E: White Bean & Spinach Crock Pot Soup & Blogger Meet up Filed under ( Beans, blogger meet up, Healthy, Italian, Restaurant Review, Soup, Vegetables, vegetarian )

Normally, I would be sad that it is Monday “already”….but I’m so excited for our doctors appointment later this week…that there are no complaints from over here today! I’m thinking about doing a guess the babies sex giveaway. The prize would be a homemade baked good (your choice: vegan almond butter chocolate chunk cookies, vegan chocolate, chocolate chip pumpkin muffins or peanut butter flour chocolate chip cookies)- would y’all be interested? If I get a good response, I will put the giveaway up on Wednesday!! Two things I want to share with you:

1) Blogger brunch at Charleston’s Cafe.

I had been looking forward to this get together for quite some time! Unfortunately, a few people couldn’t make it last minute, but a great time was had by all who made it out. The cafe already had a longgg line at 9:30:

I started my meal with a great cup of decaf:

 

And ordered oatmeal with strawberries and skim for breakfast:

 

All the ladies!! Me (+bump), Blair, Lindsay and Mandi:

2) I made a very tasty & healthy soup the other night that I must share! I found this crock pot/slow cooker white bean & spinach soup recipe through FitnessMagazine.com. The soup does not contain a lot of ingredients but packs great flavor! I followed the directions almost exactly. I did use a TJs rice mixture instead of just brown rice and I added in 1/8 teaspoon of ground red pepper (for just a tiny bit of kick- I’m a red pepper addict ;)). The outcome:

Not gorgeous- but so good! Josh loved it too. Along side our soup, we each had fruit (peaches for Josh, cantaloupe for me) & a baked tortilla (cut into “chips). Josh also had a string cheese and two peanut butter flour chocolate chip cookies:

  

A wonderful meal! We had this for dinner on Friday and enjoyed leftovers on Sunday. I’m off to teach Body Pump. Enjoy the last day of February!