orangek8

Happy Birthday, Mom!

2012-01-21T21:39:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday, Mom! To celebrate, we gathered at our place for a burrito bar! Mer and Lil' Kate showed up early so we could start prepping the ingredients. Mmm, taco beef!

Uncle Ben read Kate his favorite book in an attempt to calm down her birthday excitedness.

Mer brought delicious Shagbark tortilla chips. The BEST!

Dad was in charge of margaritas, using a recipe he used to make many years ago.

Kate was his margarita assistant.

They were DELICIOUS! Cheers!

Kate decorated this wrapping paper herself. Isn't it gorgeous!?

Dad got Mom the most awesome present ever!! Our local portrait photography and custom framing studio, Lamborn's, fosters kitties in the hopes that customers will adopt them. That's where Mom adopted Petey. While he was still living at the shop, Lamborn's made a portrait of him and it was for sale! Dad bought it for Mom!

Look at how handsome and glamorous he looks! This portrait looks like it belongs on the wall of a king's castle!

And THEN, Mom got an iPad! From all of us!!! YAY!!!!!! Super duper exciting! If anyone can have a lot of fun with an iPad, it's definitely Mom.

And then, as if there could possibly be room for anything else exciting, it was time to EAT! Beef, peppers, onions, mango, avocado, sweet potato, rice, cheese. BURRITO BAR!

I made a coconut cake. Kate picked out the candles.

What in the heck is going on with my HAIR?! It's all swooped!

Happy birthday to MOOOOOOOOM!

Make a wish!

YAY!

The View

2012-01-17T13:19:00.000-08:00

This is the view out of my window at work. It looked pretty creepy out there today.

Columbus Internet Friends Meetup

2012-01-15T21:46:00.000-08:00

This weekend I got to meet up with my favorite internet friends for a fun-filled weekend in Columbus! Billie and I picked up Gigi at the airport on Friday, and we greeted her with a big pink glittery sign.

After we checked in at the hotel, we headed over to Amy's house for drinks and snacks. Look at this cheese spread! YUM. The one on the far right is "Nasty Smoked Blue Cheese," but Amy was the only one who thought it was nasty. It was AWESOME!

We also did a very fancy beer tasting with some beers a friend of hers made. Eggnog Stout and Mole Porter.

Fancy! The beers were decent for it being his first attempt.

Amy's famous chocolate chip cheese ball. GIVE IT TO ME!

Carol was sad that she couldn't join us, so she sent us a gigantic gummy bear to ease the pain. We'll be saving THAT for later!

Hanging out!

Billie and Gigi!

Fun times!

I finally got to meet Amy's dog, Franklin. HE IS THE BEST. He is SO soft and so fluffy and SO CUTE and nice!!! He really is, seriously, the best. I mean, LOOK at him!!

Billie and Franklin!

Group photo! Minus Pamela and Rachael!

After filling up on snacks, we headed to the bar four doors away for some karaoke. Amy and Beth perused the arsenal of songs.

Gigi was up first with some Blondie!

The regulars gave her a standing ovation!

Up next was a group performance of Pony by Ginuwine.

Lauren and Billie!

All of a sudden, it was time for some car bombs! It was several people's first time, which is always exciting.

Ready, set, go!

LOOK AT BETH'S CAR BOMB. Notice that it is almost gone while the rest of us are barely swallowing our first sip!

High fives of amazement! I would love to see Beth and Cheryl go head to head.

We're all still working on ours. Beth has been done for ages. I love how Molly and Gigi are both clutching their stomachs. I feel ya!

After that exciting car bomb moment, Beth sang some Beastie Boys! She nailed it!

Everyone else stayed and sang many more songs, but Billie and I were super tired and cabbed it back to the hotel early to eat some pot roast in bed. YUM!

Saturday morning, we all gathered to head to Northstar Cafe for lunch! Rachael and Pamela both brought their horse masks for the weekend, of course.

Just a couple of horses getting ready to go out to lunch!

Yay! Northstar Cafe time!

Gigi and I shared the famous veggie burger. It really is the best in the whole land!!

We also shared some roasted potatoes.

For dessert, we headed to Jeni's Ice Cream. Duh!

I had a trio with Brown Butter Almond Brittle, Brambleberry Crisp, and Whiskey & Pecans.

Our next adventure for the day was to head to a convention called Sexapalooza.

We figured it would be entertaining, and really great people watching.

It ended up being pretty lame. There was a drag show, which was cool, but those are always cool.

One of the LAMEST parts of Sexapalooza was "The Dungeon." All the signs were like "NO CAMERAS IN THE DUNGEON!" We were like "ooh! a dungeon!" The dungeon was guarded by giant, inflatable gargoyles. The dungeon was lame for several reasons, but I personally feel like the LAMEST part about it was that it wasn't even downstairs!!!! It was just a little area surrounded by curtains! Shouldn't a dungeon at least be down some stairs?! The stuff inside the dungeon seemed just about the same as everything else in the pavilion, so I'm not sure what the big deal was.

Back to the cool parts. Melissa had her photo taken with this guy!! He said the only time he ever ISN'T wearing high heels is when he's gardening or on his bike/at the gym.

The only other redeeming thing that Sexapalooza had to offer were cutout posters. Those are pretty much always fun. And since Anne loves them the most, she did them ALL! This is just a small sampling. They were lining the walls of the room.

After Sexapalooza, we headed back to Amy's to sit in stunned silence for awhile. Then we all headed out to dinner! Beforehand we went out for some beers at Ravari Room. YAY! BEERS! CHEERS! WOO!

Anne and me!

Then we headed to dinner at Cafe Bella. Our group was so big, they had to seat us next door in this special room! JAZZ HANDS!

There was so, SO much food. I forgot to take a photo of the giant cheese platter that came out first. It was delicious. Then we got spinach artichoke dip!

GIANT platters of amazing salad!

Focaccia!

The main course was a giant bowl full of deliciousness. Roasted chicken! Meatballs! Pasta!

The vegetarians got some KILLER eggplant!!

YUM! YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM!!!! For dessert there were also little brownies, which I forgot to take a photo of. So much food, it was insane. And it was all super delicious and very affordable!

After dinner, we headed to the hotel. Melissa had booked a romance suite for the weekend and it came with a free bottle of champagne! It was time to cash in on that! I decided to wear the horse mask for awhile.

Is Anne feeding me something or am I biting her hand?!

I happened to be wearing the horse mask when room service delivered our champagne, so I opened the door to greet him. He didn't seem that phased!

Time for games! Electronic Catch Phrase!

Lauren and Billie!

Anne was the next lady to don the horse mask.

Horse playing Catch Phrase!

The final item on our agenda was to eat that giant gummy bear.

It was sort of hard to get a bite off!

But it was worth it! He was really yummy!!

That about wraps up the weekend! It's always super great to get together with these ladies and we had an awesome time. I miss everyone already!

Pad Thai

2012-01-08T20:52:00.000-08:00

Tonight I made the Vegetable and Tofu Pad Thai from the latest issue of Everyday Food. It turned out really great! I will definitely make this again soon.

Cabin Pizza!

2012-01-08T12:32:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays, Dennis announced that he wanted to try making pizza at the cabin again soon. Last night was the night, and Ben and I headed down to Meigs County for a little pizza party. Here is Dennis working on the dough!

The rocket stove was all fired up and super hot. First he let the rolled dough rise a little bit.

Then he lifted up the heavy oven lid ...

... and put the pizza inside to cook!

Meanwhile, we enjoyed a delicious whiskey barrel aged porter. Horny Goat from Elevator Brewing Company in Columbus! It was DELICIOUS DELICIOUS DELICIOUS!

The pizza was done fast! It turned out GREAT!

Look at that little tiny cutest piece of pizza EVER SLICED! I definitely called dibs on THAT piece!

Of course, I ate a lot more than that! I brought along a giant salad to round out the meal.

After dinner, discussion turned to science as it often does. We were talking about the rotation of the earth, gravity, and all that jazz. Dennis says: "Let's say this glass of wine is the moon, and that lamp is the sun." LET'S!

We also used the legend on the globe to attempt to calculate the circumference of the Earth.

We came up with 33,000 miles. The correct answer is 24,901.55 miles. Not TOO far off!

We cooked up another pizza while the stove was still hot. We were too full to eat much, so we saved most of it for the morning.

That was a great idea, because the pizza made an AWESOME breakfast this morning! Pizza and eggs!

It was time to say goodbye to the cabin.

On our way home, Dennis showed us the new property he recently bought in Tuppers Plains. He bought a trailer and a garage to use as a workspace for his electrocycle and other projects!

There's the electrocycle in its new home!

Inside the garage.

We saw a hawk outside on the power lines!

Super zoom.

We also took a little video of the electrocycle.

Hungry Charlie

2011-12-31T17:45:00.000-08:00

I feel like I have to share this with the world because I think it is the cutest thing EVER. When Charlie is hungry, he always sits up on the very top step of the basement stairs, and peeks through the door, SO PATIENTLY waiting for some dinner. He's never demanding at all, he just quietly sits there, HOPING that we notice him and give him some food!! Meanwhile, Emma will be hunting us down and stomping all over the place, yapping and squawking until we feed her.

LOOOOOOOOOK AT him.

Seriously. Is that not the cutest thing ever? He is SO patient and sweet.

Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T22:27:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!! Ben joined me for stockings up at my parents house this morning. We were teasing Kate by telling her that before we opened any presents, we all had LOTS of things we needed to get done first, and some of us might even take naps, etc. In fact, it would probably be AWHILE before we got to open ANY presents. She was super concerned about it.

But then we said "Just kidding! Let's go!"

Kate got to distribute all the stockings.

She helped with some of the unwrapping, too!

Stockings!

Mom got Christmas Dots!

Mer and Pete always have the coolest wrapping paper.

After stockings, we were all super hungry. We decided to take a break for breakfast. Although Kate kept insisting that she was NOT hungry and could totally just continue on with the present opening, she happily switched gears once we got into the kitchen. We made french toast!

The best french toast in the WORLD because we used Mer's famous homemade cinnamon bread.

Griddle patrol!

Look at all of that french toast! Yay!

I was in charge of the powdered sugar.

Meanwhile, Dad was cooking up sausage!!

The sausage comes from our friend Chuck's farm and it is the best!! It's so lean and flavorful.

A complete breakfast!

Yum!

Once we were done with breakfast, Ben headed out to his Mom's and the rest of us headed back to the living room for more presents!

Mer got cupcake hats for Mom and I, and Mom got a cupcake hat for Mer! TRIPLETS!!! Mom is vanilla, I am red velvet, and Mer is chocolate!

Eventually I made it out to Cheryl's to join Ben. Then we all headed to Vana's for Christmas Dinner! There was a huge, fresh salad.

Cheryl made two kinds of lasagna!

Mmm, a giant mountain of garlic bread.

Time to dish up!

YUM!!

Cheryl made a grape pie for dessert. It was awesome!

I have no idea who took this picture of Dennis, but I like it.

Merry Christmas, folks!

Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T23:19:00.000-08:00

Ben and I headed over to Mer and Pete's tonight for some Christmas Eve merriness. We made the same mojitos we had on Thanksgiving because they were SO GOOD! Cheers!! Delicious yet again.

Mer made some AWESOME clam chowder. It was seriously delicious. Mmm, with some buttery sourdough bread!

And of course, cookies! Everyone brought all the cookies they've been making, and we combined them!

It's always hard to choose which shape you want to eat.

Kate picked a cat!

Uncle Mark picked a plane! Duh!

And Dad picked a guitar! Double duh! I guess sometimes it's NOT hard to pick. Uh, no pun intended?!

After dinner, Ben and I headed back to our house for a cozy Christmas Eve at home.

Our Christmas tree!

We decided to exchange presents! Yay, presents!!!

Okay, time to get to bed before Santa heads our way.

Christmas Eve Eve at the Cabin

2011-12-23T23:11:00.000-08:00

This year, we had the traditional Cabin Christmas Eve celebration on Christmas Eve Eve, because Vana had to work on Christmas Eve. It was exciting to get the fun rolling even earlier than usual! Dennis had the place all ready for us.

The super, DUPER exciting thing about this year was that Dennis just finished his new addition! Before, there was an indoor toilet for urination purposes only, but if you had to do anything more serious than that, the outhouse was your only option. BUT NOW, there is a brand new bathroom with a TOILET FOR POOPING!! POOPING INSIDE!!! And a really awesome stove that produces a ton of heat. Enough to heat water for the bathtub!! Hot tub!! I am proud to announce that I got to christen the bathroom. It really was quite the honor!

Time to eat! Dennis made his famous chipotle dip.

He also experimented with making pizza on the new stove!! I thought this pizza was AMAZING, but I guess he used to make pizzas a lot and said that this one wasn't quite what he had hoped. So he plans to experiment with the process, which means we'll get to eat more pizza in the future to help him with his studies! YAY!

I made another big batch of gingerbread cookies.

We also had some Avalanche pizzas and a giant salad!

We played "Werewolf" late into the night and it was sort of a disaster, but ultimately lots of fun.

Puppies and Trees!

2011-12-21T22:07:00.000-08:00

Ben, Kayla and I headed out to Cheryl's house tonight to help trim the tree! It was the cutest lil' tree ever.

I finally got to meet Cheryl's new puppy, Bambini!! She's so cute that it's hard to believe she's real!

Ben and his beard got to spend some quality time with Tinkerbelle.

The finished product! Yay, Christmas!

Meet Brisby!

2011-12-18T11:19:00.000-08:00

This afternoon I headed out to see the progress on Summer's new house. Look at all of that drywall!!

