so, spring will officially be here on saturday! thank goodness! i’m not sure how much longer i could take this rainy, icky winter weather. what does spring mean? besides a quick trip or 2 to the tanning bed and super cute sun dresses - drinks outside of the patio! zink american restaurant on tryon has an awesome patio that is sure to be back just about every afternoon from here on out.

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So Mt. Pleasant isn’t exactly Downtown Charleston, but close enough.  If you can break away from Downtown for a night, I suggest heading over to Samos on Coleman Blvd in Mt Pleasant. It’s a Greek restaurant that has a tapas menu and a full dinner menu.   It’s perfect for going out with a group of friends, having a bottle (or 3) of wine and grabbing some inexpensive aps for a great night.  When the weather is warm enough, make sure you call ahead and get a seat outside, it’s pretty close to perfect! And the food will keep you coming back for more!

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It’s no secret that I love sushi and if it were up to me, I would eat it all day, every day. When I got to Charlotte my first order of business was to find a sushi bar. After a few suggestions, my boyfriend and I stumbled upon Nikko’s on South. And what can I say, it was love at first bite!

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I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who doesn’t like broccoli and cheese soup. Well turns out it’s super easy to make! Enjoy!

in a pot big enough to make soup combine 1 diced onion, 2 chopped carrots, and 2 chopped celery stalks over low/med heat. coat with olive oil and season with salt, pepper, fresh garlic, and cayenne pepper

once everything is soft - not mushy - put enough chicken broth in pot to just cover all of the ingredients and add a medium sized head of broccoli. cook for another 5 minutes or so.

once the broccoli is soft, mix everything together with a hand blender (a regular blender works too but i like having a hand blender). blend until you get to a consistency you like. i like to leave it a bit chunky

add 1/4 cup of heavy cream (more if you like really creamy soups). you can also add more chicken broth if you like soupier soups

now for the best part - the cheese! add i small block of velveta (yes, velveta!) and a block the same size of white cheddar. to make the cheese melt fast, cut the cheese into 1 inch cubes

cook until the cheese has all melted - about 15 minutes, stirring every few minutes to help the cheese melt

once everything has melted - enjoy!

It’s no surprise that some of our favorite junk foods aren’t exactly what’s best for our waistlines (but can we really help it if pizza and ice cream taste so good??). Yahoo Health just realized their list of 2009’s worst foods. Nothing that was on the list really shocked me. And when you see a list of the wost foods of a year that has just started, it shouldn’t shock you that over two thirds of the country of the country is overweight. I hate going into a restaurant and seeing people who should obviously be eating a salad with no dressing or cheese pigging out on burgers and beer, but what I hate even more than that is the kids that they have sitting at the table with them eating chicken fingers and fries and then washing it down with a soda before they have dessert. I’m not saying never feed your kids chicken fingers, but kids today have to learn better eating habits if their parents want to see them grow to become adults. Rather than a yearly list, maybe yahoo should make the worst food list a weekly thing and spam it out to everyone possible, so if nothing else, everyone can see on paper how bad that triple cheese burger really is. And if that doesn’t work … maybe they could try to hypnotize all two thirds of the fat people and convince them that if they eat anything on the bad food list that they will turn into a cow - literally.