A Beautiful Day

We had the best day! The afternoon and evening more than made up for the missed morning bike ride.

The afternoon started with an outing to Best Buy, where I picked up this cash!!! I bought my iPhone from them partly because of Kevin and partly because that store knows how to do business. They match prices within 30 days, so I walked out with $107 in my pocket from the new reduced 3G phone price. Sweeeeeeeeeet! (I asked about getting the new phone, but since mine is practically brand new and will have an upgraded operating system in a few days there was no real need to get the new model).

After Best Buy we went to Old Navy to return a shirt I bought in the wrong size by accident – only to find they were now 50% off so I got 2 for the price of the first! And found this tube top for $8 too. I do not normally wear tube tops (thanks to being well endowed) but I have found that they are wonderful to wear around the house when I am very sweaty after a workout and shower and can’t stand the thought of putting on a real shirt.

He got a polo shirt too – all men’s stuff was half off!

On the way to our next location I took some photos of my new purse organizer. A new friend at MyRecipes.com (where I actually do go to research recipes all the time) sent along this purse organizer when I told her how much I LOVE Real Simple magazine.

It’s totally cool! You know how you have 10 different purses to match different outfits? Well this solves the problem of transferring every little item over and over. You find a place for everything and then just transfer the whole pouch. I have a lot of little things I’m always digging for in my big ol’ one pocket purses

My camera, phone, change purse, lip necessities

Breath mints, FOOD

Pen, credit card holder, receipts, KERF biz cards

All fit snug + organized in my blue fake Longchamps purse from China : )

The final surprise destination was Old Mecklenburg Brewery, Charlotte’s first local brewery. Matt had already been and was dying to take me to check it out.

They make German-style beers – low quantity, high quality – and had two to sample.

We started with the Kolsner. I wasn’t dying to drink this afternoon, but agreed I’d go and just have a few sips of Matt’s.

Thumbs up!!! It had a lot of flavor and body for a “yellow” beer

During the tour we tried the Copper, which I liked, but not as much as the first.

So we had a third (half pint, that is) of the first again. I probably had half to 3/4 of a half pint in sips?

Which we sipped with these DELICIOUS pretzels. I really love pretzels. Wish they weren’t so “empty.”

I had quite a few because that turned into this! (With Matt’s help, though)

After the brewery we decided to go for a walk in Freedom Park.

But on the way there I wanted to stop into Home Economist to see if they had chia seeds. They had EVERYTHING but no chia seeds ;( I need to go there again for some of these bulks. They had more bulk goods than I’d ever seen!

Then we arrived at the park for our walk. Matt likes to snap candid photos of me as I’m getting ready for a real pose. A real life 180* turn!! (How’d he get my hair to do that in the middle one!?)

We had a great 30 minute walk around the lake

And then drove home to make dinner. We thought about going out (the timing would have been fun) but we had salmon at home and knew it was the better choice all around. But going out to dinner is SO FUN!

 

I came home to a package from Mara – one of her food blogger necklaces!!! Her father makes them by hand and you can purchase them on her blog here. Think I’m going to get one for my mom!

(Love it Mara – thank you!!)

Before There Was KERF

Dinner tonight goes waaaaay back to the summer after sophomore year of college when we sublet a room in an apartment together as we worked as counselors at a water sports YMCA camp. We had NO CLUE how to cook, but this salmon recipe was our one tried-and-true (and very simple) recipe.

Back then I had this little notebook where I collected recipes torn out of health and food magazines

I ranked them if we made them so I’d know if we should make it again

I had intended the book to be a wine journal too – here’s the label from a bottle my parents gave me for my 21st birthday! Guess I ate it with cheese

I wrote down some recipes we invented ourselves, like this homemade (onion-free!) salsa

Lemon-Mustard green beans (on tonight’s menu!)

And the salmon

Maple Salmon 2009

I used frozen wild sockeye from TJ’s and cooked it just like last year. This was only about .62 pounds of salmon and we only cooked it for 12 minutes instead of 20 though.

Served with the Lemon-Dijon green beans + almonds above (SUCH a good simple recipe)

I thought about heating up the leftover quinoa, but we had all those carbs for a snack, so we didn’t really need it.

 

Wine just seemed appropriate, so I had 4-5 oz of last night’s leftover bottle. I wanted some for no other reason than its romance -

Our dinner lasted well into the night – TWO HOURS. I think we both just wanted to keep the fun day together going.

He’s been up since 3:30 this morning (and just cleaned the whole kitchen while I blogged!) <3

Goodnight moon!

Tagged as: Fish, Green Beans, Salmon