Catching Up

And so ends another busy week! I feel like it's been forever since my last post, and we have some catching up to do. This week started with a work trip to Boston and ended with 9 PM takeout eaten on the couch with an SVU marathon. Lately I feel like I'm spending half my life inside a hotel room.

Don't get me wrong, I love to travel, but with seemingly back to back trips to Germany, St. Louis, Miami, Boston - and now I'm going to Vegas next week - I'm hoping to have a little bit more of a break before the next one. It's a challenge being away from Riker so often and trying to catch up on everyday life in between all the trips and weekend happenings.

But anyway, Boston! The trip was actually really great both professionally and personally. My best friend from childhood lives in B-town, and since I didn't have any client responsibilities on Monday night we were able to grab dinner together.

Julie picked me up and took me to Yard House at Fenway, which serves about a million craft beers and a bunch of eclectic American fare. We started with an Ahi tuna, jicama and avocado poke bowl to share, and it was delicious. The sesame oil and crushed peanuts set it over the top.

We both ordered fish tacos for our entrees - Julie had tilapia and I had blackened swordfish. The tacos were great, but I skipped the rice and beans. The beans were supposed to taste smokey, but they no joke tasted like cigarette smoke. Gross!

I also got a chance to see the Boston Bombings memorial, which happened to be only a block from my hotel.

What a sad place. The pictures of the little boy who was killed just break my heart, and it was difficult to read all the sentiments people had left. I'm glad I was able to see it and pay my respects, though.

I returned home on Wednesday night, and I'll tell ya you haven't missed much in the way of food or fun. Work's been really busy so I've been staying at the laptop late into the evenings, and when that happens, creative meal planning goes straight out the window in favor of old favorites.

I've eaten strawberry-banana yogurt bowls aplenty, in various forms. My nut toppings of choice this week have been raw pecans, almonds and walnuts. Gotta have crunch!

Green salads have been my go-to lunch and dinner each day, save for last night. I simply couldn't muster up the strength to cut one more vegetable. Talk about feeling lazy. I went back and forth for about an hour on what to make before I finally resorted to the menu drawer and called up our favorite pizza place, Tony's. Buttt, in keeping with our Primal diet and trying not to sink back into the Friday night pizza routine, I opted for one of the new low carb dishes.

Tony's is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a new menu and lots of new healthier dishes. They're now offering several seafood dishes over spinach or broccoli rabe instead of pasta, which I love! I ordered the Spicy, Garlicky Shrimp over steamed broccoli rabe, and it was perfect. Just what the doctor ordered on a Friday night.

***

This weekend is going to be a little busy, but all good stuff. This afternoon we have Matt's Goddaughter's third birthday party, and I'm looking forward to spending more time with the fam today. Tomorrow I'll be heading out to south Jersey with my good friend Heather to take advantage of a seriously awesome birthday present from Matt: a cooking class at Sur La Table! I really can't wait for that. Then it's home to pack since first thing Monday morning I'm leaving for a conference out in Vegas. Time to get this day started.

Hope your weekend is off to a great start!

Birthday Bloodies

Ah, another Monday. My birthday and family celebrations continued all through the weekend, and I felt like one lucky girl to be doted on so much in one week.

Saturday was my birthday part 2, this time with all our friends. In the late afternoon my girlfriends picked me up for a little daytime fun. There's a little spot in the shore town of Point Pleasant that we love; it has a cute coffee shop, a bunch of little boutiques and a really great handmade jewelry store that we're kind of obsessed with. Ever since we graduated college we've been going to Point on sunny spring/summer days to have coffee and pick out fun jewelry together, but I haven't been in literally years. It was a fun way to start the evening off! After a little girly time, we headed back down to Seaside to meet up with the rest of our friends at Chef Mike's Atlantic Bar & Grill for cocktails and snacks. I arrived to Matt handing me one of these.

Bloody Mary for dinner, anyone? ABG is one of my all time favorite restaurants, and it just reopened after Hurricane Sandy. It sits right on the ocean and has amazing seafood, so I wanted to start off there with some fancy drinks. Chef Mike keeps posting these crazy Bloody Mary pictures on Facebook and I've been dying to try one. The drink itself is great, but he garnishes it with pickled green beans (love), celery, giant green olives, pepperoncini, lime, tomato, mozzarella & basil, and a giant piece of peppered bacon (I had mine sans bacon, of course). It's like an entire meal in a glass.

They also make all their own infused vodkas. I'm not typically a vodka drinker, but I have to say the strawberry and watermelon cocktails were refreshing and delicious.

Yum, strawberries!

I didn't feel like eating a big dinner, so instead we ordered a bunch of apps and tapas to share. The sampler had Thai sweet chili calamari, dumplings, garlic shrimp, and crispy goat cheese with beets. Not a bad thing on the plate.

Matt and I also shared a plate of cumin scented falafel balls with creme freche.

I definitely want to go back for a full meal on a date night with Matt. The entrees coming out of the kitchen looked amazing.

We eventually left ABG and spent the rest of the evening bar hopping through Seaside and down the new boardwalk. It's not quite finished, but at least you can walk on it now (not like back on St. Patty's Day) and it's so nice to see everything opening back up, all fresh and new. You could still smell the paint on the walls in some places.

