Pools, Parties, and Pizza

It’s Friday!!!!

This morning I took a break from the gym so that I could set up next week’s workouts before my race.  In lieu of getting sweaty, I decided instead to get baking.  I saw this recipe for chocolate french toast and thought that sounded really yummy.  Because I didn’t have chocolate milk, I foraged and used this instead:

The result you ask?  Protein packed french toast greatness.  To be honest you couldn’t taste the chocolate a whole bunch but that didn’t stop me.

I topped mine with homemade regular and white chocolate coconut peanut butters, chia seeds (for some nutritional oomph), and maple syrup.  Nomnom.

With breakfast dishes looming, I used the dishwasher for the first time.  I am used to doing all my dishes by hand so keeping enough dishes dirty to make a decent sized “load” was hard.  It worked great though.

Additionally, my computer freaked out last night and wouldn’t start today so the time left in the morning after breakfast was devoted to trying to get my computer to roll back to the August 3rd “image”.  I knew I would lose a few photos but I realized that the best ones, the most important ones, were on this blog.  I am so thankful for that!

As I mentioned yesterday, we had a pre-rehearsal dinner pool party today at the groom’s parents’ house.  We were told there wouldn’t be food and drink there so we ate a quick lunch beforehand.  I threw some things together from the fridge and ended up with a pretty full bowl.

I’m calling it Black Bean Brown Rice Salad.  It used leftover brown rice (from the Tagarat meal), black beans, frozen corn that was thawed briefly, quartered grape tomatoes, and diced red onion.  I tossed it all in an extra virgin olive oil/balsamic vinegar mix.  After taking the first bite I spiced the mix up with garlic powder, paprika, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper.  In the end it wasn’t completely perfect but we were on a time crunch so it was good enough.

When we arrived at the party a fair bit after it started we were surprised to find we were only the second people there but man, we must have been magnets because people rolled in after us like hot potatoes.

The pool was cold so I didn’t get in but I did get to watch some very interesting happenings:

Jack lathered up the groom with sunscreen.

The groom reciprocated.

Wine was had…in plastic, outdoor appropriate, no-break wine glasses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The boys attacked each other in the pool with wet noodles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They endeavored to make a deck chair float.
After some trial and error, they succeeded.

Being the only young person at the party that wasn’t going to the rehearsal dinner, I left at 5p to come back to the apartment.  On the way my stupid check engine light came on AGAIN!

Man, I swear my car absolutely HATES me.  I just got this light taken care of yesterday!  Anyways, once home, dinner for one was on my mind and after remembering the massive carb cravings yesterday post-froyo I settled on pizza.  But not just any pizza, oh no.

Everyone, I would like you to meet the BBQ Caramelized Shallot, Mushroom, and Bacon pizza.

I have never actually taken the time to caramelize onions.  I heard it takes forever and it’s labor-intensive but tonight I had the time and well, the taste reward was bound to be worth it so I hunkered down and did it.  And might I say “mmmmm, mmmmm".

The result was sweet wonderful shallot strips of awesomeness.  It might have taken a whole bunch more time to make the pizza this way but it was well worth it.

I made the crust the way I normally do (tweaked from a super simple PBFingers recipe) with some added garlic powder, Italian seasoning, and Mongolian fire spice added in for flavor.  The pizza started with a homemade BBQ sauce base topped with caramelized shallots, mushrooms (thrown in the skillet for a few minutes), bacon, italian blend cheese, and goat cheese.  Oh man, don’t skip or skimp on the goat cheese because it, along with the caramelized yummies, makes the dish.

Jack arrived back from the rehearsal dinner at 9:30 and, being the good guy he is, brought me a piece of groom’s cake for dessert.  I would call it a black forest cake since it was chocolate with chocolate frosting and cherries.  It was delish.

Tomorrow is the wedding so tonight we’re laying low and watching some TV together.  Get ready for lots of pretty pictures from the big event after we get back.  G’night!

Question: Are you the type to sit on the sidelines at pool parties or do you jump right in?