What was even more exciting was that I finally got to meet Summer and J's new dog, Brisby!! Look at that beautiful face.

Awwww. Love!

Summer, Brisby, and Friday.

LOOK at how good Friday is. So patiently waiting for a treat and being SO GOOD.

Brisby is pretty good at it too.

I'm happy to have finally met Brisby. She's a great addition to their family!

Deery Lou is Dead

2011-12-14T11:10:00.000-08:00

Sad news, folks. My beloved Deery Lou glass is dead. I originally got a set of two when I visited Beth in 2003. By 2009, they had both broken. They're super hard to find, but I was lucky enough to find two new ones on eBay! That was a great day. Eventually, the apple one broke, but the rainbow one survived for almost three more years! This morning, while rushing to get ready for work, I finally broke it. I had reached into the cupboard to grab a vitamin and somehow the jar hit the glass, and BAM.

Deery Lou, you were a wonderful glass. You delivered so many refreshing beverages to my lips. I will miss you. Farewell.

Nancy's Birthday Dinner

2011-12-13T23:05:00.000-08:00

Tonight was a SURPRISE birthday dinner for Nancy! Since December is such a busy month, the cooking club gang decided to just pick a night to go out for dinner at Zoe instead of trying to arrange a cooking night at one of our houses. Since Nancy's birthday falls shortly after Christmas when everyone is scattered around the country, we decided to surprise her by celebrating tonight!

There was wine!

And presents!

And balloons!

And friends!

And baked alaska!

YAY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!! Deal with it, Nancy!

Tracy & Tina's Holiday Party

2011-12-10T23:43:00.000-08:00

Tonight was the magical night known as Tracy & Tina's Holiday Party! It's one of the most festive nights of the year, and it's always a wonderful time. I made gingerbread cookies for the occasion!

Party time!

Tina made me a DELICIOUS martini, and look at how cute it was with the icy cold pink elephant!

Eventually it was time for the traditional Christmas Car Bombs. Which always means I go into boss mode. Tracy caught this picture of me being SO BOSSY, using BOTH of my hands to point and boss. Somebody has to direct people where to stand!

Randy was thinking ahead! Smart man.

It was a big group this year!!

Ready, set, go!

Cheryl was the clear winner!!! Randy was sad because he was SO CLOSE but not close enough. I stopped trying to win years ago because people like Cheryl are out of my league and I like to savor every delicious drop!

We all bowed to Cheryl. We are not worthy.

Time for some cookies! Unicorn!

Chomp!

Lori ate the LAST unicorn. So I serenaded her with the theme song to The Last Unicorn. "When the last eagle flies..."

Summer observed that if you turn the cowboy boot on its side, it becomes the United States of America! COOL!

Orange hearts! Blue moons!

Cheers!

I only brought one guitar cookie to the party, and I was hoping that Leah would choose it. She did!! Yay!

CHOMP!

The next fun activity for the evening was HATS! Somebody plopped a hat on my head, and I looked around and everyone around me had a hat on! Fun! These hats are all from Tina's Wall of Hats.

Group photos!

It was a good night for some Unicorn Pegasuses. Lori was first!

Then Carrie!

MEANWHILE, Megan tasted my sugared cranberries, and discovered that she loved them, EVEN THOUGH she thought she didn't really like cranberries. EXCITING!!! It's always exciting when someone discovers a new food that they like!! So many exciting things happening at ONCE tonight!!

Back to Unicorn Pegasuses! Sean was next.

And then Shawn!

Shawn and Sean!

The final event of the night was LIPSTICK. I was recently given an old lipstick from the 70's called "Floppy." It is SO PINK. Megan, Kelly and I put some on for fun and to look fancy.

Thanks, Tracy and Tina for another magical holiday party!

Happy First Birthday, Gus!

2011-12-03T21:30:00.000-08:00

Today was a very special day, because Gus turned ONE YEAR OLD! Clark and Anne had a party to celebrate, and there were mustaches for all.

"I AM ONE! YEAR! OLD!"

Anne and Gus.

There was so much delicious food, including a killer taco bar.

The cake was glorious!

It turns out that frosting was dangerous, though.

Look at my mouth! It turned super blue!

Haha, whee! Blue!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GUS!

Megan's Last Day

2011-12-02T23:30:00.000-08:00

Today was Megan's last day at NBIA. Megan and TJ have had an ongoing war with the NBIA stress balls. I do not participate, for I am Switzerland. Today they went NUTS!

Of course, there was confetti.

Then, after work, we had a going away party at Kim's house! We wanted the night to be really magical, so we made a pitcher of Unicorn Pegasus cocktails.

Making the magic happen!

Pitcher!

Bottoms up!

There was a delicious potluck spread. I made the Feta Dome.

We had a champagne toast to celebrate Megan's awesomeness.

Cheers!

For she's a jolly good fellow!

This Evan Williams Cherry Reserve is DELICIOUS.

Kim and Ben!

Sheila got a unicorn pegasus!

Later in the evening, Tracy bet TJ $5.00 that he wouldn't go through Kim's dog door, and TJ boldly accepted the challenge.

And all of this fun and magic happened because of the wonderful Megan. We're going to miss you a LOT, Megs!

This just in from Bob: Bob was in charge of keeping keys safe at the party and in order for TJ to get his keys back, he had to dance. Thanks, Bob, for the video!

DOUBLE THANKSGIVING! Part Two.

2011-11-25T23:06:00.000-08:00

We had such a fun and delicious Thanksgiving last night that we were totally pumped to get up and do it all over again today!

We kicked things off with leftover turkey sandwiches for lunch at Mom's house. This year she had the GENIUS idea to make them on thanksgiving ROLLS. How had I never thought of this before?!?!? Behold the deliciousness:

Then we headed out to Vana's this evening for Thanksgiving Dinner Part Two! Yang and Moss made us all a round of naughty Bloody Marys with wiener garnishes.

Cheers!

Then it was time to eat! There was SO MUCH FOOD.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Look at the size of that bowl of mashed potatoes!!! It was HUGE!!!! Like, I don't know if you can get a good sense of proportion from this photo, but let me just tell you that I definitely could have sat in that bowl and my butt is not small!!

Yay!!

Oh, hello. Time for dessert. Pumpkin pie and apple pie!

And buttermilk pie!

AND MAGIC COOKIE BARS!!!

Mmmmmm.

Of course, after dessert, things took a nerdy turn as all the guys got their smartphones out.

Geeking it up!!

Here they are all comparing to try and prove whose iPhone has the best display.

This led to a whole series of phone challenges, which are documented in the following video. Happy Thanksgiving!

DOUBLE THANKSGIVING! Part One.

2011-11-24T19:04:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Ben and I are super lucky because this year we get to have Thanksgiving twice. DOUBLE THANKSGIVING!!! Since Vana is working today, we're celebrating with Ben's family tomorrow night. We gathered at Mer, Pete and Kate's house tonight for a delicious feast.

We started off with some appetizers. Veggies! Look at those gorgeous watermelon radishes!!

I made sugared cranberries, inspired by Nancy! I love these. I must have eaten 3,000 of them in the past two days.

Using the simple syrup that I soaked the sugared cranberries in, Mom and I made a big batch of cranberry-orange mojitos!

These also featured the syrup I strained from my orange cranberry sauce. Most delicious holiday cocktail ever!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Dad is pointing at something.

Army of pies!

Prosecco. Cheers!

Look at that big, glorious turkey from King Family Farm!

Carve master!

Gravy master!

Craig and Moss arranged the rolls on the tray.

Uncle Mark had a monkey in his drink!

Check out Ben and Cheryl's coordinating outfits!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Yum!!!!!!!!!!

Since Craig was tardy to the table, we only allowed him to have a tiny bite of dinner.

Time to make whipped cream!

Kate supervised.

Kate thought she didn't like whipped cream, but she was wrong!

While we were getting the pies ready, the Miller boys were geeking out in the living room.

To aid with our digestion and make more room for pie, we all did a shot of Underberg.

Cheers!

Underburg!

Pies! We had pumpkin, apple, and chocolate buttermilk.

Ed was doing his fancy pose.

Look at his fancy paws!

Full from pie, time for some more geeking.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Can't wait to do it all again tomorrow night!

Happy Fourth Birthday, Kate!

2011-11-11T21:07:00.000-08:00

Baby Kate turned FOUR today!! FOUR. She is not a baby anymore, that's for sure! Mom and Dad had a birthday party for her tonight. As soon as the party got rolling, we did presents.

PRESENTS!!

PRESENTS!!

PRESENTS!!

PRESENTS!!

This girl is serious about her presents. It's all business until the whole pile is unwrapped.

Then, it's time to enjoy them! High five for getting an AWESOME PRESENT.

It's Busytown! Uncle Ben got her a pickle car to drive around with the Busytown friends.

Time to set it up!

Coming along nicely! We had to pry Kate away when it was time to eat!

PIZZA PARTY!

Cheers!

Remember the awesome bunny night light I got for my birthday? Kate has been hoping for one of her own, so I got one for her for her birthday!

Her very own.

Mer made this chocolate cake for the birthday girl!

With chocolate AND raspberry buttercream frostings!!!!

Happy birthday to Kate!

That is one happy four-year-old.

Make a wish!

The cake was AMAAAAAAAAAZING!!!!!!!!!!!

Mmm, mmm! What a way to celebrate! Happy birthday, Kate!

Chili November Cooking Club

2011-11-05T23:38:00.000-07:00

The theme of the November cooking club was chili. Summer hosted the event in her barn, because her new house is currently being built. Check out the progress!

We all got to take a tour.

It's SO exciting! I can't WAIT to come to cooking clubs here in the future!

Whee!

Back down to the cozy barn to get started on the chili eating!

Nancy brought some of her famous sugared cranberries to munch on. I probably ate about a million of these. They look like little jewels and they pop in your mouth!

Yumi made Cincinnati Chili!

Served over spaghetti, with beans, cheese, onions and oyster crackers. I LOVE OYSTER CRACKERS.

Valerie made a green chili, which had edamame, spinach, avocado, chiles and more!

Served over brown rice. It was so different and so GOOD! Fresh and yummy. The avocado was so good in there!

Emily was sad, because while we were touring the new house, her chili boiled down on the hot wood stove and reduced by half!!! She thought it was ruined!

WRONG!!! It was AMAZING!! Hot and meaty!

And her cornbread was sweet and tasty and went great with the beefiness of the chili.

Summer's chili featured bacon, pork, bacon, ancho chilies, hominy and corn. And bacon. Bacon!

I made pumpkin, sweet potato & black bean chili. This chili also had a bottle of pumpkin beer in it! It turned out super spicy -- I think I got a naughty jalapeño!

I made beer bread too. I used the same pumpkin beer that went into the chili. (It also went into my mouth!)

Here is my chili with a heap of white cheddar on top.

Nancy brilliantly predicted that we would have plenty of chili, and made dessert instead! Pumpkin walnut cranberry muffins. They were so great. With some sugared cranberries on top! Perfect end to a chilly, delicious night.

Russian Cooking Club

2011-10-15T23:09:00.000-07:00

This month for cooking club, we took a culinary tour of RUSSIA! Emily hosted us this time. We all had to do a bit of research to figure out what kinds of foods they cook in Russia.

When we arrived, we snacked on pickled stuff!

Yumi made this appetizer called mushroom caviar. Four different types of mushrooms! It was delicious!

Emily made some other nibbles to get us started. This one had tomatoes, dill and roasted eggplant.

The classic smoked salmon on pumpernickel.

Mmm, appetizery!

We also sampled several vodkas throughout the night. Emily had frozen these in chunks of ice! JUST LIKE IN RUSSIA!

Cheers!

To cooking club!

When in Russia...!

Valerie couldn't make it tonight (she had a horrible excuse), so we had a special guest, Annah! She brought this Russian Imperial Stout for us to try. It was INTENSE! And 9% alcohol! Those Russians don't mess around.

In the kitchen, Emily got started on her next round of appetizers. Blini!

Summer baked Russian Black Bread. There were so many ingredients in this delicious bread. It was a flavor EXPLOSION!!

Slicing up that black deliciousness.

It was yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, YUM!!!!!

Another vodka to try! Although there is actually no sunshine in Russia, the vodka was good.

Blini with smoked trout, sour cream, and caviar!

Delicious! Next to my blini is a piece of pickled herring. Traditional! It was weird but okay. Kind of sweet. I liked my little piece, but wouldn't have wanted much more.

After we polished off the blini, Emily came out with ANOTHER ROUND OF FOOD!! These are pelmini, which are like little boiled pierogies. They have beef and lamb meatballs inside and DUDE. They were little pillows of JOY!!! I honestly believe I could eat forty of them if given the opportunity. I would move to Russia right now if it meant I got to eat these every day.

This next vodka was a fancy one. Made with only potatoes! As it SHOULD be!

It was very different. I liked it a LOT!

Then it was time to reveal the biggest experiment of the night. Not only did Summer bake her own black bread, but she planned way ahead and attempted another traditional Russian delicacy, Kvass. In the weeks before, she had baked a first round of the bread, allowed it to become stale, and then mixed it with warm water, yeast, mint, and raisins in a BUCKET IN HER GARAGE and left it to sit for several days. After several rounds of straining, she was left with a golden liquid. This is called Kvass, and is traditionally consumed in Russia as either a beverage or a soup base. It is "considered a tonic for digestion, an excellent thirst quencher and, consumed after vodka, an antidote to a hangover." Her research also warned her that it has the potential to taste terrible.

KVASS!

We each had a tiny glass. It definitely wasn't delicious but it most certainly wasn't terrible!

