Featuring FreezeWell PlayWell

                                      

Eat Well Play Well cooks for you!
 

With all that life has in store for us, the everyday planning and preparing of dinner can seem like a tiring chore. At the end of your long day, imagine coming home to a home cooked meal for your family that is both affordable and nutritious.

 
We do all the shopping, prep and packaging. You simply take the meal out of your freezer a day or two before you would like to serve it and follow the simple heating directions. You now have a meal which you feel good about eating and serving to your family.


 We start with the freshest ingredients and create healthy, wholesome dishes for you to enjoy straight out of your kitchen.

This is one of our classic dishes, chicken lettuce wraps.

This is a batch of our Sweet Potato Mash, served complete with poached eggs. 
What a great way to start your busy day!

This is our Italian Wedding Soup with homemade turkey meatballs. 
We will be bringing this soup back soon, as our clients couldn't get enough.

 Here we have Herbes de Provence

Here we have the filling to our coveted Paleo Pot Pie.  This dish is made with almond flour, almond oil and coconut milk.   An amazing way to have a comfort food while staying on track.

 This is an assemly line of Paleo Pot Pies cooling after baking in the ovens.

Up front, you will see a shredded Kale saute, this was served alongside a flavorful chicken dish.

We put in a hard days work, and you have dinner all week long. all for you and your taste buds.

Eat Well Play Well is excited to cook for you.  You will be pleased when you have a freezer full of premade, homemade options to choose from.

In order to be notified of menu updates and cook dates, please email eatwellplaywell@verizon.net to be added to our email list.

FreezeWell, PlayWell also hosts assembly night parties in your home....

What a great excuse to have a party. 

Grab a few close friends and walk into our assembly night.   This is a casual and fun atmosphere filled with appetizers, drinks and good friends.   You assemble your meals at your chosen stations, adding or deleting ingredients as you choose.  

The best part about this night is the days following.   Your freezer has nutritious and easy to serve meals in it.   This will no doubt, remove some stress from your busy evening.

We don't use your kitchen, we just use your counter space and when we leave we don't leave a trace of evidence that we were there.

What's for dinner?  So many options!

This is a fully stocked freezer after a few hours of cooking at FreezeWell PlayWell.  We'd love to share our treasures with you!

Please note, that in order to connect directly with only those who are interested, all of our notifications regarding Cook to Order Dates and Party Dates are done directly to email subscribers only.  Shoot us a quick email, so you can be added to that list.  We only send a couple emails a month.     eatwellplaywell@verizon.net

FreezeWell, PlayWell helps to cater a baby shower....

This cake was provided by a baker of the party host's choice, but isn't it beautiful~

We are excited to share our enthusiasm for nutritious and convenient meals with you soon.

Have a great day and Eat Well and Play Well~

 

Thank you so much for your interest.  Please bear with us while we switch over from blog to website.  We will soon have our website up and running and this will resume as a fun food blog.  Again, thanks for stopping by!

 

Please note, that in order to connect directly with only those who are interested, all of our notifications regarding Cook to Order Dates and Party Dates are done directly to email subscribers only.  Shoot us a quick email, so you can be added to that list.  We only send a couple emails a month.     eatwellplaywell@verizon.net

Night Market Little Saigon

After a hard working weekend, we needed a quick escape.    Sunday night at 7pm we found ourselves at the last night of the Little Saigon Summer Night Market, in Westminster.  We wandered around exploring and as we left we discussed how glad we were that we went.  It is only 10 minutes tops from our house and it felt like a whole other world.    I first read about this in the trusty AAA Magazine, in the beginning of summer, and put it in my Cozi family Organization App under the category of "fun things to do."  I came a crossed the dates recently and marked my calendar for last day, hoping we'd find time.   Sometimes, you have to schedule fun or else you'll never get there.

