Dinner, Dessert, and Cocktails

Hello friends! It's the weekend...woohoo!

Our One Year Anniversary was last Sunday, and we celebrated last night with my family.  For all of you Fort Worthians, we went to Ruffino's Italian Restaurant.  It's really small and quant so you get great personal service and are able to personalize your meals.  Sam took me to Ruffino's for Valentine's Day, and they catered so well to our vegan diet...the chef made a potato gnocchi with a garlic and olive oil sauce and bunch of veggies.  It was so good that we decided to celebrate our Anniversary there last night.

They were out of gnocchi (sad), but instead we ended up having a delicious pizza with a pesto sauce and sautéed carrots, onions, squash, broccoli, zucchini, and mushrooms (no cheese!).  Oh my gosh... so good!  You could do this at home so easily.  Here's how...

Buy a pre-made crust.  Or you can buy fresh pizza dough from Central Market's, Cafe on the Run, it's only like $1.50.  So get the pizza crust, make the pesto (or you can buy a pre-made pesto), and saute the veggies I mentioned above.  The veggies were cut into small cube sizes so it made it really easy to eat.  If you use the fresh pizza dough, cook it in the oven until almost completely cooked, and then add the pesto and veggies and cook for another few minutes just to allow the flavors to merry and everything to get warm.  There you go!  Dinner in a flash! I'm so bummed I forgot to take a picture of it, but it looked like the pizza of health.  It had all of those summer veggies so it was very colorful and fresh.

Basil Pesto from The Vegan Table

3 cups loosely packed fresh basil leaves

1/4 cup raw pine nuts

2-3 whole garlic cloves, peeled

3 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 tsp salt

Directions: Combine basil, pine nuts, and garlic in a food processor and blend until the ingredients begin to form a paste, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.  Drizzle in a 1-2 Tbsp of oil, along with the salt, and process until smooth and creamy adding additional oil, if needed.  Add more salt as necessary, a little at a time.

For dessert, I bought a cake from Spiral Diner.  Spiral Diner is a vegan restaurant and bakery, and they made a gorgeous cake for us!  I wanted to surprise Sam, so I took the cake to Ruffino's earlier that day, and they just brought it out when it was time for dessert!  It was a great surprise.  I wanted the cake to be like Sam's groom's cake, which was a chocolate ganache cake with strawberries (we weren't vegan at the time).  So the cake from Spiral Diner was vanilla with chocolate icing and garnished with strawberries.  The strawberries were cut into heart shapes... so cute!

Then we went downtown to the bar at Grace for a drink.  I have tell you about my new favorite "healthy" cocktail.  I'm not endorsing alcohol as a healthy beverage, but by "healthy,"  I mean it's not loaded with those sugary syrups.  The recipe may sound weird, but trust me, just try it, it's a delicious refreshing cocktail.  I need to come up with a name for this, but I read about it in a magazine, and it is apparently Jennifer Aniston's cocktail of choice.  For now, we can call it The "Healthy" Cocktail. So here you go!

The "Healthy" Cocktail
Your choice of vodka (I like Kettle One)

Club Soda

Lime Juice (I just squeeze 1-2 lime slices)

Splash of Olive Juice

On the Rocks

And that was my Friday night!  What's on your agenda for the weekend?  Something active?!?  I hope so!  My knee is slowly recovering.  I'm just now able to walk on it with stability.  I'm going crazy not being able to exercise and be active, but this gives me such great appreciation for it.  On the bright side, I am able to ride the stationary bike, and work out the upper body and abs, and I have had a lot of time to sit and think about life, health, and happiness, which I will be sharing some of those thoughts you soon! 

With Love, Health, and Happiness,

Cami

The women ended up wearing all black and white so I just had to take a picture.

 We must be related... 

My Mom, Me, and My Aunt