Convincing ourselves that the Kvass did indeed aid our digestion, we moved along to the next course. Ah, the potato course! The most important course of the night!

Mmm, potatoes!

To go with the potatoes, I made a big pot of beef and rice stuffed cabbage rolls. Mmm, aren't they appetizing?

MEAT AND POTATO.

Clearly, it was time for more vodka!

After one million courses of Russian delicacies, we were all ready for some dessert! And what do they eat for dessert in Russia? PAVLOVA! Nancy took on the task, and cooked up this bad boy:

Emily and I watched in awe as Nancy began to layer it with layer after layer of deliciousness. WE WANTED THAT.

First, a mountain of fluffy whipped cream! And pomegranate seeds!

Emily stepped up to help!

Raspberries and kiwis!

The finished product! A glorious masterpiece!

Nancy ushered the delightful treat out to the table.

Mmm! Slice it up!

It was light, fluffy and amazing.

As Annah declared, it was like eating a cloud with berry flavored raindrops. IT REALLY WAS!!

That's all for this round. I'm already looking forward to the next installment of cooking club!

Pumpkin Carving

2011-10-08T23:03:00.000-07:00

Tonight, Ben and I went to Emily and Marc's annual Pumpkin Carving Party! Look at how pretty my pumpkin is. From the Farmer's Market!

First cuts.

That's a lot of pumpkins!

Ben getting ready to dig in!

Emily came by with a tray full of rum-spiked apple cider.

Pumpkins! Mine is the bunny, and Ben's is the stained-glass-looking one on the far right!

Family Birthday Dinner

2011-09-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the grand finale to an amazing week of birthday celebrations. We got together at Mom and Dad's for a pizza party! Mmm, four different kinds of pizza!

Mom made an amazing texas sheet cake. Kate helped me blow out the candles!

Mer cut the cake!

Why hello there, chocolate cake.

Kate loves blowing candles out so much that Dad brought out a piece of cake just for her with a special candle in it. Good thing her birthday's up next!

I got this awesome bunny night light for my birthday. He is helping Kate eat her cake. Aw.

Thanks everybody, for all of the birthday wishes. It was a good one!!

Birthday Dinner at Purple Chopstix

2011-09-23T23:07:00.000-07:00

Today is my actual birthday! First, I got to have lunch with all my coworkers and TWO kinds of pumpkin cupcakes!! Then tonight was the traditional birthday dinner with the ladies! We went to Purple Chopstix. Yum, champagne!

Summer got me this dress for my birthday. She gave it to me as an early birthday present, so I've already gotten to wear it several times. I LOVE IT. As you can see, she also got one for herself! She was happy to join me in wearing them tonight, so I got to be TWINS for my birthday. My favorite! TWINS!!! And look, she made a little BABY rendition of the dress to include with my card, to remind me of my birthday gift (as if I could forget!). So really, TRIPLETS!!!

So many polka dots!! PRESENTS!

Spilling champagne. Whee!

Tonight was a SUPER SPECIAL birthday treat, because Rose was in the United States!! Special guest star!! And Leslie was there, all the way from North Carolina! The whole table tried putting on some of my lipstick and then we all had matching lips. OCTUPLETS!!!!!!!

The waitress TRICKED US and told us there was no more cake left. But it was a sneaky joke and LOOK! There was cake after all!! WHEW.

Wishes!

Matching lips!

Beauty pageant shots!

Summer and Emily battled over the last bite of cake.

After dinner, we headed to Casa for a nightcap. Here is Rose with Yumi's hair! Lovely!

Photo shoot!

Happy Birthday, Moss! (and me!)

2011-09-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

Today is Moss's birthday!! And since my birthday is tomorrow, Vana and Joe threw a joint birthday party for us at their new place! It was an Italian Feast. Mmm, garlic bread:

That garlic bread was PERFECT!! So garlicky!

Cheryl made two lasagnas!!

Time to dish up!

One of the best plates of food of my whole lifetime.

And for dessert, they picked up an ice cream cake from Larry's Dawg House!!!!!! These cakes have a reputation for being the best, so I was thrilled to get to taste one!!

Look at all those candles!

Singing "Happy Birthday!"

Time to blow out the candles. This is what it looks like when wishes come true!

The ice cream cake was SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was like a bowl of heaven with rainbows on top.

Birthday Kickoff

2011-09-22T21:56:00.000-07:00

Even though my birthday isn't until Friday, Ben was sweet enough to surprise me tonight with an early birthday picnic!! The rest of the week is so packed with birthday celebrations that this was a good opportunity for us to celebrate alone. When I got home from work, he had it all ready to go. YAYYYYY!!! We had a blueberry stilton, a sage derby cheese, and a brie. With baguette and champagne! It was so fun. Possibly the best thing about it was that we ate so early that we got hungry again later in the evening and got to eat it all AGAIN!

Cooking Club: Sandwiches!

2011-09-18T22:54:00.000-07:00

Nancy hosted the September cooking club, and the theme was "Sandwiches!" Nancy made little MINI versions of her favorite sandwich, which contains pesto, basil, tomato and provolone. And she made little tiny english muffins for them!!!!!!! LOOK AT HOW CUTE THEY ARE. We added a quarter to the platter to give you a sense of proportion.

Valerie made tofu sandwiches with snap peas and shitake mushrooms inside. These were incredible, and it was so fun to have sandwiches on tofu instead of bread!

Nancy made us a round of apple thyme martinis. Cheers!

Yumi did an appetizer version of a Banh Mi sandwich, featuring homemade pâté!

Fresh and delicious!

Then it was time to get serious and move the party to the TABLE!

Summer made mini versions of a South African dish called Bunny Chow, in which a loaf or hunk of bread is hollowed out and filled with curry. YUM! She did two curries, one with local lamb and the other with chick peas. Spicy and comforting!

My favorite sandwich growing up was always a good ol' fish sandwich. I did a grown up version on a lettuce wrap instead of a bun. I made some beer-battered fish and some fancy tarter sauce. I had quite the assembly line going on in the kitchen!

Kramer really wanted to get his paws on some of that fish.

Fish wraps! It was my first experience making beer-battered fish, and the batter didn't stick very well. It still tasted good though and the tarter sauce was amazing.

For the grand finale, Emily made ice cream sandwiches!! Oh, hi!

Homemade chocolate chip ice cream with homemade marshmallows on homemade graham crackers.

LOOK HOW CUTE AND DELICIOUS!!! They were scrumptious! The little bites of ice creamy marshmallows were the BEST.

After dinner, we played some Taboo.

And told some jokes!

And fawned over handsome Sal.

He is so fluffy and handsome!

That wraps up another amazingly delicious cooking club!

Happy Birthday, Dad!

2011-09-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

Tonight we got together at Mom and Dad's to celebrate Dad's birthday! We started things off with Dennis's famous chipotle dip. MMM, SPICY!

And then we had Casa takeout. Look at that beautiful burrito!

Birthday blowers!

Kate was playing a game where she would try to knock over that tiny plastic horse using her blower.

Got him!

After dinner, things started to get nerdy in the dining room. Dad and Dennis were Face Timing from opposite ends of the table!

Of course Ben got in on it, too!

Mom joined the nerd party from all the way in the kitchen!

Then Kate reminded us that there were very important things to focus on, like party hats.

And CAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!

Putting the candles on the cake is very serious business, and Kate was in charge.

She picked out some super cool star candles and chose where they should go! She did a great job.

Lighting the candles is also VERY serious business. Kate supervised.

So did Petey!

Yay! Cake time!

Kate helped Grandpa blow out his candles.

They nailed it!

Mmm, chocolate with peanut buttercream frosting. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!!

Marketing

2011-09-08T20:27:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm making a chocolate cake for Dad's birthday. As I was melting some chocolate, I happened to notice this ridiculous marketing ploy on the box. "Our product has two times more than half as much!!" What the?

One-Year-Until-The-Wedding Countdown Kickoff Celebration Dinner

2011-09-01T21:30:00.000-07:00

Our wedding is officially exactly one year away! To celebrate our -1 Year Anniversary, Ben and I went to Purple Chopstix tonight for a one-year countdown kickoff celebration dinner. We started with our favorite, Tom Yum Soup!

And we toasted to the upcoming year.

Cheers!

I got the sweet potato peanut pasta YUM.

Ben had the red and green curries mixed, and it was HOT!! He was sweatin'!!

We decided that we should have cake, since we're going to ALSO be having cake in exactly one year!!

YAY, CAKE!!!

After dinner, it was time for some reading in bed. We have a lot of learning to do!

Grilled Cooking Club

2011-08-27T23:41:00.000-07:00

Cooking Club was at my house this month. The theme for the night was "Grilled!" I fired up my gas grill, and Valarie brought her little charcoal grill. We had a special guest! Nancy's sister Valaree was in town and joined us for the event. She brought this delightful chilled grilled fish platter of tilapia and cod with a dill sauce.

Ladies out back grilling and chatting!

Yumi made these Indian Shrimp Skewers with Cantaloupe and Red Onion.

Ta da!

Valerie made Grilled Halloumi with Watermelon and Basil Mint Oil.

Emily showing off her manicure!

Valerie's cheese. YUM!!! This was SO fresh and delicious. The cheese was incredible. Warm and yummy.

Shrimp skewers! The marinade on the shrimp was divine!! It was spicy and went so well with the cantaloupe.

Valaree and Summer ready to chow down!

Yay! Time to eat!

Meanwhile, Summer's chicken had been grilling away, getting ready for the next course. She made Mario Batali's Spicy Black Pepper-Coated Drumsticks.

LOOK AT THAT DELECTABLE CHICKEN!

Emily made panzanella! There she is, grilling up the bread.

Putting it all together.

Yum! The bread was SO chewy and delicious. I definitely munched on a leftover slice later in the night as I was doing the dishes.

Paired with the juicy drumsticks.

Yay! More eating!!

Time for some more food!! Here are my pizzas, all lined up and ready for the grill.

Grilling pizza! My favorite thing to do!

Valarie brought a delicious chilled red wine. She originally met this wine in France!! Ooh la la!

I made three types of pizza. Pesto with grilled shrimp, heirloom tomatoes & feta, Pear with blue cheese, and a Caramelized onion, sauteed mushroom, goat cheese and basil with red sauce.

Summer declared it orgasmic!

"Then we played Apples to Apples!"

As a judge, this was my toughest decision of the night. Well played, ladies! I ultimately went with Beer. I would have to say going to the gym is more "invigorating," which was one of the descriptors on the Refreshing card. Had it been the ACTUAL word on the card, it would have totally won!

Nancy made a grilled nectarine tart with Italian pastry cream.

It was so, so, so, so, SO, SO GOOD.

And that concludes another DELICIOUS cooking club!

BEN GOT FOUR CORNHOLES TOO!!

2011-08-22T18:25:00.000-07:00

Remember how just over a week ago, I got all four bags in the hole? It was a first for me, and a very exciting evening. Well, tonight Ben got all four in TOO!!! We've both been trying all summer, and now we both have finally done it. WE ARE LIVING THE DREAM!!!

Look at all that blue in there!

The CHAMPION!

So, so, so excited!

Congratulations, Emly & Marc!

2011-08-22T12:45:00.000-07:00

Today was Emily and Marc's wedding day!! Hooray! The ceremony was beautiful. As they exited the church, we blew bubbles.

BUBBLES!

There is the woman that did the marrying part!

Ben and Nancy!

Next we headed to Eclipse Company Store for the reception. Polka dots!!

Emotions!

APPETIZERS! Look at the size of THAT feta pesto dome!! Hilarie is the original source of the recipe, and I must say hers tastes especially magical. And it's extra delicious on that Salaam bread that I worship. Mmm. Look at that big giant bowlful!

YUM! Hilarie's famous lamb chops! And feta pesto dome!!

The weather was sunny and gorgeous.

Ry made lots of beautiful music.

The cooking club ladies (minus the bride, of course!) each just HAPPENED to wear a dress of a color that perfectly matched one of my polka dots!! *I* felt like a bride with bridesmaids of my own!!

So super fun.

Speaking of matching, J's beer (Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold) perfectly matched my purse!

Ben got a spanking from Yumi!

Wheee!!! There she is, the beautiful bride!

Shoe inspection.

Time to move inside!

Cheers!

They started things off with the most delicious gazpacho I have ever had. I think smoked olive oil was the secret ingredient?

Some of the guys did a game where they had to act out different animals.

It was hilarious!

The main course! Salad nicoise! Featuring amazing swordfish poached in olive oil.

YUM!!! It was soooooooooo good.

First dance!

More dancing!

Time for toasts! CHAMPAGNE!

Cheers to the happy couple!

Anyone who wasn't going to finish their glass of champagne donated it to Summer. (Lucky!!!)

Cake time! Yay!

Mmm, it was fantastic. My only regret of the night is not tasting all three kinds!!! But I might have exploded if I had. I forgot to take pictures of the incredible cheese course that followed the dinner, but it was amazing and I ate LOADS of it!!

CHEERS TO EMILY AND MARC!

Cheryl's Birthday Luau

2011-08-17T13:28:00.000-07:00

Cheryl threw an amazing luau tonight to celebrate her birthday! Tons of other members of her family have birthdays in August, so it was a huge celebration for EVERYONE!

She and her friends worked so hard and really transformed the place into a Hawaiian paradise.

We each got to pick out a lei!!

YELLOW!

The keg was nestled inside a TIKI GOD. AWESOME. We've never had so much fun pouring ourselves beers!

CHEERS!

There were even stuffed luau pig prizes for later in the night for cornhole tournament winners. Sadly, we didn't stay long enough to compete, but it's probably better for everyone else that way because I probably would have totally won!

