Homebody’s Valentine’s

Happy Valentine’s weekend! Like most of our Saturdays, it was very low key. We’re actually enjoying a really laid back evening with two special treats right now, so I’m going to breeze right through this post!

Breakfast – Pumpkin Oats! Delicious. Minus the pumpkin seeds. Those were rancid. What do rancid pumpkin seeds taste like? Mmm trust me, you don’t want to know. Note to self: when you store your raw nuts in the freezer, throw your raw seeds in there, too!

Lunch involved a new find. Ross and I are incorporating one new fun food find every week, and lately they’ve been protein based. Ross isn’t always a huge fan of all beans, tofu and more all the time (and he doesn’t like making extra food and meat just for himself at dinner), so lately our fun finds have been protein related as a way to switch things up. I found these “Cluckphrey” vegan patties by Food for Life, the same brand that makes Ezekiel bread, so I definitely trusted the brand. 

The patties themselves weren’t bad. I warmed them up in the microwave, then threw them in a hot, dry skillet to get them a little more crispy. We had them on french bread, spinach, tomato and hummus sandwiches.

Workout of the day was Kenpo X, and it was fun! I have a feeling I’ll enjoy this a lot more when my right knee doesn’t hurt and my hamstrings aren’t so tight. I’ve been stretching a ton, but we may use some more of our Sports Authority gift cards to pick up a foam roller after church tomorrow. I hear they help a lot!

As far as the knee thing: I have a misaligned knee cap in my right knee. You can definitely feel it pop around and move when I bend my knee, and yes, it’s a little awkward. I’m 99% sure it’s from a car accident I was a passenger in years ago, where my knee was slammed into the dash after we hydroplaned through a stop light and hit a truck. I used to have a knee brace for it, but it got lost somewhere in the past 5 places I’ve lived in the past 6 years. May need a new one! I’m also hoping some of the pain goes away as my quads get stronger and as I ice.

Dinner was ready to go as soon as we were done showering. We’re big fans of keeping it casual for Valentine’s Day. I have a feeling that when we have a family, we’ll be one of those families that do something fun as a family for Valentine’s Day. We decided to make tonight our treat night/ fun night, and enjoyed some sushi take out from Fresh Market – LOVE their sushi! I had my standard brown rice vegetarian roll, and Ross branched out and tried a BBQ cooked eel roll. He said it was good, although he’s not sure how often he’ll be getting it.

I did tell Ross that I wanted two special things for Valentine’s Day: champagne and chocolate covered strawberries! Since I did the grocery shopping, it was no big deal to casually add these items to the grocery list, especially since they were on sale for Valentine’s Day!

For a fun Valentine’s FYI, here’s the break down on different kinds of sweetness levels in champagne:

• Extra Brut, Brut Sauvage, Ultra Brut, Brut Integral, Brut Zero: least sweet (0.0-0.5% residual sugar)
• Brut (.7-1.1%)
• Extra Dry, Extra Sec (1.2-2.0%)
• Sec (2.0-3.5%)
• Demi-Sec (3.5-5.0%)
• Doux: sweetest (5.0% and above)

I know Ross is a fan of sweeter wines, so I tried to find things on the sweeter spectrum. I ended up going with an Extra Dry from Korbel, but had I found anything sweeter than that, I probably would have grabbed that. Ross still liked it though!

Happy champagne-ing! There’s more to be had over here!