Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Second Anniversary

Today was Seth and my second anniversary. We had scheduled to take the day off from work to celebrate and spend time together.

We decided to start the day off right with a nice breakfast. Seth had been doing some work on finding some smoothie recipes for either breakfast or for a healthy dessert alternative (depending on the calorie count). Seth had found some good smoothies on Fitness Magazines website. They had a nice list of nine. The calorie count ranges from the low 100s to mid 300s. The former being good for snacks, I think, and the latter for meals.

Seth started by making me the Chocolate and Peanut Butter smoothie. This smoothie was made with berries, peanut butter, chocolate milk, and yogurt. It was 355 calories, which is fine for breakfast (although a bit more than I'd normally have) but would be too much for a snack.

The smoothie was very tasty although not at all chocolate flavored. I tasted mixed berries and a hint of peanut butter. I was thinking if I wanted to make this lower cal, I might try it with the yogurt and berries only with water or ice. Something to consider.


He then made himself the Peanut Butter & Banana smoothie. This was exactly as advertised and tasted very much as one would expect. It was very tasty and 305 calories.

After breakfast we left for a fun-filled day. We first headed out to Northampton where we visited my favorite tea store, Tea Trekker. They had recently relocated about half a mile down the street, and I wanted to check out there new location. I was also keen to get some green tea.

Seth had gotten me an awesome new tea kettle from Adagio, varieTEA, as an early anniversary gift and had wanted to get me some tea to match. At the store, I picked out some Sencha green tea that had just arrived that week from Japan. I also got interested in some oolong from Taiwan called Jin Xuan "Milk Oolong". It is apparently very hard to come by in the United Stated but has a very interesting sweet oolong flavor and is especially good if made in the traditionally Asian-style. I'm looking forward to trying it.

Seth surprised me by also picking up a sampler of pu-erh tea and the owner's book Green Tea. The book includes a great variety of recipes for making different kinds of hot and iced green tea as well as green tea smoothies and cocktails. While I am not much of a cook, I am totally comfortable playing around with beverages, especially if they are tea. This is the kind of "cook" book I can get behind. I can't wait to try some things out! Seth may have to be called in for back-up for anything involving the blender.


After our successful trip to Tea Trekker, we headed for lunch at one of our favorite places, Viva Fresh Pasta. I had a lovely sweet potato ravioli with maple walnut sauce while Seth had tortellini and chicken in a gorgonzola sauce.

After lunch, we hopped in the car to head back to Amherst to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, location of our wedding reception. The museum had some great exhibits: Eric Carle's book "Slowly, Slowly, Slowly," said the Sloth, the art of Maisy and Friends, and (my favorite this time around) the art of Ezra Jack Keats (who most famously wrote The Snowy Day).

After a tour of the museum with some reminiscing, we headed into downtown Amherst to the Amherst Cinema to see Moonrise Kingdom, the new Wes Anderson film. The movie was quirky; a fun off-beat romantic comedy. Perfect for our anniversary. 

Following the movie, we headed the the restaurant next-door to the cinema, Arise. Arise replaced our favorite special-occasions restaurant in town, Tabellas. Arise is a farm to table pizza pub. 

We started our meal by sharing some chickpea fries and a cocktail. We then decided to create our own pizza. We call it The Cotton in honor of our cotton anniversary this year. The Cotton is a white pizza on wheat crust with chevre, roasted garlic, shiitake mushrooms, potato chips, and arugula. 


We finished our meal with a s'mores ice cream (with marshmallow cookies) and then headed home. Whew! We were beat what a busy and fun day celebrating our 2nd wedding anniversary. 

1 comment:

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