Pennsylvania Adventures

Hi from Pennsylvania! We’re here in the Pittsburgh area visiting Matt’s parents – great to see them and to get a little change of scenery.

We came up on Wednesday morning and have had some good eats and fun adventures since we arrived! As you guys know, Matt’s dad is a big foodie and always enjoys cooking for others, so we have had some great meals. I don’t hate it. ;)

Our first night here we had some really good grilled chicken with mashed sweet potatoes, spiralized sauteed zucchini, and a traditional Greek salad inspired by Matt’s parents’ recent vacation to Greece. The spiralized zucchini was simply sauteed with olive oil, garlic, and parmesan cheese, plus a little salt and pepper. Such a simple and yummy veggie side – we will definitely recreate this at home!

For lunch yesterday we had reubens – well, I had a “Rachel”, which is a reuben with roast turkey instead of corned beef. It was so good! Turkey + sauerkraut + swiss cheese + a homemade Russian dressing + toasted rye bread. Majorly delicious.

Our afternoon snack yesterday was ice cream! It was HOT and we were walking around town with Riese so ice cream hit the spot. Mint chocolate chip is always my fave!

Pre-dinner appetizer:

We had cedar plank salmon for dinner last night – a fave of mine! Coated with a little maple syrup, mustard, and olive oil. Plus lemon and dill!

(p.s. Speaking of maple syrup – don’t forget to enter my giveaway to win yourself some organic maple syrup! All you have to do to enter is comment on my Sheet Pan Maple Curry Chicken recipe post.)

The salmon was paired with a quinoa/millet blend of grains, a grilled peach (yummm grilled fruit is the best), sauteed chard, and a cucumber and onion salad. Everything was great – so fresh!

Other than eating, we’ve been doing lots of playing with Riese, wandering around town with her in the stroller, and Matt and I also got out for a solo run date yesterday morning!

We decided to take advantage of the lack of stroller and do some trails! We drove over to Sewickley Heights Borough Park and ran from there – it’s a decently large network of trails. Beautiful, although hilly and a bit muddy – should have brought trail shoes!

We ended up having quite the adventure! We started on trails for about the first mile:

And then the trail we were on dead-ended into a road with beautiful farm views.

Rather than going back the way we came, we looked at a map on my phone and it looked like we could take the road in a big loop to get back, so we decided to go for it. After a couple miles we came upon another trail entrance that looked it was going the direction we needed to go to get back to our car, so we decided to chance it.

All was going well until we came upon a stream (bigger than it looks below) without any way to cross it that kept our shoes dry. We debated turning back, but in the end Matt offered to take one for the team and carry me through it on his back so only his shoes got wet. What a guy. :)

The trail got really steep and we ended up doing more of a hike for the last mile. There were a bunch of forks in the trail so we just kept going the way that led us in the direction of the car, and we were crossing our fingers big time we didn’t end up having to turn back – that would have been a seriously long run! Reminded us of a very small version of our Italy adventure run (check out the blog recap: That Time in Italy When a 4 Mile Run Turned Into a 4 Hour Run…)

Luckily, our gamble worked! We got back to the car right around 4 miles, after having done some running, some jogging, and some hiking/walking. Whew! Fun adventure. :)

Riese just woke up from her nap – good timing for me to sign off here! I hope you guys have a great weekend – see you back here on Monday!