Friday Favorites 1/3/14

Happy Friday! Thanks to the holiday falling mid-week, this week absolutely flew by and it is the weekend already! Woo woo!

This past week has involved a lot of healthy eating, exercise, sleep, water consumption, and spending time with family and friends. It’s been a pretty good week. Here are some of my favorites from this week. I’m linking up once again with Katie who is hosting the Friday Favorites link up!

Friday Favorites

1. Spending time with family and friends. It is one of my favorite things to do!

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2. This strawberry spinach salad: spinach, strawberries, avocado, black beans, feta cheese, pecans, and a small drizzle of Newman’s Own Lite Honey Mustard dressing. This is one of my all-time favorite homemade salads and it’s so easy.

strawberry spinach salad

3. Tacos! One of my favorite meals of all time. Everytime we make tacos I remember just how easy they are AND how delicious! This photo on the other hand could use some work…

taco salad

4. My new FitBit Flex! I am having so much fun with it as I watch the step counter go up throughout the day. It motivates me to get moving!

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5. Remote car starter. It has been ridiculously cold this past couple of weeks, so being able to start the car up without going out in the cold to do it is so nice.

6, My soft brown blanket given to us from Betsy at one of my bridal showers. It keeps me warm and cozy when I’m hanging out around the house.

couch time relax

I hope you all have a super weekend!

Any fun plans this weekend?!

Continue Reading Friday Favorites 1/3/14

Taco Salad with Creamy Avocado Dressing

Happy Friday!

So, last night I was all ready to make a couple of loaves of nutty gluten-free bread. I brought my laptop into the kitchen and pulled up the recipe from my site. Much to my dismay I learned that the link was no longer active from my recipe page. I investigated further and realized that NONE of my recipe links had transferred over from my old site.

So last night, I had to go through them all and relink them to their appropriate posts. There is probably a much faster way to do this, but since I haven’t quite figured out this whole CSS new self-hosting business, I went the slow route. It was easy, just super tedious.

Needless to say I didn’t end up making the bread, but all of the links on the recipe pages should be fixed! Links from old posts though may still be missing, but I will have to figure that one out another day.

Anyway! How about a quick lil’ recap from yesterday?

I’ll spare you the breakfast photo because you’ve seen it a million and one times: nutty bread with peanut butter and honey. LOOVE.

Lunch

Driscoll’s raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and frozen blueberries (thawed of course) topped with Fage Total 0% Fat plain yogurt, and a healthy drizzle of honey.

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I finished lunch off with a handful of almonds and two hershey’s kisses, one milk chocolate and one dark chocolate. I am usually a huge dark chocolate fan, but when it comes to Hershey’s, the milk chocolate still takes the cake. Any other chocolate though, give me dark. Meh, who am I kidding? I’ll take chocolate in any way, shape, or form.

Dinner

An amazingly delicious taco salad creation with creamy avocado dressing.

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So let’s talk about this because it was seriously awesome.

I had some browned lean beef in the freezer, so I pulled that out and began defrosting. I then heated it up on the stove top with a small amount of taco seasoning, a dash of water, and let it heat through. I added extra cumin, chili powder, and garlic powder as well.

I got to work chopping up a tomato, mini bell peppers, shredding some cheddar cheese, defrosting some corn, and concocting my dressing which can hardly be considered a recipe it was so easy…

Creamy Avocado Dressing

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 ripe avocados
  • 1/4 cup cilantro
  • 1 Tbsp. tomatillo salsa*
  • salt and pepper

*I wanted to add lime juice to this dressing instead of salsa but didn’t have any on hand so substituted with green tomatillo salsa. It turned out great! Lime juice would definitely work too, though.

Directions

  1. In food processor, blend all ingredients until smooth.

Last step, plating. I started with a nice big bed of mixed greens, next layered on tomatoes, bell peppers, corn, black beans, shredded cheese, ground beef, and lastly topped it with a large dollop of avocado dressing.

The only words spoken by me while devouring this meal were “omg, this is so good.” I encourage you to make it this weekend!

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Taco Salad with Creamy Avocado Dressing (for 2)

Ingredients

  • 2 large handfuls of mixed greens
  • 1 medium tomato, diced
  • 4 baby bell peppers, diced
  • 1/3 cup corn
  • 1/2 cup black beans
  • 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
  • 1/4 lb ground beef, browned*
  • 1/4 packet taco seasoning or homemade taco seasoning
  • Avocado dressing (recipe above)

*Other proteins may be used: ground turkey, ground chicken, tofu, tempeh, pinto beans, black beans, etc.

Directions

  1. Plate all ingredients, top with dressing. Seriously enjoy.
After dinner I headed out for a 3.5 mile walk on the most perfect fall evening.

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I am so cold this morning. When I woke up it was only 50° outside, now a couple of hours later it has crept up to 54 whoppin’ degrees. This weather makes me want to bake and drink coffee! I just might, but first I want to make sure and get a workout in, I’m meeting mom for a picnic lunch, and Dana and I have a very fun date planned for tonight!

My baking/cooking bucket list for the upcoming fall months:

  • More nutty gluten-free bread
  • Pumpkin chocolate chip gluten-free bread
  • Some sort of apple dessert (crisp, baked apples…)
  • Chili
  • Some sort of legume recipe

Okay, we’ll start with that. I am off to tackle the day. Have a happy day!

What recipe is on your fall bucket list?!

Continue Reading Taco Salad with Creamy Avocado Dressing