Midway through the night my sister Amanda and her boyfriend Justyn showed up from Philly. Love her! I was so excited to get to spend the night with her.

Mother's Day

As if Saturday night wasn't enough of a celebration, Sunday was filled with great food and more family time for Mother's Day. My second already. Crazy! I awoke to more presents from Matt and Riker, including some new beach stuff and a bunch of new plants for my home office, which I'm really excited about. Can't get enough greenery in a room where you have to sit and look at a computer all day. Then it was breakfast time.

Amanda, Justyn and our friend Adam slept over on Saturday night and we didn't have plans with the fam until the afternoon, so we all braved the Mother's Day restaurant lines to go get some food in our bellies. We ended up at a local favorite near the beach, Meg's Grill. The food is always fantastic, but for the holiday they had Lobster Eggs Benedict on special. Oh.my.god. SO GOOD. You know I'm becoming an Eggs Benedict addict, but this one took the cake - it came with an entire lobster tail and the hollandaise sauce was perfect.

I also had a few bites of Matt's fruit & yogurt parfait. We had a table outside and it was so nice to sit in the fresh air.

After everybody went home, we made our way over to Matt's mom's house for a MD party with the extended family. MomMom is in her glory when she's got her three great grandchildren on her lap.

The kids had a blast playing outside all day, and after seeing how much Riker loved playing with his cousins I think we're going to need to steal them for a weekend. His cousin Ernie is 6, and Riker adores him. He copies everything he does and it's adorable. His cousin Anna is only 3, but she loved pushing him in the swing and giving him different toys to play with.

Matt's mom put out a big spread for dinner, and I tasted a bit of everything except the steak & potatoes.

The pesto shrimp and parmesan cauliflower were my two favorites.

Dessert came in the form of cupcakes and fruit salad. I split a cupcake with my cousin Monica - strawberry frosting of course - and had a good serving of the fruit. The watermelon is so juicy and sweet right now.

It was a really nice day. I hope you had a wonderful Mother's Day celebrating with your loved ones, too!

Phew, that was a long and jam packed post. I had to get it all in now since I'm doing a little more work travel again this week. I head to Boston this afternoon for a few days and will be a busy bee until later this week. Catch you when the tide calms :)

Another Birthday on the Books

It's a week of birthdays!

I haven't really made mention of it on the blog, but yep, yesterday was this girl's birthday. Heather's little Avery was born just one day apart from me, and Mother's Day is only a few days later, so the second week of May will now forever be one big week of celebrations. Works for me! Side note - how colorful and fun is that cake? Funfetti just makes me smile.

Weekday birthdays used to be just bla, but this year my office started giving everyone their birthdays off as a new benefit. Talk about an awesome perk! At the last minute, Matt took off work too so I got to enjoy an impromptu morning of family time.

Riker even slept until 8:00 so we got to sleep in a bit. It's a rare day when I wake up and get to lay in bed reading with the covers pulled up and listening to the rain fall peacefully outside. Love that. Eventually Riker did wake up, and that boy goes from 0-to-hungry in about 10 minutes, so we rushed around and ran out of the house for a birthday breakfast at the diner.

Matt and I both ordered veggie omelets with cheese. I asked them to leave off the potatoes and bring a fruit cup instead. The omelet was good, but the fruit cup was a sham. They prettied it up with bananas, strawberries and oranges on top (yum) but underneath it was all melon. I can do without that much cantaloupe in my life.

After breakfast we dropped Riker off with my mother-in-law and then got a bunch of stuff done around the house. Not glamorous, but there are so many things on my home to-do list that never seem to get done on the weekends. It felt great to clear them off. And it was alright with me since I had big plans for the afternoon - a spa day at Simply Skin. I've had a gift card in my drawer since my baby shower ages ago, and finally got a chance to go use it. There is really nothing better than soaking your feet in a mineral bath while drinking a cup of tea, and then getting a nice long massage. I picked the Head & Foot Massage followed by a 25 minute deep tissue massage, and actually fell asleep toward the end of it. Total relaxation. And totally in fulfillment of my New Year's resolution to make more "me time".

And after tea comes wine. That's the proper order of things on your birthday right?

When I went to go pick Riker up, Matt's family surprised me with flowers, cake and gifts, and invited us to stay for dinner. Matt and I had planned to just go out for ice cream so we wouldn't have a whole cake in the house (trouble for us), but I will never turn down a slice of homemade birthday cake. Or a glass of white wine on a sunny day paired up with a big seafood spread.

Matt's mom made grilled pesto shrimp, steamed green beans, sweet potatoes and a big salad. We also had a giant pan of crab legs, which was the real focus of my attention. I just ate all the other stuff quickly so I could start crackin' those crabs.

I swear I could eat a whole tray of those things and not get full. They're so good! These ones were really delicious - salty, sweet and perfectly tender.

I feel so lucky to have such a wonderful extended family. They have always treated me like their own, which takes away some of the sting of not having my own parents and siblings live close by. Another great birthday in the books!