green room cafe

Yesterday I felt my first earth quake ever, it was all over the news as we turned on the TV later on. Our entire hotel room was shaking from left to right, I really didn't know what was going on at first. So scary (but funny at the same time because nothing happened and it only lasted for about 30 seconds). People ran out into the hallway and asked us "did you just feel that??" ..crazy!! The epicenter of the 5.8 magnitude earthquake was apparently Virginia, but it shook cities all along the East Coast!! Thank Goodness we are all safe!!

On the picture above you can see me right before devouring my delicious breakfast yogi wrap, which I ordered last week at the Green Room Cafe in Cocoa Beach. I was so happy that I found this place on happycow.net!! The chips and salsa were amazing and each of us had a delicious smoothie to complete our power breakfast. I had acai and vanilla soy milk in mine, it tasted awesome!!! The entire menu looked really enticing, I wish we could have had the chance to eat there again :(

Shark Pit Bar & Grill

After Orlando we drove to Cocoa Beach, which was the setting for the TV show "I dream of Jeannie" by the way. We stayed there for two nights and visited the World's Largest 24h Surf Store. The first restaurant we went to was the "Shark Pit Bar & Grill", located in the Four Sheraton Hotel if I am not mistaken, which also holds a big surf store & Starbucks (thank you Dear Lord). I ordered the mahi-mahi, which I never had before, but I am always curious to try new things, especially when it comes to seafood! I still felt a little hungry after my meal, it was really light and didn't wear me down. J♥ got the Philly Cheese Steak, which he liked a lot, but also he has never had a real Philly Cheese Steak in Philly, so he can't really compare!

Moe's

After a long long day at Universal Studios Orlando, we were practically starving. Throughout the day we tried real hard to stay hydrated, which turned out to be an anything but easy task considering the sun was burning down and scorching our athletic bodies lol. Walking around and standing in line the entire day was so exhausting and wore us out bigtime. So by the time we left the park and looked for a place to dine, we were glad we didn't have to waste any more time choosing a restaurant at Universal City Walk. Instead we went straight to Moe's Southwest Grill. All of our thanks go to Angela for mentioning this place on her site. The food was delicious, very hot and spicy, I had to eat almost all of the nachos to neutralize it :)

CPK again!!

Hellooooo my dear blog readers!!!

I just came back from an amazing 40 min morning run right along the Miami Beach Pathway which I finished up with 4 min of high intensity interval training (burpees, dive bombers, squats), just so that you don't get the impression that all I do is eat, although it kinda is ;) .... What I do best is eat & shop hehe. After a long morning filled with shopping and even more shopping back in Orlando, we stopped at California Pizza Kitchen and filled our growling tummies with delicious food. Contrary to the last time, we didn't order take-out so we got our food on plates yayyy. Tasted even better. I ♥ CPK so much, I really hope we can go there again soon! So many delicious dishes to choose from. No matter how picky you are, everyone will find something on CPKs menu.

Hotel Food hihahaha

Today I am just leaving you with some impressions of the breakfast at one of our hotels. Please note the lovely styrofoam plates and bowls. I guess this may be referred to as a stereotypical American complementary breakfast. Lovely.

JFK Airport Food

Besides from being completely overpriced, airport food is usually not the best. By the time we got to our gate at JFK, we decided on some kind of Asian stir-fry. I got the tofu with white rice and J♥ the chicken with fried rice. Classic! It was enough to fill us up for our 3 hour long flight from NYC to Orlando since you never get a served meal when on cross-country US flights. But that didn't really bother us too much anyways, because the only food worse than airport food is airplane food unless you are flying business class. Then again how would I know, considering the humble fact that I never paid 4000 $ and up for an airplane ticket -.-

Phil's Tavern

The last night before I left my dear Zs, we ordered out from Phil's Tavern, which would be exactly the same place we went for dinner when I first arrived at their house 4 years ago. Oh how fast time flies!!! All of our salads were really huge and yummy. I got the Tessa's Spinach Vinaigrette Salad without blue cheese & bacon but instead parmesan and a-v-o-c-a-d-o. Just in case you love avocado as much as I do, make sure you try this.

Sweet Ending & *Bucks

Located right across The Continental, this sweet little spot turned out to provide the perfect dessert/ending to our trip to downtown Philadelphia. Can you ever really go wrong with FROYO?

