Early Valentine's Day Surprises

Note: This post is gonna be really long, and have a lot of pictures, so read on if you dare ;)

Let me just say that I hate rush hour traffic. To get from my school to my house took 3 1/2 hours last night—and usually it only takes 2 hours and 15 minutes! There are always problems a few miles out of the city I go to school in, but yesterday, they were just horrendous. We didn’t get to Denver, which is about 60 miles away, until an hour and fifteen minutes after we left (around 6). But that wasn’t the half of it! It took us until a quarter after 8 to get to our house from that point. But I’m glad to be with my family again after not seeing them for 12 days.

Today has been a pretty typical day…except for a few surprises. One was that my dad bought me, my mom and sister each a little pot of red roses. It’s an early Valentine’s Day present, since I’ll be back at school on Monday, but I thought it was really sweet of him. Definitely bringing it back to my dorm to brighten it up!



My lovely roses

 

Mmmm...salad!



I also had an unusual lunch—well, unusual for me. I like salads a lot, but I don’t really ever make them for myself, especially as an entrée. Today, I decided to whip one up and see what I thought. Verdict: I’m definitely going to be making more salads in the future! My salad was made up of fresh romaine lettuce, shredded carrots, a bit of cilantro, a Gardenburger Garden Vegan veggie burger cut up on top, some fat free feta (actually really good) and very-oniony pico de gallo salsa. For the finishing touch, I crumbled a few Archer Farms multigrain pita chips on top. It was d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s! I was going for a kind of Southwestern salad, so I was disappointed to find that my soy cheddar shreds were missing, but it was still really good. Oh, and on the side I had a juicy Satsuma tangerine and a Kashi Dark Mocha Almond bar. If you love coffee and chocolate, you MUST try this bar!

Perfect ending to a yummy lunch



After an afternoon of shopping and Starbucks with my sister (I got a mocha light Frappuccino with raspberry syrup…yum!), I came home and tried to show her some yoga poses. It was really fun, because she kept cracking up and wasn’t able to do them at all since she was laughing so much. Then I had a delicious dinner: apple chicken sausage on a bun, chipotle sweet potato fries and baby broccoli. I went for a dip in the hot tub afterwards, and then started preparing a special dessert—raspberry shortcakes!

I adapted the recipe from the Whole Foods website (found here). I thought it would be a yummy dessert for Valentine’s Day; since it combines raspberries with chocolate sorbet…raspberry and dark chocolate is one of my favorite combinations ever! It was actually really simple to make and I was so pleased with the results. The shortcakes turned out like little biscuits, but they were yummy and vanilla-y (is that a word?!) It was a delicious ending to the day J

The batter--not so pretty, but very very good once baked



This stuff is really good but really expensive




The shortcakes, made from scratch!




The heart bowl makes a reappearance!





I love raspberries :)



Questions: Do you like to make entrée salads? Have you ever had chocolate sorbet?