Peas? Gross!

I'm sure babies do it all the time, but I thought it was hilarious that peas make Lennon cringe. I've seen babies gag on new foods, but never shiver with disgust.

Sidenote: Her face is not usually this messy. I do, in fact, know where her mouth is.

The food revolution

If you haven't watched Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, you are missing out. He went to Huntington, West Virginia to try to change what schools are serving their kids. He is trying to help schools get away from the nasty processed foods that our kids are being served daily and make a switch to healthier, made from scratch, choices.

I have a link on the right side of my page where you can sign a petition. Jamie would like to take his petition to the White House to show the President and First lady how many people really care and ask for their support.

For more details, go to his show on ABC.com or click on the link to the right.

Artichoke & Spinach Alfredo Chicken Lasagna

Jar of Alfredo sauce (I use 1 1/2 jars)
3 cups cooked, shredded chicken
14.5 oz artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
1 tsp garlic powder
3 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
4 oz crumbled feta cheese
10 prepared lasagna noodles
2 cups packed raw baby spinach leaves

Combine chicken and next 4 ingredients. Spread small amount of alfredo sauce in bottom of 9x13 pan. Top sauce with 5 noodles, 1 cup of spinach leaves, 1/2 chicken mixture, and 1/2 remaining alfredo sauce. Repeat layers. Bake at 350 covered with foil for 45-50 minutes. uncover and bake an additional 10-15 minutes.

I need a bib, please

New milestone. Yesterday I dropped some food and it landed on my stomach. Not the floor. Not my lap. My stomach. I was slightly traumatized by the whole thing, then I chuckled to myself. I have never had a problem with stuff landing on me. I've got a small rack and my stomach never stuck out. Well, the day is here.

And, why did I write this blog at this very second? I just saw something out of the corner of my eye. Apparently I just spilled some water on myself too. Right on the gut.

Ask me again in a couple months when I am ready to pop, but sofar, this being preggo thing is pretty great.

I could so easily be huuuuuuuuge

This site is hilarious. Thisiswhyyourefat.com is a site dedicated to photos of "disgusting" foods. Um.....looking through all of them, I would say more then 80% looked pretty delicious to me. I have a serious problem. I would have to pass on the Twinkie Wiener Sandwich-a hot dog served between Twinkies and then topped with Cheez Whiz. I even have limits.

Reusable baggies

I just bought these adorable reusable baggies from a little shop at Etsy. They are great for anything dry. Since Kenny started working in Denver and he now brings his lunch every day and I am trying to bring more snacks to work, these are perfect! We put "wet stuff" (like melon) in Tupperware, and use wrap-n-mats for our sandwiches. No waste here!

Home again

We are home. Boston was great. We were out and about the entire time we were there, and like San Francisco, walked a million miles. My legs are still a bit sore.

Wednesday: We flew in Wednesday afternoon and after checking into our hotel, we walked around to see what was in our area. For dinner, we went to Bukowski’s. It was a great dive with delicious burgers. Not too exciting a day.

Thursday: We woke up and decided to walk the Freedom Trail. It was a chilly, but still a good time. We found Mike’s Pastry which was probably tops on my list and shared a cannoli. The whole trail is about 2.5 miles, but total, we walked closer to 5. After we were done with the trail, we took the T to the Samuel Adams brewery for a tour and tasting.

Friday: We took a bus out to Harvard and walked around campus. We went to their museum which had animals on display that were over 100 years old. It smelled like dust in there. That afternoon, we went to the Charles river and took a nap on a dock we found. We walked back to the hotel to get ready for our baseball game! What are the odds that the Sox would be playing the Yankees while we were there? I mean, seriously?!? They were, and it was not easy, but we got tickets! It was such an awesome game. The atmosphere was amazing and the fans, some of the best! The seats were completely filled. The game went 11 innings and the Sox won!

Saturday: We took a boat out to go whale watching. We got to see a few whales, and a seal, and even some dolphins. I started to feel a bit sick half way through so I took a break and laid down on the bench on the boat. It was freezing and windy, so Kenny and I thought we would go down to the second level where there was an inside cabin. We walked in there and there were a ton of people way worse off then I was. Their heads were leaning on the tables, people were lying on the floor. We had entered the sick ward. There was also a funk in the air and just as I noticed it, someone came by me with a full barf-bag. We were standing right next to the trash can so she had to walk right by me to throw it away. Then another person headed our way, but her bag was dripping (I am gagging while typing this). So, we went back outside. Kenny went to the first level cabin to see if it was any better-nope. Worse. Ugh-so gross. When we got back to land, we took a break and just sat outside for a bit. I hate that I get seasick. I can’t do anything about it.