"The froyo was great! I would definitely recommend it to anyone. The peanut-butter flavor had a little bit of an edge to it, but definitely delicious. I liked the dark chocolate flavor a lot more though. It was refreshing and very different from any other ice cream that I have ever tasted. I had graham cracker bits, oreo bits, mini reeses bits, and chocolate chips on top. All of the toppings were good, but I had to eat the mini reeses bits separately because they were too large. (they were just cut in half)"

...and of course I had to get some of this:

The Continental

I ♥ to go to Philly. Brings back a lot of memories :) ... for lunch we went to the Continental, that is apparently owned by the same guy who owns Buddakan. On the menu, the crispy calamari salad immediately caught my eye (surprise, surprise!). Instead of the ginger soy dressing I ordered the coconut peanut dressing though. A♥ decided on the cashew chicken bento box. The interior of the restaurant was really cool, but be aware of the two-way mirrors in the bathroom!! I guess those can be really mean muhahaha. But what evil architect comes up with an idea like that?? After our short lunch break we wanted to continue our stroll/short little shopping spree, but then we got so tired so we really just wanted to head back home to take a nap before another Zumba class. But before that it was dessert time. If you want to know what we had, then check back tomorrow.

California Pizza Kitchen

The other day we ordered out from CPK for dinner. The food was delish, some of our salads came in multiple boxes meaning that each of us had the greens in one box, another box for the grilled veggies, shrimps etc.pp. so that it wouldn't be all gross and mushy once we got to finally scarf them down. Very quick, easy and yummy. On a side note, I highly recommend the barbecue chicken pizza as I remember it being amazing when I last had it a couple of years ago :)

Jalapenos

After a beautiful day laying out at the beach and snoozing off in my beach chair, I went to Jalapenos for dinner. I am so glad that I finally get an idea of what summer is actually supposed to feel like, after all that rain and miserable weather back home in Austria. On the picture above you see the Turkey Club Wrap. And here's the NY Waldorf Salad with I don't remember what dressing I picked or should I say what dressing was forced on me by the guy behind the counter lol. The salad came with craisins, walnuts covered in something sweet (probably honey?), lots of chicken, feta cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes..... It was nothing special really.... fast food par excellence, but I liked it!

cooking dinner...

Two nights ago A♥ and I literally cooked up a storm for dinner. We were in the kitchen from about 3:30 PM till 7 PM and boiled, minced, cut, blended, sprinkled, toasted, simmered and poured. We made the best hummus also known as the only hummus recipe you will ever need and had carrot & celery sticks to dip them in. As an appetizer we enjoyed homemade mock margaritas, which were really refreshing and perfect to start us off. Then we had an absolutely delicious sweet quinoa dish with dried cranberries aka craisins, toasted almonds and granny smith apples and to top it off, we had amazing roasted peppers à la Allie drizzled with salt and extra virgin olive oil.

Here is the recipe for the amazing Quinoa... it is slightly adapted from Angela who apparently adapted it from a certain Elisabeth.

Ingredients:

(I doubled this recipe to serve about 8 people)

- 1 cup organic uncooked quinoa (washed well with hot water)

- 2 cups of water

- 1 cup chopped onion

- 1 cup organic diced baby carrots or regular carrots, but we used the baby kind :)

- 1/2 cup dried cranberries aka craisins

- 40 almonds, toasted in the oven

- 2 minced garlic cloves

- 2 tablespoons honey (the original recipe called for maple syrup, but we didn't have any on our hands)

- 1 teaspoon vanilla

- 1 tablespoon olive oil

- pinch of cinnamon

- a large apple (we used Granny Smith but I bet you "Gala" or "Pink Lady" would work real well too)

- 1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

- 1 avocado

Directions:

1. Heat the olive oil in a sauce pan. Add the chopped onion, carrots and minced garlic and sauté until onion becomes translucent.

2. Add the water, quinoa, cinnamon, salt and once brought to a boil, reduce heat, cover it up and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. In case it gets too thick, add more water to make it even more fluffy. Stir it often so it won't burn.

3. Heat a dash of olive oil in a different pan and add the vanilla & the chopped apple (unpeeled). Sauté for about 5 min or until apple starts to turn golden. Now add the toasted almonds (350F in the preheated oven, check on them often, maybe leave them in for 10min or so), cranberries and apple to the quinoa and mix it all together.

4. Now add the honey aka maple syrup. The last thing to do is to add the chopped avocado and stir carefully once again, so it doesn't get too mushy.

Enjoy hot or cold, share with your friends or keep it all to yourself since it will store well in the fridge for a couple of days :) Tataaaaaaa