SO relaxing!! The weather was beautiful! In fact, it was excellent practice for when Ben and I go to Hawaii next fall on our honeymoon!

Jello shots! YUM!

PINEAPPLE PALM TREES!!!!! This party was the best, seriously. PINEAPPLE PALM TREES.

This bad boy had been roasting a pig since the wee hours of the morning.

It's done!

YUM! There was tons and tons of amazing food.

And SO MANY DESSERTS!!

Aloha!

Happy birthday, Cheryl!

FOUR CORNHOLES!

2011-08-11T20:10:00.000-07:00

Tonight, we had a reason to CELEBRATE!!

What's in there??!

OH LOOK! IT'S FOUR CORNHOLES THAT I MADE!!!

YAY!!!!!!!!!! All summer long, we've had a bottle of champagne in the fridge, with the plan that we were going to pop it whenever one of us got all four of our bags in the hole for the first time.

Tonight was the night! CHEERS! I got all four in!!!

In case you were wondering, they weren't all four DIRECT cornholes, but three of them were. One of my bags had landed right next to the hole and my fourth bag slammed it into the cornhole along with itself. So all four went IN and that COUNTS! (We had agreed at the beginning of summer that that situation would count! As it SHOULD!)

One of my life goals: ACCOMPLISHED.

Woo hoo!!!!!!!

Happy Birthday, Pete!

2011-07-31T13:11:00.000-07:00

Tonight we went to a party at Mer and Pete's to celebrate Pete's birthday! We got things started with some cornhole.

And inside we played with balloons!

Pete cooked up a whole bunch of sausages.

Dinnertime!

YUM.

Pete and Kate!

Kate in her little chair.

We played some more cornhole after dinner to make room for cake.

Cake time! Kate helped decorate it and she sure was excited!

All lit up.

Happy birthday to Pete!

Make a wish!

The cake was incredible.

Mmm, with some strawberry ice cream! YAY!

Happy Birthday, Pete!

Baby Gus!

2011-07-30T16:02:00.000-07:00

Today was a special day in many ways. Two sets of friends came to Athens for the afternoon! Scott & Parker, and Clark, Anne and BABY GUS. I've seen lots of pictures of Gus's cuteness, but it wasn't until today that I finally got to meet him in real life! He is even cuter in person, even though it doesn't seem possible. First, we hung out at the house for awhile.

Oh, hi!

Then we headed uptown for lunch. We put our name in at Casa, and decided to kill time on the college green while we waited for our table.

Smile!

Gus and Clark!

Parker was too hungry to wait for Casa, so she got a slice of Goodfella's Pizza. Here is Scott trying with all of his might to resist eating it while she took a bathroom break.

GUS.

We headed to Casa to finish our wait.

Mwah!

Reaching for sunglasses.

Success!

Gus and me!

BEER!

Finally it was time for lunch! Delicious mushroom parmesan dip.

Taco salad!

It was super awesome to spend the afternoon with visiting friends, and so so SO super awesome to meet Gus!

30-Mile Cooking Club Meal

2011-07-16T23:31:00.000-07:00

July is 30-Mile Meal Month here in Athens, Ohio. The 30-Mile Meal Project is an initiative challenging people to focus their meals around locally grown foods and products. Yumi hosted this month's cooking club, and she challenged us to make our own 30-Mile dishes!

Nancy started things off with a basil cheesecake and spelt flour crackers. It was AMAZING!!! What a delicious appetizer. SO fresh and delightful!

Nancy used Village Bakery yogurt (made from Snowville Creamery milk), Integration Acres goat chevre, eggs from Albany, basil from Valerie's garden and honey from Shade. She made the crackers with Shagbark Seed & Mill Co. spelt flour.

Yumi made herb polenta with mixed peppers and wineberry gastrique.

I LOVED this. I looooove polenta, and the peppers were sweet with a hint of spicy and just bursting with flavor

Yumi used Shagbark heirloom corn meal, herbs and peppers from Cowdery farms, Cantrell lotus honey, Tillis Highlands Farm wineberry vinegar & wineberries and Shew's Orchard apple vinegar.

Valerie made black bean, corn and tomato salad, served in little lettuce wraps with pepper jack cheese. I was helping myself to little lettuce tacos all night long!! They were so yummy.

Valerie used corn, cherry tomatoes, garlic, pepper jack cheese and wineberry vinegar from the Athens Farmers Market, red onion, basil, and leaf lettuce from her own garden, and Shagbark black beans.

Summer made pork tenderloin with blueberry chutney.

It was great!! Look at the color of those blueberries! Summer used local pork tenderloin and fresh picked blueberries, lodi apples, red onion and red wine from West Lafayette, Ohio.

I made roasted new potatoes and green beans with feta.

This was an awesome recipe from Eating Well. Click here for the recipe. The potatoes, green beans and and scallions all came from the Athens Farmers Market, and the goat feta was from Integration Acres.

All together, now!

For dessert, Emily made Peach Kuchen.

She used peaches and eggs from the Athens Farmers Market, Snowville Creamery heavy cream, Hartzler's Amish-style roll butter and Shagbark spelt flour. I'm sure you can tell just by reading the ingredients that this dessert was DELICIOUS!!!

Such a wonderful meal and such a fun challenge! It definitely proves that you don't have to go far to enjoy an amazing variety of food.

After dinner, it was time for games! First, we played Foodie Fight. Here is my team congratulating ourselves for getting a tough question right. Go, us!!

After that, we played the game where you write the name of a person on a Post-It note, stick it on your forehead, and then try to guess who you are by asking questions. It was really fun!!

Valerie, Nancy and Emily!

Yumi, me and Summer!

The first round. Check it out, Tom Strodtbeck!!

Round two!

Hercules.

Round three!

Round four.

And that concludes another amazing cooking club!! YUM.

Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Porter

2011-07-11T13:24:00.000-07:00

Brew Week is this week, and the first item on the agenda was to drink some of the famous Willoughby Brewing Co. Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Porter before it sells out! Sisters with beers!

Bob & Megan with their Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Porters!

Vana and Joe with their Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Porters!

Yumi got a taster of the Neil House Brewery Cranberry Cider along with her Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Porter and it was SO, SO, SO GOOD!!

Megan got a whole one!

The bartender recommended mixing the two in one glass! I decided to be like Yumi and keep them separate though. That way I could have a sip of either OR a sip of both in my mouth at once! Which really was delicious.

Unicorn Pegasus!

Happy friends drinking beer!

Tom is in town this week, which gives us all mixed emotions. It's bittersweet!! We love having him here, but of course we're all so sad that he'll have to go away again soon. We miss you, Tom!

Pesto Salmon

2011-07-10T21:20:00.000-07:00

Today I made pesto with the basil from our deck. It has been growing like CRAZY this summer! Here is my harvest:

It made SIX batches!! Whoa. And I freeze them in 1/4-cup portions so it made twenty-four of those. MMM. We decided to eat one of them fresh tonight, and had Dennis over for dinner. We topped some salmon with the pesto, parmesan and tomatoes. I've never cooked salmon with pesto before and it was AWESOME!! I'll definitely be making this again!

Grilled Pizza

2011-07-09T20:18:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the perfect night to grill out and eat outdoors! We had my #1 favorite summertime classic, grilled pizza. Yay. Tomato, goat cheese, and basil from my deck on the left, and then pear with gorgonzola on the right.

With a summery salad topped with fresh peaches! YAY!!

Visit from Claudia

2011-07-09T13:05:00.000-07:00

Claudia came to visit yesterday with her boyfriend Kyle! Immediately upon their arrival, we went to Casa for lunch. Then we walked all over uptown and campus, looking at all the things that have changed since college. That made us very thirsty, so we went to Jackie O's to taste some beers!

Kyle had never been to Athens, so we had to show him the Ridges! We walked along the nature trails and then decided to play some putt putt. I was VERY excited to discover that they had added a little stream with a tiny waterfall to the course!!!! I feel like a putt putt course is not up to par (ha ha) unless they have running water on the course.

When I was in middle school, I spent every free second at Putt-On's, the mini golf course that used to be out on Columbus Road. It was AWESOME and they totally had a fish pond and a MOUNTAIN. Eventually, somebody decided to tear that course down and put up a super crappy flat one instead with crappy obstacles and NO WATER. I never went there and of course it went out of business, because it sucked.

ANYWAY. The course up at the Ridges has just been getting better and better now that people are finally taking care of it! And I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the waterfall!!

And it's actually a DOUBLE waterfall because there are falls at each end of the little stream!!

Anyway, we had a lot of fun playing the course. We each got one hole-in-one!

Claudia cracked me up on this hole, because she used a technique I had never seen before. She actually got INSIDE the quilt square box!!

It was a pretty smart idea. Kyle followed suit.

For dinner we went to Purple Chopstix, mmmm. Then this morning it was back to Casa for brunch! What a delicious visit!

I got the seasonal huevos rancheros. There was peach berry salsa under there!! So good.

And we shared a biscuit with soysage gravy.

Unicorn pegasus time!

Yay!

Cuteness!!!

Happy Fourth of July!

2011-07-04T21:53:00.000-07:00

We got together at Mom and Dad's tonight to celebrate our independence! Dad grilled up a huge batch of different types of bratwurst.

Look at all those sausages!

Mom got Fourth of July necklaces for everyone and Kate made it her mission to collect all of them.

There she is taking Uncle Bens'!

The weather was gorgeous and perfect!

Mmmm!! Potato salad, baked beans, ratatouille, sausages, peppers & onions!!

Great Lakes Conway's Irish Ale. So bubbly!

YUM!!!

I made a lemon bundt cake for dessert.

It was fresh and delicious!

Happy Fourth of July!

New Bike!!!!!!

2011-07-03T12:51:00.000-07:00

I got a new bicycle!!! My old one was almost 20 years old and it was a super heavy, clunky mountain bike. I had no idea how much better it was going to be to ride a new bike until I tried it. WOWEE!!! New helmet, too! My old one was from 1999! Oops!

Tortilla Soup

2011-07-02T18:19:00.000-07:00

Since cooking with my new counters is so awesome and fun, we had Mom and Dad over tonight to celebrate! I made tortilla soup, mmm. The recipe was from The Best Light Recipe and it was DELICIOUS!

It is SO MUCH FUN to cook in the kitchen now with the new counters. All I want to do is cook and then clean up my messes because it's so easy!! Whee!

New Counters!

2011-06-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

Ben and I got new counters!! Our old counters were only OKAY. When we moved in, the formica was peeling off. Dad fixed it up with some glue, and made these nice wooden edges to hold everything in (thanks, Pa!). That made it absolutely livable for the past two years. But it was hard to clean and just not the BEST. I spend a lot of time cooking in this kitchen, so it was definitely time for an upgrade! Here are the counters before:

And here are the NEW counters! They are Corian and they are THE BEST. They have these little subtle bits of SPARKLE throughout and it makes me soooo happy! It's a subtle, amazing sparkle. You walk through the kitchen, and glittering SPARKLES catch your eye!! And the counters are so satisfying to clean because they LITERALLY SPARKLE.

With a seamless sink! SO EASY TO CLEAN!

Here is a video to show the subtle sparkle. It's hard to capture on film, but you can see them sparkling!

Happy Father's Day!

2011-06-19T13:24:00.000-07:00

We had plans to celebrate Father's Day with a burrito feast at our house tonight. After enjoying that Golden Peach Soup with Shrimp & Crab Seviche last night, I knew I had to add it to the menu for tonight. I thought Dad would just love it!! Plus I wanted to eat it again ASAP!! So I went out and picked up more peaches! Yay, round TWO!!

Oh, hi! It was the perfect start to our burrito feast.

Mmm, burrito.

All wrapped up!

Plus an enormous salad.

Mom also made a delicious peach crisp. It was yummy to start and end the night with peaches. I forgot to get a picture of the dessert, though! After dinner we played euchre. It was fun to get to enjoy a delicious dinner in honor of an awesome dad! I love you, Pa!

Cooking Club at Valerie's

2011-06-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

Valerie was the host of this month's cooking club. The first thing I saw when I walked into her kitchen was this gorgeous loaf of wine cheese bread!! I was first introduced to this AMAZING BREAD at Nancy's Infused Vodka Cooking Club in January 2010. I think I have probably mentioned it at every single cooking club (and various other social functions, too) since then. So I was OVERJOYED when Valerie said she would be making it again tonight!! Behind it is her other dish for the evening - Tuna, Pasta and Pecan Salad.

I had to have a little moment alone with the wine cheese bread. Look, that one pocket of cheese in the foreground looks like a heart! I think it loves me back!!

I had to tear myself away from the loaf, because it was time to start eating!

Yumi made a deconstructed eggplant parmesan.

It was so much lighter and more summery than traditional eggplant parmesan! There was also a lemony olive oil to drizzle on top.

I was up next, and I served a Golden Peach Soup with Shrimp & Crab Seviche. I wanted to try this recipe because I am OBSESSED with fresh peaches, and also because I love seafood. This recipe ROCKED. Three pounds of peaches!! Here is a link to the recipe, I highly recommend it!

Served with some slices of the dreamy wine cheese bread and I was in HEAVEN.

Emily made a french onion tart! Ooh la la!

We ate the tart along with Valerie's tuna pecan pasta salad and Summer's green bean, quinoa, and crispy shallot salad. This trio went great together!

Mmmmmm!!!

We were pretty full, so we decided to take a little walk. We checked out the garden.

Nancy did a bit of modeling!

Then we ventured back to the house for some fun and games.

Fun and LAUGHING!