Something I noticed while in Boston: Before we actually went, I was looking for restaurants online. I saw that there were a ton of French restaurants, from casual café’s to expensive, fancy places. When we got there, there were French people everywhere! I assume, they were mostly French-Canadian, because Quebec is relatively close. I swear we never went more than 5 minutes without hearing someone speaking French. I would say we had a 50/50 split between French and heavy Boston accents. Am I missing something? I thought Boston was known more-so for the Irish…..

Pictures on "Our life" link to the right

A few words on my trip to San Francisco

I'm home. Had a great time. The work part of it was pretty painless and then Kenny came out Thursday morning. Ryan and Darcie were fantastic hosts. We ate way to much food and walked a million miles. Hopefully, we walked off most of the calories consumed but I highly doubt it. I got a bunch of blisters on my feet. We saw the Golden Gate bridge, Alcatraz, Golden Gate Park, the aquarium, went to Napa, and did some other things in between. We were bombarded by seagulls and mass poop bombs, ate too many delicious treats to count, and Kenny had a failed attempt at surfing (too cold and windy).

Slainte!

I hope that everyone has a fantastic St. Patrick's Day! Today is my favorite day. Well, my second. My birthday is my favorite, for obvious reasons.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Slainte!

Thank you Denver Restaurant Week 2009!

I am so excited about my date night next Friday! Denver has an annual Denver Restaurant Week where you can choose from over 200 restaurants serving a 3 course dinner for $52.80 per couple! Incase you are not familiar,Denver is one mile above sea level, which is 5280 feet, so that's why the meals are $52.80. Anyways, I made a reservation at Bistro Vendome and booked the night at The Curtis, which coincidentally happens to be $52.80 for the night! I am so excited! Have I mentioned that already?

A bit about each place:

Bistro Vendome, designed to evoke the look and feel of a long-established, family-owned bistro plucked from a Parisian street corner, features a carefully crafted menu that contains a wealth of French flavors served in a comfortable and charming environment.

The Curtis: You don’t just stay at The Curtis, you experience it! We are committed to good old-fashioned fun. From the minute you walk through our lobby doors, you are immersed in the best of pop-culture. You’ll find cartoons playing in our lobby. Each of our guest room floors has a personality all its own. Every detail has been revved up to create a boutique, one of a kind Denver Colorado hotel experience. You can even get a wake-up call from Elvis or Austin Powers!

Lamb ravioli

Every time we eat pasta, Kenny has to make it. We have not purchased any for at least a year. He loves breaking his pasta maker out and whipping up some noodles. The other night, on Good Eats, we watched Alton Brown make ravioli and decided we could totally do that. The next night we made lamb ravioli and it was delicious! There are a few things we would change next time, but for our first try, they were great! It was a bit time consuming, but really enjoyable! If you have a pasta maker (the hand crank kind) I would suggest giving this a go. If you have to roll your pasta out by hand, I would not suggest this. That would take FOREVER.

No close calls

Kenny didn't win the dodgeball tournament, but he didn't hurt himself either! They made it 3 sets (best 3 out of 5) but lost to a group of little highschool track team shitheads. It's probably better that they lost. Kenny and I don't have the willpower to turn down chick-fil-a. Free for a year? Nothing good could come of that.

Seattle or bust!

For our second wedding anniversary, I took Kenny on a surprise trip with surprise friends! Kris and Patrick came over on Wednesday night and Kenny had no clue. Patrick showed up first and Kenny thought that he was just stopping by to visit. When he finally figured it out, he was really excited!

We also kept the “where” part a surprise until we got to the gate. I cannot tell you how many times I almost wrecked where we were going! This trip has been planned for months and things have happened, or we have seen things on tv, where I wanted to say, “Oh, we can go there when we are on our trip.” or “I can’t wait until we are in Seattle to do…..” I did it though! I kept it a secret until the last possible second!

For the record, I love everything about Seattle. I would move there tomorrow if I could.
I decided that on this trip, everything we did had to be accessible by foot, monorail, ferry, etc. So, we stayed right downtown at The Alexis. It is a beautiful hotel and was in the perfect location to get to everything with ease.

