No Fun For This Baker

Hello lovelies!

I hope everyone is enjoying their Sunday—their Super Bowl Sunday, that is! Tampa is CRAZY as one may imagine…..I did manage to stay clear of any major road today but this city is packed, that’s for sure. Church was great this morning and afterwards, Ryan and I tried out a brand new place for lunch—Datz. Datz Deli just opened up here this past Wednesday and is a gourmet, sit down deli. It was awesome! Unfortunately we weren’t the only ones with the bright idea of hitting up Datz for Sunday brunch today and the wait to get our food was sort of outrageous. Our server more than made up for it though by first bringing us a little “snack” platter with cheese, italian ham and spicy flatbread—

And when my meal finally arrived it was totally worth the wait! I ordered an egg sandwich on homemade pumpernickel that was stuffed full of egg whites (I specified this to make it a little lighter!), swiss cheese, Italian ham and smeared with cranberry-apple butter. It was served with pure maple syrup to dip and a fruit bowl. YUM!

To drink, I had one of my favorite things in the entire world that I can’t seem to find everywhere—–a blackberry italian soda!

An italian soda is actually a very simple creation. You just pump some fruit flavored simple syrup in soda water. I used to drink peach ones all the time in Charleston and then when I was in Paris, I had a version with grenadine in perrier. They are SO refreshing and not as sweet as regular sodas. A wonderful treat!

I ended up going home after brunch to help my brother and my mom with a “little” school project. Apparently, my 18 year old brother had to bake 150 chocolate chip cookies for an economy project due tomorrow. Hmmmmm somehow I feel like he knew about this project before today but isn’t that the way high school projects always go??!! I walked into a kitchen that looked like world war three with cosco sized bags of flour, chocolate chips, sugar, butter and the biggest jug of vanilla extract I’ve ever seen. Yep, it was a mess for sure. Thank God for the KitchenAid!!! We got it done though and I was even too full from brunch to eat any dough or even think about a cookie (yet). Haha 😉

Since my house was not very yoga conducive this afternoon (with dough flying everywhere and espn blaring), I decided to just let out a little stress on the upstairs treadmill instead. I blasted my ipod and ran for 25 minutes, the whole time thinking how strange running felt to me since I haven’t done it in forever. I was fine at first but then my shins started to ache, my knees started to hurt and I was reminded once again how much I love the yoga practice. Not to whine or diss cardio workouts, but some people are meant for some things and others are meant for other things. No big deal.

And for dinner, my mom made her delicious bbq pulled chicken in the slow cooker, recipe courtesy of the Southern Living Cookbook. This stuff is seriously out of this world! We like to make huge batches and freeze it. I made the organic hamburger buns at work and my mom made some broccoli slaw to go alongside.

And then after dinner I broke down and just had to taste test a cookie to see if they were okay for the school project…….hehehe

Yep—-they’ll do. We used the recipe from the back of the bag of hershey’s chocolate chips. A good ol’ standby!

I hope everyone enjoys their evening. I’m sad I can’t be with Ryan at our friend’s super bowl party tonight but that’s just the way it goes I guess. I’m hoping to get a good night’s sleep and get ready for my work week!

See you tomorrow!!