Recent Meals + Cold Stone + DIY Iced Passion Tea

I am so happy to have a functioning keyboard on a laptop right now!

You don’t realize how important each and every letter on a keyboard is until one of them stops working.

I’m successfully set up on my new Mac (which was not easy but I won’t get into it) and ready to talk about recent meals and whatever else I have going on in my food world.

Let’s rewind to last Friday night when I had dinner at Cipollini.

Cipollini is definitely one of my favorite Long Island restaurants.

Zucchini linguine is still one of my go-to orders when out for dinner and I see it on the menu.

I had a cup of decaf coffee with below chocolate tarte dessert which I thought about after my run on Saturday when I didn’t feel well.

As I mentioned in Monday’s post, I had to cut that run short because I didn’t feel right. This was the first time I’ve needed to cut a run short like that since the 2014 Fitness Magazine Half Marathon.

My cup of decaf coffee at night was the only thing I can think of that may have been out of the ordinary for me prior to a run. I always drink coffee in the morning before a run, but never a cup at night? Could it have dehydrated me or something, even though it was decaf? I truly do not know, all know is that I didn’t feel well suddenly while running which was not at all normal for me. I was totally fine once I stopped running and have felt fine since that run, but still, it was so weird for me!

In other news, I recently mentioned that Trader Joe’s is always out of romaine lettuce. I finally asked WTF and was informed that Trader Joe’s is switching romaine lettuce suppliers which may be causing the issues. On this particular day of food shopping, I was not going to Whole Foods too so I grabbed the Southwest Chopped Salad Mix from Trader Joe’s just to have some sort of salad in the house.

I used the Southwest Salad chopped salad mix to create the below salad and added tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado, and Dr. Praeger’s veggie burger. It was quite good.

It would have been nice to have romaine lettuce in the house to make a salad when I was having a slice of Ezekiel toast smothered in vegetable cream cheese.

You know that if I crave anything, it’s vegetable cream cheese, right? Random I know, but vegetable cream cheese is a major favorite and major craving for me.

While I don’t eat vegetable cream cheese on a regular basis, I do eat it when the cravings hit, which is typically in the summer.

Check out this giant chopped salad from Town Bagel! It was SO BIG. I wish I remembered what I chose as my ingredients. I’m guessing it included my usual combo of tomato, cucumber, beets, chickpeas, roasted cauliflower, avocado, hearts of palm, and likely a few other vegetables.

It had been FOREVER since I last had Cold Stone Creamery! Who remembers my weekly obsession with Cold Stone creations?!

I didn’t get a waffle bowl this time but I did get a Like It size with vanilla yogurt, cookie dough, chocolate chips, whipped cream, and hot fudge.

And finally, can we please discuss who I think I am making my own Starbucks Iced Passion Tea?!

I bought the Tazo Passion Tea Bags and find it extremely quick, easy, and cheap to make my own Passion Iced Tea at home.

I add a squeeze of lemon and pour it all into this nice pink cup that I bought at Target.

While I can’t give you a specific recipe that I use to make my DIY Starbucks Iced Passion Tea (I am really basic about it), there are so many variations of recipes available if you search the internet. Here’s one site that offers a few variations on the Passion Iced Tea to try.