southern lovin

Ah, such a great weekend. It was so good to see my sister and my grandparents 🙂

Friday morning I woke up and split a lemon zest luna bar with my sister. This flavor i thought was okay. I really liked the lemon larabar so i was hoping this would taste similar, but it had more of an artificial lemon flavor and I don’t think I will buy it again. Before my sister went to class we went to a natural market that was nearby and checked out the goods. She hadn’t been there before, and I suggested some things she should get. She got a lot of bars, and some almond milk, and we got a little bit of organic oats to make later from the bulk bin. I bought a Synergy Kombucha drink that i’d seen on a few blogs. I got the guava goddess flavor, and i’m not exactly sure why because I don’t even know what guava tastes like, but to me it tasted a little like grapefruit? I thought the drink was okay, but I definitely would like to try some more flavors. It was pretty expensive for a drink, so this will be a nice treat once in a while. I think it gave me some great energy though, it made me feel really refreshed after I drank it. I also picked up a white chocolate Macadamia nut and Dulce de Leche Luna bar.

 

When my sister was in class, I went over to their campus gym, and got a great run in. They have an indoor track and I ended up doing a run/walk for an hour! This is the longest i’ve ever run, and it felt great to get that accomplished! I just blasted my music, and kept on truckin. I would run for about 10 minutes, then walk a lap, and then repeat that for the hour. 9 laps around their track equalled a mile.  I left the gym feeling absolutely fabuloussss. When I got back, I made my sister and myself a bowl of oats! She had been wanting to try a bowl, and ended up loving it! she got a packet of cinnamon pb at the store, and loved it in her bowl. I think she’s officially hooked! 

After we ate, we made the ride to NC. Dinner was ready for us when we got there, and it was so so good. We had cream of mushroom porkchops, green beans, potatoes, pickled peaches, and dinner rolls. My grandma had just found a recipe for pickled peaches and thought it would brighten up the plate. I was a little nervous when I heard that the peaches would be picked, because I thought they would taste sour, but they had a great taste. Still very sweet and brought an amazing taste to dinner. To end dinner the right way we had a slice of my grandpa’s famous pecan pie. He prides himself in his pie and it was delicious. 

The next morning I made another bowl of oats, and had it with a sliced banana and some blueberries. These barney butter packets came in SO handy! Thanks Lora, you really are the best 🙂 I mapped out a loop around my grandparents house, and their street  is in a 1.1 mile loop. My sister and I ran it 3 times and finished out a 3.3 mile run! The weather was absolutely gorgeous, and was about 60. It felt so great to run in the sun. I can’t wait till spring now, that weather was such a tease. Lunch was a ham, muenster, pickle, and mustard sandwich on whole wheat, and a bowl of grapes.

After lunch we headed over to the botanical gardens, and there was an amazing orchid exhibit. I took some pictures for all of you  and will post them tomorrow once I get them downloaded onto my computer. Everything was beautiful, it was hard to believe that the flowers were real because they were so perfect.  For dinner we decided to go pick up some takeout from a local Italian restaurant. We picked out a few items and shared them. I took a spinach stuffed shell, some pasta that had a ton of veggies, a piece of garlic bread and a side salad. Perfect little combo, i love sharing food family style, you get a little taste of everything. My grandma made a gorgeous apple pie. She said its more of an apple cobbler because the crust floats on it, its not pinched around the edges. It was soooo GOOD! I fixed myself a hefty serving with some creamy vanilla ice cream. It was heaven.

This morning we woke up, ate the same breakfast as yesterday then headed on the road back to Virginia Tech. Once we got back I took my sister out to lunch and we went to this awesome little southwest restaurant called Cabo Fish Taco.  I ended up getting the Burrito Verde. It had portabella and wild mushrooms, roasted peppers, zucchini, squash, spinach, bell peppers, black beans, rice and cheese. It was so fresh, and not greasy in the slightest bit. I ate about 3/4 of it, and didn’t eat any of the cucumber salad I got with it. That didn’t really have any flavor. My sister got an awesome salad. It was the diablo shrimp salad and had shrimp and pineapple chunks skewered and grilled with a mango bbq sauce over salad. I tried one of her shrimp and it had great flavor with that bbq sauce. We then headed over to tcby for a little sweet treat, and I got a kiddie cup of white chocolate macadamia nut. This flavor is EVERYWHERE lately. and i’m loving itttt. I think this is a new flavor there and it’s a keeper! it was so tasty and had no sugar added and was fat free. 

this is possibly the longest post ever, so i’ll recap the botanical garden and the rest of the night once I got back to MD in the morning!  Hope you all had a wonderful weekend 🙂  I can’t wait to catch up on all your blogs!! Monday sure feels like it’s coming up quick!