In all honesty, my first instinct was to crawl up into a ball and sleep but I have a hard time doing that because I'm a pretty "antsy" person.  I can't imagine why I was tired by Sunday evening: I'm carrying a watermelon in my belly and I did a "shop and cook" all day Saturday and an "office organization and tail end of a cook on Sunday."
I decided that running ragged is more satisfying then being on the couch, and we set out to our mini adventure.  Besides, I did have some couch time Saturday in the pm, while my hubby recovered from his two day tournament by hibernating (picture sleeping bear) on the couch for a few hours.  We now have access on our TV to Amazon Prime movies/shows, as well as Netflix streaming.  With this, I have newly discovered watching TV series' on these apparatuses.   With summertime series scheduling, when I do turn on the TV I find myself not having a clue what to watch.  I'm a DVR creature of habit and pretty bad at channel surfing.   Anyways, this is my new solution.   I've been watching Parenthood Series 3 as my first series.  Between the ipad and the TV, I am getting through the series in a few weeks.  I feel so accomplished, just kidding. 


Back to the Little Saigon Night Market...


This was a food faire extravaganza with a row of vendors for shopping in the middle.

I do wish I had taken more photos, but 1) I didn't bring my camera and only had my phone and 2) I didn't want to look like too much of a tourist, we already stood out quite a bit.   So apologies, maybe more photos next year.

My husband quickly showed his adventurous eating side and was tasting grilled oysters.   It was massive.   

Bonus - the prices of food was fantastic.  When you go to some of these faires or food truck events, you leave hungry and broke.  Not the case here.

Next we shared (well, I think I got about 20%) a pork skewer, which had been roasted on the open flame bbq.  It was tasty and he commented on how he loved the sweet tasting marinade that they use. 

We did a lap around and settled back in the front where it was crowded, by the live music.  Here we ordered: Bo Bia.
Bo Bia, (I am missing some accent marks) which is Carrot & Jicama Roll w Vietnamese Sausage.    At first glance, I said, "Oooh Spring Rolls."  This very nice lady in front of us said, this one is actually Jicama with Vietnamese Sausage and Basil.  We got talking a little and she explained a couple things to us.  She was also pregnant, turns out she is delivering this Thursday so we wished her congratulations and best of luck to her.  

It was fun to watch the lady make the rolls because I have made spring rolls a few times and she of course was a speedy pro, in comparison.  I was wondering about the pink tray that she was making them on.  It appears that it is just a plastic tray with holes on it, which helps it not to stick after a quick dunk in hot water.    You can barely see in my photo but to her right (our left) she had an electric skillet going and a pot which was has a split in middle.  Half was for her hot water and in the other half she had the jicama, carrots, and sausage piled up.  After dipping the wrap in the water, placing it on the pink tray and filling it with the fillings, she would turn to her left and grab some basil, and then add the hoison sauce and a spicy sauce, and roll it up.

I also ordered some little round beds of Curry Rice with shrimp.  We had to wait for some more hot ones to be made and we got some hot ones and some not so hot ones.  We should have asked for all hot ones, because they were of course the best.

Our only ordering mishap was the Cabbage Plate.  It looked like Vermicelli noodles but when we got it, it was definitely a vegetable that looked like noodles.  He thought cabbage, I am not convinced it was cabbage but I can't put my finger on what it was.  Maybe more jicama.  Unfortunately, sorry no photo for examination.






I originally took this photo because I have a good friend named Mai, who would also appreciate this event.   (Hi Mai~)  But it gives a good image of the booths where were ordering from.   Talk about some hard working women.

There was one line that was extra long, which of course intrigued me.  A 'you know a restaurant is good by the long wait outside,' type of feeling came over me.  It turns out it was for Sweet Tofu.  They had one option at this booth and it was Sweet tofu in three sizes.   So naturally, I ordered sweet Tofu, in a medium.  I was second in line when the huge pot of tofu ran out, I had flash backs to a couple funny fast food stories I have that have to do with pregnancy cravings and not being able to get the desired foods, but that is another story.   We (The people in front of me and behind me) got comfortable and consoled each other with laughs.   The new pot would be here in 5 minutes.  It, and another full pot, came in less than 5 minutes and we were back in business.   They must have brought it from their restaurant down the street.   They open this very very large pot and it is one big piece of tofu.  They very methodically scoop small pieces off into your bowl and pass it down the line to the next server who adds the sweet.  It was (from what I could figure out) condensed milk, boba, candied ginger and a sweet syrupy sauce.  It was tasty, however I think it is a bit of an acquired taste.  The candied ginger pieces were extremely potent when you bit into them.  I ended up taking it home and enjoying it when we got home while I could sit down.  Did I mention tired feet that weekend? 

