Chocolate three ways

Hi gang!  Sunday was our last day of our anniversary vacation and that meant that we needed to relax as much as possible.  I started the day off with my long run and had really great weather for it.  Once I was home and showered Scott was up by that point which was surprising because I usually have the mornings all to myself! :p  I made myself a little bowl of recovery fuel.

Small bowl of Greek yogurt with homemade granola and some dark chocolate chips on top.  Because I’ve been having fresh fruit with the yogurt the past several weeks the chocolate chips have been missing.  And boy have I missed them!  I love that little Sunday treat to myself and having chocolate for breakfast is full of awesome.  After breakfast I worked on my exercise recap post and Scott was pacing around the kitchen.  He started rinsing out my yogurt bowl and wondered if there was more breakfast to be had.  He thought that since I just had a bowl of yogurt that was my breakfast.  I then reminded him that I just ran basically my own 1/2 and that he’s not normally up at this time, so I always have a little something to tide me over.  Plus that wee bowl of yogurt isn’t nearly enough to feed me after that kind of run.  Gimme food! :p

After I finished up my post, I headed into the kitchen to get crackin’ on Sunday Breakfast.  Last Christmas, Scott bought me this amazing waffle maker.

It gets super hot and has removable grates that makes for easy clean-up.  They are also reversible making the waffle maker into a sandwich press or a small griddle.  The trouble is that I have yet to figure out the right batter proportions for the darn thing.  Either I get waffles that are small and odd shaped or I use too much batter which then leaks out the side.  Because of that, I’ve been sticking to making pancakes instead. I like them a lot and it goes quicker for me than the waffles.  Yesterday though I decided to suck it up and pull out the waffle maker.  I’ll never learn if I don’t practice, right?

I made a really simple waffle batter using spelt flour and soymilk.  Even though I still got oddly shaped waffles they turned out fabulous!

I had two and topped them with:

  • Yogurt
  • Pumpkin seeds
  • Sunflower seeds
  • Walnuts
  • Fresh blueberries

We also had fresh watermelon with breakfast.   After breakfast, I prepped everything for dinner later in the evening.  Then we plopped down on the couch to see if we could finish Lego Star Wars since we are so so close!  No dice though.  We tried to kick it but we had to repeat a lot of things since we kept dying.  Have I mentioned my great dislike for this game?  Because it’s huge.  I’m at the point where I’m not even sure I could replay it.  It does a lot of dumb things AND there are way too many flying levels.  I’m not a huge fan of the flying.

Eventually it was time to get down to business with dinner!  We had some lovely ribeyes that we were saving just for this occasion!  I rubbed them down with an awesome smoky cocoa-chili rub and let them hang out all day long.  They hit the grill and smelled amazing!

I promise that the steak is not burnt or overcooked.  The cocoa powder really penetrates the meat and darkens it to a very deep brown color.  The rub I used on the steaks is very similar to the rub I used on these chicken thighs.  For the steaks I added in some smoked paprika, smoked sea salt, and a pinch of brown sugar.  Steaks are local beef purchased from North Market.

I had half a steak along with some grilled eggplant that I picked up at the farmer’s market.  The eggplant sat in a super simple marinade of:

  • Olive oil
  • Soy sauce
  • Garlic powder
  • Salt
  • Curry Powder

So yummy!  Still more food to be had, there were side salads to complete the meal.

Red leaf lettuce and romaine topped with:

  • Chopped tomato (from the farmer’s market!)
  • Shredded carrot
  • Cucumber
  • Red onion
  • Sunflower and pumpkin seeds

A quick and easy balsamic honey-mustard dressing on top.  I am in love with having these side salads with our meals!  I can prep them ahead of time and let them hang out in the fridge until we are ready to eat.  They are so cold by that point and such a nice refreshing treat during these hot summer days.  It definitely might be something I stick with this summer.

I realized that as I’ve been posting these meal recaps, that every week you are seeing a meat product of some type featured for dinner.  Clearly we are not vegetarians.  In fact we don’t subscribe to any one diet in general, we eat what works for us. We actually only eat meat once a week and that just happens to be on Sundays! :p  Throughout the week our meals are mostly vegetable based with at least one seafood meal in there somewhere.

Will you continue to keep seeing meat on my Homespun Sunday posts?  Most likely since for meal planning purposes that is technically our “meat day”.  I’m sure there will be a few times that pop up when we don’t have meat for one reason or another but for the most part you can expect that to be a typical thing seen for these posts.

We didn’t get a chance to watch Holmes on Homes last night because we just sat down to eat dinner at 8pm and forgot to tape it.  Doh!  Will definitely have to remember for this week though!

Last night’s wine was also a special one.

I won this bottle at last year’s Foodbuzz Festival.  Since we were celebrating a special occasion it was time to crack this bad boy open!  It was a lovely deep and velvety merlot with a nice little kick at the end just to make sure you were paying attention that this is indeed a red wine.

I forgot to take a picture of dessert! But it was some double chocolate-chip cookies I had previously made.  I pulled a few from the freezer and warmed them up, making them the perfect ender to a perfect week of vacation.

How was your Sunday?

Also for more Homespun Sunday fun, check out Clarice’s post!  She had homemade pizza last night!  Whooo!

This post was part of Homespun Sunday. Want to join?  Just let me know!

9 thoughts on “Chocolate three ways

  1. What a great Sunday :)

    I had a great homespun Sunday yesterday, and am working into today, too!

    I’m making yogurt in my crockpot as I type :)

    That pile of chocolate chips on the yogurt looks so good.

  2. Haha, okay just seeing those chocolate chips has me craving chocolate like mad now!

    And I love the combo on your toast. I recently started making toast with yogurt, berries and nut butter and loved it! Such a great discovery! :)

    Hope you have an amazing week girl!

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