Remember way back when I made a sweet and salty salad to enter into a Foodbuzz contest to win travel and airfare to the Foodbuzz Festival? Well, Fresh Express/Foodbuzz sent me coupons to use when purchasing the lettuce that I used in the salad. Well, they sent a lot of those coupons and I have some to share with you!

If you are interested in 4 coupons for a free bag of Fresh Express Salad, leave a comment here. Maybe let me know what kind of salad you will make or you favorite salad dressing or you favorite toppings (I like bacon, blue cheese, and pepperocini peppers with balsamic vinaigrette. And just for fun you get extra entries by following me on Twitter, Google Friend Connect, and/or liking my Facebook page.

These coupons expire at the end of January so I have to get them out to you quick. I will select two winners sometime the evening of Sunday, December 5th.

Do you like scallops?

I didn’t think I did. Most of the scallops I had ever tried we mushy. Yuck!

At least until this salad.

The last time Kath came to town a group of us got together for dinner at the Providence Cafe. For some reason I was in the mood for something with blue cheese and this salad was it. This salad was enough to make me give scallops a second look.

What dish have you had lately that changed you mind about a food you thought you didn’t like?

Check out the mess in my kitchen. This is a rare occurrence lately, so I thought it needed to be documented.

When I got home I made the contents of my refrigerator explode all over my counters. The lighting in my kitchen is dreadful and I was hoping to get some good, nicely-lit shots of a meal I wanted to put together.

Thanks to Foodbuzz Tastemakers program and Fresh Express I was sent some coupons for Fresh Express salad mix to create a delicious salad.

My salad started with a 7 oz can of salmon.

After draining the salmon I mixed it with 1 whole egg, 1/4 cup panko bread crumbs, a sprinkle of garlic gold and salt and pepper.

All mixed up.

Form into patties and place on a hot skillet. Brown on each side.

I love to make salmon patties to eat on sandwiches, on salad, or on their own. You can keep them simple or you can spruce them up with the addition of different herbs. Plus, they are so easy to make!

I forgot to take a picture of the finished patties, but you will see them on the salad.

While the salmon patties were cooking I got to work on the salad toppings by browning 5 or 6 pieces of bacon (I used real bacon but you could use turkey bacon or leave it off), grated 2 apples, 2 carrots, and diced some red onion (not pictured). I forgot about the apples turning brown. Oopsie. They didn’t look at all appetizing but they tasted great.

Assembly time! For this salad I let B pic which Fresh Express salad mix he wanted and he came home with the Spring Mix.

Spinach (way on the bottom where you can’t see it), Fresh Express spring mix, shredded apples, shredded carrots, diced red onions, bacon crumbles, salmon patty, and bleu cheese crumbles.

Top with your favorite dressing.

You could make you own, but I love Newman’s Own balsamic vinaigrette so that is what I used.

Blue cheese and apples is one of my favorite combinations. I don’t normally eat fruit on my salads (no dried cranberries, strawberries, or mandarin oranges for me, thank you) but I loved the little bit of sweetness and crunch on this salad. Apples + cheese + bacon = sweet & salty salad.

No time for more commentary, its time to mix and enjoy!

Ya know how there is always that little restaurant around the corner that you want to try but you never get around to it? We have a ton of those in our neighborhood! Each time we drive by I am say we need to try them out but we keep driving and I forget about it until the next time we pass by. One Sunday evening we actually, finally, stopped in at one of these places. Meet the Sunset Grille. I am horrible at taking picture of the outside of the restaurant so you will have to settle for this photo of the their kitchen/bar area instead.

We really loved the open dining room where you could see the kitchen. We weren’t close enough to see any action though.

I know that this is just a glorified water pitcher, but I love the little detail that is out of the ordinary.

We started our meal with one our favorite appetizers, pimento cheese. This pimento cheese was creamy with just a tiny bit of heat and was a perfect contract to the crunchy bread. Probably our favorite restaurant pimento cheese yet (The Fresh Market jalapeño pimento cheese holds the all time fave spot).

Next up was a Sonoma County Salad. Romaine, Laura Chenel Chevre Goat Cheese, Tomatoes, Kalamata Olives, Red Onion, Roasted Beets with a blood orange vinaigrette. Citrus-y vinaigrettes aren’t really my thing so we got some balsamic vinaigrette too.