We played Balderdash and had dessert. Nancy made TWO KINDS of ice cream sandwiches. Whoa. Chocolate, cherry & pecan cookies with vanilla ice cream, and triple chocolate cookies with vanilla ice cream!!!!

They were so, so, so, so, so, so, SOOOOOOO GOOD.

I was in LOVE.

As we continued the game, my appetite inched slowly back, and I found myself walking out to the dining room several times to slice off "tiny bites" of the wine cheese loaf. Finally, after the millionth tiny bite I said "screw it!" and just grabbed the rest! MMM!!!

It was a fantastic and delicious night and it was magical to be reunited with my favorite wine cheese bread. I can't wait until we cross paths again.

Warrior Dash

2011-06-05T14:39:00.000-07:00

Summer and I ran the Warrior Dash this weekend in Logan! We were really impressed with how organized the event is. The Warrior Dash is a 5k with lots of obstacles like mud pits, fire pits, rope climbs, etc.

Before the race. Look at how nice and clean our tank tops are!

FIRE PIT!

MUD PIT!

This is AFTER we hosed off.

Warrior!

Warrior!

Warriors everywhere.

Summer and some random girl.

Bus ride back to our car.

On the way back to Athens, we spotted a fruit stand selling sweet georgia peaches!!!!!!!! YES!!!!! Peaches are my favorite fruit of the whole summer and these were AWESOME AWESOME PEACHES. I bought a basket and they're already all gone. YUM.

Memorial Day Grilled Chicken

2011-05-30T21:21:00.000-07:00

Mom and Dad had us over for a little cookout on Memorial Day. We worked up an appetite by playing some cornhole in the sunshine!

These were some intense games!

Then we headed to the back deck where Dad worked his grill magic on some chicken.

We had some drinks and waited for the magic to happen.

MMM! MAGICAL INDEED!

Mom made this SUPER delicious pasta salad with asparagus.

And I made a giant salad.

Plus some of Mom's homemade bread, which I think I had four pieces of?!? Soooooooo good.

Happy Memorial Day, everyone! We sure feasted like kings. YUM!

A Cooking Club Picnic

2011-05-29T23:45:00.000-07:00

Summer was the host of the May cooking club. Since her new house is currently under construction, she and J are living in his parents' partially finished barn! Since they are living very simply and a lot of her kitchen stuff is packed away, she decided to do a picnic theme. It was a super hot and summery weekend, so the theme was perfect!

I got started right away on a big batch of mojitos featuring fresh mint from my mom's Mojito Patch.

Refreshing! Cheers!

Yumi gathered a bunch of delicious items from the Farmer's Market to create a tasting plate. She also pickled some green beans, which turned out AWESOME! That camembert on the bottom right of the platter rocked my world. It was creamy and rich and delightful.

Summer was serving fried chicken as the main course, but teased us first with this chicken-fried edamame. Which let me just tell you, was genius.

Valerie started things out on a light note with this spinach, walnut and asian pear salad. Mmm!

Nancy made a soba noodle dish and served it in these adorable takeout containers.

Whee! Look at that deliciousness! It was so tasty and super fun to eat.

Look at all of that fried chicken!!

Emily made cassoulet. It was tomatoey and beany and scrumptiously comforting.

Chicken 'n' beans!

YUM!!!

We were all pretty full from dinner, so we took a stroll to make more room in our stomachs.

A pretty goofy picture of Emily and I showing off our matching lip gloss.

What, WHOA. Summer's house is GONE!!!!! That is where her HOUSE was! And where her new house will be! As you can see, J is pointing out various notes of interest.

Back to the barn for more fun!

Nothing makes room for dessert like a few rounds of cartwheels!

For dessert, I made a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. I wanted to carry it in my cake-carrier, so that it would be safe and protected. However, it was 90 degrees when I frosted this cake, and the frosting was just RUNNING down the sides. I had to keep it refrigerated or else!! I stuck it in my huge cooler full of ice and wedged a bunch of items up against it, crossing my fingers that it would make it there safely.

Luckily, it did! Whew!!

Once we started to dig in, Valerie pointed out that any of us who were enjoying our cake without a glass of red wine to wash it down were missing out on an amazing experience. So we pretty much all had a round of red to go with! And she was right! It was a great combo.

After dessert, a whole mess of Nascar racers showed up! One guy for every girl....

Once we all chose our boyfriends, we had a little photo shoot in the telephone booth.

Yumi's boyfriend has such a distinguished mustache!

Emily's boyfriend is super intense!

Aw, Valerie is fixing up her boyfriend's goatee. How sweet!

At first glance, you might think that I was dating Emily's boyfriend. But NO! That is his twin!

Besides, it wouldn't matter anyway because clearly Emily and her twin aren't that serious.

Heather with her boyfriend!

Twins!! Every girl's dream!

Emily and I mingled with the twins for awhile.

The twins are very serious, but it's cool. We can hang.

Group photos!!!

These crack me up, because there are a handful where Heather is sitting in front of the guy who is flashing the "number one!" symbol with his finger, but it sort of looks like HER finger in all of them.

Finger! Hahah.

What an awesome cooking club!!! Fantastic picnic deliciousness and then a barn full of Nascar hotties. Who could ask for anything more?!

Mothers Day Mojitos

2011-05-08T22:29:00.000-07:00

Tonight we got together at our place to celebrate Mother's Day! Mom brought along the fixings for mojitos, featuring a gigantic bunch of mint fresh from her mojito patch!

Yum!! Refreshing, delicious mojitos! What a great idea, MOM! Yet another example of why we should be celebrating you!!

Cheers!

We played several games of cornhole.

And then headed inside for a feast! I made Thai Pork Stew and a huge salad.

After dinner, we headed back outside to play with some toys from Ben's vast collection. The highlight was one of those spinny things that shoots the flying disc way up into the sky!

There it goes!

There it goes again!

Up so high! It only landed on the roof once!

Whee!

Kate is excellent at toy retrieval.

Ben busted out some little wooden gliders as well.

Fun with aeronautics!

Retrieving!

Oops, one of the planes landed in our neighbor's tree!

Ben had to retrieve that one!

At this point we were ready for dessert. Mer made a Texas sheet cake with mocha chocolate frosting!!

Oh, hi, sprinkles!!

It was DELICIOUS!

It was great to spend the day with family to celebrate the awesomeness of Mom!! I love you, Mom!

Happy Birthday, Kayla!

2011-05-07T22:27:00.000-07:00

Kayla hosted a potluck cookout tonight to celebrate her birthday, which was yesterday. Yum, look at all of that delicious food!

Ben's plate (he was really hungry):

Yay, cake!! John's famous chocolate cake. Mmm.

Happy Birthday, Kayla!

Happy Birthday, Dennis!

2011-05-02T22:23:00.000-07:00

Today is Dennis's birthday! We did a lot of celebrating. Yesterday my parents, my parents' friends Jay and Carol, and Ben and I headed down to Dennis's land. The day started off rainy but cleared up just for us!

We had a delicious lunch of grilled ciabatta sandwiches with pesto, tomato and mozzarella. Plus fruits salad and chips!

Then tonight the whole family went out to Casa for dinner. Mmm, tacos! Then we headed back to our place for cake and ice cream. I made a golden layer cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. The only picture I managed to get from ALL of this celebrating was one photo of the cake!

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T22:56:00.000-07:00

This sure was a delicious Easter! We started things off with some challah french toast. It blew my MIND!! The legend is correct, it absolutely makes the best french toast in the world.

Yay!!!!

Then we had my parents over for dinner! I made this Martha Stewart recipe, Mushroom and Black Bean Tortilla Casserole. It's from one of the recent issues of Everyday Food, and I've already made it FIVE times! It's SO easy, SO healthy, and SO delicious!!

Mom brought a delicious salad.

Delicious!

For dessert, we made Peep s'mores!

Mmm, toasty little bunnies.

YUM.

DOUBLE YUM.

Ben and I made a second batch later in the night. Too good to resist! HAPPY EASTER!

Eggy Cooking Club

2011-04-23T23:45:00.000-07:00

Emily hosted the April Cooking Club tonight, and the theme was eggs. A perfect theme for springtime, especially since the dinner took place on Easter Weekend! I decided to make a strata, which I had never done before. I made a dinner strata that had mushrooms, onion, spinach, ricotta and marinara. Here it is fresh out of the oven!

Valerie made challah bread! Look at how shiny and delicious.

Of course there was Easter candy.

Nancy was in charge of cocktails! The first one was a Perfect Lady, which has gin, peach brandy, lemon juice and egg whites. Cheers!

Summer made some little egg sandwich appetizers! They were on little toasts with a basil-arugula pesto. MMM!! Amazing.

Emily made a salmon souffle! Look at how tall and mighty it is!!

Yumi made a side dish of asparagus with bearnaise sauce.

Oh, hi! This challah was OUTSTANDING and the best thing about it was that Valerie made tons of it so that we could all take it home to make french toast the next day. I've heard the legend of how challah bread makes the most incredible french toast in the world, but I have never experienced it yet. Can't wait!

Emily bought some fancy eggs from the farmer's market. They were $1 apiece! This is because they come from a rare breed of chicken. She hardboiled them and we each ate one half just to see how they taste. It was delicious, but it tasted mostly like a REGULAR delicious hardboiled egg to me!

Here I am cutting into my strata. Rarr, look at the size of that knife! I am SERIOUS about cutting this thing up.

At this point, it was time for Nancy to prepare her second cocktail of the evening. This one was called a Royal Rumble, and included gin, one beer, orange soda, and a whole egg. Sunset Wheat was the beer of choice.

Here is Nancy, ready to add the egg!

Money shot!

OOPS!!! The blender was too full and Royal Rumble went EVERYWHERE!!! I love the look on Nancy's face as she's realizing that this is happening.

We cleaned up the explosion, and got back to it. This time the look on her face says, "Oh yeah. I am in charge here. I OWN you, blender. Just TRY to explode again, I dare you!!!!"

This time it was a success! ROYAL RUMBLE!

This is where I would like to make an announcement that I'm afraid my camera is dying. All of a sudden, the little lens won't immediately open when I turn it on, and look at THIS picture!!:

WTF?!

For dessert, Emily made sabayon with fresh fruit. It was soooooooo good!!!!

Seriously, SO good.

SERIOUSLY.

At this point I started to get passionate about something (yogurt? I think?) and realized I forgot to pack my ushanka! I really like to always have it with me at Cooking Club because you just never know. Luckily, Emily also owns a fur hat!! Whew! A passionate tirade just isn't the same without one.

You can really tell I mean it when the fist hits the table.

Doesn't Emily look lovely in it?

The last cocktail of the night, which not everyone chose to enjoy, started with this bowl of glittering Peeps.

Peeps + wine! Obviously the yellow Peeps go with white wine.

And the pink ones go with red! CHEERS!

California Trip

2011-04-17T13:44:00.000-07:00

This week I headed to California for the annual NBIA conference. It was great to see Lindsay and Tom, and as usual we did a lot of hard work and managed to fit in a great deal of fun as well. After I was done working the event, I headed to Santa Cruz to spend a few days with Cousin Dan & family. It was an excellent trip full of tons of delicious seafood, lots of fun times, and many beautiful sights. Check out my photos for all the details!

I Didn't Miss The Cherry Trees!

2011-04-08T08:43:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving for California first thing tomorrow morning, and I was feeling super pouty and bummed this week because I thought I was going to miss the cherry trees this year. I could see the buds starting to peek out slowly throughout the week, and figured that next week they were going to explode. Even yesterday morning they were still little buds. But it was a sunny and gorgeous day, and by the late afternoon, a bunch of them had bloomed!

So last night when we got home from work, Ben and I took a little drive down to see them! We try to always have a visit or a picnic under them while they're in bloom.

Yay! There they are! They're not in full bloom yet of course, but they were DEFINITELY worth a visit! There were lots of people out enjoying them.

Happy to be there!

What good luck! I really feel complete and ready for my trip now. I know I'll see lots of cool and beautiful things in California, but I have to say I feel very lucky to have gotten a little glimpse of the cherry trees this year. They're really special and awesome! I bet they're going to be incredible next week, everyone should go and enjoy them as much as possible!

Ben Got a New Helicopter

2011-04-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

Ben got a new remote-controlled helicopter, and it is super awesome!!

Here comes Charlie to check out the scene. Look at his little marshmallows marching across the floor.

He was pretty enthralled.

Landing a helicopter is serious business.

Happy Birthday, Ben!

2011-03-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

Today is Ben's birthday! We had a big family pizza party to celebrate. Dad decorated with balloons!

Yay, pizza!

I made a huge salad.

And a chocolate cake with peanut buttercream frosting!

Singing "Happy Birthday!"

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR BEEEEEEEN!

YUM.

The cake was super delicious.

Cheryl told some stories while we ate cake!

Then it was time for presents!

Benjamin Elfin Forest got a new apron!

And some delicious-looking wine!

And Dennis made Ben this mirror!

It says "beautiful" on it. So sweet.

He taped a photo of young Ben on it, too. Look at his little hairdo!!

Happy birthday, Ben! Cheers!

Chocolate Cooking Club

2011-03-26T23:37:00.000-07:00

Nancy hosted cooking club this month, and the theme was chocolate! We used an episode of David Rocco's Dolce Vita as our inspiration, and followed the menu that he featured on the show. Cioccolato! We made the four recipes from his menu, and added two additional recipes. Summer kicked things off with a chocolate martini. She put her own twist on it to make it even more delicious!

Bailey's Mint Chocolate, Godiva White Chocolate Liqueur, and Vodka! With a Junior Mint as garnish. So delicious!!

We also had lots of fantastic wines to enjoy throughout the night. Look at how cute this little predator is!

