Surprises at Dollywood!

Check this out!  It's part of my lunch at one of the places inside Dollywood!  I had their Salad Bar which also included a Mac & Cheese Bar.  I asked them if I could do it with no meat or dairy and the wonderful lady who was doing the custom mac n cheese orders went back to the kitchen and found the olive oil and did mine vegan style!  I thanked her multiple times for the special treatment!  This is what we came up with!  Macaroni in Olive Oil with tomatoes, green onions, read peppers, onions, mushrooms and it turned out yummy!  A special shout out and THANK YOU to Dollywood!

One of the many things I enjoyed about Dollywood was the friendly ducks throughout the park just waiting to greet passerby's.  Everyone who worked at Dollywood treated them like guests of the park...they were completely free to come and go as they please.  There were many natural places for them to frequent including ponds and streams.

Another neat part of Dollywood was the artisans and their demonstrations.  This guy was one of the blown glass guys.  Everything they make during the day goes into the last part of the process to cool over night and then it's available for sale the next day in the gift shop next to the demo area.  I posted a bunch of photos of me over at the Travel Blog if you want to check it out and I will have a lot more from Dollywood in the very near future.

Celebrate With A Shake

I didn't plan this post but I figured...WHY NOT...it's time to celebrate!  I'm ringing in the New Year with a SHAKE...both in movement and in this smoothie.  I've been trying to use my Maca and Cacao more lately and thought tonight was the perfect time to try another one.  Here's what's in this...

2 C Almond Milk
1 Banana
1T Maca Powder
1 tea Cacao Powder
2 T Agave
1 tea GoL Perfect Food Yerba Mate Energizer

Another goal of mine here was to use more than a half of a banana.  I'm really trying to incorporate more of them in my diet and I have been working really hard to get past that HALF banana mark in my smoothies!  Guess what!?  Tonight I did it!  Woot!  I used almost an entire banana!

Also pictured is a Glass Straw from EcoJarz - my first time using the glass one and I'm LOVING it so far - AND - the glass jar - I'm reusing it from an Argo Iced Tea that I got a while back!  I now have TWO of these and love the height and heavy-dutiness to it...I'm so glad I used them and they cleaned up nice! 

Looking forward to a great 2014!  Happy and Safe New Year to you all!  Thanks for reading!