Tag Archives: booze

Best Ever

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It’s a good thing I decided not to blog after dinner yesterday because we ended up staying out for drinks!  It was a late, fun night.

We started our evening with dinner at Las Culebrinas, Adam’s favorite Cuban place on the planet.  They have rolls with the best garlic butter.

We also ordered some appetizers to share.

Fried plantain with shrimp in red sauce and mozzarella sticks.

For dinner I got Mahi Mahi crusted in corn flakes and topped with a honey mustard sauce.

It was a little too fried for me but the sauce was so good.

And it came with a side salad with great dressing.

We did lots of sharing (though no one went near Adam’s beef because he was moaning so loudly – and whispering sweet nothings to his chocolate flan – and we were all a little afraid).  I ended up eating the equivalent of 3/4 of my plate.

Afterwards we walked around Coconut Grove for some more people watching.  And somehow ended up at Uncle Moe’s for drinks.  Like the Cow Tipper.

Here’s a shot with my hand for size comparison.

My mom and I split this one, obviously.  It was tasty, but not as strong as it sounds.

Which is good, because I was feeling good this morning.  I decided to skip the hotel breakfast, which was lackluster yesterday, and get in a quick gym trip instead.  15 minutes on the treadmill for a bit over a mile.

I ate my stolen pear for breakfast.

Along with a NuGo Dark bar packed from home.

And we stopped by our old favorite Thai place for a bubble tea smoothie.

Strawberry coconut smoothie with bobba.

So freaking good!

Plus a few peppermints for freshness.

Amid the day’s exploration we also spent some time at the mall. I know shopping seems like a strange vacation activity, but my parents live on an island so it’s more exploratory for them than the beach. My dad shared a pretzel with me while we were there.

I ate about x2 what’s pictured. We were practically frozen so I also bought an earl grey with steamed skim milk.

A few stops later, and we were at my favorite place on the planet.

Where I made the biggest cup of froyo I’ve ever eaten.

Everything chocolate and caramel, smothered in marshmallow.

Heaven. Pure heaven.

And the evening only got better. The plan was to go to Joe’s Stone Crab, but a 2-hour wait scared us away. The disappointment was very serendipitous, because we ended up having a best ever dinner at Joe’s less formal take-away spot next door. You ordered your food at a counter and brought it to the booth yourself and it ended up being just perfect.

To start, Adam and I split a seafood bisque.

It was creamy and tangy with big chunks of fish.

Then the four of us split an order of stone crab.

Stone crab is like the best crab you’ve ever had, on steroids. It is meaty, yet tender and buttery.

I got most of two claws, dipped in butter and mustard.

I drank a spicy bloody Mary with my food but I was too excited about the crab to remember to photograph before a few sips in.

For the rest of the meal, my mom and I split two sandwiches.

The shrimp po boy and the lobster Reuben.

The po boy was good, though I mostly ate the shrimp out of the bun, dipped in remoulade.

The Reuben was out of this world. Everything that’s good about a Reuben but with the added amazingness of lobster.

Everyone kept laughing at me for chewing with my eyes closed but I just couldn’t help it. The big pieces of meat were absolutely perfect.

I thought I couldn’t be happier, but then Adam bought me this t-Rex juice container.

Best trip souvenir ever.

My favorite activity in any city is bike riding, and for the hour after dinner that’s just what we did.

It was so much fun, though our times in the sand basically left my thighs burning! Then we spent another hour walking down the club strip on South Beach for the ultimate people watching. It was the best vacation day ever.  The best.

Happy Thanksgiving

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We’re in Miami!

Can I just say, how little I did I manage to pack for two people for four days?

And that’s with the husband’s giant boy clothes taking up extra space.

Our day of travel went smoothly, minus my yogurt (in a perfect peanut butter jar!) getting tossed at security. We slept though the first flight and then spent three hours walking around the Chicago airport.

We got a strange 8am meal, splitting a Baja chicken burrito from Burrito Beach.

I asked for chicken, red rice, black beans, corn, cheese, sour cream, and roasted veggies.

Supplemented with a tangerine packed from home.

I was pleased with the job I did packing food for this trip.

(Adam also had a downright gourmet salad in my backpack.)

I ate a sandwich – Applegate Farms Turkey Bologna, Crofter’s Grape Spread, everything Bagel Thin – on flight number two.

Plus Peanut M&Ms bought from the airport.

I also started reading the all time funniest book ever on the plane.

Clearly Webster liked it too.  I laughed aloud so many times I’m sure our seatmates were thinking of muzzling me.

Before we knew it, we were on the ground and hugging my parents at the gate.  We are so freaking excited to be with them (especially in Miami!).

Our first stop was a nice walking tour of our old haunt, the U!