Valerie brought this super, SUPER delicious and perfectly appropriate wine, The Chocolate Block.

THIS ONE HAS A UNICORN!!!!!

Time to eat! Le Bernardin, ooh la la! Fancy times!

Valerie made chocolate babka! Soooooooo delicious.

Emily made the Shrimp with Chocolate.

Yumi made the Beef Stew with Chocolate.

And Nancy made the Penne with Chocolate and Anchovies.

Now that is one brown plate!! This dinner was definitely weird. I usually like pretty much everything always all the time, so I did enjoy it. The shrimp were plump and juicy and awesome. The bread was hands down fantastic!! The pasta was WEIRD but I liked it. The bread crumbs gave it an awesome crunch. The beef stew was super intense.

It was hard to keep the chocolate off our faces, so we all looked extra beautiful while eating this meal.

We decided to save my salads for last because we figured we'd need something refreshing. ACTION SHOTS!

Sprinkling berries!

Mmmm. The salads were bright and delicious. Topped with chocolate balsamic dressing!

After dinner, we played an intense game of Foodie Fight.

Then things got crazy.

Nancy has the creepiest yet awesomest wiener water gun from the good old days. SEX!

The gun inspired a series of spy team photos.

Go team!!

Charlie's Angels? Or something.

New Bedspread and Sock Stealer

2011-03-12T13:35:00.000-08:00

We got a new bedspread! Here is Charlie modeling it.

Emma has always had a bad habit of stealing my socks and dragging them around. Here are a few of her latest hauls.

Valentine's Day Cooking Club

2011-02-12T23:32:00.000-08:00

Tonight was the February installment of cooking club, and I hosted it at my house! Since it is the weekend before Valentine's Day, we had a Valentine's Dinner. Hearts everywhere!

Valerie got things started with an aphrodisiac cocktail, a Latin Fling! It had rum, pineapple juice, Chinese five spice syrup, and lime juice.

Summer seduced us with a ménage à trois of bacon. Tempura fried bacon, bacon dipped in chocolate, and bacon wrapped around succulent chicken.

Nancy made two loaves of bread! This amazing heart-shaped pesto masterpiece:

And this fantastic loaf that had an entire cup of red wine, and pine nuts. Both breads were SO great. Bread is seriously my favorite.

Emily made this adorable salad. Pink grapefruit segments, celery hearts, dried cranberries, candied pistachios, and little heart-shaped bites of fresh mozzarella!

It paired perfectly with my roasted vegetable lasagna. A match made in heaven!

Summer loved those mozzarella hearts!

Of course the bread stayed out for the duration of the night. I could not keep my hands off of those loaves!

Yay, time for dessert! Yumi made cheesecake bites. Pistachio, S'mores, Mint with Sprinkles, and Nerds!

Toasting the marshmallows with a flame.

Teamwork!

Fire! They were all delicious but I think that I liked the Nerds ones the best.

Gina stopped by for a quick visit, and shared a couple of cheesecake bites with us. It's always nice to see her!

Highly flammable 151, and a blow torch. DANGER!

Wiener time.

Valerie ended the night with another aphrodisiac cocktail, Flaming Spanish Coffee.

This drink was so dramatic and intense, we had to take a video. Look how INTENSE:

Mmm, frothy and delicious. Homemade whipped cream on top.

Summer taking her first sip:

Summer's mind is blown by the deliciousness.

After we were done stuffing ourselves, we played some cards.

We also did that experiment where you draw a pig and it tells a bunch of stuff about your personality. We didn't have the info about what anything means, though. But it's clear that we're all very different ladies!

Yet another fantastic night of cooking club. It was YUM!

Happy Birthday, Vana!

2011-02-06T21:27:00.000-08:00

Vana and Joe had the whole family over tonight for a birthday potluck! They had an ENORMOUS bottle of champagne that we popped.

Moss made deviled eggs and hummus.

After the champagne was gone, we made a round of buttery nipples! So delicious.

And after THOSE, we had mimosas with some champagne that Moss brought! So many delicious drinks!

Time for the main course! Vana and Joe made enchiladas, and Ben and I brought sweet potato black bean burritos.

Mmm.

Plus pasta salad from Kayla, and a big old salad from Dennis.

After dinner, the ladies did some chatting in the kitchen.

And the dudes did some chilling on the sofa.

Nala did some sleeping on the chair.

Then it was time for presents!

For dessert, Cheryl made fudge pies with cream cheese icing. They were totally naughty and awesome.

Happy birthday, Vana!

Pin the Treats in the Kitties' Mouths

2011-01-23T20:46:00.000-08:00

Tonight was Mom's birthday party and Mom and Dad made party games! This one was called Pin the Treats in the Kitties' Mouths, and you had to try to get the treats into Lucy and Petey's mouths.

Here comes the blindfold!

Go, Mer!

Pete's turn.

Kate was Grandpa's little cheerleader!

The birthday girl!

Uncle Ben!

Kate wasn't quite ready to have her first blindfold experience and I can't say I blame her!

Hmm, is somebody peeking?

We also played Pin the Tail on the Donkey (Eeyore).

I made a coconut layer cake, Mom's favorite!

Here it comes!

Wish time!

Mmm, with chocolate ice cream. YUM. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!

Retro Cooking Club

2011-01-15T23:50:00.000-08:00

Yumi was in charge of Cooking Club this month, and we did a retro dinner! We all dressed up in 1950's and 1960's outfits, and made food from that era as well. As soon as we walked in the door, Yumi handed us a Tom Collins.

Mmm, the appetizer table.

Yum!

Nancy made this fabulous nut loaf.

And Valerie made olive cheese balls and shrimp puffs. I could not stop popping those olive delights into my mouth!!

Summer's mom helped her do her hair.

It was magnificent.

And the other side!

Cheers to bee hives!

After the modeling shoot, I headed into the kitchen to see how Yumi was doing. CHEERS!

Turns out she was cooking up a storm!

"LOOK AT HOW MUCH BUTTER I'M SUPPOSED TO USE!"

"Seriously? I'm supposed to just keep adding more and more and MORE?"

"WHEN DOES THE BUTTER END?! SO MUCH WHISKING."

Eventually we decided it was buttery enough and she could stop.

I made stuffed peppers! Everything looks more delicious when arranged symmetrically on a platter.

Yumi's masterpiece, salmon wellington. (With buttery butter sauce to drizzle on top!)

Emily went above and beyond, and in addition to her main dish for the night, surprised us with a classic gelatin "salad." So futuristic and thrifty!

Oh my god. LOOK at it. What a glorious centerpiece!

Bon appetit!

Emily slicing into the salad.

Whoa.

My serving of "salad." It was SO GROSS. Hahaha. We all greatly applauded Emily for daring to make this dish, and it sure was dazzling to look at, but none of us could finish our helping. I actually kind of choked on mine, because it was so slippery it went SHOOTING down my throat!! Nothing says "fresh" like coating your veggies in a layer of slime! I can't believe people actually used to EAT this!!

Emily also made individual tuna noodle casseroles that were totally delicious.

Yay! Eating!! I think that in this picture, Yumi has just taken a bite of "salad."

For dessert, Summer made Babas Au Rhum.

RUMMY! I loved the rum-soaked raisins.

Last time we had cooking club at Yumi's house, she gave Summer a yellow dress. It's becoming a tradition, because this time she had one for Emily! Look at those pretty pastel girls, they are like visions of spring!

I brought my huge collection of vintage magazines, and we flipped through those off and on throughout the night. The kitten cover is my FAVORITE. There is a 100% chance that I would buy that magazine if I ever saw it at the newsstand.

After dinner, we played a wild game of Twister!

We played with teams of two. This was our very first move of the night. Look at how dramatic Summer's pose is!! With an attitude like that, she was bound to win.

Getting harder now...

Valerie and I lost round one, so it was time for Emily & Nancy to combat Summer & Yumi!

It turns out there are a lot of butts in Twister. They should've called it Buttster.

Twisted!

Spin a good combo, Valerie!

BUTTSTER!

Who knew Twister was going to be THIS FUN!?!

It was time for the final round and we all had our game faces on. BRING IT!

All twisted up, right off the bat!

Hahaha, I love Nancy's face in this one.

Uh oh, my slip is starting to show a LOT.

SERIOUSLY SO FUN!!!!!!!!!

Since I showed Emily's butt earlier, I figured it was only fair to show my butt too. Whoomp! There it is!

Could we BE having any more fun??? It's so fun it HURTS!

Right foot yellow!

Hands and feet.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!

Who wants to play Twister? Emily does!

After Twister, we played Charades.

By this point in the night, Summer had acquired a tiara from Yumi!

And Yumi had put a fancy red hat on my head!

Second word, two syllables!

It was an awesome game and an AWESOME NIGHT!

Cheers to another fantastic installment of Cooking Club!

Blast from the Past: Baby Charlie and Emma

2011-01-14T08:01:00.000-08:00

I found this folder of pictures of Charlie and Emma when they were little baby KITTENS. They are so little and CUTE. This first batch of pictures was from the first time I met them. My mom had informed me that the cutest kitten she had ever seen was up for adoption at the vet. I went to go check him out. She sure was right! Aw, little baby Charlie in a cage.

It turned out there were actually TWO kittens there. Emma, too!

Awww. Obviously I had to get both.

This picture kills me because I feel like Charlie is hoping with all of his might that I will adopt him.

The first time I ever picked him up!

LOOK AT HOW LITTLE HIS PINK NOSE IS!!!!!!!!

And here they are at home, peeking out of the windows!

So fuzzy in the window.

Charlie in the sink!

SO LITTLE IN THE SINK!

Little Emma!

Little BABY Charlie.

Eeeeeeee look how SMALL. And his marshmallows are so big because he hasn't grown into them yet!!!!

Man, I love that cat so much.

And finally, a bunch of cute pictures of them cuddling.

Good Luck Pork

2011-01-01T20:01:00.000-08:00

Mom and Dad had us over tonight for the annual tradition of pork and sauerkraut on New Year's Eve! Yay! We had champagne, too. Now we will all have good luck this year!

I think it may be the best batch that they've ever made. SO DELICIOUS. Happy New Year, everyone! I think 2011 is going to be AWESOME.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2010-12-31T16:59:00.000-08:00

I tried out another cookie in my new oven today! Chocolate chip! They were PERFECT. Seriously. Whoa. I think it may have been my first ever batch of chocolate chip?!? Or at least that I can remember. We're having Summer and J over for a NYE dinner tonight, and these will be the dessert. YUM!

Banana Bread Beer

2010-12-27T18:57:00.000-08:00

Today, Summer stopped by with a little engagement present. Banana Bread BEER!

It is incredible. It tastes like a delicious loaf of banana bread, except even more delicious because also it is BEER. I highly recommend.

New Curtains

2010-12-27T13:50:00.000-08:00

Mom made us some more new roman shades for our house! And they're awesome! Here are the ones in Ben's office:

His are blackout shades so that he can geek out in the middle of the day if he wants to. Very cool.

And mine are my favorite Marimekko print EVER, that I've had in the past two places I've lived. Sadly, it is very hard to find now, and I was bummed thinking that I had used it all up in places that I've moved away from. Now I'm settled, and I wasn't going to be able to have curtains made from my favorite fabric! But them Mom found a little stash that she had forgotten about, and it was JUST big enough to make curtains for my office. YAY! MEANT TO BE!!

I'm engaged!!!!!

2010-12-26T11:12:00.000-08:00

After Christmas Dinner over at my folks' house last night, Ben and I headed home to open our presents to each other. Afterward, he suggested we play some Bananagrams. Yay, I love games and especially Bananagrams! So, we were playing for awhile, when suddenly he pushed the tiles aside and set a little special pile of tiles in front of me. He asked if I could figure out what they spelled and I was like, "Of course! I'm super good at word games!" and I started spelling some different words with them. Then he said, "Here, I know what they spell!" And he made them spell THIS:

WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was like "OF COURSE! YES! YAY!!!" I was so surprised!! It was unbelievable. Definitely the best game of Bananagrams EVER!! After he spelled it out, he pulled out a ring box. He had made a temporary ring, knowing that I'd want to be in on any jewelry choosing efforts (correct!). He should be a jeweler, look what he can do with cardboard and glitter!

This morning, Dad made us a little celebration breakfast.

Aw, yay. I'm so happy! We're getting MARRIED!!!

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T20:31:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!! We headed over to Mom and Dad's early for some holiday fun!! Look, there's Santa!

Brown rice and beans for breakfast. YUM!

Opening stockings!

YES!! Subway gift cards!

Kate got to be in charge of choosing and distributing gifts.

She was great at it!

Uncle Mark!

PRESENTS!!

Open it!

Kate got some bubble wrap for Christmas because she likes to pop it.

Mer got me a snake bracelet!

Kate got an umbrella. We had to teach her about not poking peoples' eyes out.

Distributing more presents!

A present for Grandpa!

Mer has a roll of the best wrapping paper on Earth. SANTA KITTIES.

We took an afternoon break so that Kate could have a nap. Mer and Pete gave me a ride home.

While I was at home, I took the opportunity to enjoy some kitty snuggle time.

Then it was back to Christmas Land! And this time there was a cheese platter!!

And champagne!

Happy little family.

Dad's cooking up some Christmas dinner!

YUM!

Kate LOVED the mashed potatoes. I think she had five helpings?! She kept saying "MORE MASHED POTATOES!"

Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope you had a wonderful holiday!

Christmas Eve at the Cabin

2010-12-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, Ben and I headed to Dennis's cabin for the annual Christmas Eve party! It was snowy! A white Christmas for sure.

