Sooo nice to have a day off! Thank you MLK- I guess you were a pretty big deal ;-).
Today hubby gently nudged woke me up asking for waffles.
The theory?
"I just thought you'd want to use your new waffle maker!"
No ulterior motive there...
Banana Chocolate Chip Waffles
Ingredients:
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup rolled oats
2 ripe bananas
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
2.5 tsp baking powder
2 TBSP brown sugar
2 TBSP cane sugar
1.5 cups soy milk
water to thin (2-3 cups)
1/4 cup chocolate chips
Directions:
1. Preheat your waffle maker
2. Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl (flour, oats, sugars, cinnamon, baking powder) and wet ingredients in a medium bowl (bananas-mashed, vanilla, milk). Pour wet into dry, add water to thin. Fold in choc chips and mix until dry lumps are gone.
3. Pour batter into waffle maker. Mine took about 1/3 cup of batter per quadrant- this made reealllly thick waffles!
4. Cook according to waffle maker instructions. Mine's a flip kind, so I flipped it over 2-3 times per waffle, for 2 mins on each side.
5. Top with fun things like pecans, chocolate chips, whipped cream (hubs); or honey greek yogurt, choc chips, and banana (me).
Batter makes about 4 large waffles. Hubby ate 2.5- I like to think this gave him the energy to put this thing together:
Nice work honey!
I went to the gym mid-afternoon and logged some miles on the treadmill + strength training. 5.55 miles in 42:39 and some ab/arm/leg circuits w/ 10 lb weights for ~25 mins. It felt good to get some strength in, I bought Jillian's Michael's new 6 week 6 pack workout this weekend and I plan to try it out reallll soon :-).
Then we got ready to go to fancy schmancy 3 year dinner at Casbah- a very local restaurant that we've heard awesome things about but never checked out.
It was time to break out the LBD.
Hubs went with his fave- button down, tie, dress pants.
One day I will include the top of his head in one close-up pic.
Casbah appears to be a very small restaurant on the outside, so I was pleasantly surprised to see it was actually pretty sizeable! The lighting was very romantic, and there was (heated) outdoor seating available,but we went for indoors- also very cozy.
We started with apps, I got the Local Mesclun Greens w/ polenta croutons, Parmigiano-Reggiano, + red wine vinaigrette.
I could honestly have eaten the polenta croutons as a meal and nothing else. So. Good.
We also shared the Grilled Chickpea Flatbread: baba ghanoush chickpea hummus, red pepper muhummara, extra virgin olive oil.
The pita was warm and fluffy and the hummus and babbaganoush were delicious! I think they were made w/ fennel, which made for a very interesting taste. I didn't really try the red pepper- as I'm not a fan.
Yeah, I'm picky.
For entree, I got the Scottish Salmon, white beans, beech mushrooms, tomato,oregano, garlic, spinach
(yea there's some stuff hiding under there, I promise)
It was perfect! I ate 1/2 and passed it on to the bottomless pit hubby.
He got the Red Pepper Casereccia: seared sea scallops, jumbo lump crab, roasted garlic, parsley butter.
I tried the noodles and crab- it was aMAZing.
Somehow I found room for dessert (surprised?)
Grilled Gingerbread: molasses quince, caramel sauce,sweet cream ice cream
Also, perfect, delicious, unique...
As you can see- Casbah was frickin amazing. Highly recommended if you're in the Pittsburgh area :-)
Watching Despicable Me w/ the hubs then bed.
See ya later!