So fun to see how the campus had changed in little ways.  I will admit to becoming a bit nostalgic when we walked past the building where I took all of my English classes.  Plus it’s fun that Adam and I got to date here for four years.

Our next stop made my heart sing.

Self-serve froyo is high on my list of things to be thankful for!  I did keep the serving small though (we were about to head out to a nice Turkey Day dinner!); dolche de leche and taro froyo with fruit, a smidge of marshmallow, sprinkles, and lots of popping bobba.

If we manage to sneak in a froyo every day of the visit I think this will end up being the best vacation ever.

For dinner we headed to the Chart House.

The shirt that Adam has on here is actually the one he got married in!!!

I started my meal with a Blue Moon.

And a really great roll with butter.

And for dinner I went traditional.

Sliced roast turkey,

cornbread stuffing,

mashed potatoes,

cranberry relish,

and creamed spinach.

The spinach was soooo good, but overall I probably ordered the wrong thing since I actually hate most Thanksgiving foods.  I only ate a 1/3 or so of my plate; but at least I won’t have regrets about “missing”anything, and Adam is thrilled with his plate of leftovers.

My meal came with pecan pie.

But there wasn’t a preference issue that kept me from eating this, the pie was just plain nasty.  Store-bought (crappy store-bought) pie, Chart House?  You can do better.

But what really matters on Thanksgiving is family, and I got to spend the day with my three favorite people.  And I hope all of you, Americans or otherwise, got to spend the day with your nearest and dearest too.

This Is Halloween…

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…and it just wouldn’t be Halloween without candy for dinner!  Seriously.  And it’s a good thing that dinner was easy to describe because I’ve got to keep this quick; I’m spending 8am – 9pm on campus tomorrow and I need to sleep.

Unfortunately I ran out of time this morning and didn’t even manage to finish more than 1/3 of my oatmeal.  My yogurt and pear held me over okay while I was busy, but the minute classes were done I needed to EAT!  I just had to get through my 30 minute commute (I walked today) to tear into this huge plate of bread with dipping oil.

Guys, this bread is so freaking good.  It speaks to my soul.

Mmmmmmn!

I was craving a Reece’s Cup all day but we were too cheap to buy candy so I settled on this peanut butter chocolate ice cream bowl instead.

I put a healthy scoop of chunky pb in the bottom of a cup, topped with mini chips, microwaved until melted, and then scooped on a bit of slow-churned vanilla ice cream.

So much better than the candy bar could ever be.

And I even did end up getting my candy.  I had to break a $20 before tomorrow so I bought 15cents worth of the good stuff from the bulk bins.

Followed by pumpkin beer!

We headed over to a friend’s house for a Halloween get-together and this Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin Ale was split three ways.

I also had a small cup of tasty punch,

a handful of pita chips with hummus,

and some organ sugar cookies.

I believe I ate a stomach and a humerus.

Other than cookies and company, the impetus for the get-together was introducing our friend Anna to the fabulousness that is “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

She’s a fan now!  Especially of the music.  Confession – I totally call “TNBC” by the title “This is Halloween” instead!  Happy Halloween, guys!

Staying Alive, Staying Alive

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Let’s not talk about last night.  Dinner was a disaster, studying was a disaster, bedtime was a disaster.  Let’s not talk about this morning either.  No breakfast, no answers to the test questions, no remembering that my car was parked on the wrong side of the street and that deciding to walk would earn me a ticket.

Let’s just start this post at 11; that’s when the eats for today started anyway.  I spent the hour between my test and class in the food lab, planning for the Chili Sale.  We are selling on Tuesday and cooking all day Sunday so my group had to go think logistics.  We’ve got a specific plan for what all 18 classmates will be doing in the kitchen for 6 hours on Sunday, but I’m pretty sure it’s still going to be a shit-show.

Today’s food lab was the fat substitute group.  Normally I don’t snap pictures because I’m too busy taste-testing but there were a few things I couldn’t eat today so I had the time to photograph.  We tried regular and reduced fat samples of potato chips,

pudding,

and shredded mozzarella.

I could totally tell the difference between the original and modifieds!  Appearance, texture, and flavorwise.

After lab I got some real lunch (and breakfast!) at the campus bookstore.

Del Monte Tropical Medly fruit cup for vitamin C.

Plus this go picnic snack pack.  It contained crackers with hummus,

and roasted edamame, a fruit and nut blend, and a small square of dark chocolate (all of which were fantastic).

This ended up being a very filling lunch, though 520 calories is low to cover two meals.

I was stuck on campus until 2 so I got a little bit of studying done.  After our crazy chili week we have two super difficult weeks of testing and assignments and I’m hoping to be a little better prepared.  And speaking of being prepared … I am recertified in CPR!  That was what my committment at 2 was, BSC offers classes to students for free.  2 hours of chest compressions felt like quite a workout!  I can’t think of a better motivation to start hitting the gym than the fact that I might be too fat and out of shape to save a life.

