Friday = Gionino’s Pizza
Gionino’s Pizza = Happy Mary
Gionino’s Pizza + Hot Sauce = Heaven
Heaven I say… HEAAAAAVEN
Last day in Charleston
Sunday was our last day in Charleston. For breakfast, we nibbled on some of the goods we had brought from home, then headed to the Folly Beach Pier.
We layed out on the beach for a while, then headed to Locklear’s for lunch.
Jarrod got a chicken wrap and I ordered the shrimp burger wrap:
I’m still not entirely sure what a shrimp burger is made of, and I don’t think my belly was very fond of it! That’s ok, that left more room for hushpuppies 🙂 The food wasn’t stellar, but we were really there for the view anyway:
After lunch, we strolled along the pier.
Then back to the beach so Jarrod could catch some rays:
And I could lay under the pier in the shade: Haha…
And then I got pooped on… Second time time that has happened to me. It’s supposed to be good luck, but I don’t know about that. Getting pooped on is pretty crappy in my opinion 😉
Lucky for you, I didn’t take a picture!
For dinner, we hit up the Mellow Mushroom.
This place was, well, trippy, for lack of a better word:
I orderd the field green salad and Jarrod got the ceaser salad and some tortilla soup:
Of course we also got some bruschetta to share:
All of this was delicious, but the Gourmet White pizza we ordered was AMAZING:
Jarrod said he could “eat this for nine days.” Thankfully, we don’t have a Mellow Mushroom near home… though there is one in Columbus….
After dinner, we went to the Vendue Inn Roooftop bar for a drink:
Love this bar. It was really nice and breezy and they had some great live music. We also saw Nick Lachey which was funny.
Today we are headed home. Strike that. Change of plans! Today we are headed to Edisto Beach, then back to Charlotte 😀 Home will have to wait!
Pita Pizza & a Green Monster
Some nights I am really amped to try out a new recipe…. And some nights, I just want pizza. Tonight was one of THOSE nights.
I decided to use a Joseph’s Middle East Bakery Low Carb pita as my base. I topped that off with:
- 1/4 cup Classico Fire Roasted/Tomato Garlic spaghetti sauce
- Sprinkling of garlic powder, onion powder, dried parsley, dried oregano, black pepper, and red pepper flakes
- 1 ounce thinly sliced grilled chicken (leftover from the batch I grilled up sunday night)
- 1 light babybel cheese sliced into four super thin discs
- 1 tbsp fat free ricotta
- thinly sliced red onion
- a couple thinly sliced cherry tomatoes
Popped it into a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Then, I topped it with some chopped basil from the back yard garden:
I served the pizza up with a side salad that consisted of romaine, cherry tomatoes, red onion, banana peppers, and 2 tbsp Ken’s Steakhouse Lite Northern Italian dressing with Basil and Romano:
The salad was delicious. That Ken sure does know a thing or two about dressings 😉
And the pizza was.. in a word… Umm…. YUM. Ok, that’s two words, but regardless this pizza really hit the spot:
Soooo goood!!! Why don’t I make pizza more often?!
Check out this huge banana pepper I’ve got growing in the back yard:
He might have to go on my next salad 🙂
Stats on the pizza: 197 calories, 20g carbs, 6g fat, 20g protein, 5g fiber
Stats on the salad: 97 calories, 13g carbs, 5g fat, 3g protein, 4g fiber
All together now: 294 calories, 33g carbs, 11g fat, 23g protein, 9g fiber
I’ve previously eluded to the fact that I’m a messy cook. Given the simplicity of my dinner tonight, you’d probably assume that my kitchen would be in pretty good shape. Whelp, you’d be wrong!
Take a look at this monstrosity:
I wish I were kidding. Can you imagine the disasters I could create if I had a big kitchen?
After dinner, I couldn’t wait for late-night snack time to roll around. I decided earlier in the day that I’d make up a green monster smoothie for my snack to give me lots of energy for my run in the morning.
Threw the following into the blender:
- 1/2 cup Almond Breeze Unsweetened Almond Milk
- 1/4 cup Oikos plain Greek Yogurt
- 1 packet Truvia (stevia) all natural sweetener
- 1/2 cup fresh frozen strawberries
- 1/4 cup fresh blueberries
- 1 cup fresh SPINACH
- 3 ice cubes
It’s green. It’s delicious.
Mmmmm…
Thankfully, the green monster gave me the energy I needed to clean up that disaster kitchen:
Stats on the green monster: 105 calories, 18g carbs, 2g fat, 9g protein, 5g fiber
Blog Updates
I recently updated my About Me page to incorporate some comments I had posted on the blog. I also added a Foodie Q&A page where I plan to keep a running list of questions readers ask. And as always, I am continuously linking all my recipe posts to the Recipe Page. This page is actually getting pretty long, so I think I’ll be reformatting it in the near future.
Pita Pizza & a Green Monster
Some nights I am really amped to try out a new recipe…. And some nights, I just want pizza. Tonight was one of THOSE nights.
I decided to use a Joseph’s Middle East Bakery Low Carb pita as my base. I topped that off with:
- 1/4 cup Classico Fire Roasted/Tomato Garlic spaghetti sauce
- Sprinkling of garlic powder, onion powder, dried parsley, dried oregano, black pepper, and red pepper flakes
- 1 ounce thinly sliced grilled chicken (leftover from the batch I grilled up sunday night)
- 1 light babybel cheese sliced into four super thin discs
- 1 tbsp fat free ricotta
- thinly sliced red onion
- a couple thinly sliced cherry tomatoes
Popped it into a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Then, I topped it with some chopped basil from the back yard garden:
I served the pizza up with a side salad that consisted of romaine, cherry tomatoes, red onion, banana peppers, and 2 tbsp Ken’s Steakhouse Lite Northern Italian dressing with Basil and Romano:
The salad was delicious. That Ken sure does know a thing or two about dressings 😉
And the pizza was.. in a word… Umm…. YUM. Ok, that’s two words, but regardless this pizza really hit the spot:
Soooo goood!!! Why don’t I make pizza more often?!