We arrived in Seattle on Thursday morning and went straight to The Underground Tour. I highly recommend this tour if you ever make it up that way. It is really interesting to think that 16 blocks of Seattle’s “ground floor” is actually really the second floor. It is also weird to think about what goes on in the other 13 blocks where the tour doesn’t venture. I can imagine there is some very sketchy stuff happening down there. The rest of the day we spent walking around town figuring out where things were and what else we could do. We met up with Marcus that night for dinner and went to the Crab Pot. The guys all did a boil and it was a ton of food! We finished the night with a (loooong) walk to The Cheesecake Factory for dessert.

Friday, we woke up and went to Pike Place Market. I love that place. Kris and I found some fantastic finds and Patrick and Kenny ended up buying a load of fish, lobster tails, and crab from the Pike Place Fish Market. I also found my second husband there. I don’t really believe in past lives, but I seriously have a very strong obsession with anything to do with lighthouses, fishing towns, fisherman (only hot ones of course), fishing boats, etc…..realistically, I cannot stand the ocean and I get sick standing on a docked boat. Kenny was nice enough to take a picture of my 2nd (wearing waders and sporting a beard). It was too funny. I miss him already. After the market, we made our way over to the aquarium. It is a bit older, but you can tell they are working on it. It was also a lot of fun and we got to see some adorable sea otters and an octopus eating 2 fish. They also had my favorite, the decorator crab, so that made me happy.

Saturday was an early morning. We took a ferry ride over to Bainbridge Island and walked around there for a while before grabbing some lunch right on the water. It is a gorgeous island and I was a little disappointed that we couldn’t see more. When we got back to Seattle, we stopped by the best crepe place in the world, and then took the monorail over to Seattle Center where we went to Empsfm and took a few pictures with the Space Needle. That night, we met up with Marcus again for dinner and some drinks.

This is the short story of everything we did. I know it’s pretty long, but we were out and about walking up and down huge hills the entire time we were there! We never had a bad meal, and I honestly enjoyed every second of my trip. I even got to see an old friend while there. He works right across the street for where we stayed!

I love Colorado and everything it has to offer, but Seattle has always been one of my favorite places ever. Who knows. Maybe someday I will be able to call it home.

Sweet Caroline bah bah bah

Ok, fine. Super Diamond was fun. Will I go see them again? Probably not. Would I suggest them to others? Meh. "Surreal Neil" does sound exactly like Neil Diamond which was pretty impressive.

I did not like when the guy next to me took off his afro wig and twirled it around over his head, flinging his sweat all over the side of my damn face. I did not like that one bit.

A biodegradable birthday

Biodegradable Plates, Bowls & Cups

I am having a few people over for a birthday BBQ next Saturday. I was concerned about the utensils and everything that I needed to buy. You know, since I am all earthy now. My problems were solved when I found this site!

These plates are made from 100% sugar cane fiber (bagasse), a byproduct of the sugar refining process. (Supplies of this material are virtually unlimited worldwide. The use of bagasse products eliminates the dependence of traditional wood fiber-based materials in disposable tableware. Since bagasse is traditionally burned for disposal, the diversion of the fiber into the making of tableware prevents harmful air pollution.)

The potato-starch cutlery is sturdy, attractive, reusable, and suitable for hot foods up to 220° F. Because it's made from renewable resources (potato starch and vegetable oil), and because it's compostable, this makes a great replacement for standard plastic cutlery.These pieces will biodegrade within 180 days in a commercial composting facility.

To top it off, everything was reasonably priced-hooray! More money for birthday presents!

It could be worse

A friend of mine had her father-in-law visit last week. He sounds like quite the guy. She told my mom these two stories, but couldn't get through an entire sentence without gagging.

They were all in the car driving one day. T (my friend) was in the back seat behind the passenger, the FIL*. Her husband was driving. They had just finished eating and her FIL had some food in his teeth. Let's first review the proper ways to handle this.
1. Wait until you get home and then brush.
2. Floss in the car (Kindof gross, but I have been known to do it).
3. Make that annoying sucky, slurpy sound while trying to suck the food out from between your teeth.
Her FIL unfortunately chose non of the above. He decided that, instead, he was going to take them out (he wears dentures) and LICK them clean. He sat there holding his chompers and licked all the food out. Are you gagging yet? My stomach just turned.

On another car trip in the same week, they had one of their daughters with them . She was sitting directly behind the lovely FIL. Her mom kept telling her to roll her window up. She had told her 5 or 6 times and was ignored every time. Well, FIL felt the need to hawk a loogey (I just gagged) and upon doing so it went out the front window and came right back into the back and onto the daughter. All she could do was sit there, frozen with disgust. This, children, is why you should listen to your parents. If you don't, you'll end up with a loogey on your shirt.

