Fun Fun Fun weekend!!! Congrats to Larbs! It was fun to go through Davidson graduation again – 3 years after my own 🙂
Saturday and today were much more toned down than Friday night for me. Here’s a photo recap:
We arrived at Davidson in the afternoon for the Baccalaureate. The hub and I walked around campus for a while and checked out the recent growth and changes in the town. We lucked out with perfect weather!
I snacked on some trail mix I brought in a baggie around 4:30.
President’s Dinner
After the service, there was a President’s Dinner on the main quad lawn. The plates were pre-assembled. Most of them had chicken barbecue (which was good – I had a bite), but I asked what the vegetarian option was and was happy to hear they had lentil oat patties so I got that instead!
They were obviously made with vital wheat gluten like the chickpea patties because they had the same flavor and texture. They weren’t the greatest, but for a college cookout, I was impressed.
I didn’t eat the coleslaw (never have liked it) and left some melon (not a huge melon person) and I shared bites of the patty around the table, but I ate everything else.
Psych Reception
Later that night we went to a Psychology Dept. Reception and I had a few small handfuls of mixed nuts and just a sip of the husband’s wine and a bite of his brie on cracker.
Beer Truck Party
And even later, we attended the infamous “Beer Truck Party,” which is a senior class parent-sponsored party with kegs in a truck. I had a Blue Moon, but honestly, it didn’t taste much like Blue Moon (in a bad way).
The food varies from year to year depending on the planner. This year was….well. Pretty bad (in my opinion!). Chicken fingers, spring rolls, pig in a blankets, store-bought cookies, artichoke dip, mini pizzas – I’m not the least bit interested in any of ’em. But my family sure did dig in!
Here’s all the food I didn’t eat. Although I did have a few small nibbles only to confirm that it just wasn’t good.
I did have half of what looked like a homemade brownie bar that was pretty good –
We got back to the hotel around midnight and collapsed of tiredness.
Hotel Workout + Breakfast
I actually brought some workout clothes and did a quick workout in the hotel fitness room (about 40 minutes on the elliptical). I knew it would help wake me up and brighten my day, and it did.
After a shower, we hit up the hotel breakfast. But I found myself eating the usual 🙂 Our lunch reservations weren’t until 1:45 so I needed something to hold me over a long time. It didn’t seem like the time to experiment with cereals and bagels, so I made oatmeal with hot water, banana, and some crushed peanut trail mix I brought from home. Along with a carton of milk and coffee. I didn’t end up eating the yogurt – I really don’t like sweetened yogurt that much.
Commencement
Our graduation was held in the sports arena due to rain, but this was the first year in about 5 years that they could hold the ceremony out on the academic lawn!! It was so much prettier and sweeter than our dark indoor one.
The profs all lined up for the graduates to walk in!
Genes. My dad and I love magazines 🙂 (Yes, this was posed, but we did both bring them to read and we looked like this while waiting for the ceremony to start!)
Family photos with the grad:
We’re all Davidson alumni now!
“Celebratory Interlude”
Since our brunch wasn’t until 1:45 (every restaurant was booked through lunch!), Karen treated the group to what she referred to as the “celebratory interlude” at a wine bar across from the restaurant 🙂
I had about 1.5 glasses of a fabulous pinot (we’d had the Tolosa 2006 Pinot before – I highly recommend it!)
We were all a little tipsy by the time we sat down to brunch 😳
The graduate received a Red Sox hat for a present! She and Matt are moving to Boston in late June and she’ll be getting a specialist degree and masters in school psychology at Northeastern. I’ll be up to visit for sure!
Lunch
For lunch I started with ‘dessert’ – the best cornbread muffin of my life with honey butter. Mmmmmm!!
Followed by Apple-Butternut Soup (with apple chips and pumpkin seeds)
And a side salad with parmesan. I didn’t have any dressing (it wasn’t my style)
I also had a bite of the husband’s fried green tomato sandwich, mom’s pesto “Green” eggs and gouda mac’n cheese. All were grand!
Grocery Store
Some of you have been requesting some more grocery store trip shots. This week is strange because I’ve got my night school starting tomorrow so we just got a bunch of fresh stuff and will come up with recipes as needed.
- Celery
- Havarti from the deli
- Mushrooms
- Pepper
- Eggplant
- Strawberries
- Brown rice
- Zucchini
- Racchicio
- Sprouts
- Swiss Chard
- Cilantro
- Capers
- Plain yogurt
- Flavoroed yogurt
- Garbage bags!
- Spinach
- Pumpkin
- Sugar
- Bananas
- Deli turkey
- Goat cheese
- Lime
- Apple
- Lemon
- Orange
- Tomato
- Tofu
Sunday Dinner
Matt (Larbs’ Matt) had a soccer game near our house so we invited him for dinner 🙂 The husband said he was in the mood for pizza, so pizza it was. But we decided to do something more nontraditional: Cilantro Pesto with Mushrooms, Zucchini, Goat Cheese + Parmesan. He used the Grilled Flatbread Recipe for the dough, but multiplied it by 1.5 (and used whole wheat flour for the addition). It was our most perfect pizza dough yet! I made the cilantro pesto by whirring a bunch of cilantro in the Cuisinart with a handful of walnuts, about 1/4 cup parmesan and 1 tbsp olive oil. The veggies were grilled before they were added.
I wasn’t terribly hungry because of our late lunch and had 2 small pieces (we cut the pizza into 12 small instead of 8 medium slices). My toungue wanted to keep eating, but I was just not that hungry.
On the side we had a salad made with grilled radicchio, lettuce mix, sprouts, raw zucchini, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and homemade balsamic dressing.