This salad was great, and it taught me something about myself. It taught me that I really don’t care for goat cheese and that I do, in fact, enjoy roasted beets. I would have never though I would say that I don’t like some kind of cheese yet I do like some kind of veggie.

Last but not least, we ordered a BBQ plate to finish. Fantastic, finger-lickin’, and all that good stuff. I especially liked that the pork was already tossed in sauce, which had a great flavor and was just the right amount to wet the BBQ without making it soupy. The sides were pretty spectacular too. The baked beans were a little meaty, which threw me off, the macaroni and cheese was homemade, and the cornbread pancakes were a perfect complement to the BBQ.

When I was younger my family rarely went out to eat. I remember as a teen a trip to Olive Garden was such a treat. Oh how times have changed. Over the past several years I have been spoiled by some fantastic restaurant meals and Olive Garden has been knocked down a few notched….at least for dinner time.

Trying to be a somewhat conscientious spender I try to pack my lunch as much as possible so a lunch out is a special treat no matter where I go.

A coworker who shares my foodie fascinations decided to give me a break from my ho-hum (only ho-hum because I have been too lazy to put much effort into putting together my lunch bag) packed lunches and offered to treat me to a lunch of soup salad and breadsticks.

The breadsticks were warm, soft, and garlic-y and the highlight of the meal.  Although I am now accustomed to crispy romaine lettuce or other greens in my salads I found something comforting about the iceburg only salad that used to be my preference.

Minestrone was my soup du jour and was chunky and warm but somehow still missing  something for me.  The entire lunch, food, company, and conversation were all a welcome diversion from my norm. Thanks Sal!

I love weekends. And not just for the usual reason of not having to go to work. Weekends are also when B and I often do our best eating, and that has certainly been the case this weekend.

Friday’s eats were not anything special. I started my day with overnight oats in a jar. Do you notice Michael Buble in the background? He came to Charlotte this weekend, but I was too cheap to buy tickets. I bet it was a great show though.

Lunch was an amazing salad that hit nearly all of the food groups. It included spinach, romaine, avocado topped with sautéed zucchini, carrots, and kidney beans (because I didn’t have time to roast them). I also poured on balsamic vinaigrette, Greek yogurt, and hummus. I had a few Kashi crackers on the side for some whole grain action.

The salad was excellent in theory but only okay in execution. The warm veggies wilted the greens and them I made it worse by putting the dressing on in the morning. I ate 3/4 of the salad before deciding it was just too soggy for me.

The day dragged on and on at work. It was just a slow day where I had to wait on feedback from others before I could move on. Plus we had dinner plans that made me particularly impatient to get home.

We had a Groupon for Pewter Rose that I have been itching to use. It is such a cute place! If you want to see more, check out Katie’s blog too. She went on Thursday night to celebrate her 25th birthday.

It feels like it has been so long since we had a nice meal out so we decided to start with a nice bottle of wine. I believe this was the Zenato Pinot Grigio, delicious.

The we ordered the Rhode Island calamari as out starter, which was probably the best calamari that I have ever had. The breading had an amazing flavor an they were not too chewy.

Warm bread.

For our main course we split the seafood risotto.

It was so creamy and decadent. If I hadn’t started to get full (and wanted to save some room for dessert) I think I would have licked my bowl clean.

We also had a side of tempura fried asparagus, which is usually served with their Chilean sea bass. When I saw it on the menu I knew I had to give it a try. I am not an asparagus fan, but I usually love anything tempura fried and this was not exception!

We finished of the meal with a slice of key lime pie, which I completely forgot to photographs. Oopsie.

I always love nice meals out with B. The night would have been perfect had we not come home to this….

Piper apparently did not appreciate us leaving her again so she took out her anger on our rug. So guess who got a new rug this weekend.

Ugh. I am so full. Looking at these pictures from today is even making me feel uncomfortable.

Yesterday was so emotionally draining that I slept hard, and had a hard time pulling myself out of bed.

Once I did get moving I made myself another smoothie.

The smoothie was good, but like most of the other smoothies I make it needed something more. I think I am going to take some notes on a post-it from the Fitnessista’s smoothie making post. I was so excited to see this post today, perfect timing!

