The Great Sage DC/MD/VA Blogger Meet Up

I hope everyone is having a FAB weekend so far. Yesterday at work we did a wine and food pairing tasting, which went extremely well. At Cecile’s we have a wine and food club, and we featured 4 wines and 2 dishes from the club for the tasting yesterday. The dishes were pasta carbonara, and horseradish encrusted beef tenderloin. My co-worker did the cooking (he went to culinary school) and did a fabulous job. We also had Charlie Adler from Taste DC in talking about food and wine pairings. It was quite an exciting day at the store. After the tasting I headed to Clarkesville for a DC/MD/VA blogger meet-up that I coordinated. I was pretty proud of myself because I am usually shy when it comes to things like this, and I was able to step out of my box and get together a great group of bloggers. We met at The Great Sage, and organic vegetarian restaurant.

I met up with Aurora, Kat, Matt, Sana, Anne, Ashley, and Jacquie for a fun vegetarian meal and good conversation. It was interesting because we all don’t necessarily have ‘food’ blogs, but we all blog about something to do with health, nutrition, food, or exercise. I loved learning about everyone and seeing all our different personalities come together.

Everything on the menu looked so good, but I ordered the soup of the day, which was spicy curry coconut soup, and the Herbed Quinoa with Shitakes for my main dish. The quinoa came with sautéed shiitake mushrooms, spinach, and caramelized pearl onions with parsley-garlic oil. It was Soy and Gluten free (not like that matters to me, but it was on the menu).

Everything was so delicious! Even the bread and olive oil with herbs they put out at the beginning of the meal was wonderful. I was so surprised at how much flavor each dish had. It is really remarkable who good veggies and quinoa can be! Everyone got something different, and everyone seemed to enjoy thir food a lot. I was too stuffed for dessert, but got a small pot of hot green tea to sip on.

It was just what I needed. And after we said some goodbyes-a few of us headed over to Roots, my fave local green market, for some goods. It was such a breath of fresh air to meet so many NICE people who have the same interests as me. I hope we can continue doing these meet-ups more often. Thanks everyone for a great night! And thanks to The Great Sage for a wonderful meal-I will definitely be back!!!

This morning I woke up with a new mindset. Lately I’ve been so down about what has been going on with my ankle, and not being able to exercise like I’m used to, that I’ve just been eating whatever I want, whenever I want. And with my metabolism, I can’t do that! My clothes are tighter, I have less energy, and I just don’t feel well overall. So today I decided that I am going to start March off on the right foot (Even though technically March is tomorrow, I like to start things on Sundays). I can’t keep going on like I have been because it’s bringing me down in all aspects of my life. I’m getting a physical in late March, and I want to make sure my cholesterol is not through the roof. I just need to be more aware of what I’m eating and cut back a bit.

I made oats for breakfast for a filling start to my day.

I made my oats with unsweetened chocolate almond milk and Quaker oats, and topped them with 1 Tbs MaraNatha peanut butter, and some berries. I was given this peanut butter to sample, and I have to say I loved the consistency. I’ve seen MaraNatha nut butters everywhere and have wanted to try them so I was thrilled when they contacted me to sample and review their products. I’ve been eating a lot of almond butter lately, so going back to peanut butter was a nice change. It was pretty yummy, and had to limit myself to ONE tbsp. I didn’t have any fresh berries so I just used frozen berries that I heated up in the microwave for a bit.

I didn’t even need to use sweetener because of the peanut butter, but the berries made it a little tart. My Sunday has certainly been lazy, and I LOVE it that way. Chris and I went to Cosi for lunch where I got a half tomato soup and half greek salad with fat free balsamic dressing. I do love me some Cosi!!!! And tonight we are going to a jazz club in DC, which I’m pretty excited about because I love jazz. I know it makes me sound like an old fogey, but I do.

Have a wonderful rest of your weekend. GO USA HOCKEY TEAM!!!!

Tagged as: blogger meet up, maranatha peanut butter, quinoa, the great sage