Avena

How about a post with no real point?  Sounds good to me!  :).

So back in 2008, when I went to Panama with my dad, I bought this tiny carton of something called "Avena."  It was delicious.  It's like an oatmeal drink and tastes all cinnamon-y.  I had mostly forgotten about it until one day Jeremy and I tried a drink called "horchata" here locally at a Mexican restaurant.  Not exactly the same thing, as horchata is made from rice instead of oats.  And also seems to be more dairy-free.  But still made me remember the avena.  And oh how I wished we could find some avena around here!  I finally remembered at some later date to google it.  And I found a recipe for it!  I was so excited, and I "pinned" it to my pinterest for reference at a later time. 

That time has come.  And oh. my. goodness.  It did not disappoint!  It probably wasn't the EXACT same (but it's been 4.5 years, so I'm not exactly fresh on the exact taste), but it sure is close.  And delicious.  And now I'm cooking up another batch to have tomorrow morning before church :).  Yum.  Jeremy likes it too.

I also tried a copycat recipe for Olive Garden's Chicken Gnocchi Soup that I found on Pinterest.  Not exactly the same, but still very good!  I will make it again :).  Definitely a recipe keeper. 

And in case you wanted these recipes...  Here you go!
Soup
Avena drink

Yesterday at about 1 p.m., Jeremy got a call from work saying he didn't need to go in.  What a happy surprise!  (Unfortunately that surprise didn't extend into tonight, but I guess you take what you get...).  So we got to do a date night :).  My original plan was to just buy some ice cream as a treat for us to have as a semi-date night thing, since I wasn't anticipating him having a night off for at least 3 more weeks.  And we think of ice cream as a treat.  Well, I still bought the ice cream :).  haha....  Butterscotch oatmeal cookie or something like that.  Definitely different!  But we had a chance to go out for date night, so we did :).  We headed to Applebee's and I ordered a steak and Jeremy got a steak fettuccine.  I will say I was kind of disappointed in the amounts of food for the price and the quality of the sirloin.  Golden Corral has better tasting steaks.  We don't have one of those around here.  But it was nice to go out on a date with my sweetheart :).  And then when we got home, since we're both used to staying up late; we continued date night with popcorn and Cool Runnings as we snuggled up on the air mattress (which really doesn't fit 2...).  Such a fun date night :).

And last, but not least.  Here's a couple of clowns!  Haha...  They were calling themselves that after they found Uncle Jeremy's hats.  And they put on a circus show for us before I took them home.  We had them Thursday evening while both Christina and Nick were at work.  They are sweet girls.  And I know my dad loves to see a picture of them every now and then :).