Happy National Vegetarian Week!

Good afternoon lovelies! Happy National Vegetarian Week to all of you. In celebration of all the vegetarian and vegans out there, I stopped by Farmer's Market this morning and picked out this weeks vegetables. Once again, I love spring time and all of its bounties. This week my best find was my far a lovely bunch of green beans that were the freshest, best looking I have seen in a long time and around $1.50 a pound.

I will try and post some of the boy's and I favorite vegetarian meals throughout the week in celebration of all the vegetables out there.

The spinach I picked up this afternoon, that I promptly wash in my handy dandy salad spinner. 

Smithfeild aquatics center

Really short post today about the Smithfield Aquatics Center located about 45 minutes outside of Raleigh and maybe 15 minutes from where my kiddies live. The aquatics center is a great option for rainy days or to just mix things up from the routine. They have a big pool and a great splash park, as well as several fitness facilities. I usually take D to the splash park which is open Monday/Wednesday/Fridays from 10 am to noon. Its a lot of fun for the kids to play in and I would say no more than two feet deep at its center. The facilities them self are clean and when we've been never too crowded. They offer a great variety of classes.

The Park: Clayton Community Park

Goodmorning lovlies. Just a quick little snippet today about the Clayton Community Park located right next to the Clayton Community Center. Since my family lives outside of Raleigh this park is great for anyone living in the Clayton/Garner area. It's right behind the Little Gym in Clayton.

I love this park to take the kids to and have a little picnic and playtime. It has two playgrounds which is nice because one is a little bit bigger and geared towards the older kiddos and the other is a short walk away but slightly smaller for the slightly smaller ones. There's some great climbing structures for them to play on, slides, a large sandbox, swings and a pretty large shaded picnic area. Along with the playgrounds there is also two sand volleyball courts, baseball fields, tennis courts, and a half mile paved path that goes around the park and a large pond. 

The park isn't very shaded expect for around the pond so don't forget to pack and put on your sunscreen. Overall though, the park is great and a great way to spend a couple of hours with the kids. Sometimes I'll pack up their bikes to ride around the path while I trail behind :)

North Carolina Fiber Festival

I was so excited when I found out about the NC Fiber Festival this weekend! As an avid knitter its hard to pass up booth after booth of homemade, handspun, hand dyed yarns. It's like going to heaven. Overall, I really liked the festival. I never knew there were so many fiber artists in North Carolina!

Also, I really liked all the spinning wheels that were on display throughout the arena and occasionally at the odd booth or two you could watch someone spinning the fiber into yarn.

I loved it... if only I had more money to spend while we were there! I picked up a pattern and two balls of yarn to knit the boy a hat with (it's the least I could do after dragging him to yarn pallooza,) as well as, four sets of needles all for around $50. I would have loved to spent more on the delicious looking balls of yarn, but don't we all?

Since it was part of the larger "Got to Be NC" festival there was a lot of other fun stuff going around. It was almost like a miniature version of the State Fair, there were rides, food vendors, exhibits, etc. And on top of all this, since it was the weekend, the Flea Market was taking place too! There was so much to see while we walked around, I really can't complain about how I spent my Sunday afternoon.

Artsplosure

 

Ok, so I was driving home from the kiddies Friday afternoon and I heard about Artsplosure, which is taking place this weekend in downtown Raleigh. It sounded fun and interesting so I talked to the boy Saturday morning and we checked it out.

Maybe I just didn't know what to expect or maybe my expectations were too high but I wasn't really impressed by the festival. Perhaps, I was looking for more art taking place, things being displayed, performance art, and all that. The festival was meant as an "explosion" of "exposure" to the city of Raleigh to all types of art.  All in all, it seemed like the craft section you see at the State Fair or any seasonal local festival. All around Moore's Square, it was lined with small booth's that local artist could sell their goods and promote their name as an artist. Spotted in and out of the booths were some food stands that offered the usual fried fair food. There were two cool areas in Moore's Square where you could play chess and see a sandcastle being built. That was the most interactive art we saw though. To me what they had planned was geared more towards families. They had at least three stands for face painting and several areas where kids could go and do crafts.

What really caught my attention on the radio was the news reporter talking about the Impressionist Sculpture Garden that sounded like the feature exhibit of the festival. Impressionist paintings are one of my favorite forms of art so this sounded like an interesting and different take on art. First, let me say that this exhibit had to potential to be amazing but it feel short. The sculptures themselves were beautiful and the portraits in the original paintings were brought to life, in life size form. However, the landscapes in the paintings were not translated very well in the "garden." Two or three of the gardens were done fairly well with plants all around them bringing out the feel of their original paintings but the rest just had one or two around them.  This was opportunity for local landscapers to show off... and well, they didn't. However, a nice touch was that they had easles set up around the area that you could try your hand at painting your own piece or art.
 

This was my favorite one, mainly because of the yarn :P

 

David's Dumpling and Noodle Bar

Yum, yummy, yum. I love David's. It's delicious south Asian style food prepared by a real chef. David even walks around the restaurant and talks to every table. Sometimes he even sends out little samples of soup.

For the prices you pay and the quality of food you receive, David's is a great bargain. It has quickly become one of the boy and mine favorite restaurants to go out to eat. Since we are both veggies our favorite dish is the sesame tofu. Light, crispy. Perfect.

Between the atmosphere of the restaurant, the great food, and David himself, you are sure to have a great night out. Actually, I might go there tonight :p

Farmer's market finds of the week

If there is one thing I love about living in North Carolina is the State Farmer's Market, located off Lake Wheeler Road. It is great in the spring in summer time for finding some great, fresh, local produce at really affordable prices. This week when J and I went to the Farmer's Market, I saw for the first time orange and purple cauliflower... and well, aside from my curiosity as to how it tastes different than it's boring cousin white cauliflower, I just couldn't resist that beautiful color. (Sorry we ate the orange cauliflower before I had a chance to get a pic of it, but it was just as yummy too!)

Also, as a random side note, I think finding colorful veggies like this is great to try on the little ones. It's so different and bright from what we tend to think of as cauliflower. Maybe, making it as whipped cauliflower will be a fun and healthy substitute to mashed potatoes. I don't know, something about bright purple veggies just seems more fun than the everyday.

Along with our colorful finds we also scored on some delicious red tomatoes, green tomatoes, spinach, spring onions, regular onions, broccoli, and carrots. And believe it or not, we only paid like $15 for all that amazing produce!!! That would cost at least twice as much in the supermarket and isn't nearly as fresh. I really do love this time of year because of the Farmer's Market and the ability to each such fresh delicious foods. I cannot wait for sweet peppers to start appearing at the market soon!

Since last night was Wednesday it was date night. Instead of going out to eat we decided to cook our delicious, fresh food at home. Now, I don't know about you guys but I love to eat any form of Asian cooking, whether that be Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc. One of my all time favorites is, Tempura. So when I stumbled upon a box of Tempura Mix at the Harris Teeter, I just had to try it.

It was really easy, I just followed the recipe on the back and read a few people's tips on the internet. And let me tell you, my purple tempura cauliflower was so flavorful and delicious and the light, crunchy tempura batter around it was amazing. Please, if you like tempura try making it at home. It was really easy, just took a little bit of time more than anything. Along with the cauliflower we fried up some carrots, mushrooms, and green peppers. We paired our veggies with some steamed rice and a fresh spinach salad and it was one of the best meals we've made at home in a long time. Out to eat, this all probably would have cost at least $30.

 

It was all together a delicious meal that I will definitely repeat again!