course no coffee). We always drink these in the dining room vs. our breakfast kitchen bar counter, for some reason, per Riese’s insistence. 😉
Mid-morning Matt took over and I headed out to meet my friend Jen for a run!
The weather was AMAZING – cold but sunny, I think in the 50’s when we ran. My absolute favorite running weather!
We ran along the waterfront trail from Daingerfield Marina down into Old Town Alexandria and back.
I felt so great out there – amazing what a difference cold weather and way lower humidity makes with running! And such a treat to catch up with my good friend, too.
4 miles, done!
When I got home, we had a cheesy broccoli and spinach frittata (similar to my veggie frittata recipe, but smaller so we made it in a skillet on the stove, and we didn’t add the cheese until the frittata was fully cooked – we just put it on top and let it melt quickly before removing from heat and serving).
Plus some salad and cantaloupe!
We had enough frittata leftover for the next day, too, which is always nice – I am a big fan of “cook once, eat twice.” Any more than that and we get sick of it, though. 😉
For lunch on Saturday we picked up Italian subs from Market to Market in Del Ray and had it with some chickpea and artichoke salad and olives.
Plus some watermelon!
Saturday night we went out to dinner – still loving the outdoor back area at Eveningstar Cafe in Del Ray! I forgot to get a photo, but I had the salmon plus a side of fries.
Sunday morning was all about banana bread! While I slept in, Matt and Riese made me a batch of my old fave Peanut Butter Banana Bread as an early birthday present. 🙂
They used white whole wheat flour (instead of whole wheat pastry flour) and regular sugar instead of brown sugar because it’s what we had on hand. It came out delish! We are going to bring it with us to the lake.
It was super nice out on Sunday, too, so we took a little mini soccer ball to a nearby field and kicked the ball around with Riese. It was really fun – all three of us had a blast running all over the place! It’s really nice to have outdoor activity options again now that it’s not so hot out!
As for last night, we had a couple friends over for a backyard grilled dinner! Aren’t these kabobs Matt put together pretty? So colorful!
Matt grilled up the sausage and veggie kabobs for us, and our friends brought an Italian pasta salad (<- similar to my recipe!).
They also brought a homemade apple pie for my birthday, which was super sweet!