Since I knew that my smoothies have not had any real filling power I ate some cinnamon chip toast with peanut butter.

My breakfast only held me over until 11 AM. I was genuinely hungry, and I really wanted something to distract me from my sulking.

This was an awesome salad. Spinach, romaine, carrot, sweet peppers, tomatoes topped with Greek yogurt, hummus, salsa, and 2 crumbled black bean burger patties.

I finished my lunch off with some watermelon. Love.

My afternoon creeped along and I ended up snacking on some crackers and string cheese. I was so happy to see 5 PM rolled around. Unfortunately I got some disappointing news from one of my meetings last week that made me even sulkier.

After sitting in front of the TV most of the evening I finally got myself up off the couch to cook dinner.

And as I mentioned earlier, I ate so much food. All in all I ate 2 ears of corn, 1 small can of baked beans, 2 red potatoes, and 4 kale leave baked into chips. I ate what was pictured about time 2 plus some kale chips.

Now I have to face this.

How did I manage to get this many dishes dirty by myself? I worked 8 hours and didn’t even cook anything special. Gracious!

Last night was one of those nights where I really bit off more than I could chew. I cooked dinner, did blog stuff, attempted homemade baked beans, and then made homemade sweet potato gnocchi a la KERF. All of that cooking also means a lot of cleaning. I had to unload and completely reload the dishwasher and still had dishes leftover. I blogged and caught up on Google Reader and Twitter. Then I insisted on doing a yoga session, which was completely worth it. Then I tore down the beds that my hubs germified earlier this week. Fortunately I had the sense to not take those any further.

Messy, messy and germy, germy. Ick!

My overly ambitious attitude carried over into this morning as well. I was woke up by our TV at 4 AM so I was feeling tired and cranky and decided to skip out on my workout. I will try to do some yoga again tonight, cuz my muscles are tight. My desk is too high for me so I sit in this awkward shrugging position all day so I can type.

I got out of bed and did the usual hygiene stuff and got my make up on. Then I proceeded to the kitchen, making a stop at the laundry room to start the first of many loads of laundry. Once in the kitchen I decided to soak some dried kidney beans for tonight’s dinner, throw my baked bean concoction into the slow cooker to cook all day, unload and reload the dishwasher, make breakfast, and pack today’s snacks. It was my ambition to do all of this in 20 minutes.

No such luck. At 20 til 8 (I am supposed to be at work at I still wasn’t dressed and had no idea what to wear. Eek! I managed to get some clothes on, but not shoes. I shoved my shoes in my back, slid on my slippers and ran out the door giving myself about 12 minutes to get to work. Luckily traffic was light and I walked into my office at 8:01. Whew.

This is what I managed to throw on. Not great, but could be worse. At least I didn’t show up in my yoga pants! Plus, I am still wearing my slippers.

Breakfast was couple of red berry Special K waffles with maple syrup. They were only okay. B picked these out, I prefer plain Eggo’s.

My AM snack was a salad of cucumber, grape tomatoes, and broccoli slaw. I topped with a few gorgonzola crumbles and olive oil vinaigrette. Lunch is always easy when I have spinach and rice in the fridge. I just have to throw them in a bowl with a few topping and I am set.

In my bowl today is raw baby spinach; leftover basmati rice medley from last Thursday; leftover bacon, andouille sausage, and tomato slices from Tuesday’s lunch; and a drizzle of Newman’s Own ranch dressing. Plus some homemade sweet potato gnocchi.

Tasty and filling. Gotta love that combo.

So far no dessert, but I have a feeling I am going to have a snack attack soon.

3.75 days down, 1.25 to go until the weekend! Soon the countdown to Good Friday will begin! See you for dinner.

I think today has been one of my busiest Saturdays in ages.

I was up early this morning because I was excited about brunch at Kath’s house. Although I almost ruined it for myself. I had in my head that brunch was at 10:30 when it was actually at 10. Good thing B looked over the email or I would have been late!

After realizing my error in timing I rushed to get a shower and get ready. I have really horrible dark circles under my eyes (I think its hereditary), so I rarely go out and meet new people without concealer under my eyes. At the beginning of January I bought a new product to try, Erase Paste by Benefit.