Getting ready to hike up the hill.

Here we go!

We got Dennis an L.L. Bean bag for Christmas, because he always admires mine whenever I use it to haul a bunch of stuff up there. It looks good on him!

Night falls and the fun times begin.

We played some Apples to Apples.

Ben, Vana and Yang.

We drank some beers.

We played some Charades.

Little mini glitter lava lamp!

It wouldn't be a party without Dennis's famous chipotle dip.

LASAGNA!

More cookies!

This morning, we got up early to head back into town. The children were nestled all snug in their beds.

Dennis and Ben had a little technology geek session before we left.

Bye-bye, Dennis! Merry Christmas!

It snowed some more while we slept!

Ready for the trek back down the hill.

Crossing the snowy bridge.

Heading home! It was another magical cabin Christmas Eve!

More Cookies!

2010-12-24T13:14:00.000-08:00

I decided that I wanted to make some more cookies to take to Dennis's tonight for the Christmas Eve party. Since making and decorating cut-out cookies takes FOREVER, I got a little more serious about it this time. Instead of whimsically decorating the cookies in whatever frosting I was feeling at that moment, this time I divided the cookies into equal numbers and frosted one color at a time. Oh, and this time I made gingerbread instead of sugar cookies!

I would say the new method did save some time. They still took forever, though! But it's worth it. Very relaxing and therapeutic. Not to mention delicious.

Ho Ho Ho

2010-12-23T13:08:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures of our Christmas decorations to help put you in the holiday spirit. Charlie loves to sit under the tree like a little present. He's the best present I could ever ask for! Have you ever seen anything cuter in your entire life!??

Ornament!

We put some lights on our hedges this year.

PRESENTS!

Ben got me a robot for Christmas! I don't think I'm going to be able to open it though, because it is too cute.

Cut-Out Cookies

2010-12-20T12:52:00.000-08:00

Having a brand new oven makes me want to bake, bake, bake! I hadn't made cut-out cookies in YEARS, so yesterday I decided to go for it.

I made a bunch of batches of frosting, too.

Whee! Let the decorating begin!

Ben helped me decorate, here is one of his cookies.

Finished product. Yum!

I took some over to Mer and Pete and Kate last night. They were a hit! Kate picked a yellow moon.

And this morning, a green brontosaurus!

Snow Day

2010-12-16T16:37:00.000-08:00

It snowed a ton last night, and was still snowing this morning. I tried to drive to work, but it was super slippery and there were cars spun out along the way. I decided to turn around and drive back home. I took a vacation day and instead walked through the snow over to Mer's house for FUN with her and Kate! We bundled up and went outside to play in the snow.

Afterward we had some delicious hot chocolate.

After hot chocolate, Kate showed me her new magnet book!

It was a great day. It made me feel like a kid again!

New Oven

2010-12-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

I got a new oven! I felt sad to let go of the old one, because it was a good little oven, but the thermostat didn't work and the heating was inconsistent, so I took advantage of my one-year home warranty to get a great deal on a new oven. Bye-bye, old oven! You cooked a lot of delicious things! Thank you for your service!

Yikes! It's gone!

Dad and Ben putting in the new one.

There it is!! Dad will be adding a strip of wood there at the top.

I made some pumpkin cookies to test it out. They turned out PERFECTLY!!

I would say the new oven is a success.

Hotdish #6: Seafood Chowder Casserole

2010-11-28T12:54:00.000-08:00

Not wanting the long holiday weekend of fun to end, Ben and I decided to have my parents over for the sixth and final casserole from the Eating Well hotdish series. We decorated the house that afternoon, so it really felt like a worthy evening for the grand finale hotdish! We sat around the tree while it baked.

We also enjoyed the toasty fire.

I'm sad that Thanksgiving is over and gone, but now we get to look forward to CHRISTMAS! Yay!

The Seafood Chowder Casserole looked and smelled delicious.

Just like the picture!

It had cod, shrimp, crab, potatoes, leeks and celery along with gruyère cheese.

Mmm. Mom continued the tradition of providing a crisp and refreshing salad to go along with the hotdish.

Since it was the grand finale, I also made dessert. Apple crisp!

So, the Eating Well hotdish extravaganza was definitely a success. All of them turned out AWESOME. We seriously loved them all and it is hard to pick a favorite. Every time we had one, someone (or everyone) would say "This one is DEFINITELY my favorite." So I'm not sure if they just kept getting progressively more delicious, or if it just so happened that whatever one was in our mouths at the time was the favorite.

Last night Dad suggested that we start over and make them all again!! I'm seriously considering it. YUM, YUM, YUM!

Here is the link to the final recipe!

Shade Winery

2010-11-27T12:47:00.000-08:00

This afternoon I headed out to Shade Winery with Kim and Joy.

I had never been there before. It was Kim's idea! Look at how cute it is!

The vineyard.

The tasting includes eight wines for the low, low price of $6! What a great price!!

I think possibly my favorite thing about the winery was that they had jars of oyster crackers on every table. I loooooove oyster crackers. They are hands down my favorite cracker of all time. FYI, the best tasting brand is definitely Kroger. They have cornered the market on oyster crackers for sure. And that is the brand that Shade Winery serves (after much complicated oyster cracker taste testing and research, they explained!), which means they obviously have excellent taste.

There are other delicious snacks to enjoy too, like Integration Acres cheese and crackers.

Mmm, wine!

The friendly owners. It's Gina's friend Neal and his wife! The Shade Winery experience was definitely a great time and I would recommend it for sure.

Double Thanksgiving

2010-11-26T21:21:00.000-08:00

Ben and I are the luckiest ever, because his mom hosted Thanksgiving on Friday this year, which means Double Thanksgiving for us!! My parents were invited too, which means they got Double Thanksgiving TOO! So lucky. Here's Dad fixing up a little cocktail at the drink station.

It was a cold but sunny afternoon. Yang, Ben and I are happy because tons of delicious food is headed our way.

Dennis and Ben enjoying some wine.

Relaxing while the final dishes are prepared.

Moss mashing up some potatoes!

TIME TO EAT! Oh, boy!!!

THE ROLLS!!!!! I almost forgot to get one and when I remembered, I leapt across the room in a panic thinking they would be gone. Thankfully there were two left. YES. I am very thankful for rolls.

Dennis, Joy and Moss are FULL!

After we ate, we headed out to the back deck to see how far Joy and Kayla can spit! They were both blessed with small gaps between their teeth, which means they have the skill of spitting water great distances. What a fun talent to have! Here's Kayla gearing up:

Joy is ready to go!

And they're off! Kayla got some good distance.

Yang pretty much just dribbled water down his chin.

Spitting is fun and it makes people happy!

Joy's turn. She is like a FOUNTAIN of spit!!

LOOK HOW FAR!!! She's like a FIRE HOSE!

Here is a video of the spitting event.

Time for pie! Vana made an apple pie...

AND AN OREO CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE. Duuuuuude!!! It was delicious.

There was also pumpkin pie, but I forgot to get a picture of it. After pie, the men headed outside to be manly and dig holes!

Ben supervised with his glass of wine.

Go, Dennis! Dig that hole!

Yang was also in a supervisory role.

Dig it, Moss!

Cheryl and Ben are inspecting the hole progress. The holes are for Cheryl to plant some new trees in.

Vana came out to join the supervising.

It's a hole!

After the hole digging, it was time to rest and digest.

It was also a special night because Yang signed Dennis up for Facebook. Welcome to The Internet, Dennis!

Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T12:01:00.000-08:00

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!! I spent the evening in the kitchen last night making some side dishes! We decided to make stuffing using bread from the Village Bakery this year. It was SO EASY and so delicious. You just sautee some onions and celery, then pour in water until it simmers, and then dump in the bag of dehydrated, seasoned, local bread crumbs! POOF YOU HAVE STUFFING:

I imagine we'll probably go this route every year, since it saves so much time and turns out delicious! I also made two kinds of cranberry sauce: plain, and bourbon cinnamon.

This afternoon, Ben and I packed up the sides and headed over to Mom and Dad's to start celebrating! Mom was working hard making gravy.

Mer was whipping up the mashed potatoes.

I took a shift stirring the gravy.

YUM!! Look at that King Family Farm turkey!

The peas are ready! Or wait, are they still frozen??

CHEERS!

Kate had on a beautiful holiday outfit. So pretty!

We did some playing while we waited for all the cooking to be done. Look, here comes Petey!

Dad was in charge of carving the bird, as always!

It's good to hang out in the kitchen for this event, because you get to have tastes.

Dad helped himself to a few tastes as well!

Ben worked up an appetite by playing with Petey.

One of my Grandma's batiks.

YAY!! TIME TO EAT!

Eskimo kisses!

Mmm, my plate.

After dinner, we played some Pictionary to work up an appetite for pie.

Mer and Pete brought some Underberg to help speed along our digestion.

First you bang it on the table!

Then you drink it fast!

UNDERBERG!

"There's that husband of mine, doing shots again."

Finally having found enough room for pie, Mom made a batch of whipped cream. Kate is the luckiest because she gets to lick the beaters.

LUCKY!

Time for pie!!! Mer made a delicious apple pie.

And Mom made a pumpkin pie with FRESH pumpkin and graham cracker crust!!! I think it was the best pumpkin pie I have ever had in my life. Fresh squash really makes a difference.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Time to go lay down.

A Beer With Tom!

2010-11-24T11:58:00.000-08:00

Since we weren't going to be seeing each other for the long weekend, some coworkers and I got together after work for a holiday happy hour. We Skyped Tom on TJ's laptop!! Hi, Tom!

Tom gave us a tour of his holiday booze lineup. CHEERS TO THAT!!

It was cool to enjoy a beer with Tom and toast to the holiday together! We miss you, Tom!

Babysitting

2010-11-23T08:45:00.000-08:00

Tonight I babysat Kate. We had a blast! First we made up games with a soccer ball.

Then we played dress up.

Aw, hi Buster!

She's a little flower!

Then it was bath time. Kate was wearing cups on her feet as shoes!

After bath, she got to have a treat.

Then it was book time and bed time!

Hotdish #5: Curried Chicken Thighs with Buttery Croutons

2010-11-21T21:12:00.000-08:00

Tonight I made the fifth Eating Well hotdish. Curried Chicken Thighs with Buttery Croutons!

This casserole left me with a battle scar. I burned myself!! I had forgotten that last week the electrician had moved the rack inside my oven up to the top, and I'm so used to just sliding dishes into the oven at the usual height that I singed my hand against the top of the oven! YOUCH.

But I've got to say it was probably worth it, because the hotdish turned out AMAZING. I used chicken breasts instead of thighs, and it was sooooo good. I cooked up a batch of basmati rice to serve it on, because it makes a lot of yummy sauce. The peas were a crisp and bright addition to the dish, and the buttery croutons were great.

Paired with a fresh salad from Mom, it was a wonderful dish!

Here is the link to the recipe.

11/28/10 UPDATE: Here is how the burn is looking a week later. OW!

Cooking Club: Soup's On!

2010-11-20T23:29:00.000-08:00

Valerie was the host of the November Cooking Club, and the theme was soup! What a perfect theme for such a chilly month. Valerie decorated the table with a centerpiece of flower soup!! How lovely!

And what would a soup night be without a delicious loaf of bread?

Summer started the night off with a Parsnip Yam and Watercress Chowder.

It also had green apples in it! It was sweet and delightful.

Emily made TWO soups to swirl together - tarragon pea, and ginger roasted red pepper. They went fantastically together and look at how PRETTY! Such a delicious holiday soup.

Next up was Valerie's Chinese Rainbow soup. This was my favorite of the night! First of all it is called Chinese RAINBOW. Awww!!!!!!! How can you not love that?! And it had coconut milk and peanut butter, yum. TONS of succulent mushrooms and other veggies, and the tofu was just perfect. I kind of wanted to climb inside my bowl and swim around.

We followed the rainbow with Yumi's lamb and potato stew! It was yum. Hearty and filling! The mint sprinkled on top was the perfect burst of flavor.

I made a spicy blue cheese tomato soup! The secret ingredient was beer. It was SPICY!! So good.

The final soup of the evening was Nancy's shrimp and mushroom bisque. It was SO tasty!! It was the perfect soup to round out the lineup. Juicy, delicious shrimp and creamy, wonderful mushrooms.

After dinner, Nancy surprised us all with scarves!! She's been practicing her knitting, and we were the lucky recipients of her practice!! Lucky US! Everyone's scarves were so different and they were all cute cute cute. Thank you, Nancy!

After our little modeling session, we were in for another surprise. Valerie had prepared a DESSERT SOUP for us. Oh my god. Raspberry white chocolate soup with freaking BROWNIE CROUTONS. Shut UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My cup of dessert soup had a raspberry shaped like a HEART in it!! Can you even HANDLE the cuteness?!?!? It was totally completely delicious. What a great surprise!

This was a seriously awesome installment of cooking club. When I got home, after seven types of soup and several glasses of wine, my stomach was loudly going "SLOSH SLOSH SLOSH!!" when I moved, which was kind of fun to gross Ben out with. HOORAY FOR SOUP!

Happy Birthday to Kate!

2010-11-11T20:56:00.000-08:00

To celebrate Kate's third birthday, we had a delicious pizza party featuring Avalanche Pizza! YUM!

There's the Birthday Girl!

Kate managed to get a piece of pizza stuck to her finger.

It was pretty silly. She's a little PIZZA FINGER!!!! She kept waving it around.

Silly pizza finger birthday girl!

Everyone knows that birthdays are full of fun and surprises.

PRESENTS!

It's a big one!

Yay! Blocks!

