The SC and I love Chattanooga. It is the perfect weekend destination and we took an spontaneous trip there last weekend.

We usually eat at the Blue Water Grille which has some amazing seafood but felt like doing things a little different this time. I tweeted about our trip on our way down there and our friend Cambrey suggested a fun pizza place, Lupi’s. We don’t usually eat at pizza places all that often but for some reason after a long work week and the two hour drive pizza and beer sounded amazing.

The place was packed so we had to sit at a small table in the back of the restaurant until a better table cleared. This table was a great place to sit though because it was actually an old Ms. Pac-Man game turned into a table. The SC loves Pac-Man so this ended up being a great place to sit while we waited for our food.

We also had some fun with the camera while we waited…
While the SC and I have very similar taste in food (har, har) we have a hard time deciding on pizza toppings. He always wants meat, meat, and more meat and I’m bigger on the veggies and exotic cheeses. We compromised with a strange but delicious concoction of Italian sausage, artichoke hearts, and roasted corn.

I was very happy to indulge in a ginormous cider and the yummy pizza.

What is your favorite pizza topping(s)?

BTW don’t forget to check out the post below this for my delicious giveaway!!

My love for all things peanut butter is immense. I like nothing better than to stick a spoon in the jar and get the nutty concoction stuck to the roof of my mouth. I like it in asian food (peanut sauce), on chocolate ice cream, on a banana, in my oatmeal, and on a good ole peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Unfortunately, we all know peanut butter has a LOT of fat in it. And even the reduced fat version isn’t all that forgiving. So I was ESTATIC when I found the beloved Better ‘n Peanut Butter. This stuff is AMAZING and the best part is that it only has 2.5 grams of fat and 100 calories per serving. You can feed your peanut butter addiction and still fit into your skinny jeans.

I love this stuff so much that I had to make a special trip to trader joe’s today because I have been out for a whole week (the horrors!) I intended to buy two jars so I wouldn’t have to venture out for more for at least a few days (oh, I kid…this stuff lasts me about 3 weeks.) However, I decided to share my love for Better ‘n Peanut Butter with all of you and thus I bought a third jar. This third jar shall travel far at the end of the week to visit one of you lovely blog readers. I hope a wonderful relationship is born.

Anyway, let’s get to the good stuff. The details. You have the opportunity to win four entries by following the steps below:

1. Comment on this post & tell me your favorite way to eat peanut butter (1 entry)
2. Become a follower of this blog (1 entry)
3. Blog about this giveaway (1 entry)
4. Tweet about this giveaway, include @heatherbee21 in your tweet please! (1 entry)

Yep, thats 4 ways to win this incredibly tasty food!!! The contest will close at 5 p.m. on Friday, October 15. Check back for the winner! Good luck!

Last Sunday the SC and I went to see the musical 9 to 5 at TPAC. I love, love, love the theatre (especially musicals) and we had been looking forward to this for awhile. My parents gave me season tickets to TPAC for christmas last year but the season doesn’t start until September! We wanted to go to dinner before the show but also not spend an arm and a leg. Luckily we had a restaurants.com gift certificate for The Mad Platter in Germantown which is very close to the theatre. We had eaten there once before a year ago or so but I think I only had soup on that visit. This time we both ordered entrees.

The menu changes seasonally and the fall menu had just been created. I love to look at restaurant menus online before I go so I can cut down on the 45 minutes it takes me to decide on what to order. Unfortunately, I had been looking at the summer menu online so I had to order something else.

For some reason nothing on the menu really appealed to me all that much and I ended up ordering the Tuscan Linguini even though it came with a green olive sauce and I don’t really care for olives. Major fail. While the dish is pretty I didn’t enjoy it very much.

The SC ordered the pork dish which as you can see came with some strange foam on top! He wasn’t too impressed with his dish either. It seemed to lack real flavor.

Sorry to all you Mad Platter lovers out there, it didn’t strike our fancy this time!

On Friday we culminated our apple unit by making apple bread in the bread machine. I had forgotten to go to the store to get some of the ingredients and on Friday morning I really wanted to be a slacker teacher and tell the kids we’d have to wait for another day. However, my stellar teacher skills came out and I jumped out of bed early to get all of my things from home into the car so I could head to the store before school started. It was well worth it because my students loved this experience. Since I teach in a low income school I love giving my students experiences they may never have. I’m sure not too many of them have made their own bread before so this was a fun (and delicious) experience.

I simply googled the recipe and used one of the first ones I found. I adapted it by adding pieces of apple (which seemed to all magically disappear into the bread…next time I’ll use more and bigger chunks) It was my first time to add anything to my bread but I am anxious to make a cranberry pecan bread soon. 

Apple Bread

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups apple cider
2 tablespoons butter, softened
3 cups white bread flour
2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

Directions:

1. Place ingredients in the bread machine pan in the order suggested by the manufacturer.
2. Select Sweet setting (recommended to use light crust setting) and start machine.

The past week of Kindergarten has been devoted to learning all about apples. We have sung songs, read poems, learned about Johnny Appleseed and culminated our learning with making applesauce in the crockpot. This is a great idea for a family to do as well. The apple sauce is DELICIOUS. Here are a few pictures from our experience followed by the recipe at the end.

We brainstormed on the board what we thought the ingredients would be. The kids came up with this list all by themselves! 

Each student had the chance to add some ingredients. Wish I could show you their sweet faces!
cooking, cooking…the room smelled sooo good!
Ready to eat!

Crock Pot Applesauce

Ingredients:

10 apples
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
few dashes of cinnamon

Directions:

1. Chop 10 apples into small pieces and place in crockpot.
2. Add 1/4 cup of water, 1/4 of sugar, and a few dashes of cinnamon.
3. Cook on high 5 hours.
4. When finished mash with spoon or potato masher.
5. Allow to cool and serve.

Next time I may not add any sugar as it was pretty sweet. It tasted a lot like apple pie filling and the kids loved it!