Weekend Eats!

Friday was date night - always my favorite night of the week:)  We went to dinner in Park Slope at Convivium Osteria. Super adorable Spanish/Italian/Portugese food in a cozy split level restaurant with hanging brass pans and candle light to read your menu.  Their menu is fairly gluten free friendly.  All appetizers are GF and the rabbit and sea bass are GF.  They also have a fantastic wine list with a great selection of Italian and Spanish wine.

 Flappin' Jack Pancake Mix makes DELICIOUS waffles!!!  And a little maple syrup and butter never hurt;)  Sir Shankupotamus - aka my husband - had the gluten kind of waffles but it was a fun Sunday Brunch.

 In the constant quest to have a happy tummy and eat better a home I'm always searching for great GF recipes.  In my instagram/web/Pinterest search lead me to the blog My New Roots.  Sarah Britton is charming with her posts and her pictures are wonderful.  I searched through some of her posts and came across The Life Changing Loaf of Bread.  It was Sunday, why not??  I used ground flax rather than the seeds and I think my dough was a little dry because it didn't hold together well and crumbled a bit after I took it out of the oven.  It still was very yummy but I think if you can get a hard loaf that is slice ready it will take better pictures AND make better toast!  I guess Nutella cancels out all of the good stuff in the bread, but it just tastes so good!!

While my bread was setting I made some Red Bean and Chorizo Stew from Aran Goyoaga's - Cannelle Et Vanille - Cook Book Small Plates and Sweet Treats.  This book was the first purchase I made after I found out I was gluten intolerant (I found her blog first which was consequently right before her book was published so the timing was impeccable).  It is beautifully photographed and everything I have made so far has been delicious!  I wrote to Aron to thank her for creating such a wonderful book and she was very kind and encouraging about the start of my GF journey.

 These little suckers are 2 ingredient cookies from The Burlap Bag.  As lovely Lauren suggests, I chose several "add-ins" for my cookies.  Some have dark chocolate chips, and some have cranberries.  I also added some vanilla and maple syrup to make them taste more like oatmeal cookies.  Next time I'm going to try peanut butter and maybe some coconut!  These are super easy and work well with frozen bananas.  Isn't it CRAZY how fast bananas go bad??  New plan: freeze immediately and then make yummy baked goods as desired:)   The recipe can be altered to make single portions - by this I mean using only a single banana and measuring oats accordingly.  What?  An entire banana plus oat meal seems like it would make more than one serving of cookies?  Well lets see how long healthy cookies with pieces of melted dark chocolate last in your kitchen.  Hey, I'm just saying.... plan accordingly or you will end up eating 2 bananas worth of cookies!

Sunday sounds busy....but Saturday I did nothing until lovely Erica Youns's B-day Party at the Jimmy!!  She is a very fancy lady so I had to step up the wardrobe. Sadly I miss-judged the dress code....... The Jimmy is more of a dress establishment!  Make note ladies!  It was still a great time and she still looked AMAZING on her big day:)

Pretty birthday lady:)

And then it was Monday.