Check out this huge banana pepper I’ve got growing in the back yard:
He might have to go on my next salad 🙂
Stats on the pizza: 197 calories, 20g carbs, 6g fat, 20g protein, 5g fiber
Stats on the salad: 97 calories, 13g carbs, 5g fat, 3g protein, 4g fiber
All together now: 294 calories, 33g carbs, 11g fat, 23g protein, 9g fiber
I’ve previously eluded to the fact that I’m a messy cook. Given the simplicity of my dinner tonight, you’d probably assume that my kitchen would be in pretty good shape. Whelp, you’d be wrong!
Take a look at this monstrosity:
I wish I were kidding. Can you imagine the disasters I could create if I had a big kitchen?
After dinner, I couldn’t wait for late-night snack time to roll around. I decided earlier in the day that I’d make up a green monster smoothie for my snack to give me lots of energy for my run in the morning.
Threw the following into the blender:
- 1/2 cup Almond Breeze Unsweetened Almond Milk
- 1/4 cup Oikos plain Greek Yogurt
- 1 packet Truvia (stevia) all natural sweetener
- 1/2 cup fresh frozen strawberries
- 1/4 cup fresh blueberries
- 1 cup fresh SPINACH
- 3 ice cubes
It’s green. It’s delicious.
Mmmmm…
Thankfully, the green monster gave me the energy I needed to clean up that disaster kitchen:
Stats on the green monster: 105 calories, 18g carbs, 2g fat, 9g protein, 5g fiber
Blog Updates
I recently updated my About Me page to incorporate some comments I had posted on the blog. I also added a Foodie Q&A page where I plan to keep a running list of questions readers ask. And as always, I am continuously linking all my recipe posts to the Recipe Page. This page is actually getting pretty long, so I think I’ll be reformatting it in the near future.
Early bird catches the corn dog
It’s Saturday, and you know what that means. Yard work!
You’d think for as much time as I devote to my yard, it’d be in pristine shape…. Oh what a pain in the ass homeownership is the joys of home ownership 🙂
There is one specific area of the yard that I leave completely untouched. You can see I have quite the crop of poison ivy growing:
I hit up the Home Depot this morning to pick up some spray to (hopefully) help with my poison ivy. Did you know Home Depot opens at 6am??? I leaned this little nugget of information when I called them at 7am to see when they opened. 6am? Those customers must be hard-core home improvers.
Before I got to work in the back yard, I cooked up my favorite egg breakfast: 1 dippy egg & 3 egg white scramble with S&P, Red Pepper Flakes, and Frank’s Red Hot. I always add a splash of liquid (usually skim milk or water) to the egg whites to help them stay fluffy. Also, toasted up a Thomas’ multi grain english muffin on the side.
Stats on breakfast: 218 calories, 28g carbs, 6g fat, 22g protien, 8g fiber
After chowing down, I headed to the yard.
Until last summer, I was one of those people who thought I wasn’t allergic to poison ivy. Well, that is until I accidently weed wacked some of it. I really didn’t know what poison ivy even looked like, so I was unaware of the horrible mistake I had made and basically let myself marinate in the poison ivy juices all day while I worked away in the yard. This resulted in what I will call a immobilizing infestation of poison ivy all over my legs. Since then I will not go near the stuff.
Today, I put on pants and long sleeves (despite temps in the mid 80’s) just so that I could approach the “infested area.” My luck, I’ll get poison ivy on the only part that was left exposed: my face 🙁 I’m sure I’ll have nightmares about that tonight!
I’ll have to post some before and after shots once I get it all finished (which will be never sometime soon).
After all the yard work, I was starving!
Sometimes I just get cravings for weird foods. Case in point, today I had a sudden craving for a corn dog! I can’t remember the last time I had one, but something triggered the corn dog eating machine deep inside me. So, I decided to try and make a healthified version of a corn dog. Even typing “healthified corn dog” makes me scoff. How ridiculous sounding is that?
I had some frozen Jennie-O turkey sausages in the freezer and also some Joseph’s Lavash bread, so I pulled them out to defrost before hitting up the yard early this morning.
I cooked up 2 turkey sausages – 1 for the “corn dog” and 1 for a healthified jambalaya recipe I’m going to try later in the week. Once cooked, I wrapped 1 turkey sausage in 1/2 a Joseph’s Low-Carb lavash bread, stuck in on a skewer, and threw it back on the grill.
Ridiculous, I know…
Once the lavash was crispy, I pulled it off the grill and served it up with a big squirt of mustard.
Ok – so it’s not exactly a corn dog, but eating it off a stick sure made it seem like one and it definitely hit the spot 🙂 I’m a BIG fan of Jennie-O’s hot turkey sausage.
Corn dog stats: 210 calories, 7g carbs, 12g fat, 22g protien, 3g fiber
BTW – yesterday while volunteering I had a Smores Luna Bar – and I wasn’t a big fan. It wasn’t bad tasting — just didn’t remind me of a smore AT ALL. Definitely the least favorite of all the flavors I have tried to date. I also had a few bites of a Chocolate Cherry Bear Naked Grain-ola Bar. It was OK – but again, I wasn’t super impressed. Apparently I was hard to please yesterday…
What did hit the spot, however, was the Gioniono’s pizza we had for dinner:
Still trying to decide what to cook up for dinner tonight… Suffering from foodie’s block.