This weekend is going to be super busy (I’m spending Saturday and Sunday on campus) so when I got home I did some preemptive cleaning and got ready for our weekly grocery trip.  Plus I put dinner into the crock pot.

I refueled around 7 with a Honeycrisp apple.

Plus half a Wolaver’s Pumpkin Ale, split with the husband.

We weren’t fans sadly, neither of us finished our half.  The first sip was heavenly but every subsequent taste felt a little more bitter.  I washed my mouth out with a cordial.

And then we were off to the store.

Thankfully dinner was preparing itself at home because we were HUNgry like Attila by the time we got home.

And this meal was gooood!

Roasted green beans.

Tofu “fish” cakes from More Make It Fast, Cook It Slow.

And a hunk of Piccolo bread from Wegman’s bakery.

Some notes on the bread – a) it was perfect; chewy yet airy; b) I dipped it in olive oil but couldn’t get a good photograph; and c) another (smaller) hunk was also hungrily eaten in the car on the way home!

Are you CPR certified?

Bad Blogging of Book Club

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It’s 2am and I just got home; I’ll just give the important notes.

* Webster is doing fine, he came home with an antibiotic and an order not to worry

* I looooved The Help.  I may not have eaten or changed out of my smelly shirt this afternoon, but I read it in its entirety today

* My friends make really amazing food for book club

* I had 3-4 chocolate saltines and 5-6 chips with the most amazing crab dip

* I had two Arnold Palmers made with this!

My Exam Was On A Low Carb Diet

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{This post was started last night.}

One three-hour review session probably wasn’t enough, but at least I don’t think I failed today’s exam.  And I handed in my paper too so now it’s two down, one to go for this week; phew!  I did make one really silly (really embarrassing!) mistake that is going to cost me a lot of points.  I was thinking adult DRIs for CHO but fixating on percentages for CHO in the DASH diet and ended up saying that older adults require only 55-65 grams of carbohydrates each day!  <– Carbs are the primary energy source for brain function and the RDA is 130 grams/day!

I think I needed more coffee.

That’s ice, Godiva Pumpkin Spice Coffee, Plain Silk Almond Milk, and a big splash of English Toffee Syrup.  I tasted before sweetening and sadly I don’t think I like the Godiva Pumpkin Spice Coffee outside of pumpkin latte oatmeal.  Too much spice for me.  I brought the rest of the bag in to my friend Kim and she’s going to report back.

Here was the rest of breakfast.

A 2% Fage with Strawberry.

And a Berries GoMega Superfood Bar that Odwalla sent me to try.

I didn’t care for the bar and only ended up eating two small bites.  My negative review is for a positive reason though – this tasted like a berry muffin!  It’s just that I don’t like muffins all that much.  I shared with a friend who confirmed my muffin assessment.  We did admire that it provided 25% percent daily value of your Folate and Calcium and 50% daily value for Vitamin E for only 210 calories.  If you are a muffin person I recommend it.

Lunch was a bagel sandwich that I recommend to everyone.

Cinnamon Raisin Bagel Thin + Applegate Farms Honey Maple Turkey + reduced fat pumpkin cream cheese (mine is from Einstein’s Bagel Bros) = Yum!

I’ll be honest and admit that this could have used a slice of cheese, but other than that it was pure perfection.

I brought in the rest of the Ghirardelli dark chocolate (a Foodbuzz sample) to share with the girls as study fuel.

One piece was enough for me.

And before I knew it – mostly because I was thinking too hard to look at the clock – my exam was done and one final class stood between me and freedom!

In this case, freedom meant beer.

Adam and I split this Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale 40/60 his favor.  Tasting note – not bad, but not really pumpkin-y either.

And I drank this Dogfish Head Punkin Ale all by myself.

I really did taste pumpkin, brown sugar, allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg.  And beer!  This is my favorite pumpkin brew so far this season (2nd would be Shock Top’s pumpkin).

Notes – I hadn’t had much to eat, I was tired, I’m a lightweight.  Those notes are important because what I did next was get drunk and go to bed at 8:30 pm!  Haha, I’m sure I needed the sleep.

I’m feeling well-rested now, which is awesome because I’ve got to do some serious learning for tomorrow’s exam.  Hope everyone is having a good week!

10/90 Work To Sleep

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I spent basically the whole day napping with the dog and the husband.  It was epic.

Just like next week will be an epic fail as I try to work around all the stuff I didn’t do.

I swear the cold just makes me go into hibernation.  My appetite was all over the place too.  We started our “morning” with hunks of sourdough dipped in herbed olive oil.

