Hello there – and happy National Avocado Day! I know, there’s a day for everything… but just in case you need an excuse to enjoy some avocado toast, there you go. 😉
As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m coming to you from Pittsburgh area, where we are currently visiting Matt’s parents!
We have had lots of good eats this week thanks to Matt’s dad, who loves to cook. The highlight was a big dinner for Matt’s birthday, which was yesterday!
Matt requested steak, baked potatoes, and his dad’s famous homemade caesar salad for the occasion and it was all delicious.
I hadn’t had a loaded baked potato in ages and forgot how good they are! Any other loaded baked potato fans?! They were topped with sour cream, chives, grated cheddar cheese, and crumbled bacon. Major yum.
For dessert, we all enjoyed some pastries from La Gourmandine in Pittsburgh. Delicious – my favorite was the cream puff one in the middle.
Fun to get to be with his family for his birthday – they made sure it was extra special. Riese was pretty pumped about the desserts, too. 🙂
One of the other dinner highlights from this week was my Sheet Pan Asian Salmon (<- recipe)! Since it was nice out, instead of doing the sheet pan method, Matt’s dad grilled the salmon and veggies and it still came out really well.
We marinated the salmon in the sauce the recipe calls for for about 30 minutes before putting it on the grill, and we saved the leftover marinade and boiled it down a bit so we could drizzle it over everything when it was ready.
If you haven’t tried that recipe yet, do it! It’s one of our go-tos.
Served with rice and a little caprese salad for fun, too!
Another night earlier in the week we had some really good grilled chicken salads with roasted beets, avocado, walnuts, and homemade croutons.
I know, even the salads Matt’s dad makes are fancy – check out that avocado! 😉 We’ve been so spoiled with food this week!
We had a few more La Gourmandine pastries for dessert that night – apple pastries are one of my favorite desserts! I love that they aren’t too sweet.
Lunches this week have mostly been leftovers and fridge odds and ends, and breakfasts have almost all featured handmade English muffins from a cool local small business, Willow Bend English Muffin Company.
If you’re in the Pittsburgh/Sewickley area, check them out! Matt’s dad is friends with the owner, Richard, and it was fun to chat with him a bit and see his operations in action (masked up, of course) on Tuesday when we went to pick up our english muffin order.
We got some of the Cranberry Orange, Chive, and Buttermilk english muffins this week but they have a ton of different flavor varieties. I’m excited to try some of the other flavors soon!
They are so good – I’m going to order a ton of them for us to take home and freeze before we leave!
On the fitness front this week, we did our usual Tuesday and Thursday morning virtual boot camp via Matt’s brother Drew. The whole family joined in, so we set up on the back deck so we had enough space for everyone!
Matt and I forgot to bring our weights with us, so we’ve all been using an assortment of bottles, cans, bags of flour, etc. as “weights.” Whatever works!
I will leave you with a pretty sunset picture – I took Matt’s parent’s dog for a lovely walk last night and the views were beautiful.
I hope you guys have a nice weekend!
Matt and I are actually driving back to DC today for a little adult’s only weekend back at home (!!); we are attending our good friends’ super small backyard wedding tomorrow so Riese is staying in Pittsburgh with the grandparents.
We will head back to Pittsburgh on Monday and spend another week or two (playing it by ear!) up there all together before all heading back to DC!
I have a recipe hack coming for you Monday since we’ll be traveling that day, so please enjoy that and then come back on Wednesday for a belated long weekend recap!
Some posts + recipes from my blog and around the web:
- Overnight Crockpot French Toast Casserole – in case you missed it on Wednesday
- Mediterranean Sheet Pan Chicken Thighs – this is on our menu for next week!
- Easy BBQ Meatloaf – I <3 meatloaf, can’t wait to try this
- Preschool learning cart – great ideas here!