I finally have a camera where I can get a non-blurry close up. This is my eye before and after.

I have been really happy with the results compared to the other products I have tried, which include Bare Mineral Bisque and Bobbi Brown corrector/concealer combo.

Onto Brunch. I did not get a group picture but the group included Me, Kath (of course), Diana, Whit, Stacey, Emily, Kate, and Michelle.

Oatmeal was on the menu and we has a spread of amazing toppings.

There were several Great Harvest baked goods and some biscotti.

A large assortment of nut butters.

Agave Plus granola, TJ’s pumpkin granola, Crofter’s Superfruit spread (blueberry I think), pumpkin butter, cranberry preserves (or something like that). There were also wheatberries and fresh raspberries that I forgot to get a picture of. In my bowl was banana oats, Agave Plus granola, wheatberries, raspberries, Nutzo, and Crofter’s Superfruit Spread.

This was a fantastic bowl of oatmeal! And it came along with some great conversation. We all sat and talked for 2 hours! It was really great to meet all of these ladies.

By the time I got home I was ready for a little lunch. On the ride home I had decided on Brussels sprouts.

Sautéed Brussels sprouts, onions, and turkey bacon. This bowl was nice and light and saved room for what I had planned later.

At 3PM B and I headed to Birkdale Village to go see Avatar in Real 3D. Of course I had a big tub of popcorn planned for me and B to share!

Plus some peanut M&M’s. There may have also been some Mr. Pibb involved too. 

I liked the movie despite the similarities people have pointed out between it and Pocahontas. I liked the story and it actually held my attention for the whole 3 hours.  I really did not think the 3D was spectacular and was really excited that it didn’t make me motion sick.

And if all of that wasn’t enough food B and I still had dinner.

We decided to use leftover shrimp to top a salad of spinach, romaine, and baby bella mushrooms.

So far that’s it for so far. Time for chores since I have been out playing all day. Boo.

Today was a ridiculous day. I woke up not feeling well but made myself get up for a workout anyways. I spent the first half of the day in meetings and the second have working on getting caught up from being in meetings the past 2 1/2 days. Bah!!!

I felt so overwhelmed this afternoon. I am really hoping things get better. I am hoping to have a better idea of what is going to be like from here on out after my one on one sit down with my new boss tomorrow morning. I am definitely feeling anxious over it all.

After my workout this morning I was craving grits. Weird, I know!

Cheddar cheese grits with 3 pieces of bacon.

They were so good and really satisfied my craving. Unfortunately they did not keep me full for long. So I snacked on an orange during one of my meeting.

I was super stressed at lunch and was really lacking direction in what to fix. I had hardly any leftovers and no inspiration.

Romaine, spinach, red bell pepper, carrot, tuna and olive oil vinaigrette.

I followed up my salad with a few sour cream and onion Pop Chips and a few chocolate covered almonds.

This kept me full all afternoon, but that didn’t stop me from munching on some mini candy bars while I was stressing.

When I got home I was iffy about cooking dinner but I was excited about what I wanted to cook. Since I didn’t snack all afternoon I was starving and decided to suck it up and get to cooking.

Polenta cakes topped with chicken andouille sausage and sautéed peppers and onions. F.A.I.L

I don’t know if the sausage was getting old or what but it definitely had a funny taste, the butternut squash got cold before the rest of the food was finished, and I under seasoned the polenta. Today was definitely not the right day to try cooking something new.

And then to top it all off I was (and still am) craving cookies. I decided it would be fun to make a test batch of cookies that I am planning on making for Diana’s bake sale for Haiti.

F.A.I.L

They were bland and icky. The batter was too runny which is why they are so wide and flat looking. And I have no idea how I am going to make them better. I either have to figure it out this weekend or change what I plan to make. If I need to change me recipe does anyone have any suggestions? I have been trying to think of something a little different and interesting but would plain ole chocolate chip cookies or brownies do the trick? Blueberry muffins maybe?

I am exhausted after this long, overwhelming day. I have a couple more things to do before I sign off but I am going to try hard to get in bed ASAP. I need to try to sleep off whatever sickness is trying to take hold of me.

I am so glad that tomorrow is a new day. Sweet dreams!