It was a special day for Baby, too. She got a new outfit. Looking spiffy, Baby!

Kate loves dress-ups these days, so I got her some fun dress-up items. A princess wig! Doesn't Pete look beautiful?

Meredith, too!

Look at the little Birthday WITCH!!!

Admiring herself in the mirror.

Little witch playing with her new toys.

CAKE!!!!!! Mer made this cake and it was PHENOMENAL.

Happy birthday to Kate!

Anxious to get to those candles.

Make a wish!

Hooray!

Party!

YUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Possibly the best cake I have ever had.

Birthday girl!

And she's off again with her toys!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KATE!

Hair

2010-11-05T22:28:00.000-07:00

Tonight at Jackie O's, Summer was wondering how she'd look with Vana's hair, so we tried it! And then we decided to see how everyone looked with everyone else's hair. Here's Summer with Vana's hair:

Vana with Summer's hair!

Redheaded Vana!

Riley with Vana's hair!

Dune with Vana's hair!

Summer with Riley's hair!

Yumi with Vana's hair!

Mike with Vana's hair!

Me with Vana's hair! Vana's hair smells amazing, by the way.

Vana with Yumi's hair!

Megan with Vana's hair!

Riley with Summer's hair!

Redheaded Riley!

Hotdish #4: Broccoli, Beef & Potato Hotdish

2010-10-31T22:13:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be a fun way to celebrate Halloween by cooking up another Eating Well hotdish! This time I made the Broccoli, Beef and Potato Hotdish. Ta da!

LOOK! It looks just like the magazine!

Mmmmmmmmmm.

Mom brought a yummy salad to have with it. Everyone agreed wholeheartedly that this one was definitely the BEST casserole so far. It was absolutely delicious!!

Here is the link to the recipe. Happy Halloween!

Hotdish #3: Chili Cornbread Casserole

2010-10-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

Tonight we had another Hotdish dinner party with Mom and Dad! This time we tried the Chili Cornbread Casserole. That's three down, three to go! It turned out GREAT!

The chili was spicy and flavorful, and the cornbread was packed with fresh cilantro.

Paired with a refreshing, crisp salad, it was a wonderful meal! I will be making this again. So far, these hotdishes are all winners.

Here is the link to the recipe.

2010 Pumpkin Party

2010-10-16T23:16:00.000-07:00

Tonight was Emily's annual pumpkin carving party. I got a huge pumpkin and decided that I would walk to Emily's carrying it. I thought that it would be okay because of that one time that Ben and I walked to a party WAY down the bike path carrying pumpkins. It turns out that a shorter distance with a bigger pumpkin does not equal a longer distance with a smaller pumpkin.

I should have gotten a picture of me holding it so that you could see the size ratio, but it was freaking HUMONGOUS. That is my foot over to the right in the above picture, if it gives you any idea. I was thinking it had to be at least thirty pounds, but other people better at spatial relations and such were telling me it was probably closer to fifteen or twenty. It was too big for me to comfortably hold, and I had to take like fifty breaks on the way to Emily's house, which is <0.3 miles from mine. My arms hurt for DAYS!!!

Maybe it would help to see Carl next to the pumpkin. SEE HOW HUGE?

Here is the full lineup of pumpkins!

That's mine on the left with the monocle and mustache.

I loved Mark's pumpkin in misery. He's so MISERABLE!!

Summer's Seaman's pumpkin was awesome!

Carl and Brad got rowdy later in the night and had a major wrestling session in the pumpkin pulp.

Boys will be boys!

I don't think there was a clear winner, but then again, EVERYONE'S a winner when you're wrestling in pumpkin!

Blennerhassett Mansion by Candlelight

2010-10-09T23:24:00.000-07:00

Tonight I took a trip back through time to Blennerhassett Island in the year 1805. This is a special event they do annually, where they banish electricity for the night and light the island with candles. Such a picturesque scenario, and I totally forgot my camera!!! I was bummed when I realized it, but fortunately Leighanna was taking pictures that night, and said I could use hers! YAY.

Here we are on the ferry over to the island.

You can see some of the candles!

We had a harvest feast by candlelight using very futuristic styrofoam dinnerware.

The mansion was filled with candles. Look at the scary ghosts over to the left of the picture!!!!!

Inside the study.

This woman was playing the harp.

So many candles everywhere.

Waiting to go inside the mansion. The Blennerhassetts were throwing a huge party!

Here we are in front of the fireplace.

Dancing!

Cards!

This guy was answering all sorts of history questions for us.

Bedroom.

Kitchen.

They were cooking huge platters of fresh gingerbread in the kitchen. Yum.

We went on a horse drawn wagon ride around the island.

Leighanna with our horses, Dolly and Sugar.

Campfire! There was a guy telling ghost stories, but they weren't very scary. It makes me think that the island probably isn't haunted. All of them went something like this: "One day, somebody heard a SOUND! Up in the attic!!! It might have been a GHOST!!! No one will ever know." or "One day somebody saw some silhouettes in one of the vacant houses on the island. It might have been people actually inside of the house but it ALSO MIGHT HAVE BEEN GHOSTS!!"

View of the mansion as we headed back to the ferry.

Within minutes of boarding the ferry, Summer somehow managed to sweet talk the captain into letting her drive the boat!!!

I love this next picture. I was just standing there GAZING at Summer, thinking to myself how it never fails - any time we go anywhere, she always manages to somehow up the fun level one special notch. It's like having VIP access to Extra Guaranteed Fun! I was thinking, "of COURSE she's driving the boat. I mean, of COURSE she is!!" and then the flash of the camera caught my reflection. Ha ha, look at me! I'm totally President of the Summer Fan Club!

And being the president certainly has its perks, because then she pulled me in and *I* got to steer the boat!!!!!!

TOOT TOOT!!!

There I am, steering us into shore.

What a great night. Thanks again to Leighanna for taking pictures!!

Camouflage

2010-10-09T16:13:00.000-07:00

Ben and I went down to his dad's land this afternoon, and we almost stepped on a toad! He was so well camouflaged we almost didn't see him. Look how hard he is to spot!

Upon closer inspection, there certainly is a toad hiding in there.

I'm glad we didn't step on the little guy.

Anniversary Celebrations

2010-10-02T15:15:00.000-07:00

As of September 30, Ben and I have been dating for four years! Four is my favorite number, but something tells me they're going to just keep getting better. Since we both love to celebrate, we've been celebrating all weekend!

First we started by picking out some fancy beers. Thanks to Kate at BellaVino for the recommendation of Founders Cerise.

"You’ll have a soft spot for this one. Using only fresh Michigan tart cherries, this beauty tantalizes with intense flavors combined with a no hesitation malt bill. Adding fresh cherries at five separate stages of fermentation achieves the ultimate balance between tartness and sweetness."

This beer is so good that we basically FREAKED OUT. It's so delicious!! It is like EATING a cherry!!! But also drinking a beer! Both of which are awesome! AND IT IS PINK!!!!!! Look at it!!!!!

We also got this Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale, which is super delicious. I think I would make a horrible beer critic because my review for almost every beer is "IT'S SO DELICIOUS!"

Ben got me an orange rose, aw!! And Dad got me those yellow daisies for my birthday!

Today we had a picnic, which is our anniversary tradition. We were going to do it in the backyard, but the neighbors were chainsawing and it was distracting. Plus this way we got to sit in comfortable chairs and crank up some tunes.

We had four types of cheese, fresh baguette, pita, crackers, chicken salad and apples.

Also, raspberries, strawberries, and chocolate covered pretzels from a local joint called Sarah's Sweets.

And best of all, some champagne! This bottle was a housewarming gift. Thanks, Tracy and Tina! It was DELISH! And LOOK at the bubbles! They were moving so fast that I almost took a video.

CHEERS!

Hotdish #2: Buffalo Chicken Casserole

2010-09-26T22:08:00.000-07:00

Tonight we had Mom and Dad over for another Eating Well hotdish! This time it was the Buffalo Chicken Casserole.

It was sooooooooooooooooooooo good! The carrots and celery were totally perfect, and the noodles and chicken were creamy and cheesy.

Mom brought two little apple crisps, each featuring a different local apple! And there's Dad, pointing out my new birthday gift - Bananagrams! It's super fun.

Here is the link to the recipe.

Birthday Fun at Purple Chopstix

2010-09-24T23:45:00.000-07:00

I had a fantastic birthday dinner with a bunch of awesome ladies. It sure seemed like the bottles were getting emptied quickly!

There's at least one drop left in there!

YAY I GOT TO WEAR THE PURPLE CHOPSTIX HAT!!!!!! Thanks, Candice! And caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaake!

Emily is mesmerized by the size of the hat.

We all got to wear the hat! Here's Emily!

Linda!

Nancy!

Yumi!

Valerie!

Summer!

Summer performed a very realistic ancient bird mating dance for us.

Don't you totally want to mate with her?!?!?

BIRTHDAY!!! I got to wear the dress too!

Summer managed to get some video of the excitement. This video illustrates how loud our group tends to get when we go out for dinner. My apologies to any other diners in the establishment.

Unikey!

After dinner, we went to The Union. Time for some unicorn pegasuses! Candice!

Emily!

Linda!

Skye!

Thanks everyone for helping me celebrate my birthday.

2010 Pawpaw Festival WITH GINA!

2010-09-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Ben, Vana, Gina and I headed out to the 12th Annual Ohio Pawpaw fest. Here we are in the car on the way to pick up Vana.

Gina knew just about everyone at the fest. Here's Gina in the VIP booth.

In the t-shirt tent!

Gina and Barb!

The pawpaw man himself offering Gina some tasty fruit.

Time for a refreshment in the beer garden. Mmm, Pawpaw Wheat! CHEERS!

Gina and Andie!

Tink!

Gina and Kelly.

Sue, Gina and TJ.

Gina hanging out with the Millers!

Gina and Joey.

Gina taking a spin on the Village Bakery's corn tortilla making machine.

Look at those tortillas! Gina made the dough for those!

After all of Gina's hard work, we just had to get some tostadas for lunch.

We also had some delicious kabobs and noodles with pawpaw sauce!

Victoria and Gina at the Snowville Creamery booth.

Ben, Gina and I took a spin in Dennis's electric car.

Whee!

Gina and Billie!

Sue got a unicorn pegasus!

Back in the beer garden.

Gina and friends.

Family!

Gina and Mason!

Gina and Jason!

Gina and Nicole!

Gina checking out the beer garden.

Vana and Gina standing in line for some delicious beer.

Hitting up the dance field.

Gina and Adrian!

Cheers!

Olivia and Lexi showing off their unipegs.

Smooch!

We had a wonderful time at the beer garden.

Say cheese!

Mmm, Pawpaw Wheat!

Gina sure has a lot of friends!

Gina and Michelle!

On our way out of the festival, we met this giant pawpaw walking in!

After the festival, we went back to our house for pizza. YUM!

Gina and I had such a good time at the festival yesterday, that we headed back with my parents today!

Gina and Kelly!

Gina, Dad and Baby Kate enjoy a pawpaw popsicle.

Gina and friends!

Moss was on his way to participate in the skateboard demo.

Gina and Warren!

Gina and Kayla!

Gina and Joy!

Gina and Mac!

Gina and Paula!

Mom, Gina, Baby Kate and Dad getting ready to take a horsedrawn wagon ride.

Gina and I check out some of the artwork.

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At the tostada station again!

Spencer, Marilyn and Gina!

Gina and Ginger!

On our way out, we checked out the sheep pen.

Pawpaw Festival 2010 was a blast!! Of course, it wouldn't have been nearly as fun without special guest Gina Geremia.

Rainbow

2010-09-13T17:10:00.000-07:00

Look what greeted me this afternoon as I was leaving work!

Pretty.

Colorful Cooking Club

2010-09-11T23:26:00.000-07:00

Tonight, Emily hosted cooking club. The theme this month was color! We each had to make a dish that was one specific color, and dress to match our color. Look, we're a rainbow! We're all enjoying our appetizer course that Nancy made, these crazy insane blue cocktails.

Nancy also made blueberry breadsticks. Doesn't she look like an ocean WAVE?!?

YUM.

These drinks were dangerous. They had gin, vodka, rum, and blue curacao. (I think.) They didn't taste alcoholic at all, which is why they are so dangerous!! Like a Long Island Iced Tea.

Valerie's color was black. She started us off with some caviar.

Yep, that's pretty black! It was VERY salty.

I was pink. I brought some Red Bicyclette wine to match my outfit!

Yumi was yellow, and also matched her wine to her outfit.

Yumi has become quite the wine snob these days. Look at her smelling that aroma! Critique!

I made summertime borscht.

LOOK AT HOW PINK IT IS!!!

I dished up the perfect amount into all my little bowls, but then I still had to put in the tzatziki. After I added that, all the bowls were SO FULL. I had to walk to the dining room SO SLOWLY and Valerie spotted me with a paper towel just in case.

Seriously, oh my god. LOOK HOW FULL.

Valerie made black rice!

YUM. It was super gingery and had pecans and dried cranberries.

Pink & Black!

Yumi dishing up her yellow entree. Curried vegetables!

Emily made spinach ravioli!

Yellow and green!

The significant other of the lady who hosts cooking club is always lucky enough to get a plate by the end of the night. Look at Mark's plate! It is a total rainbow!!

Colorful!

After all that food, we played Taboo for awhile to work up an appetite for dessert.

BROWN COURSE! Summer made the BEST ice cream sandwiches. Brown butter cookies, with homemade caramel ice cream, DIPPED IN CHOCOLATE and then some crushed Heath bar sprinkled on.

A masterpiece on the plate AND in my mouth.