What I’m Loving Lately: Late Summer Edition

On Tuesday, we went to Red Rocks for our last concert of the summer — Young the Giant was incredible and Sameer’s dance moves are the very best! — and it was legitimately chilly!  Last night, my dad texted me about how it’s getting darker earlier in the evening.  I’m feeling that (self-created) pressure to do everything I haven’t crossed off my Summer Bucket List and all of this can mean only one thing: it’s officially late summer.  But, I’m going to refer to it as “late summer” instead of “the end of summer” because that’s just too depressing for a Friday post 🙂  Here’s some stuff I’ve been into lately!

Binge Mode

Guys, I spend a significant amount of my life trying to hide how deeply immersed in Game of Thrones I truly am.  But I fear I’m actually doing a terrible job because my blog, my Twitter account and my real life conversations seems to be about 80% GoT references and 20% food.  So now that it’s out in the open, I wanna tell you that I’ve been listening to this Podcast (so much that I’m actually speaking like the podcast hosts now — shouts to Binge Mode!) and now I even have Joey listening!  It’s pretty legit and also really funny, so I highly recommend it.

The Savvy Cook

Mentioned this cookbook here and there but I’m making my way through some of the MANY recipes I have dogeared and so far, I’m loving everything we’ve tried!  Made some egg-free French toast with MISO-DATE BUTTER (can you even?!) and it was so so good!  I can get weird about eggs sometimes so I was delighted to find a recipe for French toast that did away with them completely.  Also, that butter is a sweet savory dream and leftovers make for some incredible oatmeal.

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Iced Lattes

In the summer, Joey is ALL ABOUT iced coffee and I get it because that stuff can be incredibly good but I’ve been falling for a creamier cold coffee drink lately, so lattes are where its at.  My local coffee shop just switched from using almond milk to oat milk, but as long as it tastes like caffeinated cereal milk, I’m don’t really care what kind of non-dairy milk they use.  P.S. I ordered an iced lavender latte last week and life felt too good to be true.

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Peaches

I truly love a stone fruit.  And there is NOTHING better than a perfectly ripe, sweet, in-season peach.  For real!  You know when you get one that tastes so good it’s almost like you’re eating cobbler?  And your entire summer is built around finding THAT ONE perfect peach?  I’ve been lucky enough to eat several of those this summer and it makes me wonder what I’ve done to deserve such happiness.

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Gel Manicures

Growing up, I always had great nails.  Somewhere around 2011, they started to suck.  They were thin and brittle and ripping on the sides ALL THE TIME.  I’m gonna chaulk it up to a major increase in cooking, aka washing a lot of dishes, aka drying my nails out but who really knows.  What I DO know is that I got a “Oxygenating Medical Grade 10-Free Gel Manicure” at my fav place at the beginning of June and my nails have been killer ever since!  I’m not going to question this magic, I’m just going to enjoy it.

On the weekend docket: Rockies, Yoga on the Rocks, Frozen Live, smiles, hugs, LOVE!

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?!