Weekend Things

It’s Monday but I’m in a good mood and I blame the weekend.  I wholeheartedly love the full-on summer month of July but man did it feel exhausting this year!  I hit the ground running with Shakespeare Fest, 4th of July and ambitious birthday cooking plans, followed by a trip to the mountains, three concerts, hosting a summer BBQ and celebrating my mom’s birthday.  All SO SO fun and 100% worth feeling a little overbooked, but boy am I ready for a bit of an August slow down.

We maybe got a good preview of that this weekend, because even though we had Friday dinner plans, a Saturday night concert and early morning breakfast on Sunday, everything still felt real calm, cool and collected.  Gimme all those R&R vibes!

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Can we start with Thursday, though?  Because it was my mom’s birthday and she had us over for lunch and that spread — salad, roasted garlic bread, jambalaya! — was so delicious and my mom was just too cute.  I love her so much!

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On Friday, we went out to celebrate at Mas Kaos and though it started shaky when we were the first table sat upstairs in what felt like a weird attic space, it filled in later on and then the food was really good!  I felt panicky all day wondering how I would possibly choose between pizza and tacos, but then just ordered both and truly felt I was living my best life.

Back at home, we threw on Frances Ha and right away we loved it.  Maybe didn’t love the second half quite as much, but we still really liked it overall.  And what a delightful surprise when Adam Driver showed up!

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Started out slow on Saturday by making a weirdo breakfast for Joey and I.  I saw this recipe for Sweet Corn Oatmeal with Peaches in Cooking Light last month and couldn’t get it out of my head!  It was more savory than I had expected but also oddly satisfying?  It was a little bit gloomy/had recently rained but I was so hellbent on going to the Farmers’ Market for the first time in 3 weeks that I wasn’t going to let anything stop me.  Got peaches, shishitos (finally!!!) and a bargain stripy squash (technical term) for 50 cents then biked home all smiley and happy.

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Afternoon shopping afterwards and I think everyone else had the same idea because Nordstrom Rack was PACKED.  Also, just want to tell you that Joey and I have been doing this thing where we forget to print concert tickets beforehand, which leads to driving to the office (did it TWO DAYS IN A ROW two weekends ago…) to use the printer or finding a Kinko’s.  What is even wrong with us?

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Saturday night was spent at Red Rocks for the Tedeschi Trucks Band.  FYI, it’s apparently “Te-de-SKI” which is cool because I only told about 100 people I was going to a “Te-de-shee” concert.  Anyway, we classed up our tailgate game with an actual table and chairs, plus takeout from BriDer.  It was probably double the price of our usual Illegal Pete’s tailgate dinner but looking back on those sweet potato tots, it was worth it.  Saw a real cute deer on our way into the amphitheater ♥

The actual concert was so great!  I’ve never been to a real jam band show so I didn’t know what to expect but everyone was dancing and singing and not even trying to pretend they weren’t smoking weed.  If you’ve never been to Red Rocks, that sort of thing is pretty normal but I think this was the most blatant display I’ve seen.  Most importantly though, I got to hear “Midnight in Harlem” live and Susan Tedeschi has an INCREDIBLE voice!

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Sunday started with breakfast at Snooze.  Joey’s grandparents had never been there and I was all too happy to join them for their inaugural visit.  Afterwards we “adulted” by going to the grocery store, making lunch salads for the week and taking a walk up the street to buy more coffee beans for iced coffee that I never actually made (FAIL).  I also made a double batch of freezer cookies because we were out (THE HORROR!) and that just wasn’t going to work.  Feels much better now that we’re re-stocked.

Hey, I actually made it to Sunday afternoon yoga!  Felt so good to make it there and to get a good stretch in.  Back at home, we cooked dinner together and it was the very best.  Actually, Joey was at the breading station making “fried” broccoli and told me he felt very stressed but I think he was being dramatic 🙂  We made tacos from The Savvy Cook and I was so blown away by the end result!  We even made our own flour tortillas and they were a little messy and time-consuming but otherwise completely easy.  I stuck the extras in the freezer (along with the leftover “chorizo” dip) so we can totally make this killer meal again and it will be a real breeze.

