run now, pizza later

What I Ate [this] Week

10.15.14

I know I'm super late (I usually post these right when I wake up in the morning) but I was too lazy to write the post last night and had to wait till after work to get it all together. Anyway, it's Wednesday and that meanssss I have meals to share with you!

This week I'm showing you a collection of what I've been eating this week, mainly because I was AWFUL at taking a picture of each meal throughout a whole day but I managed to take pictures randomly throughout the week.

| Breakfast | I didn't do a WIAW last week because this banana bread was all I was eating. Just kidding… kind of. but in actuality I ate it for breakfast pretty much every day last week. I've also been juicing all the fruits lately because I bought a Breville juicer – the juice shown above is grapefruit juice! I've been taking the grapefruit juice and putting a little bit into sparkling water to make way more affordable la croix. | Coffee| I've definitely been digging the pumpkin spice & salted caramel mocha lattes from Starbucks all week – so good! | Lunch | I've been hitting up a roasted chicken {I plan on showing you how to roast a chicken soon, spoiler alert: ITS SO EASY AND DELICIOUS AND NOT SCARY EVEN THOUGH IT SEEMS IT; side note: I'm still perfecting how to carve a chicken, but once I really get it I'll tell you how!} for my lunches & shredding some of the chicken breast and putting it into salads with spinach and whatever fruit I've got on hand {grapes/pineapple/blueberries}. | Snack | I've still been going for the saltines for snacks this week & oreos [not pictured]. | Dinner | Dinners have been that roasted chicken I mentioned. I eat it paired with a salad or some roasted vegetables and quinoa. Also, is it taboo to tell another family's food secrets? If there is one thing I've learned from having dinner at the Doyle house, it would be how AMAZING a roasted chicken can be – but I will NEVER eat chicken without strawberry jam ever again. It is the best combo and the only way to do it. DO IT. I also made a zucchini salsa that was ON POINT last week {I'll be sharing it with you in the next couple weeks} and I ate that on some tortilla chips & on top of my crockpot chicken fajitas {which I'll also be sharing soon}. The salsa was so good. Shout out to Deb who gifted me a zucchini from her sister's garden – thanks so much!

So what do you guys want to see first on the blog? The roasted chicken? the Zucchini salsa? or the crockpot chicken fajitas?? I gotta knowwww. TELL ME.

Love yewsss.

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Sunday Sprinkles

10.12.14

1. I'm LOVING my new Essie color. I painted my nails yesterday. It's buy me a cameo.

2. I'm SO sad that I'm not home for Scituate Art Festival. I feel like it's been FOREVER since I've gone and this year my mom lives right in the center of it so I wouldn't even need to deal with parking or traffic and like omg why am I 2500 miles away from that?

3. I met my favorite blogger this week! You know her because I pretty much talk about her in every post and Frankie got me a signed copy of her book for our anniversary and I gave one away a few weeks ago. She was just as cool in person as she is on her blog. Swoon.

4. I bought new throw pillows for my couch and a new candle holder and some decorative sparkly pinecones and i realized that i was just like having a weird interior design day. My living room is totally different now (not really, but it FEELS different).

5. I LOVE the song Riptide from Vance Joy (I was listening to it on repeat for like weeks) & this T Swift version. Omg.

6. Is number 14 the reason I continue to buy new kitchen equipment? ITS ALL MAKING SENSE NOW… except the ice cream maker. that doesn't make sense.

7. There is construction that's happening across the street from my apartment and it's the most annoying thing to ever happen. HI CONSTRUCTION MEN I DON'T NEED A SIX AM WAKE UP CALL BUT THANKS SO MUCH FOR DOING IT ANYWAY.

8. But really.

9. | Scandal | I just don't even know with Quinn – or Robin? Is Robin back? I can't tell. What about Huck. WHAT IS GOING ON. And MELLIE – all the feels gurl. Liv & Jake – you idiots just need to like put a ring on it or something so Jake stops being insecure. Liv's not going to go back to the President because I said so and like my heart can't take another season of ARE THEY TOGETHER FOR REALZ again. | Nashville | WAHHHh. Julietteeeeee. The craziness that is her life is killing me. Rayna – just go get back together with Deacon so everyone can be happy… we all know you're endgame. TEDDY made me so sad when he didn't even know how to flirt anymore. poor thing. Also. I'm on the Gunnar and Scarlett train still (obvi) so I'm like over all the other girls in his life. | HTGAWM | It's honestly no competition that this is the breakout show of the season for me. I'm like SO into it. I want to know everything. It's like a really dramatic and flashback-filled game of clue. I feel like they're totally framing Sam to make it seem like he did it when he didn't. I don't like Sam, but I really think that's way to easy of a scapegoat character. Rebecca is the girl I've got my eyes on. I feel like she's some sort of evil mastermind. SOMETHINGS up with that girl. | New Girl & Mindy | Honestly? didn't have that much to say about them. not too impressed.

10. If you're reading this blog because we went to Scituate together, you should really think about donating to this year's flag football tournament in honor of my Uncle Craig. Let me know if you're interested and didn't see anything on Facebook and I'll put you in contact with the guys running it.

11. Now go make some pumpkin bread. because yum.

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Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Banana Bread

10.09.14

I've come up with the recipe you'll be baking this weekend: Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Banana Bread. Or you could just make it now. DROP EVERYTHING AND RUN AROUND HOARDING ALL THE PUMPKIN! It's necessary I swear.

I wanted to make you something delicious. And something that makes you feel like you're being wrapped up in a warm blanket of goodness. And like you're frolicking through fields of fallen leaves. YOU deserve it.