I had a second serving of about 50% of what you see here –
So sad our weekend is over!
Courtney says
Kath it looks like you had so much fun! I loove your green skirt! Where did you get it? (If you dont mind me asking…)
Liza says
Hi everyone! I have a favor to ask my fellow KERF readers. I’m a student at UCLA and working on a project for a Social Communication and New Technology class… and my topic is blogging! Specifically, I’ve decided to look at how diet/ healthy eating blogs promote weight loss and maintenance among community members. I’ve created a survey (it’s short… only 10 questions) and was hoping you would all take it for me! I’ll be happy to share the results… I think it will be very interesting and informative for all of us. To access the survey, simply click my name “Liza” at the top of this post and it will take you to the survey. Thank you, thank you all in advance! I really appreciate it and wish you all a great week!
Liza says
P.S. I cleared posting this survey with Kath… so it’s all good! Thanks again!
jen says
will you visit cristin of eat like me while you’re in boston? she’s having a baby!
Kath says
Courtney ,
Thanks 🙂 It’s from Loemann’s, so I have no idea what other stores might carry it.
Jen,
I’d love to meet Cristin, but she’s a real-life celebrity! I’m too shy to email her 😳 Maybe I’ll run into her in a restaurant – that salad place she loves perhaps?
Kath
Kristie says
That looks like a really awesome weekend and so much fun! The Beer Truck party food sure doesn’t look very great… it’s amazing how much better healthy and REAL food looks in comparison to all that packaged, processed fried etc food. SO unappetizing!
babycakes says
Kath, I am in grad school about 5 minutes down the road from Northeastern (I’m at Simmons). I know we don’t know eachother, but being such a huge fan of you and your blog, I am so excited that you will be visiting Boston! Congratulations to your sister! I have a few Davidson alums in my family as well. It’s a fantastic school for sure. I hope your sister likes it here in Boston! So glad you all had such a nice time today. The pictures are great 🙂
hk says
I’ll be a bostonite myself…starting tomorrow 🙂 yay, let me know!
glad it was a great weekend, looks like a great celebration with friends and family!!
Good luck with classes tomorrow night, I’m sure it’ll be an exciting new class to add to your Nutrition/RD knowledge base 🙂
koootz says
yayaya i graduate soon and these pictures got me really nervous. I feel like I look so much younger than your sister. I too am living in Boston starting July!
tell your sister I say congrats and Boston is fun despite the cold- I like her new red sox hat!
VeggieGirl says
No doubt you had a fabulous, fun-filled, action-packed weekend!!
greenpeeps says
I’m a school psychologist, so I was excited to read that your sister is going into school psychology! 🙂
flipflops says
Yay Sox! I bought a red sox/green monster crib mobile. Start em young. Here’s a link on best of boston for the sis. I thought larbs was short for larabars. Good luck. My Northeastern Reunion is next year! Time flies. When you visit, make her take you to the Marino Center (great on-campus fitness center). The whole south end/back bay are full of cool restaurants.
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/best_of/category.html?show=6
Lindsay says
Kath,
Just wanted to say GO YOU! You are truly my inspiration for having a healthy relationship w/ food! I am not quite there yet as I have major issues resisting food at parties & at restaurants; however, when I saw how great you ate this weekend despite tons of processed/sugary goods, I was majorly inspired 🙂
Sidi says
Hey Kath, happy to see you back. It looks like your past weeks were really busy. Pictures are great.
lainb says
Is that your sister’s boyfriend? And his name is Matt too? He and your husband look like they could be brothers!! 🙂
working says
Liza, I did your survey and hope you get a lot of responses. I am in the midst of data collection for my doctoral dissertation, so I am very sympathetic!
Congratulations to the graduate! Always an exciting time 🙂
Suzanne says
wow, it looks like you had a fun weekend, Kath! You all look so dashing in your ‘dress’ clothes. 🙂
It’s funny…now that I am so used to eating healthy, when I see food like the food at the Beer Truck Party – I don’t find it as good as I used. Which is definitely a good thing! So I totally hear ya when you say you weren’t really into it.
Congrats to your sis! Best of luck to her at Northeastern!
Betsy says
happy graduation!!!
magpie says
Grilled radicchio – what a great idea! I usually make it in ratatouille, but I will have to try grilling it next time. And that honey butter with cornbread muffin looks soooo good. Cornbread muffins are terribly addicting.
Rose says
Kath! That black dress is so super cute! And that pizza looks amazing 🙂
yaz says
wow, you survive on only that amount of groceries for a week! i can’t believe it… we usually buy half the store on every trip to the strore. 🙂
Congrats to Larbs!
sarah says
the graduations looks like it was fun! and good luck starting night school! i am excited to see with how you deal with the long work days (packing lunch and dinner) because i have to do that so often for my job, and i NEED some ideas!
have a great week!
Danielle says
How exciting! Congratulations to your sister 🙂
CourtneyS says
Yea! Congrats to your sister. She will LOVE Boston. It’s my favorite place in the world!
Kath says
Bostonites,
When I come up, we’ll all have to get together for dinner and/or drinks 🙂 I’ll be sure to let you all know when I pick a weekend. It’ll probably be early August.
greenpeeps ,
Cool!! She’s really excited about her program.
Lindsay ,
Thanks 🙂
lainb ,
Yep – she’s dating a Matt too, who she also met at Davidson. And you all have me convinced that they do look alike now!
yaz ,
Like I said in the post, that’s not really a normal amount of groceries since we have weird meals this week. We also had milk and bread already. But we never had many packaged items.
Kath
Teddy says
wow that butternut squash soup looks amazing!
Congrats to the Grad
Teddy