Could this post be any longer??  Um well, I could talk about Game of Thrones and it could be A LOT longer, but I’ll keep it brief and just say: Jon & Dany face to face at long last!  How thrilling!  What did you all think?!

Weekend Things & a Summer BBQ

You know when your weekend was so good that just thinking back on it has you doing a little good mood dance in your office?  No?  Yeah, me neither…

But seriously, this weekend we had a very chill Friday that involved cooking vegetables from our garden, a Saturday that started with a new coffee shop and ended with a summer BBQ with our friends and family and a Sunday that was so blissfully relaxed it almost felt wrong but mostly felt so damn right.  THE BEST!

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To say I had been looking forward to this dinner all week long would be a major understatement.  We pulled four cute little beets from our garden and used them to make this flatbread from my new cookbook and then I sauteed a HUGE bag of chard we harvested from our garden and Joey raved about it all through dinner.  I was like “it’s just some chard!” but yeah, it was actually VERY GOOD.  Also, I guess I’m just gonna quit my job and be a beet farmer now, okay?  Please tell us the difference between pizza and flatbread though!

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Everyone was coming over at 5 on Saturday and our house needed to be cleaned and burgers, sangria and broccoli salad needed to be made, but there is ALWAYS time for coffee first!  And Blue Sparrow Coffee was ADORABLE, so I’m 100% glad we made it there.  I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, RiNo is just the coolest neighborhood in Denver!  We got our coffee and headed up to this rooftop patio and had the whole thing to ourselves.  It was so cool and peaceful and quiet up there ♥  We went full-on dorky married couple and inspected those garden beds so hard.  I loved every single second!

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Afterwards, we cleaned and prepped (hallelujah for husbands who mow and pull weeds and water lawns and put out tables, chairs and cute little drink stations so that when you come outside everything is already perfect!) and it was all so low stress that I even took a hammock nap and finished a book afterwards.  WHO AM I?!

As for the actual BBQ, I loved it SO much!  Everyone brought such delicious things and Joey grilled the burgers (x3!) to perfection and everyone was like “this water with fruit in it is so good!” and I got to see and laugh with all the people I love best in this life.  It was magical indeed.  Also, for the record, the pregnant lady outlasted everyone else and was the last person out the door at the end of the night.  Guys, Hannah and Josh are having a baby boy and it is fucking fun to talk about HIM instead of IT now.

P.S. Totally ate a brownie while cleaning up after everyone had left.

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Started Sunday with a run breakfast at Sassafras and yeah, those roasted vegetable grits with goat cheese and a side of jalapeño cornbread were as good as they look!  Afterwards, while Joey being a bike mechanic in the backyard (don’t ask…), I I re-stocked myself on granola and made some hummus with extra virgin olive oil that Lori brought back FROM GREECE!  She also got me thee most stunningly beautiful blue opal jewelry and I am actually the luckiest daughter-in-law ever.

Then…our first Sunday Rockies game of the year (how?!) and we biked and had seats in the shade and won 13-3, so I was in my happy place for real.  Afterwards, we tried to move as little as possible and keep all the lights off because summer heat is not messing around this year.  Plus we had our groceries delivered and decided to wait till Monday to do our weekly salad prep so we really had nothing we needed to do.  It was honestly SO NICE.

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For dinner, I picked our first squash and tomato of the year (!!!) and then we ate outside and I was like “I LOVE SUMMER!”  Big Brother and Game of Thrones afterward!!!!  Ummm how incredible was that episode of GoT?!  I had literal chills so many times and even Joey couldn’t stop talking about how crazy good that ending scene was.  My sister and Wayne just started watching the series and I’m simultaneously jealous that they get to watch from the beginning and disappointed that they’re JUST NOW watching from the beginning.

This week, I have book club, birthday celebrations for my sweet mama and a weekend concert to look forward to so I think I’ll be riding this summertime high for a while 🙂