While I was waiting in line for my tofu, the hubby explored his options.  He definitely took the "When in Rome" approach.  He said he tasted Coconut Escargot (which they gal gave him for free) and came back with a bowl of snail looking items also.   I don't know the exact name, but he said they were good.  I watched with a semi intrigued face but did not partake in the sucking from the shells process.   He said all the (not to be taken wrong) "old ladies" were in line for these.  Probably because they are more traditional and have enjoyed them for many years.   He fit in like a charm, I'm sure....

It was a fun hour and a half out on the town.  We had to leave because the neighbor called and said that his sprinklers were going to go off on my husband's open window truck at 8:30.  It was good timing though, we had tasted plenty and were ready to settle in for the weeknight.

I hope you enjoyed our little adventure, we sure did.

Have a great day and Eat Well and Play Well~

Freeze Well, Eat Well

You may or may not know it, but Eat Well, Play Well also has a division referred to as Freeze Well, Eat Well.

The details of this great expanding venture are on the next few tabs of this blog, take a look.   We are cooking this weekend and are excited about this month's menu, which is sure to please many hungry appetites. 

This freezer if full of made to order healthy, homemade meals.  Imagine having your freezer stocked full of these scrumtious items and not wondering what's for dinner every night!

You simply pull the meals out a day or two before you would like to eat them and place them in the refridgerator to thaw.    Follow the simple cooking or heating instructions and you have yourself a meal.

 Here we have the rolled lasagna order, split in half.   

Placed in a beautiful baking dish and baked as per directions and you feel good about what you are serving yourself and your family.   Have you checked the sodium content on commercial frozen meals lately?

Here I added some brussel sprouts, you could add whichever side you please or simply eat it alone.    (There is spinach in this dish, so you can count that as your greens if you'd like :) )




We have many dishes which come in the baking dish already.  These are perfect for feeding a family or for guaranteeing leftovers for a couple.

This "Mexican Casserole" browned up nicely.   You wouldn't know it by tasting it, but this dish was made with cottage cheese to keep it light and healthy.

 I was feeding a small group, so I added some rice and some black beans.



We also do parties where you invite a few girlfriends over and we set up stations where you can prepare your own meals.  Imagine leaving a great party, with dinner for the week!  What a great excuse to meet up with the ladies. 


Assembly parties do not require any cooking in your kitchen and when the party's over we leave your area just as we found it.

Have a great day and Eat Well and Play Well~

Camping

We are headed out camping tomorrow for the weekend after an almost full day of work for the both of us. 

A little Friday to Sunday trip to Leo Carrillo State Beach, which is in Malibu about an hour and a half north of us, we are hoping for the traffic fairies to fly our way.  We've never been to this campsite but the reviews and recommendations that I've gotten say it's a great spot. I made these reservations over 6 months ago, I'm pretty sure it was before I knew I was pregnant, but it should be a good time, round belly and all.  We are upgrading from our normal camping mattress to our full-on queen size air mattress, which we use when we have extra guests in the house.  Yes, we have a converter to blow it up directly from our Granola Hippy Car.   

I am hoping for some relaxing time in the sand, under a mellow sun, while felling cool ocean breeze.  It has been so hot here the last couple weeks, that I am dreaming of the days of  sweaters and blankets.  Actually in all honesty, last night I had nightmares about my child birthing trip to the hospital, but I'm sure it's just the hormones, the reading I did at lunch yesterday, and the realization that I am in my third trimester and that the 3 month count down has begun.


Time to talk about the food.


We decided to attempt some simple pre-prepped cooking for our camping trip.  This really didn't take long to do, i had it all packaged up in about a half an hour and even had time to sit down at the computer tonight! 

Can you guess what we'll be eating? 

