Ha 
Bet you wonder what I mean there!
Well let’s just say, there is no need to tell you how many bottles of vino we drank Friday night, but let’s just that we certainly indulged!
The day started off pretty good. Felt awesome from spinning last night and was doing my Friday happy dance in my desk chair at work. Breakfast was the same: coffee, oatmeal and raisins. Lunch was a ginormous salad of romaine, iceburg, red cabbage, carrots, lots-o-peppa and feta (mmm, feeetttttaaaa). Add 2 tbsp fat free Balsamic dressing and shake it up. Side note: do you shake your salad? If not, you should because you end up needed much less dressing this way Check out this baby! I was sooooo full afterwards and feel happy to have some veggies in me.
Mmm, salad
Instead of the green, crunchy grapes I packed as my afternoon snack, I opted for a Grande Iced 2 Pump Vanilla Latte from Sbux. It’s 80 and muggy in Cali (unusual) so this really hit the spot.
Notice the misspelled name!
Onward to Girls’ Night prep. After conehead Naava and I went for a walk, I did some cleaning (I’m a neat freak) and got set to food preps.
First: Cookie’s Pesto (Cookie is my mother-in-law, Chris 
)
Several handfuls washed and patted dry basil leaves (stems removed)
Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
EVOO
Salt’n'Pepper
Pinenuts (I used roasted)
Garlic (the more cloves, the merrier)
Get your food processor out and start throwing things in. Okay that’s not fair, it does take a little more than that. Fill halfway up with basil leaves and drizzle some EVOO in. Blend for a bit. Then add some coarsely chopped cheese (think 1/2 in by 1/2 in). Throw in maybe 1/4 cup pinenuts and a coarsely chopped garlic cloves. Blend. Not that you’ve got your basic mixture. Start the taste testing. From here, I add pepper and a wee bit of a salt. But then I end up adding another set of all the above ingredients. I usually end up using (in total)
4 handfuls Basil
Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (deck of cards size)
1/2 cup pinenuts
2-3 garlic cloves
3-4 tbsp EVOO
Dash(es) of salt
and 1/2 tsp pepper
YUM! Some lovely add ins are: sundried tomatoes, any other kind of cheese, walnuts and/or pecans, artichokes, spicy peppers, and arugula. There are obviously many more, but these are what I’ve tried.
Basil galore
Pesto batch #1
What’s all this pesto to do? Well, cover our pizzas of course! I love pizza dough from TJs. Yes, I’m aware that dough is not that hard to make, but I honestly really think their dough is delish, especially the whole wheat.
On the pizza went:
Even shmear of pesto
Sliced yellow zuchinni
Orange bell pepper
Roma tomatoes
Yellow onions
Pepper (of course)
Bake for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees and you are good to go!
Veggies!
The two masterpieces
But less, I forget — there were appetizers as well, including Roasted beets with goat cheese and whole grain crackers:
Such a beet fan!
Dessert was another recipe from Julie – pumpkin spice cookies! Have I told you about my love affair with pumpkin? It’s quite sick really. I try to find ways to incorporate it in all my food, so when I saw this super simple recipe on PBF, I had to try it!
Even the uncooked dough is tasty!
Hello lovers!
And Rachel brought us Sprinkles cupcakes too Definite WIN!
Cinnamon, Vanilla, Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate, and Doggy Cupcake
Naava loved hers
Us ladies stayed entertained by DVRed auditions of So You Think You Can Dance and lovely glasses of vino!
