Beachy weekend

I had a beautiful weekend! My sisters, a couple gorgeous gal pals and I headed to the Oregon coast. the drive was lovely and we stopped at a berry stand for some fresh picked strawberries.

Photo from the drive, courtesy of Emily

The weather on the Oregon coast was nice and clear, still chilly, but beautiful just the same. On the first night, Emily, Paisley and I did the grocery shopping and stopped a great little fish market to pick up 6 lbs of steamer clams, 3 dungeness crabs and some smoked salmon. All very good and very fresh. I feel that people have some hesitation in making their own clams, but it's actually very simple.

My basic recipe goes as follows:

• 1 lb live manila or other steamer clams
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 6 oz chardonnay (little mini bottles are perfect for cooking)
• 1/4 c sliced onion
• salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Melt the butter, saute vegetables (aside from garlic) & season with S&P.
2. On a medium-high heat, add clams, white wine and garlic & cover.
3. Shake them up a few times and watch until the clams open, remove from heat and serve. Don't overcook! As soon as they open they're good to go.

This is very basic, but you can add whatever vegetables your heart desire that saute well: peppers, tomatoes & zucchini are good ones. It's also really beneficial to add some fresh herbs (parsley or basil) and/or lemon at the very end, once the clams have opened. Also, bacon is good too. :)

Lastly, if one of the clams doesn't open, do not try to force it open and eat it. If they don't open within a couple minutes, it means they've died and are not safe to eat.

Here's some pictures from our feast, including artichoke, roasted brussel sprouts and a baguette.

 And these are the clams I made for lunch, I used garlic, zucchini, tomatoes, onion, red bell pepper and basil to finish. De-light-ful. I made too many though, so I had one of my besties, Rachel come pick them up. They won't keep well, so only make as many as you can serve of eat. Usually a person will eat between 1/2-1 lb of clams. It's pretty low cal too, as look as you don't drink all the broth.

On Saturday, we spent some time out on the beach, playing ball with the pup and enjoying the ocean air. Here's a bunch of pictures, I consolidated them for your viewing pleasure.

Emily and Paisley (left); Emily and Erin (right

All the sisters together (Emily, Katie, Erin and I)

Puppy had a great time on the beach, Practically comatose today.

After some beach time we went into town for a yummy sushi lunch and some walking about. We stopped at a candy shop so I could get some salt water taffy for E. I cannot tell you how disappointed in America I was while in this candy shop. Chocolate covered deep fried twinkies, ding-dongs, bacon. Here's the real clincher though: 5 lb gummy bears. I looked at the nutrition label, there were 51 servings. But you know the person who buys that isn't sharing it with 51 people. So much sugar, so much excess. You know I'm advocate for eating what you want, but there are boundaries and these boundaries are being decimated. Please put your healthy hat on when visiting a candy shop. I was able to get out of there with just a 1/4 lb of salt water taffy.

Then we headed home and waited for my Aunt Lisa and future cousin in law to meet up. We had Papa Murphy's take-n-bake thin crust pizza for dinner, they have new flavors that are pretty yummy. Chicken, bacon and artichoke and Thai Chicken. I enjoyed both and was happy to have the thin crust. We stayed up pretty late chatting and then hit the sack

I woke up at 8:30, cleaned the house, made breakfast for the ranks and then really wanted to take a run. It was perfect running weather, sunny, 62 degrees, with cool wind. Ligo and I did a solid 5ish mile (Mapmyrun malfunction) run out on the beach and promenade and it felt so good. I think I have the running itch back, but I really don't want to over do it. My hips were pretty sore, but manageable.

Beach run

Then we went to the Seaside aquarium, pretty janky but the baby seals were adorable. Then we hit the road. Oh yeah, and I stopped for a small ice cream cone at the middle-of-no-where Dairy Queen. I have no regrets about my food choices, but I am cleaning it up for this week.

This morning Emily text me that she was going to a Les Mills Bodypump class, so I decided to join her. I used to go to these classes all the time. I really enjoy them. If you're not interested in the weight room, but still want to get your tone on, I encourage some research of these videos/classes. They work. High rep low weight. Personally, I feel that lifting heavy weight with lower reps has better and faster results, but to each their own. Bodypump was great sweat. After we went to the produce market and loaded up and followed that by Uwijamaya (japanese groceries). I like Uwijamaya because they have fresh and live seafood. They also have curries, dumplings, noodles and all kinds of other delicious things. But it is on the spendy side, so watch the prices. I indulged a little and picked up some ahi poke. I am going to try my hand at making this myself, it seems awfully simple and buying it for $17.99 p/lb is just not acceptable. When I give it a shot, I'll let you know how it goes.

For now, It's great to be home, be sore and have a kitchen full of delicious, healthy goodness. BUT, I've still got a lot of work to do before my finals on Thursday. So I'm hitting the books. I hope you had a great weekend too! Kisses!