Weekend eats

My weekend started with Pizza Port for a friend’s birthday.  Pizza & beer!

Pizza Lahaina: Canadian bacon, pineapple, bell peppers & onion

We love pizza port partly because they make their own beer and it’s mighty tasty!  I am a huge hop head when it comes to beer and love my IPAs.  I had one of my favorites: Blind Pig by Russian River Brewing Company.

One of my boyfriend’s (who wants to be referred to as ‘that man’) and my new years resolutions was to not watch TV so we canceled our cable as of last week.  It has been an adjustment that’s for sure but I’ve been reading more, cooking more & now blogging! =)  Saturday after my run, we wanted to go watch the NFL playoffs and without TV at home, we have to go elsewhere.

First stop was 3rd corner Wine Bar where they were having a wine tasting with 9 wines from Australia & New Zealand. ‘That man’ and I shared a tasting. It was not bad except that he is hurt from his rugby game so he couldn’t get up and down very easily and the tasting was in a corner of the restaurant so I had to get up and go get each of the 9 tastings for us. I don’t know if I’d do the tasting again though we did order a bottle of the Chardonnay from the tasting.

We split the mussels as well as the meat and cheese plate

At halftime, we walked over to Lumberyard Tavern & Grill.

Here we split grilled artichokes, sweet potato fries & a stuffed portabella though I forgot to take a picture before it was too late.  This is all that was left..

The highlight was the Ballast Point Sculpin IPA.  Another great IPA.

It was a fun night with friends!

Besides eating out, I did a little work in the kitchen as well.  Here is a recipe for mini muffins that I adapted from Ashley’s recipe to make it work with what I had at home.

Chocolate Peanut Banana Bread Mini Muffins

Adapted from Ashley

• 1 cup pastry flour
• 1 very ripe bananas
• 1/4 cup crunchy peanut butter
• 1/4 cup melted coconut oil
• 3 tablespoons almond milk
• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/8 cup brown rice syrup
• 1/6 cup sucanat
• 1 flax eggs [1 tablespoon ground flax meal + 5 tablespoons warm water]
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• a couple shakes of salt
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts

1. Preheat your oven to 350* and grease muffin pan.
2. Whisk your flax meal + water together and let sit for at least 5min.
3. In a large bowl stir all dry ingredients together (flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, sucanat & salt)
4. Mix wet ingredients in a smaller bowl (mashed banana, vanilla, almond milk, peanut butter, coconut oil, brown rice syrup)
5. Add wet to dry and then add walnuts and stir just enough to incorporate
6. Pour into greased muffin pan & cook for 15 min.  If you are using a larger muffin pan your cooking time may vary.

These muffins are barely sweet but great with a little butter or even some peanut butter or coconut butter!

Don’t forget the milk! You will need it =)  Next time I might add more banana and see what that does..

Another project I did was attempt to make my own Larabar with the ingredients I had at home.  Here is what I came up with:

Coconut Apricot Tropical Larabar

Recipe inspired by Larabar and Angela

• 1/2 cup processed dates
• 1/2 cup processed dried apricots
• 2/3 cup finely chopped walnuts
• 2 tablespoons unsweetened coconut
• zest of orange to taste

Remove pits from dates and put in food processor or Magic Bullet.  Process until pasty.  Measure processed dates to get 1/2 cup.  Repeat process with dried apricots.  Repeat process with walnuts but measure 2/3 cup of finely chopped walnuts.

Mix all ingredients together in food processor or combine with hands in bowl.  I had to get down and dirty to incorporate all the ingredients as my magic bullet is not large enough.

Spread mixture onto wax paper and cover with another piece of wax paper.  Roll to desired thickness and shape.  Put in refrigerator to get hard.







So much cheaper than buying the real thing!  They were actually really easy to make & taste great!

Wow.. that was a long one!  Hope you all had a great weekend! G’Night!