Easter Weekend: Egg Hunt, Girl’s Night at Kid Cashew, Zootopia

Hi there. I hope you all enjoyed your weekend and Easter if you were celebrating. While I didn’t have a traditional Easter, it was a nice weekend that included an egg hunt, a girl’s night out, seeing Zootopia and more.

I had a super low-key Friday night but it was just what I needed after a long week of work and a day that started at 4:50 a.m. I took the girls for an evening walk while I chatted with my grandmother and then set up camp on the back deck with candles and a glass of wine to finish up a big project that was due. I finally wrapped it up around 9 and made myself this salad. Arugula, spinach, tomatoes, avocado, toasted pecans, sauteed prosciutto and sauteed chicken tenders with a homemade tahini dressing. I was in bed reading by 10:30 and lights out by 11.

Eight hours of sleep later, I made a light breakfast of two scrambled eggs and a fruit bowl before running out the bank and the farmers market to pick up more eggs from my favorite farmer.

I met a friend for a run and we ended up covering just under 6 miles. I am happy to see the return of running weather. (I am always light on the running in the winter because I hate being cold!) I refueled with a banana topped with cashew butter and raisins and got ready to teach at 11:15.

I was super excited about my afternoon plans. I invited myself to an egg hunt that some of my friends were having. One of my friends has the sweetest and cutest 18 month old so I was eager to see her hunt eggs for the first time.

It was crazy how quickly she picked up on the process and I especially loved her excitement when she learned that there were all sorts of good things like chocolate, cheddar bunnies and fruit leathers inside of the eggs.

I never teach on Saturday nights but due to the holiday weekend we didn’t have anyone to cover our 6:30 p.m. twilight flow so I subbed the class. I love the more relaxed vibe of this class and the more downtempo music. Here’s my Spotify playlist (you can follow me on Spotify)!

After class I headed home to quickly get ready for a girls night with one of my best friends.

There are so many new places in Charlotte that I want to try to we decided to check out Kid Cashew (how’s that for a restaurant name?). It’s a new Mediterranean restaurant in the Dilworth neighborhood. We started with hummus. I really liked the thick texture of this hummus.

We shared a few things for dinner. This is a beet and arugula salad with pistachios and whipped goat cheese. (This was first goat cheese since Whole30 and it was every thing I remembered and more!)

The chargrilled octopus with white beans and fried garlic was amazing. The octopus was so tender and the white beans were really big and not mushy.

And finally salmon over a quinoa blend with a tomato salsa and cilantro yogurt.

Overall, we enjoyed our dining experience at Kid Cashew but one note is that the restaurant is SUPER loud. It was hard to hear each other at time.

My friend’s husband and baby were out of town visiting family so we made the most of girl’s night. We stopped by another wine bar before heading back to her place where we stayed up talking until almost 2 a.m.

My girls spent most of the weekend like this. (And I Snapchatted way too many photos of them, follow me @jendecurtins.) It was overcast and rainy in Charlotte but it made for a very cozy Sunday.

I made brunch for me and the boy. We had egg and veggie scrambles with avocado, sweet potato bowls with almond butter and a big bowl of mixed fruit.

The rest of my Sunday was spent taking and teaching yoga before a Sunday night date. We grabbed dinner at Whole Foods. I had cilantro lime rice, roasted broccoli, a lemon rosemary chicken thigh, a smoked chicken leg and stewed okra and tomatoes.

My fiance asked if I wanted to see the new Superman movie but I had just endured Deadpool with him a couple of weeks earlier so I convinced him that we should get to see something I picked instead. I picked Zootopia after hearing great things about it on NPR one day. It was so smartly written and engaging. I highly recommend it for kids and adults!

Best end to the weekend. Cadbury Creme Eggs are my #1 favorite Easter treat (even above Reese’s Eggs!).

How did you celebrate Easter (if you did)? Did you do Easter brunch, lunch or dinner? Any egg hunts?

What’s your favorite Easter candy? 

Relevant post from the archives that I wrote after Easter in 2014: How to Rebound from an Indulgent Holiday (hint: forget about it!)