Recipe of the Week!

Roasted Summer Veggies and Goat Cheese

I'm sure that I could be a vegetarian. I love vegetables. For this dish I tossed eggplant, portobello mushrooms, zucchini, yellow squash, and tomatoes in olive oil and some salt and pepper. I roasted them in the oven until they were tender and topped it off with some goat cheese. I added some italian turkey sausage to Matt's dish. You could probably also add some pasta, or use this as a side dish. I thought it was delish!

4th of July

Obviously I am behind in blogging...I'm blogging about our 4th of July weekend in Pittsburgh when it's the 21st of July. At least it's still July. Matt and I had quite an action packed weekend. On the actual 4th we went to the Pirates-Phillies game at PNC Park with my sister and brother in law. It was super hot, but at least the game had some action. Matt and I spent some time downtown afterwards watching the Three Rivers Regatta, and spending our free money we won at the Pirates game at the casino. On Friday we went to the driving range and then decided to visit East End Brewery. I highly recommend a trip there if you are a local, or even if you are visiting. The guys that work there are super nice and you can try anything you want! You can read about our previous visit here. 

Saturday my sister and I went to the Pittsburgh Zoo with my friend Nicole and her son Drew. I might be biased, but I honestly think that the Pittsburgh Zoo is one of the best. I like it because the habitats are a main part of the zoo so it's not super depressing. I hate when you go to zoos and the animals are just right in front of you with no space to move around. The downfall is that you might not see every animal every time you go to the zoo in Pittsburgh, but I like to think the animals are slightly more happy. 

My friends Nicole and Drew

I pet this sting ray!

On Saturday we had a little picnic with my extended family. It was great to see everyone. Matt and I chose to go to Pittsburgh for the 4th of July because we will be visiting New England and his family later this month. When we originally chose that date I forgot that my mom was going to be out of town on vacation gallivanting Croatia, so it was weird to be home without her, but I'm glad she was having a good time in Europe. 

We had to head back to Virginia on Sunday, but we decided to make a quick stop at the United Flight 93 Memorial. We always drive past the signs on our drives to Pittsburgh, so we decided to make time to go this time around. It was a pretty cool side trip. The memorial is in it's very early stages, so you can't easily see everything the architect had in mind. We watched these videos on the NPS website after we got home, and I wished we had watched them before so I could have picked stuff out while were there. A lot of it isn't built yet at all, much like when we went to the memorials in New York. If you ever decide to make a trip here I highly recommend you speak with the park rangers. We found out some little known information about 9/11 and Flight 93. The ranger explained to us that the public actually knows very little about the specifics of flight 93 because the majority of the media was focused on the New York attacks and the Pentagon. 

Remembrance wall and gateway to the crash site

The large rock marks the site of main impact. 

The black wall marks the edge of the crash site set by the Coroner.

View of the entire field and memorial

Recipe of the Week!

Chicken Bruschetta

My aunt sent me this recipe about a month ago. It sounded simple and delicious and that's pretty much what it turned out to be. I cut the recipe below in half because there are only two of us and it's for four pieces of chicken. I also cooked the chicken in the oven instead of on the grill. I think it was raining...cause this summer it's either raining or 110 degrees. I think the bruschetta recipe also made a lot, but I just ate it by itself later in the week, or I guess you could just have extra on the side.

Ingredients:
4 chicken breasts
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 tbs olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup mozzarella
salt and pepper  to taste
thinly sliced basil

Bruschetta recipe:
4 medium tomatoes
1 small sweet onion
2 tbs. balsamic vinegar
1 tbs. olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Mix first four ingredients in a ziploc bag. Marinate the chicken in the bag until ready to use (I only had a couple of hours, but next time I would do longer). Meanwhile, dice the tomatoes and onion, mix with balsamic and olive oil, salt and pepper, and set aside. Grill or bake chicken until fully cooked. Transfer the chicken breasts to a baking sheet and top with bruschetta and mozzarella. Place in the oven until cheese is melted. Remove from oven and top with basil.

Recipes of the Week!

I know what you are probably thinking..."didn't this blog use to feature recipes?!?!" Well yes, friend, it did. I swear I still cook. I really do...almost every night. I guess maybe I'm in a small slump. I have been making stuff I've already posted, or just normal stuff. The thing I am most upset about though is that we had a housewarming party and I made all these new recipes that I really liked and then was in such a fluster that I forgot to take pictures. I could post the recipes without pictures, but I hate when magazines do that. I do have one coming up for some yum chicken...I promise.

On another note...I can now blog from my phone. I'm doing it right now. Technology. The babysitting lifestyle is rough these days. Pool weather is at a serious minimum this summer.  My sun worshipping ways are suffering, but I hear thats for the best. Here are a few pics from our week so far.

Adventures in Babysitting, Year 3

Traffic

Traffic. Yep. Thanks for the reminder. I have babysat the same kids for the past two summers. I like them, we get along, it's a pretty decent deal most days. Well right after we bought our house their mom emailed about this summer. I was worried about the commute, but I decided to do it thinking it couldn't be horrible. It's summer...less commuters was my thought. Wrong. I don't know for sure what it's like during the school year, but this is no joke. It's a fiasco. For example...I live about 5 miles from 66 (the main road to get anywhere) and it takes about a 1/2 hour to get there. Not necessary. 

So I've tried backroads, multiple routes, every type of traffic research I can think of to no avail. I have two other major issues with these commuting animals. 1. The people I call "cheaters." These are the people who cut in front of people who are following the traffic rules. The people like me who have seen the same light change colors 9 times, but wait impatiently while yelling at cheaters in the confines of their car. And 2. Unpredictability. I think that's up there with one of the worst parts of living in NoVa. You never know when there will be traffic or how long it will take you to get somewhere. It's seriously amazing the difference in traffic on any given day at any random time. And I swear that channel 4 news does no traffic report on 66 any day of the week because no one would actually go to work. I'm so sick of 95 getting all the attention. 

On one final note. Thank god for the Kane Show. 

Food Lover in the Suburbs

Taste of Historic Manassas

When we were city dwellers we used to go to this food festival called Taste of Arlington...well great news...there is now a Taste of Historic Manassas. I was excited at the potential of this. And it turned out to be pretty good. Here is how these "taste of...." things work: you buy a ticket and it has eight small tasting tickets, the restaurants that are participating set up booths with a few different samples of their food, and then there is usually some entertainment and other random people trying to get your attention.  The most exciting part of this for Matt was that he got to actually try another restaurant than Katerina's. This brings me to my next point. Katerina's. 

Katerina's is pretty much the only restaurant I go to in my new suburban nights out. I love it. It might be accurate to say it's a minor obsession. Katerina's is a tiny little restaurant with Greek food. Literally everything is good. I would say that the tirokafteri, tzatziki, the avgolemono, the gyros, and mousaka are among the top of our list. I mean honestly this place is just right up my alley...lemon, olive oil, salty feta, oregano...you really can't go wrong. If you live around here you should go, and if you don't when you visit us that's the only place we take people.