Off all the things my body could have demanded at 45* degrees in October, next came ice cream.

I topped Ben and Jerry’s Cinnamon Roll ice cream with hot fudge and Heath crumbles.

When we did make our way out of the cave it was to go to the movies.  50/50 was great; very touching and funny.  I love Seth Rogan in everything he does but it was nice to get to see him play a new role.

We also made a weekly trip to Wegmans.  They were out of eggplant entirely which through our meal plan for a loop, but I think we worked it out.  We didn’t get any hot bar (more on that tomorrow) but I did buy 50cents worth of Halloween candy.

50cents for $100 worth of happiness.  I live for theme things.

Following the theme, Adam and I split a pumpkin beer when we got home.

Shock Top’s Pumpkin Wheat was wonderful.  Not bitter at all like some pumpkin beers I’ve tried.  I think I actually liked this variety better than traditional Shock Top.

For dinner we made this tofu quiche.

Same recipe as last time, though I did leave out the milk this go-round.

It was quite good; very cheesy.  A good hibernation food.

How did you celebrate the start of October?

More Sleep More Hunger

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Apparently my body didn’t get enough sleep or food the other day because it demanded more of both in large quantities.  Good thing it’s the weekend and I had time to indulge in both.

Adam and I actually got out of bed at 8 am this morning but when the dog got back into bed we thought we’d cuddle with him, just for a minute.  4 hours later it was noon and we were waking up for lunch.

Adam made chicken salad my favorite way; shredded chicken with grapes, walnuts, and Miracle Whip.

Grapes totally make chicken salad.  But apparently this didn’t fuel us that well because we totally went back to sleep until 2:30!

When we got up and set out on errands I was starving.  We stopped at Tim Hortons on the way to Goodwill for a caramel apple cider.  On Friday I was bemoaning the pumpkin options I can’t try until Pumpkin Month (aka October) and my friend Kim convinced me that September should be all about apples.  Another theme?  I’ll take that challenge!

That happy face was before I actually tasted the cider sadly, yuck city.  It tasted like it was made with fake apple flavoring.

I chucked my cider after 1 sip but I did eat 2/3 of this filled maple doughnut.

This was a very out-of-character thing for me to eat but I was low on options and we were running late for our afternoon activity.

The Bison Ballpark Brew Bash is a craft beer tasting event whose proceeds benefit Cystic Fibrosis research.

We got our tickets 50% off with Groupon so it wasn’t a big deal that I didn’t end up drinking that much.  I ended up taking a few sips of a few things and calling it a day.

Buffalo Brew Pub’s Oktoberfest.

I don’t really remember this one; not bad but not my style.  I drank ~1oz.

Ithica Beer Co’s Smoked Porter.

Eek, not my thing at all; one sip was enough for me!  The smoked flavor was almost meaty, I imagine drinking a full one of these would feel like eating a meal.

Rohrbach’s Brewing Company’s Vanilla Porter.

For a porter the flavor was nice and light and I liked the vanilla scent.  ~1.5oz.

Post Road’s Pumpkin Ale.

Ewwww.  The smell of this was good but it was way too sour for me, I was sad that I even took one sip.

Six Point Brewery’s Sweet Action Cream Ale.

Yum!  This had a great light fizz and almost orange-y undertones.  I drank 95% of my pour happily.

Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale.

Now this is what pumpkin brews should taste like!  The smell was pumpkin pie and the taste was pure pumpkin.  I am definitely going to be on the lookout for a bottle of this before October Pumpkin Month.

I ended the day with Heineken Light.

I know most people who drink craft beer would call this a low note, but don’t hate, I love Heineken Light.  The flavor is mild enough that it’s sort of like drinking water, but the brewery is quality enough that it’s not like drinking dirty water (my thoughts on Bud, Miller, and Blue Lights).

The most exciting taste of the day was this soft pretzel – covered with mustard – that I split with the husband.

We took the train to the event but ended up walking back to our car in Allentown afterwards.  When we lived in Allentown I used to walk down to The Spot all the time and it was great to do some Delaware ambling again.

Adam and I were both still starving when we got home and we weren’t quite sure what to do with our evening.  Thankfully our friends Patrick and Michelle had just headed to dinner and invited us to come along.  We ended up at Gin Gin for Chinese food.  They had bobba!

I got a taro milk tea with tapioca.

I got the chicken and eggplant in garlic sauce with rice.

I also took several bites of the table’s order of bok choy.

The food was good but my meal was pretty heavy so I started feeling sick before I felt full.  I ate about half of my food and boxed the rest up for Adam’s lunch this week.

Finishing out my day with dessert, I split these Panda Yummies with Adam,

and ate a mini sundae whilst watching “That ’70’s Show” and blogging.

Today’s been fun, hopefully tomorrow will be productive!