Hello friends and happy Christmas Eve eve! 🙂
Isn’t this Amaryllis blooming in my parent’s kitchen beautiful?
I so miss this awesome window ledge — it’s perfect for food photography!
Anyway! I’m continuing to enjoy my winter break and having nothing to do besides go running and meet friends to eat delicious food 🙂
First up — after a hilly 3.5 mile run around my neighborhood — lunch with my friend Michelle at Boulevard Woodgrill in Clarendon, VA yesterday!
Michelle and I became friends over the summer when we both took Microbiology at the Northern Virginia Community College. I was finishing up my dietetics prerequisites, she was finishing up nursing prerequisites! We worked together for a group project on The Plague and totally rocked it. No big deal 😉
She’s wonderful and I’m so glad we’ve been able to keep in touch 🙂
Here I am holding the super cute Christmas gift she brought me — a reusable cup!
LOVE these things! Thanks again Michelle 🙂
I actually almost bought one the other day so I’m glad I didn’t! Michelle said that me and my blog have been a big part in helping her finally kick her soda habit and drink more water instead, and that now she always brings one of these cups around with her filled with ice water.
She said her biggest problems with kicking the soda habit were that a) she really likes straws, and b) the car — she never had anything with her, would get thirsty, and then resort to buying a soda somewhere. This cup = both problems solved! Now she can refill it for free with water anywhere that has a water fountain. I’m so proud of her 🙂 All it takes is a little preparation, right? It’s the same with me and food — if I don’t have snacks on hand, I’m way more tempted to buy something junky.
Anyway! Like I said, we met for lunch at Boulevard Woodgrill, which is one of my favorite restaurants in Clarendon. Great seafood in particular!
(picture from their website)
I ordered the Tandoori Chicken Pita, which is a warm pita stuffed with tomato, lettuce, feta, cucumber, grilled chicken, and a garlicky mint yogurt sauce. It was delicious and reminded me a lot of my beloved Chicken Shawarma Pita Pitza!
With fries on the side. Yum! Normally I will sub out fries for salad or fruit, but I was in the mood for them yesterday. Fries are one of my major loves, so I treat myself to them every once in awhile. 🙂 (With lots of ketchup! The ketchup is key.)
I nearly finished the sandwich and made it about half way through the fries. Deeeelish!
After a few hours with the fam, it was off to the next adventure — dinner with my best friend Jenny from high school! She lives in Maryland now with her hubby but is back in town for Christmas.
Jenny and I met on the first day of 10th grade (we’d both just moved to town — we went to high school near here in Falls Church, VA) and have been best friends ever since 🙂 It was wonderful to catch up a bit more. She ran the Jingle All the Way 10k with me last weekend, too!
Jenny is a vegetarian, so we hit up one of our favorite vegetarian spots in the area — Sunflower Vegetarian Restaurant in Falls Church!
Yum! I had the “Adventure of Tempeh Land” (lol, love the titles), which is organic marinated baked five grain tempeh sautéed with red pepper, snow peas, asparagus, baby corn, and white mushrooms in a Thai curry sauce. Plus brown rice!
Yum! I’ve had this before so I already knew I liked it. My only complaint about Sunflower is that they add MASSIVE amounts of sauce to each dish for some reason. Too much!
Jenny (who goes by Jen now that we are grown up (kind of), but I will forever call her Jenny) ordered the Orange Imagination.
Pretty, huh? It’s soy protein marinated in orange juice with fresh orange slices, pine nuts, snow peas, and Thai basil, garnished with pine nuts and steamed broccoli.
I sampled it and it was very yummy 🙂
Such a wonderful day with great friends. Now I’m off to go for a nice, long, hilly walk with my mom around our neighborhood. We’re meeting a foodie friend for lunch afterward — stay tuned for some epic photos!