Look at that melty butter. Don't you just feel like its surrounding you? Do you feel like you could fall asleep in a pad of melty butter? No? How is it ALWAYS just me? How?

Last year I made you these three ingredient muffins [that I still adore] with a chocolate caramel sauce [that I still swear tastes like brownie batter]. Fun fact: that's the third most popular recipe on ze blog. I think you kids like pumpkin. Or maybe you just like that there were only three ingredients?

This year I wanted to do something different. I can't really pin point where I came up with the idea for merging banana bread and pumpkin bread. I think it just came to me? But I google searched for like EVER to try and see a recipe to work off of and I just didn't like any of them. Also, there aren't that many out there.

It boggles my mind because its SUCH a good combo.

Oh. more melty butter. wow.

ummmmmmmm. oh flavor stuff. right. So like. the banana and pumpkin are kind of perfect together. they don't over power each other. its like an ideal harmonization of flavor profiles. I don't even know what that means. go with it.

I would probably say the consistency of the bread is more like banana bread. But you totally taste the pumpkin. Andddd the chocolate chips were just for funzies.

Yes, I said funzies. Earlier I made up harmonization of flavor profiles. It's late. I'm tired. Pretend both of those didn't happen.

What would I give to have another piece of this? I ate it for breakfast LITERALLY every day last week (and sometimes lunch… and sometimes dinner).

Side note: I actually GAVE some away. Like I couldn't keep it in my house because I'd eat it all. And I just couldn't do that to myself. I should have frozen some to keep for later. For a rainy day. WHAT was I thinking?! I've made a huge mistake. I've never been more disappointed in myself than this very moment.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Banana Bread

Author: Ashley Renee
Prep Time: 15
Cook Time: 70
Total Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

Scale

Ingredients

1 cup of pumpkin puree
2 ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a 9-by-5 inch loaf pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on both sides. Coat well with cooking spray.
Whisk pumpkin, mashed bananas, vegetable oil, brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla.
Separately, whisk together flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, salt, and baking soda.
Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Mix in chocolate chips.
Pour batter into the loaf pan and bake for 60-70 minutes. (The bread is done when you can insert a toothpick and it comes out clean!)
Let cool for 1 hour, then remove the loaf from the pan and transfer to a rack to cool completely.

Nutrition

Serving Size: 6
Calories: 636
Sugar: 56
Sodium: 294
Fat: 25
Saturated Fat: 5
Unsaturated Fat: 19
Trans Fat: 0
Carbohydrates: 97
Protein: 8
Cholesterol: 65

You definitely shouldn't make this and top it with melty butter and drizzle it with this chocolate caramel sauce. nah uh. deff don't do it. {DO IT}

Make it? Lemme see it! Hashtag it: #thepikeplacekitchen

Insty. Twittah. Lovingzeblogs. Pinnypins

WIAW | Feelin Better!

10.01.14

Hi kids! It's WIAW again. Our favorite time of the week. Thanks, as always, to Jenn for hosting!

This is what I ate last Wednesday. This week was a big week for me with all the celebrations and a bunch of friends' birthdays and just. all. the. things. I was still somewhat sick (last week I showed you what I ate on Tuesday, while I was sick), but I got a lot of my appetite back… and you'll see that. In the form of wanting ALL of the snacks.

| Breakfast | I graduated to eating crunchy peanut butter on a whole wheat english muffin. I washed that down with a nice cold glass of orange juice. Still tryin to keep my Vitamin C up! | Lunch | For lunch I roasted (read: burned) some zucchini and broccoli with garlic salt & grapeseed oil. I had that with some of the leftover roasted chicken I had from making the soup I showed you last week. | Snack | This is where things got out of control. I was feeling really snacky last Wednesday. I started off with one spoonful of triple berry ice cream (from whidbey island) – yes I am a freak of nature and will just eat one spoonful of ice cream (a pint can last for MONTHS in my house). Then I decided I wanted two peanut butter Oreos because… do I really need to explain myself there? Later in the afternoon I cut up an apple and sprinkled a little cinnamon on top and munched on that. Finally, I was starving before I actually ate dinner so I let myself have a handful of saltine crackers. | Dinner | For my dinner, I made some veggie & chicken kabobs. I marinaded the chicken/zucchini in a little white wine and EVOO. Popped those suckers on my grill pan with some onion and red pepper and went to town! I ate one skewer with some steamed broccoli and a crescent roll. nom.

Am I the only one who finds themselves going to town on all the different foods/flavors after being sick? It's like I want to make up for all of the foods I missed out on! I was definitely pretty happy to be somewhat back to normal appetite.

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Happy Anniversary

09.29.14

I know this isn't a normal blogging day for me, and I've been trying really hard to stick to a normal schedule, but I would really like to take a minute to tell a special guy in my life how much I love him.

Frankie, you are my best friend, my partner in crime, my everything – and all of the other super cliché things I love to pull out at times like this. What it really comes down to, and what I've been spending a lot of my time lately focused on, is what makes me happy. You are by far the brightest light in my life. You make me laugh when I can't breathe from crying and you make me giggle when I'm trying super hard to be serious (which happens to be most of the time because we both know you're the kid in this relationship and someone has to take care of you). You make me feel safe and you make me feel loved. I can't imagine where I would be without you, certainly not on continuous adventures throughout the country and the world. So the conclusion that I've reached in the time I've been spending trying to figure out what makes me happy is: you. You make me the happiest. And I can't imagine loving anyone else half as much as I love you.

Thank you for making my life so complete over the last six years. I love you. Happy anniversary!

P.S. I bet you're glad I forced you to date me now!

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