August and September Bestowed

I’ve fallen a bit behind on my recounting of Bestowed boxes.

Alas, I’ve fallen a bit behind on blogging in general. Not to fear though – I am back with a vengeance. Bestowed is a monthly delivery program of healthy living products – mainly food with some beauty and fitness thrown in. Each month’s items are unique and provide a fun way to try new products without buying them myself (or having to buy a large size).

Since July’s box, I’ve neglected to tell you about my August and September goodies.

In the August package there was:

A coupon for a free Noosa yogurt:

A package of SeaSnax (roasted seaweed):

A bag of rice chips (barbeque flavor):

these were delicious!

A crunchy oats and honey granola bar:

Two flax and chia packets:

Mighty Leaf Iced Tea:

Miracle Noodles (basically low calories noodles – they were weird):

REBOOT (a supplement drink):

And rice vinegar (Bestowed recommends putting it on salads or stirfrys):

As you can see, this Bestowed package was quite large. I could tell it would be good when I felt how heavy the package was (probably from the bottle of rice vinegar). I still have yet to try the REBOOT, iced tea, or rice vinegar, but everything else (minus the noodles which were weird) was very good.

In the September package I received:

Cinnamon Crunch Somersaults (basically, just granola. I think they sell it at Starbucks or Caribou?):

A bag of popcorn (sans butter and salt):

Cranberry almond thins (more or less a thin cookie):

Small packs of olives (I gave these away immediately):

Hazelnut Chocolate Dairy-Free Milk:

I love dairy free milks, so this made me especially happy (sorry Noah, I know how that pains you).

A Greek Yogurt Squeeze:

Fruit snacks:

VitaMelts Multivitamins:

These taste good, so maybe I’ll remember to take them!

And white whole wheat tortilla wraps:

Like August, the September package was heavily packed. Bestowed, you don’t let me down again! I haven’t tried anything from the September package yet, and writing this post has made me even more excited to sample. If anything rocks my world, I’ll tell you about it later. 🙂

Make sure to check out my other Bestowed posts here:
July
June
May
April
March
February
January

My Personal Restaurant Week

My family is visiting from out of town, so the next few days are going to be sort of like my own personal restaurant week. I don’t normally eat many meals out at all, so this is an exciting treat and opportunity to try several restaurants I’ve had my eye on.

First up, Broders’ Pasta Bar in the Linden Hills neighborhood. This restaurant features homemade pastas and a wide selection of traditional Italian dishes.

The menu had a lot of enticing dishes. The most interesting to me were a ricotta gnocchi with peppered beef, spaghetti with meatballs, and a fettuccine with salmon, capers, and pistachios. While I was trying to decide, a basket of focaccia, sourdough, and salted crackers were brought to the table:

On the waitress’ recommendation, I finally decided on the meatballs. I substituted linguine for the spaghetti though because the linguine was homemade and the spaghetti wasn’t. Direct quote from the waitress, “It’s the best meatballs and sauce I’ve ever had – and I’ve tried a lot.”

The dish was fabulous. The sauce wasn’t too overwhelming, and the meatballs had a great flavor. If I went back, I would probably want to try another one of the appealing dishes though since there were so many good looking items!

Since I stayed at the hotel with my family, I took a quick stop by Dunn Brothers with my father for breakfast.

This Dunn Brothers is inside of the Minneapolis Convention Center. I tried a vegetarian breakfast sandwich and had a yogurt parfait minus the granola:

This was not good. I feel strongly about eating my own sort of breakfast, and the weird food in the morning didn’t make me feel very good. Neither item was too tasted – I’m going to pack my own breakfast from home if I stay at the hotel again. This breakfast incident made me realize that I have two primary meal preferences.

1) I don’t like to switch up breakfast. I know what I like, and I like to make it in my own kitchen.
2) I like to eat lunch alone.

I can try, but I just don’t like switching these rules up. Call me a creature of habit.

What are your meal preferences?