Clockwise from the top we have bread for our tuna sandwiches kit (low mercury tuna from Sprouts).  I made up a little mayonnaise mix which has curry and salt/pepper, I also packed some hummus and I have some shredded veggies which will go in the tuna as well.  On the side, we have some red pepper sticks to dip in the extra hummus.   Below that bag we have our dutch oven Stew Kit.   There are beef chunks in there, they are just hiding.   At the 6 o'clock position we have a dutch oven pizza kit.   I read you can place an aluminum pie tin in the dutch oven and cook the crust in that.  Then layer on your toppings and cook some more and you have a yummy pizza.  They only thing I had to purchase for this was the crust and the sausage.  I decided to go with sausage because pepperoni has nitrates in it, and apparently nitrates aren't that great when you are pregnant.  At Sprouts they have amazing homemade chicken sausages (the price is pretty good too, I think I paid $2.00 for these two full size, braut size sausages.) and I snatched up a spicy one for the hubby and a regular one for me.  I figure we'll grill them up, use half for the pizza and half as a side to the pizza.  More protein for a carb based meal.





The rest of the items are goodies.  Well, we have the one bag of brown, which is the pup's food and treats and the rest are our people treats.     The clementines and fruit snacks are for my snacking needs and the almonds are for the hubby's snacking needs.  The plastic container holds chocolate chips, mini mallows, and caramels, a pantry clean out with a smile.  These goodies will get stuffed into banana boats which will be wrapped in foil and thrown into the fire.   A little something I saw on The Pioneer Woman the other day, I doubt she'll let us down.  We also have popcorn that we can attempt to pop over a fire.

Hopefully it works out and we have the patience for everything to cook.  We actually have a portable stove with pots and pans but all this dutch oven cooking seems so exciting.  Not pictured is a carton of egg substitute and some bacon that we will cook up on our stove one morning.  The other morning we will probably have yogurt, granola, watermelon and/or store bought smoothies.

Have a great weekend~ I will be attempting to unplug and reload, all while eating well and playing well.

Julia Child

Happy 100th Birthday to Julia Child today.  I love the dedication picture on the front page of google today.

You can watch full episodes of her show here: PBS Julia Child

A fun quote from the Washington Post: "She had an incredible work ethic; she loved a good joke; her work is, perhaps, more relevant than ever; even longtime chefs were thrilled when she complimented their dishes; any extra effort that it took to see her in person or on television was worth it; it’s okay to make mistakes as long as you learn how to fix what went wrong; cooking is fun."  Washington Post Julia Child 

Have a great day and Eat Well and Play Well ~

A Quick-Fix and A Throw Together Lunch

Sometimes the best meals or snacks are not planned and come out of a quick burst of creativity.

I had just returned from a store called the HB Farmer's market, which has a deli of fresh hummus, tzatziki, and baba ghanoush.  Don't mind if I do.   Shopping makes you hungry, so it was quickly snack time.

 My husband was putting some of his fresh caught fish to good use and made himself a scrumptious fish salad.

 We also wanted to try out a quick recipe suggestion from a friend and whipped up these baked breaded zucchini coins.   They turned out delicious.

It all came together on the table. 

I thought I would leave this photo un-cropped because in doing so, it tells a story. 

It reminds me that this was a Sunday afternoon, the day after our anniversary.  I see part of the gift that I got for my husband which was this mini portable ping pong set.  (5 year gift tradition is wood, which was difficult to adhere to)  We had a nice little rally that day set up on the kitchen table, a little playfulness goes a long way.   You can see he is patiently waiting for me to snap the photo before he eats the meal he (mostly) just prepared.  Good thing he has that beer in hand, to buy me a few seconds.  You can see my camera lens cover on the table, which shows my haste in "Wait, let me take a quick picture of this gorgeous food."

Here are some other quick snacks or meals that have made it on a plate.   These are what I like to call "quick fixes" because they are satisfying, healthy, and are made up, from "what's in the kitchen."

Simple Pear Slices and Cinnamon and Sugar Toast.  A sweet alternative to junk food. 

 Using left over steak, I was able to quickly able to assemble a nutritious steak taco.  Look at all the colors.

 Add an orange on the side and we may just have a well rounded meal or snack.

Here we have another quick taco with a Trader Joe's chicken patty and peppers.  On the side is cucumber, tomatoes, hummus, green onions, salt, pepper, oil and vinegar.  Turns out to be a wholesome salad.

Have a great night and Eat Well and Play Well ~ 

Maine and Boston

A couple weeks ago we spent 6 days in Maine and in Boston.  We had a great time seeing new sights and catching up with friends.  It was a much needed get away, as it had been way too long since we had flown anywhere together "just because."

