Four day weekend [part 1]

Is there anything better than a long weekend?  Yes.  And that’s a long weekend house dog sitting here.

With sunny weather, golf course views, and a well stocked fridge, there’s no reason to venture further than the community pool.  Agreed?

We drove down to San Juan Capistrano on Thursday evening and stayed through Monday.  Some friends joined us for part of the time.  We cooked.  We ate.  We drank.  We relaxed.  The weekend may as well be titled “blissful nothingness”.  It was perfect.

When we first arrived, the priority was dinner.  That’s what 3 hours of traffic will do to you.

Apps: Sabra’s roasted red pepper hummus and Mary’s Gone Crackers organic herb crackers

   

These are two of my faves (and my in-laws know it).  Don’t think I don’t know how ridiculously lucky I am.  They spoil me rotten.

Dinner: Field Roast vegan sausage and wild rice

Post-meal I was feeling inspired so I decided to bake cinnamon rolls for the weekend.

 

I pulled up this recipe, gathered the ingredients, and got to work.

It’s not easy baking in someone else’s kitchen!!  It took three times as long because every single thing took forever to find.

But I still ended up with these beauties.

As much as I wanted to dig in right away, I saved them for breakfasts (and our friends).

Dessert: So Delicious vanilla bean coconut ice cream with strawberries and forte breakfast tea with Silk soymilk

Our friends arrived after midnight, so I was up super late and ended up sleeping in ‘til 9 am on Friday morning.

I woke up to a text from Kyle saying they were almost within view from the backyard.  So I made my way out to watch them play a hole.

Pretty cool thing to roll out of bed to see…

Breakfast followed.

Breakfast: cinnamon rolls, coffee, & sunshine.

Doughy. 🙂

When the boys got back we went for a walk to the pool.

As you can see we had a tight schedule to keep [that’s four days worth of “tasks”].

Once noon rolled around it was deemed an acceptable time to crack some beers.

I held off because I’m a light weight and starting so early in the day is a recipe to pass out by 2 pm.  Instead I made some lunch.

Lunch: spinach salad with strawberries, avocado, and a quinoa & lentil salad (brought by our friends).

Who needs the golf channel when you can watch the games live from your backyard?

After noon snacks: chips and guacamole.

 

Salt is just so addicting.

This chip had a death grip on the bowl.

Lazy days.

Despite the kilos of chips and booze we all consumed, we ended up putting together a pretty legit dinner.

It was a team effort, with Kyle on the BBQ…

 

…me on the veg fare…

…and the rest of the party on chopping and food prep.

  

Maggie and Buck were on scrap patrol.

Ready, set, dig in.

 

Dinner: grilled pineapple and onions, Field Roast vegan sausages, corn on the cob, quinoa & rice pilaf, and a simple green salad

I made the quinoa and salad, and added the same dressing to both.

• extra virgin olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• lemon juice & zest
• apple cider vinegar
• water
• honey

Light and summery with a bit of tang.

Even though our friends aren’t vegan, we all shared the Field Roast sausage.  The three flavors include:

Italian – made with fresh eggplant and packed with fennel, red wine, garlic and sweet peppers

Mexican Chipotle – a spicy-hot blend of smoked Chipotle peppers, Chili de Arbol peppers, fresh chopped garlic, sweet onions seasoned with cumin seed and oregano

Smoked Apple Sage – a savory combination of apples and sage anchored with yukon gold potatoes with a subtle hint of hickory smoke

Funny enough, we all had different favorites.  I prefer the smoked apple sage.  It’s mild enough to go with or in anything but still packed with flavor.  Kyle loves the Mexican chipotle.  It was too spicy for everyone else though.  Todd and Kelly liked the Italian ones.

Dessert: fresh strawberries and So Delicious coconut ice cream (again)

We ended the night with quality broadcasting, including Aziz Ansari’s stand-up and R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet.  Intellectual stuff.

Saturday was more of the same..sleeping in til 9…coffee…cinnamon rolls…etc.

Our friends headed back to the Westside around noon, so we decided to be semi-productive and wash the car.

I helped wash, but left the vacuuming to Kyle (during which I attempted to even out my hideous shorts tan from the day before).  Nobody need comment on the burn, I’ve already kicked myself for it multiple times.

Scrubbing the bugs off the windshield counted as my workout for the day (just go with it) which worked up my appetite ever so slightly.  Not really, but I’m trying not to feel like a total glutton since I subsequently pounded over 2 cups of Blue Diamond smokehouse almonds.

Prior to this weekend I had never tried these…and OH MY GOSH they are so addicting.  It’s like salty, savory, BBQ flavor to the nth degree.  It’s pretty much impossible to have fewer than 50 in one sitting.  Freakin’ nuts.

The only way I was able to pry myself from them was by taking Buck on a walk.

The views are outstanding, but I especially loved chasing the lizards.  No success.  I did see a few fuzzy caterpillars though.

My phone was having a hard time focusing on them and kept doing this weird thing where it would flip around to take self pics instead.  Anyone else noticed this problem with their iPhone?  I ended up with a lot of these.

Siri, please face the other way.

After the walk we went hot tubbing, both as a way of cleaning off the dog hair and stench.  Don’t worry, I showered too.  I’m not that lazy.

For dinner, I took advantage of the fridge’s produce drawers and made some buttery mashed potatoes.  That’s what happens when Southern Living catalogs are in your face all day long.

I balanced it out with a big salad (from leftovers).

    

Boil water.  Cut potatoes in chunks.  Once potatoes are soft (test by piercing with fork), drain water.  Add milk (I used Silk creamer because that was all we had) and Earth Balance.  Mash.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Perfection.

 

I topped the taters off with even more Earth Balance.  The salad was the same as the previous night’s with leftover Field Roast sausage added in.

I had seconds of the mashed potatoes, but practiced a little bit of self control after that.  Only because I knew that dessert was around the corner.

Coconut ice cream!

The late night baking bug hit yet again, so I answered the call.

Banana beer bread.

Similar to this recipe, but with sweeter ingredients added in.

The Koko Brown Ale was the star of the show (we got a Costco variety pack of Kona Brewing Co. Aloha series and nobody liked the coconut flavor as a beverage).  So I decided to use it for baking!

 

The bread was wet as a dough, but turned out pretty awesome.  Smelled like banana and coconut and brew.

This post is getting fairly lengthy (which is surprising since it’s full of nothingness), so I’ll cut it off here and continue with the rest of the weekend later).