A Weekend of Good Eats, Arm Balancing and More

Well, it was yet another fun and eventful weekend. I’m enjoying weekends so much more now that my weekdays are so busy and full, but don’t get me wrong, it’s good busy and I am not complaining by any means. When I was first laid off, and before different projects and my summer class picked up, I didn’t really have a sense of weekend … for all I knew it was the weekend every day! It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I think I enjoy having a more defined sense of the weekend.

Saturday morning, I slept in a little (7:30 I think?), but got up early enough to eat a nice breakfast before my 2-1/2 hour arm balances workshop with the lovely, Ms. Kathryn Budig. She taught various workshops all weekend at Yoga Pearl, but I only made it to one. I would’ve loved to do more, but didn’t want to spend too much money. Fortunately, I got to do one of her sessions when she visited last summer too. She’s spunky, funny, witty and real. She also takes the fun in yoga to a whole new level. Seriously, she’s awesome and I learned a lot of good tips from her workshop, specifically with practicing handstand and forearm balance.

My Saturday morning breakfast of sautéed mushrooms, zucchini, kale and spicy turkey sausage served with two over easy pasture eggs and avocado slices.

The workshop ended in the early afternoon, so afterward I walked over to Whole Foods in the Pearl District to make a salad. On my walk over, I bumped right into the Best Butcher Contest, sponsored by Whole Foods. Two whole street blocks were closed off and filled with different vendors, musicians, kitchen demo setups, etc. Panorama (a grass-fed beef farm) was there, along with some other farmers, a pickle vendor, live pasture chickens, etc. It was pretty fun to walk into and I got to sample some delicious grass-fed meat too. Panorama is actually the brand I buy when I get grass-fed beef from Whole Foods. It’s good stuff!

Best Butcher Contest, sponsored by Whole Foods. Don’t mind the poor quality phone pic.

For dinner Saturday evening, we had a tasteful, simple meal of roasted beets, sautéed kale with garlic and cherry tomatoes, and grass-fed eye of round steak. It was lovely and extremely satisfying.

Grass-fed eye of round, sautéed kale and cherry tomatoes, and roasted beets.

Yesterday, I got a lot done around the house and it felt great! Cleaning, tidying, laundry and cooking, of course. For dinner, I threw some ingredients into the Crock Pot – chicken breasts, carrots, onion, garlic, cabbage, ghee, vegetable broth, salt and pepper, and a bit of dried thyme and parsley. After several hours of cooking, I shredded the chicken. It’s so tender at that point that it shreds so easily and basically just falls apart. To pair with the chicken stew, I made a batch of almond flour biscuits, which we ate with grass-fed butter spread on top. It was definitely a comfort meal and Jesse said it was blog-worthy.

Sunday dinner: thrown-together chicken stew and almond flour biscuits with grass-fed butter.

Oh, another exciting thing happened this weekend … Jesse and I got a grill! Wahoo! My mom reached out to me after reading this blog post of mine and offered to get Jesse and me a grill as an early Christmas present. We had to order it online, so we don’t have it yet, but we picked out a Weber portable gas grill. I can’t wait to start grilling!

Weber portable Q 100 propane gas grill.