We took a red eye out on Wednesday night and landed in Boston around 6am. It ended up working out quite well because our hotel was able to get us a room when we showed up at 7am.  We figured the chances of this happening was a long shot and were happy to settle in and have a spot for our heads for a little nap.

We woke up late morning and headed out onto the town, hungry as ever.

The day progressively got better as we sought out new sights and tastes.

One place went to was The Paramount Beacon Hill, Boston

This was a bustling breakfast/lunch joint.  You walk up to the counter and place your order with the cooks.  The line wrapped two fold in this long narrow cafe. 

Once you received your order and paid, they helped you quickly find a table in the crowded dining area. 

Now there a few things that I usually don't order for breakfast and French Toast is one of them, they just usually seem too indulgent.  However, this day I went for it, figuring hey I am indulging a pregnancy craving and we are on vacation, aka our "Baby Moon."  Yes, we are expecting our first baby in November, so mama is 5 months pregnant.

My fruit on top came late, but it was worth the wait.  With the butter and a little bit of syrup, my belly and mouth were smiling ear to ear.    The meal was not lacking on flavor, by any means, and I can definitely see why it was so crowded.   (I had searched out breakfast places before we came, knowing that we may be stranded without our room, and this was one of the top listed places)

We walked around a lot of Boston that day, poked our heads into the Quincey Market which is a food site to see.  Think - food court extravaganza.  We walked down by the water, and eventually we ended up jumping on a tour bus towards the end of the day and we were able to spend an hour or so visiting the U.S.S. Constitution.   It was great to see the city as a whole as they whisked us around their tour loop.   We had him dump us off in China town in the late afternoon and decided to seek out a tasty place for a light "second meal."  It was basically our lunch, but it was a very late lunch.   We stumbled upon Winsor Dim Sum Cafe, which turned out to be a treat.   I let my husband order on this one and we ended up with a great little spread.   

We feasted on pot stickers, steamed pork buns, shrimp shumai, and a yummy noodle dish.

Dunkin Donuts

Dunkin Donuts is EVERYWHERE in Boston so it should make my food report.   We so have Starbucks all over the place here in SoCal, and they have Dunkin Donuts on what seems like every corner in Boston.   I had previously heard their coffee was good, I didn't test it myself but my husband enjoyed a cup and we shared a few donut holes, just because.

After regrouping back at the hotel room and putting on our evening attire, we decided that our one night in Boston should be spend exploring the North End of Boston  or "Little Italy."  We took the T or the Train Subway system to the North End, boy can it be confusing for newbies but we made it.  I really felt like it was an important piece of the Boston adventure, I may have been alone on this thought, but we were glad we did it.  Once in Little Italy, we picked a place that was off the main drag, but looked busy.  We ended up heading out and eating late but they were still going strong.

This was our Caprese appetizer, what a cute way to serve this dish.

My photos were limited on this meal, because it was very dark in there and we were shy about snapping a bunch of pictures of our food.  We didn't want to look like tourist or anything...

We hopped in a taxi in order to get back to our hotel, as it was approaching 11:30 or so.  At the last minute we decided to have him drop us off at Cheers, the Original Cheers.  There is a Cheers down by Quincy Market, but the other one right below Beacon Hill is distinguished as the original Cheers.  The outside was used in the show whenever they shot the outside.  The inside was much smaller and laid out nothing like the bar on the show.   It turns out they just expanded upstairs by making a replica bar of the show's bar for tourist.  This was special to my husband because his dad loved the show.

Yes, we brought a mug home. The theme song has been sung a few times while putting the mug to use, since it has been home.

Here we are navigating our way out of Boston, I have three maps and an email print out in my lap, not to mention my cell phone with google maps active and in use.   Luckily, we had no problem getting out or with the drive to Maine.  We had walked so much of Boston, that we basically knew where we were and the Enterprise guy was obviously very used to drawing very explicit directions.  Google maps on the phone was also a necessary part of the trip as well, without it we may have been lost in the woods somewhere. 

