A Delightfully Delectable #WIAW

While many of y’all were busy celebrating Valentine’s Day with a loved one–whether that meant a fancy night out or a comfortable night in–I was on an airplane headed to Kentucky to visit one of my more-than-blends, Brittany. As Brittany has already done a perfect job of summarizing our time together and the food SHE (and sometimes we) ate, I will spend this What I Ate Wednesday post focusing on the delightfully delectable food–not only a riff on the title of Brittany’s blog, but a description of every meal and snack I had on my travels.Although I had, as usual, packed a veritable picnic for the plane, I didn’t munch that much. [Maybe the Diet Coke I will never deny myself on an airplane filled me up with its bubbly yum?]No worries, of course, because once we had made it back to Brittany’s house from the airport, I took full advantage of her promise of as much of the free banana and pear Chobani in her fridge as my hungry stomach little heart desired.

puffed rice, kashi cinnamon harvest, banana chobani, and trader joe's fig and sunflower butter

I’m pretty sure that both Brittany and her hubby secretly believed I had been sent from Virginia to eat them out of house and Chobani (and nut butter ).

pear chobani with puffed rice, cinnamon harvest cereal, oats + honey granola, and trader joe's pumpkin and raw almond butter

But both Brittany and I know the value (and joy) of a nighttime snack. Her favorite is a coconut microwave muffin, and mine is a bowl of Chobani.[Since I wasn't sent this flavor of bite, I was fig-in' excited to try it. I LOVED the real bits of dried fig in it.]

fig and orange chobani 'bite' with cinnamon, cereal, strawberries, and a dollop of trader joe's peanut butter

Being the house guest of a food blogger is amazing for many reasons, but one of the best is they don’t carethat you want to have a messy bowl of yogurt yumminess every night…or that you will eat oatmeal every morning.

vanilla and cinnamon oats, topped with apples, strawberries, pears, fig butter and a melty glop of sunflower butter

They also eagerly offer you strange-to-most specialty items like lucuma powder or (to DIE for) Amish cinnamon, and don’t bat an eyelash when you start covering everything in them.

cinnamon vanilla oats w. fruit, sunflower butter, and a sprinkling of lucuma

And did I mention that my “Welcome to Louisville” present was a near-empty sunflower butter container that Brittanyhad saved especially for me to use for my oats? [Perfect for traveling in my tote.]

sun warrior proats w. wild blackberries, blueberries, fig and chunky peanut butter

Of course, we did eat more than just yogurt and oats.

i don't even know what is in this bountiful box of beauty...but there was smoked tempeh + zesty tahini dressing involved

 The Whole Foods salad bar didn’t stand a chance…

an all-too-common sight.

…and lunch at a Lousiville landmark brought me a taste of honey harissa drizzled on Egyptian pink lentil stew, and a salad with extra roasted veggies and olive tapenade bruschetta.

the carrot-ginger dressing you can't see because i was busy drinking it.

Visiting a fellow blogger also means you get to make special requests for dishes you’ve seen on her blog. Cushaw Stew was the first recipe of Brittany’s I ever remember craving, and it was every bit as wonderful as I had dreamed it would befor the past 6 months or so.

peanuts on stew? totally taste bud-boggling.

I was also eager to try her Eggplant Dal and Thai Green Curry. We never got around to the dal, but the curry–altered from this recipe to include green beans and butternut squash–with jasmine rice more than made up for that. Sweet squash with spicy curry is a flavor revelation.

and the basil really IS as crucial as she says.

For my last lunch before leaving, I figured I might as well keep up our trend of eating every meal out of a bowl.

not my last lunch, but i had to express my newfound love of buckwheat groats on salad for crunch.

This giant salad featured ume plum vinegar I couldn’t resist trying, ground black pepper, and stone ground mustard for a spontaneous and surprisingly phenomenal ‘dressing.’

brittany basically watched as i cleaned out her fridge. she didn't seem to mind.

As you can see, Jenn and all of you other lovely friends-through-WIAW, the food in Kentucky was incredible. If you can believe it, the time we were able to spend together was 100x better. I’m pretty sure we were both about to suffer withdrawal symptoms when I left on Sunday afternoon. How blessed and lucky are we to find someone with whom we click so immediately and completely?

Make sure to check out Brittany’s side of this WIAW story.