Friday favourites

I. Pumpkin and coconut muffins: I made these muffins using this recipe because I needed to use up some leftover coconut milk. They turned out a bit crumbly (I'll try using another egg next time to fix that), but their flavour is awesome!

II. My birthday cake: three layers of spiced carrot cake slathered with mascarpone cream cheese frosting. Enough said.

III. Chobani Bites: I picked these up when I was in the US and they are really good! Raspberry and dark chocolate is such a great flavour combination.

IV. Ben and Jerry's frozen Greek yogurt: Another find from the US. Why don't we get this stuff in Canada?! The strawberry shortcake flavour is so good and I love that it has actual chunks of shortcake in it!

V. Whole Foods lunch dates with friends: On Thursday I met my friend Molly for lunch at WF - it was great to see her because it's been probably a year and a half since I last saw her! We had tons to catch up on over our salad bar lunch. Mine had a base of spinach and kale with Mediterranean tomato and cucumber salad, Florentine chickpea salad, sesame broccoli salad, roasted sweet potatoes (buried underneath), beet slaw, Greek quinoa salad, teriyaki tofu and hummus. So good!

What are you loving this week?

What's the last thing you baked?

Road trip '13: Day 7

Day 7 was our last day! It had a rough start though because I had a pretty bad sleep - it was so stinking hot in our hotel room overnight. So we skipped working out again in favour of having a slow start to our morning.

After breakfast we said goodbye to Syracuse and headed to Rochester, where our first stop was Trader Joe's. Since we don't have these stores in Canada, I'm always excited to check them out when I'm in the US.

Just like my last visit though, I was a bit disappointed by how many of their products say "May contain nuts" on their labels. But I still managed to pick up a pretty good nut-free haul.

Mac & cheese, coconut cream, cookie butter, sunflower seed butter, sweet Thai chili sauce, coconut chips, dried banana, and plantain chips.

After TJ's we went to The Owl House for lunch, which is a cute restaurant we found through Urbanspoon. It was in a renovated house and we actually ate in the backyard on the patio - I felt like I was eating at someone's home!

They had really delicious iced Earl Grey tea - it made me want to start making my own iced teas at home more often!

We also split an order of their Moroccan smoked beef "jerky". It wasn't really jerky-like, but it was still really good.

And then I had the salad of my dreams: shaved Brussels sprouts, kale, lemon, olive oil, and romano aioli. This was amazing! I plan on trying to recreate it, but I doubt I could do it justice - the flavours were just so perfect.

My sister and I also split a panini with brie cheese, apple, red onion, baby arugula and Dijon mustard on sourdough bread with housemade kettle chips on the side. This was seriously good too! It was an all around good meal.

After lunch we drove to Buffalo for our last few stops at Target (for bathing suits and Champion workout wear) and Wegmans (for more food). We even bought a cooler so that we could get some refrigerated and frozen items - and by that I mostly just mean Greek yogurt. 

I decided to try out the Wegman's brand of Greek yogurt, Chobani Bites, honey Fage, vanilla coconut Oikos, and a few Chobani flavours I've never tried before. So far I'm not a big fan of the Wegman's kind, but I love the Chobani Bites!

With our car packed to the brim with groceries, our shopping loot, suitcases, pillows, gifts for dad, gum wrappers all over the floor, etc, we headed back home.

So that's the end of my recaps! But I already have plans to visit some great restaurants in the area this summer, so you'll definitely be seeing more of my foodie adventures soon. ;)

What are your favourite Trader Joe's products?

What are your favourite Greek yogurt brands?