It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Aaaahhh! Finally the gorgeous 70* weather has arrived.  The weather allowed for plenty of outdoor activities.

Lunch with Mom on Saturday al fresco…

Best part was the mini lemon tart at La Madeleine’s and Mom eating hers.

Isn’t she cute? 😉

And feeding some birdies while we enjoyed the weather.

After eating, we also went on a small adventure—a car chase hunt in search of the 15 cop cars that were chasing one speeding black truck, but we never found them. 

Saturday night Chris and I met some friends out at StepBrothers Bar and Grill to celebrate my friend Chantel’s 30th birthday.

Somehow I keep forgetting my camera for important events.  For instance, Chris and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary this past Thursday on February 17.  We did go out to dinner to celebrate, but I managed to leave home without my camera and my phone.  Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing though.

Cooking was also involved in my weekend.  I made these oatmeal chocolate chip muffins with some changes that I may post at a later date.  I am still deciding if I like them enough to share the recipe.

Check out the Halloween muffin cups since I was short a couple and that’s all that was left in the cabinet.

On Sunday, with the beautiful weather Chris decided to grill up some chicken for dinner and I made a rice-veggie-cashew side dish.  It was a delicious meal.

The chicken was marinated in red pepper flakes, orange pineapple juice, and salt and pepper.

As for today–

I had a muffin and greek yogurt with blueberries and honey.

Simple lunch–

I managed to eat too much of my favorite hummus and chips after work.

And bean and chicken enchiladas were made for dinner using some of last night’s chicken.

I made the enchilada sauce following this recipe, but it was definitely not as tomato-y as I prefer since it required no tomato ingredient. 

The consistency was good, but flavor-wise it was just okay.  It was worth a shot, but I am still on the hunt for a better one.

Until next time…good night!

A Saturday Game of Scolf

On Saturday the weather was absolutely gorgeous—sunny and highs reached 68*.  The husband and I headed out to City Park in uptown New Orleans to play a game of Scolf with friends.  I thought some of the wives/girlfriends would be going along, but it turned out I was the only girl in attendance.

Several years ago a friend of the family invented a game which he originally named Scoobat.  Later, he renamed it Scolf.  Scolf, similar to golf where a ball (the size of a tennis ball) is scooped into different sized baskets with different point values, and is played in teams.  We had three teams of three.  My team consisted of myself, Chris, and our friend Timmy.  Later on in the day we added another player to our team who came late.

Here are my teammates—Timmy left and Chris right.

Each player has a paddle and a ball.  To start, each team member hits the ball off of a batting tee as far as he or she can hit it toward one of the other baskets a couple hundred feet away.  A player can opt to hit the ball out of hand as opposed to using the tee.

Off in the distance between the yellow flags is one of the baskets valued at 2 points.  Three other baskets were scattered valued at 3 points, 4 points, and 5 points with the smallest basket being valued the most.

The basket above is the 3 pointer.  After each team member hits off the tee, the “best” ball is chosen for all team members to play from, which is why you see four balls in line in the first picture next to my teammates.  Once close enough to the baskets, players must then use the paddle to scoop the ball in the basket.

Here I am scooping my ball for a 4 point gain for my team. 

All members of one team attempt to score until one person makes the basket or no member makes it. (It is not that easy!) The other teams then attempt a basket until 1 team earns the  points.  Then we move toward the next basket of the scoring team’s choice.  (The man in the background above on the right is the inventor of the game.)  The team that reaches 22 points first is the winning team. 

The game is fun, but loooong.  We were there for about three hours until another team beat us at the 5 point basket earning their 22 points total.  The game requires lots of walking, but it was a beautiful day so I didn’t mind much though it was tiring having done an hour of cardio and abs Saturday morning.

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Monday’s breakfast was a half whole wheat bagel with peanut butter, plain 0% greek yogurt, sugar free syrup, and a sliced banana.

Today’s commute was blanketed with morning fog over the entire city causing traffic galore so I was a few minutes late for work.  What a way to start the week.  Ugh!

Lunch included an Everything Bagel Thin with turkey and reduced fat swiss heated in the microwave at school, a simple spring mix and tomato side salad topped with balsamic vinegar and a splash of olive oil, with an apple.

My after school tutoring snack was two handfuls of peanuts…

Plus I stopped on the way home to get a Mardi Gras King Cake filled with Raspberry Cream Cheese after talking with hubby about him wanting a good one.  Oh my yum!  Confession:  We bought a cream cheese king cake just yesterday at the grocery, but we ate it all in one day.  Oops!!

 

Dianne’s bakes their cakes each morning so it was super soft and fresh.  More to come on King Cakes in the future.

For dinner I cooked a potato in the microwave and topped it with leftover chicken from last nights “beer in a chicken.”

I added some BBQ sauce, reduced fat mexican cheese blend, a dollop of greek yogurt, jalapenos, and salt and pepper.

….All mixed up.

Does Scolf sound like something you might like to play?