New Hampshire features no sales tax, and they have 2 big state run liquor stores so that you can stock up when you drive by.  We stopped and got a couple items to bring for our Maine house hosts and a bottle of wine to drink during the trip.  Our friends from Maine reccommended we waited on getting any beer because they have local beer and boy were they right, their beer is very tastey, or so I heard.

We arrived in Boston Friday evening and were happy to see our friends and hosts.  We were quickly whisked away by our friends to a local brewery because it was closing soon for the evening.  This brewery had only been around for about a year and it was on tap at practically every establishment that we saw throughout the weekend.  Oxbow Beer, and word is that it is tasty!

Oysters

You may or may not know but Maine has an abundance of fresh oysters and boy did my hubby taste them.  This was a sampler plate that he and the only other brave soul of the group (not I) shared.

After that tasting, we found ourselves at a great little restaurant, The boat house bistro.  The menu had a great array of tapas and we had fun exploring it.

 http://www.theboathousebistro.com/

Shopping local is a special treat in this area.  They live in Edgecomb with a neighboring town of Darimiscotta.  They belong to a local farm, where they buy in a share and get crops delivered to them.  They also belong to a fishery, where they get a share of the catch. 

This is their local Co-op grocery store and it did not disappoint.  What a great local selection for such a small place.  I never would have expected to see it in this remote location.

A self serve Herb and Spices Station...

This was local Maine Gelato. (we later visited their actual shop for a taste)

For the record, Maine has amazing local ice cream as well.  Their milk is so fresh and clean.

We took a drive around their area and were in awe of all the breathtaking scenes. 

Here we were at a lighthouse, which were of course on gorgeous cliffs of the ocean.

 

We seem to keep talking about that this dinner, which was such a treat. 

We had a picnic with lobster in a cove, need I say more...

2 lobsters, a lb. of shellfish, and corn was less than $20.

The aftermath...

Full bellies.

After dinner, when the wind died down, we moved out closer to the water and ended up sitting on the picnic tables and watching a fireworks show that we luckily stumbled a crossed.  They were coming from a gorgeous house acrossed the cove.

Home sweet home...

This was a photo of their front yard from inside the house.

She has an amazing garden going on their property, this is only a portion.  Fresh and organic was not in low demand.    It has actually inspired us, we are growing some of our own items now.

This was a great simple brunch on the veranda, a little love and a toaster oven can do amazing things.

A peek at what awaited us when we woke up.  This was local goat's milk yogurt, tasty.

Inspiration and learning...

Heading South...

Sunday we decided to head south and explore some of their favorite spots and towns.

This was the gelato spot that I mentioned earlier.  There was a line, but they didn't care how many flavors you tried.  And boy was it hard to choose, luckily they'll split your order into a few different flavors.

We arrived in Portland in the late afternoon and begin tasting our way through the town.  Portland, ME is a bit of a foodie town, I hear that chefs will often open up restaurants here before taking on an adventure in Boston.

One of our first stops was an underground dungeon like watering hole which had an extreme selection of beverages. Novare Res

www.novaresbiercafe.com

We stopped at a cute little restaurant/bar called Sonny's.  It had a Spanish Swanky feel, but also a cozy meet up feel with couches and coffee tables. www.sonnysportland.com

As you can see, they had an array of infused vodka and tequila.  If it has chiles and says spicy, believe them, right hunny?

We topped of our night at Duck Fat, which was such a treat.  I could hear the commentators from Unique Eats commenting on their food in my head as we sat there.

www.duckfat.com

 

Back in town, the other half felt like he needed to try a lobster roll, while in Maine.  This was local spot and it was highly recommended on Internet research.

This was in the outskirts of Darimscotta...

They had quite a menu for a little shack...

Monday Farmer's Market

This guy was selling local faire out of a re purposed ambulance.

And last but not least, we have goat salami, which we did purchase...
 

I hope you enjoyed our taste of Maine, as we did.~

We traveled home with and added carry on of 24 fresh oysters on ice and goat salami, non edible additions of a lobster cookie cutter, a cheers glass mug, some mini lobster socks for the kids of the dad who shuffled us to and from the airport, and a last minute purchase of a mini 6 mos. T-Shirt with a Maine lobster on it, for our new addition.  Found at the cutest general store, that I have ever seen.  http://www.ebgs.us/

 

Have a great week and EWPW~