The Calm After the Storm

**Sigh**

Do you ever just have weeks, not days but weeks, where you're like, Okay, I'm glad THAT week is over!?  Well, that's how I feel about last week and I AM glad it's over.  I had so much to do, got so little sleep and blah, blah blah.

At the same token, though, when one feels so busy and overwhelmed with "too much to do", one can be left with a feeling of accomplishment upon the tasks' completion.  So I do feel a little bit of that too (although mainly I feel relief and am just glad it's a new week).

One of the things I had to get done this past week (or so I thought) was to make a birthday treat for my friend, Patrick.  The "or so I thought" comes in here:  it was not his birthday.  Like, kinda not even close.  Here it's Wednesday and I'm making his raw chocolate peanut butter cream pie and then I realize, Hey wait, his birthday isn't January 15th (the date I made the pie was January 16th, by the way, so I still would have been off) but January 25th.  Rather than freeze his pie until next Friday, though, I opted to give it to him and we all got a good laugh out of it.  I also started to make him a card but I needn't go into further detail there...

Another of last week's "to dos" was to fill a baking order for a 30-person anniversary event.  When I first got the assignment I was super excited and geeked to make all the cute little heart-shaped goodies.  However, when the date rolled around and I realized, Uh, I have no time, I just wanted to get it done.

I did, of course, and Julie, my dear friend who teaches at the yoga studio where I work and is the person who placed the order, is such a sweetheart and was so appreciative.  Her gratitude made everything all worth while.  Back to Julie, though, and to show just you just how sweet she is, take a look at the cute little envelope of moolah she gave me for the treats!!

So today, Sunday, all those "have tos" are done.  I was able to do the things I truly had been wanting to do all week.  I made more almond milk as well as some almond pulp crackers with the milk's leftovers.  I also made some zucchini chips (well, I'm still making, actually, as they're in my dehydrator and will be for the next 16-20 hours).

The other day I got a new cookbook, Raw Energy by Stephanie Tourles and it's AWESOME!!!  I'm sooooo excited to make so many recipes from it because they all sound fabulous and simple.  The zucchini chips are filling my house with the most wonderfully fragrant Italian-y odor right now.  I can't wait to eat them!  Ooh!  And these chips, though not a meal, are my "recipe followed to a T. from a book" for the week.

Now, because I started all of these baking/cooking/uncooking activities right around after I awoke this morning I missed my usual morning yoga class.  I went instead to an Ashtanga class at 1:45 and it was AMAZING!  Truly one of the best practices I've had in months.

I used to do Ashtanga every morning at 6:00 am when I was in yoga teacher training but after the training ended I was like, That ain't happening anymore.  This girl wants her sleep, even if her "sleep" is only until the late hour of 7:30 am.  Today's class, though, reminded me just how much I love Ashtanga.  I truly felt so wonderful after today's practice that I might resume going to some 6:00 am classes, if only I can get my lazy butt outta bed at 5:10 in the morning!

My day continued to get better even after I got home.  I showered, got ready and then my mom and I headed out for Ann Arbor to partake in Restaurant Week!  I LOVE Restaurant Week and I was so thrilled that my mom was game to go!  She works full-time and does so much driving throughout the week that I wasn't sure she'd be willing to go to Ann Arbor for this event but because she has tomorrow off for MLK Day, she was on board!

We went to one of my all-time FAVORITE restaurants, Melange, and I had a wonderful Mexican food-inspired amuse bouche of a tortilla chip with beans, avocado, scallions, creaminess, heat and other magic, a first course maki roll, a ridiculous second course of mushroom polenta over braised Swiss chard with pickled onions and a smoked truffle sauce, and a dessert of the best-tasting sorbets I've ever had.  Flavors were blood orange and raspberry chambord.

My amuse bouche (the maki roll followed this but I gobbled it up before I snapped a photo).

Melange's interior, shot one.

Melange's interior, shot two.

My mama!!!

And the piece de resistance!  My entree!

A slightly closer shot of my entree.

Though it's hard to tell in this picture, I ordered a scoop of the blood orange and the raspberry chambord sorbet since I could not decide : /

I apologize for the poor lighting but Melange's ambiance did not lend itself to clear photos and I refuse to use flash.

All of this was accompanied, of course, by wine.  My wine of choice?  Fire Road Sauvignon Blanc.  Divine.

When I got home I was like, Hmm...there are still a few hours left in the day.  What else can I do?  So I made cookies.  I will be bringing them in to sell at work tomorrow and posting a recipe for them in tomorrow's post as well.

Good night!

...and good riddance!  Yeesh, was that long!  Another Frankenpost!