Grits in the City - Fitness. Family. Food.

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energy bites for mama

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I feel like I am a pro athlete in training. I can’t stop eating. Between all of the added work of nursing and the added hours I am up in the day, my body is continually hungry since Baby Z arrived a week ago today. A friend of mine recommended that I check out this recipe for No-Bake Energy Bites from Smashed Peas and Carrots, and she had me hooked at “peanut butter.”

I’m learning that having things prepared to eat off of for days, or even weeks, is the key to keeping your energy up for the long haul. T made a double batch of these for me and I’ve been eating off of them for the past several days.

The great thing about this recipe is that there are so many great little ways to tweak it to make it a bit different each time. The recipe yields around 18-20 “bites”, depending on how big you roll these. [Read more…]

hospital go-bag essentials

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The countdown is on to Baby Z’s arrival – either next weekend or sooner. In order to be prepared, I’ve been spending lots of time over the last month looking into what I should bring and what I should leave at home. Some folks say bring the Boppy. Others say don’t do that – Boppy abuse! Leave at home, since it’ll just get ruined. I’ve ready the same for your personal pillow. How do you know what to bring?

Here’s the rundown of some of the items I decided I had to pack. I’ve had the bag out now for almost a month, and the contents have continued to grow over the weeks. Just for fun, I’ll be revisiting this post-delivery to let you know what, if any, of these items I decided was unnecessary! [Read more…]

breakfast at the smith, midtown

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It’s pretty rare that I’m trying to find a reservation to eat before 11am on a weekend. When my friend A came in town, she needed to be uptown for a Yankees game early enough that we were looking for a spot for “brunch” on the earlier side. 10:30. No biggie, right? Wrong. Most sit-down restaurants in Manhattan don’t start serving until 11 or 11:30, aside from coffee shops and diners.

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restaurant week at virginia’s

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Restaurant Week is one of my favorite things in New York City. T and I made reservation the moment it launched for River Park, a restaurant he’d been really wanting to try and one I’d been wanting to return to. I also was at the point of receiving a $100 check from OpenTable for having made so many reservations. The stars were aligning for a pre-baby nice date night out! Except that River Park’s listing was subsequently updated to note lunch only for Restaurant Week, and OpenTable updated their rewards program to only apply to a limited subset of restaurants. Such a bummer all around. Since our dinner was that night we had to figure out an alternative option pretty quickly. I read some great things online about Virginia’s, so we decided to give it a try.

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a revolutionary afternoon in morristown

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For my mother’s birthday last fall, we planned trip was to the site of George Washington’s winter encampment, located close to Morristown, New Jersey. As a retired history teacher, she has quite the impressive list of historical landmarks she wants to visit and this was the next site on the line-up.

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The Ford Mansion, which housed Washington and his men during the second encampment in New Jersey of the Revolutionary War, is now a national park. There’s a museum to the side of the property and guided tours of the house. [Read more…]

inside pregnancy style

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There is a lot of ugly maternity wear. A LOT. Well, I shouldn’t say ugly, but definitely boring. And most of it? Is expensive. My thought was so not only are you not going to give me cute patterns, cuts, and prints, but my wallet is going to bleed to get it? No thanks.

Thankfully, I’ve found some great options and tricks along the way to help make it through this summer. Here are some of my favorites.

Used clothes are your friend. No, seriously. There is so much truth in that saying that one man’s trash is another’s treasure. I’ve been finding mine off of two fabulous apps – Poshmark and Mercari. There are others out there, like ThredUp, but Poshmark and Mercari have been my favorite since they tend to have a nice selection of designer brands. I’ve bought a number of items that are non-maternity styles from Anthropologie which work great during pregnancy. If you have friends who can give you some hand-me-downs, even better.

Poshmark Delivery

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10 layers of awesome at parm

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I’ve always wanted to try Parm, but never seem to make it there. Now there are a number of Parm outposts around the city – including one on the Upper West Side. When my friend JB and I were trying to figure out a spot to catch up one night, we decided Parm it was. The nice thing too about the UWS location is that it’s on OpenTable – always a huge plus in my book.

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I’ve heard the other locations aren’t massive spaces, so I was surprised to see just how far back the UWS location extends. There’s a counter on the right as you enter where you can get sandwiches and other items to go and the bar runs along the left-hand side of the restaurant’s entrance. [Read more…]

cheers to year one

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To celebrate our first anniversary, T and I decided to go to a restaurant we’ve both been wanting to visit for quite some time – Gramercy Tavern. I’d been there once years ago with my manager from DC. We’d sat at the bar and enjoyed cocktails and I believe some appetizers – but I’d never sat in the dining room for a full meal.

Grits in the City - Lara Ziobro - NYC Blogger - Food Blogger - Lifestyle Blogger

We had a 9PM reservation but they ended up being able to seat us earlier around 8PM, a welcome start to the meal. They surprised us with a pre-dinner toast since it was our anniversary – champagne for T and some local sourced sparkling grape juice for me. I was worried that my more limited pregnancy diet would mean no chef’s tasting for me, but they were absolutely amazing and willing to accommodate my restrictions (and food allergies) – substituting in some items from their three-course menu as necessary to complete the line-up. [Read more…]