Saturday Fun Day/ Sunday Rest Day

I love Sundays. Especially Sundays when Derek is in town and we have no other plans, but to be lazy and just catch up on life. I plan on instating a new rule: from now on Saturdays are fun days and Sundays are rest days. Sounds good to me.

Derek had been eyeing the nut butter crusted fries I’ve been featuring on the blog lately, so I offered to make him a batch for lunch. I was really after any excuse to make these bad boys again.

(original recipe found at Angela’s blog)

We started with freshly peeled parsnips and carrots

The coating is simple – combine a generous portion of peanut butter with evoo and salt.

Mix well.

Coat the parsnips and carrots with the peanut butter goo.

Bake at 400 for 20 minutes, flip, and bake for 10 more minutes. Flipping is important – otherwise they burn.

The finished product.

Yum!

You know I am obsessed with these, so it shouldn’t be a shock that these knocked my socks off, but I bet you’re more interested in what Derek thought. Truth is Derek loved them too. He cleaned his plate and licked his fingers before asking for more. He actually wished there was more of a peanut butter coating, perhaps some pb mixed in the bbq sauce? Hmm… maybe next time.

With the fries I made a slightly grilled cheese (I was impatient and only let it ‘grill’ for 30 seconds) that had swiss cheese, tomato, and spinach.

Mini gerkin

The perfect Sunday lunch.

We spent the rest of the afternoon by the pool. The weather was just too nice not to! I swam, lounged in the shade, and even managed to finish my book (First Sight by Nicholas Spark).

The book was so-so. As I’ve mentioned before it was a VERY slow read. I’ll admit the ending had me in tears – what do you expect with Nicholas Spark? – but if I had stopped reading halfway through I’m not sure I would not have cared about missing the ending. This was not some of Nicholas Spark’s best work. Oh well.

After the pool I made some smoothies for Derek and I to cool off with.

• Plain Yogurt
• Almond Milk
• Frozen Strawberries
• Frozen Pineapple
• Flaxseed
• Cacao Nibs

I have a thing with needing to drink smoothies with a straw, but I am out of regular straws. So, I improvised.

Classy.

I wanted to try something new for dinner tonight.

I’ve has seitan on multiple occasions in the past, but have never attempted making it myself!

Hmmm…. what do you do with seitan?

I literally threw it in the plan and let it speak to me.

The seitan asked for some onions and garlic to keep it company in the pan.

Then this can of tomato sauce was asking to join the party from the pantry.

Along with some frozen oregano.

Everything simmered in the pan for 10 minutes, which was just enough time to let all the flavors meld into something wonderful.

I served the tomato seitan on some leftover harvest grains with a little feta.

Seitan really does taste just like chicken. You could have served this combination over pasta and no one would have been the wiser. The seitan was slightly chewy, but in a good way. It was flavorful and a great addition to the tomato sauce.

I had a corn on the cob that needed to be roasted tonight or thrown away. I roasted the corn with the husk still on for 15 minutes at 400 and then shaved off a serving on kernels on my plate. I can’t stand eating corn actually on the cob, it sticks in my teeth that way!

A serving of vanilla ice cream with thin mints and granola for dessert.

That was a lot of food to cover for one day! It was all good food too.

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I better finish resting before my full week of work begins tomorrow.

Good night!