*FIL=Father-in-law, incase you couldn't figure it out.

Pasta Salad

With the 4th of July right around the corner, I figured a delicious pasta salad recipe would be perfect! It's quick and easy, so enjoy!

Thanks a lot Food Network

“You don’t need to tell her. I bet she wouldn’t even notice.” This is what was said 10 minutes before I walked through the door with a scrunched nose, instant headache and a scowl on my face already annoyed with Kenny. Thanks to Food Network, Kenny decided that it would be a grand idea to clean our smoker and grill racks in the oven on self clean. Three problems with that. Well, actually a million problems with that, but three that stick out.

1. Food Network said that is was ok to do if they were slightly dirty. SLIGHTLY. I don’t know that we have really ever scrubbed any of our racks. They were pretty nasty.
2. Our oven is (was) brand stinkin’ new. Immaculate inside. Those days are gone. There is currently a layer of nastiness on the bottom of the oven now and he somehow managed to make burn marks on the top of the door. Oh, and the oven racks are bent from the weight of the other racks.
3. The smell alone was enough to ruin my day.

I also heard that during the self clean process, there was a time when using the fire extinguisher was a definite possibility.

I wonder if I can sue the Food Network for a new oven? Oooh, or maybe I can get my own show? It would be some sort of show with a lot of traveling and involving desserts somehow. I would have to have a personal trainer traveling with me so I didn’t gain 1000 lbs from all the amazing treats I would consume...Sorry-I digress.

I am also not comforted by the fact that the words, “Don’t use the Dyson to vacuum out the oven.” had to leave my lips.

P.S. Will miss you already company! See? I told you there would be no Part II. You guys are so great and Henry is pretty much the cutest thing I have ever seen…he has our vote ;)

Butter-pants-ka-chou

Kenny had the worst luck with butter this past weekend. Friday night, we went out for dinner. We ate at the Ore house (insert lame, perverted jokes here-I sure did). Our server walked behind us and dropped her basket of bread and butter onto Kenny's back. She casually picked it up and went on her way. No sorry. No apologies of any sort. Just a nonchalant oops and away she went. I looked at his back to wipe the bread crumbs and their was a huge clump of better on his back. I cleaned it off, all the while our server walked by again and watched me, not saying a word. Then, on Saturday, out to dinner again. We ate a lot that weekend. The boys had an amazing Cajun dinner where they just put paper down and pour all your food onto the table. Crab, corn on the cob, sausage, and shrimp. It looked delicious. I wouldn't actually know if it was though. There is something about food being served directly on the table that turns guys into cavemen. I didn't dare try to stick my hand in there for fear of it being ripped off. Some random guy came over to clean up and when he was getting ready to leave he dropped an entire ramekin of melted butter on Kenny's pants. Oh, sorry. Sorry-was all he said as he made his way to the trash with the remains of what started as dinner. Kenny's left pant leg was completely covered. Completely. You could tell he was really annoyed but was trying to keep his cool. He went to the bathroom and soaked it, but 5 minutes later it reemerged with a vengeance. Hey, butter-pants-ka-chou (Usually he is referred to as Shoo-Shoo-ka-chou. Long story.), do you want to go grab a beer? Oh man. I hope this name sticks.

Hey fatty! Leave some for the rest of us!

I know, I really should not speak ill of anyone or anything at my place of employment, for many many reasons, but I am just so over it.
There is one guy here that is all about free food. Doesn't matter who brought it, what it is, or where it came from. He is all over it.
We have food of some sort brought in almost daily around here. I do not usually partake because I would prefer to not weigh 500 lbs. Anyways, a woman in my department brought two pies in today. Two pies for 30ish people. So, common sense would tell a person to have a small slice. Oooooh no. This guy takes 1/3 of the pie, slaps it on his plate and walks back to his desk. Seriously? What is the matter with him? Because of his stupidity, a bunch of people didn't get a piece of the apparently delicious pie. The thing is, he does this ALL the time! He can't just take one cookie, he has to take 5. A piece of cake? NO! He consumes 4. And, it's not like he takes one and comes back later after everyone else has had a chance to get whatever it is. He takes everything his little heart desires up front.

And, yes, he is a lard-butt.....and a moron, but I don't think the second has anything to do with the food.