Tag: food

It’s the simple things…

Today was quite a lovely day. Firstly, there was the perfect weather. Secondly, I got to do some training in chemistry (yes, that’s lovely). Thirdly, I got to sit outside and read in peaceful surroundings.

Yesterday, I drove to Bloomington, IN, and checked into the Biddle Hotel inside of the Indiana University Memorial Union. Then I drove around looking for food and went to the Scholar’s Inn Bakehouse. I had a Reuben and a caramel Italian soda. The Reuben was OK and the soda tasty. I picked up a chocolate cupcake to eat back at the hotel.

The hotel is interesting. It looks like a hotel in the lobby and rooms, but when you get into the stairwell, it’s very much a dorm stairwell. Look, smell, and sound. Heh.

This morning, I went to the Maple room and picked up my bag with my packet, a copy of the college text that IU uses, and their lab manual. I had a blueberry bagel vit schmear. The admissions people talked with us first, then our chemistry coordinator walked us though the Chem 105 (and Chem 101) topics. I figured out that there’s quite a few topics I’ll need to brush up on.

We all walked over to Nick’s (an IU institution, apparently) for lunch. I had the fish & chips. Pretty nice. Once we returned, she covered the rest of Chem 105 and they realized that they could finish up tomorrow, so I should be able to go home early.

After the workshop ended, I wound up walking around the shops and restaurants near campus. I had decided on Thai food for supper, and there were a few Thai places to pick from. I eventually went to Siam House. The Crab Angel appetizer was interesting and tasty and the pad Thai was merely adequate. It had a nice spice to it. 🙂

I was stuffed after supper, so I returned to the hotel room and read my BeBook. And then decided why read indoors when there was such a lovely campus to read at. So my BeBook and I took a walk to People’s Park (I think is what it’s called) and sat under the trees and read. (Sadly, IU recently had lots of wind damage from a storm at the end of May and lost over 300 trees.) Near 8pm, I walked over to Hartzell’s for ice cream. They had dark chocolate and sweet basil ice cream, which was an interesting and tasty flavor. So I had it and some mint Oreo (made with creme de menthe) ice cream. And I sat & read my BeBook. A nice moment of bliss which was slightly spoiled with a bum who cadged $2 from me. 🙂

Anyhoo, now I’m talking to elsaf and judiang via Skype. So the bliss continues. 🙂

Mmmm, Strawberries

I spent the weekend at mom & dad’s place. Saturday was a day to swim in the pool and to have grilled burgers. (Earlier in the day, though, we had lunch at Taco Bell.) Sunday was our trip to the Troy Strawberry Festival.

We arrived shortly after it opened at 10am and walked to the levy from the high school parking lot. We started down one side of the levy checking out the crafts and deciding what we’d eat later when we’d gotten hungry. My first purchase, as usual, was a strawberry lemon shake-up. It’s tasty and gives me something to savor while perusing the festival.

An hour or so later, we had gotten to the far end and decided anything we saw at that point that we wanted, we should buy (so we wouldn’t have to go all the way back again). My second purchase was a strawberry empanada (basically a fried strawberry pie). We all agreed it was pretty tasty.

We saw folks we knew at some of the booths, and while the folks were talking to some of their friends at one booth, I bought a strawberry cupcake. Small and tasty with a nice icing (and a slice of strawberry on top).

I was hoping one of the vendors was doing the 1/2 bbq chicken that our firehouse does each Memorial Day Sunday. But since I always have my friends around, I never get to have it anymore. (Silly judiang and elsaf don’t care much for it. No accounting for taste! 😉 Heh.) Alas, none of the booths seemed to be selling it this year, so I went with the winner from last year – the grilled pork chop sandwich. I also bought another container of their rub since I’m running out of the one from last year. The booth was also selling strawberry smoothies, so I got one (the shake-up long since gone).

Mom and I ate our sandwiches (she’d ordered the same) and drank our smoothies while father waited in line for his bourbon street chicken, beans, and rice. When it did arrive, it turned out to be worth the wait. Next year, it’s going to be a harder decision if both the pork chops and the bourbon street chicken are back again. Our final strawberry treat of the festival was a strawberry pizza from Fox’s Pizza Den. A nice and tasty combo of cinnamon’ed pizza crust, fruit dip, and strawberries.

Having spent two hours at the festival, we waddled back to the car (actually, none of us actually felt stuffed, just full, so that was good) and returned to their home. Mom and I returned to the pool and I vegged there for awhile (reading my BeBook or swimming) before finally returning home.

My intention was to do laundry, but I was sleepy, so I had supper and then took a nap. When I later got up, I at least got my sheets and undies cleaned before bedtime. Heh.

If you ask me, this was a good (and tasty) start to my summer vacation. 🙂

Home again, home again!

I stepped back into my house at 10 til 11pm last night. Linus was glad to see me. Lucy, I suspect, resented my leaving in the first place. Indeed, she didn’t join me in bed all know (as far as I could tell). I think she’s finally forgiven me, now.

While taking a walk through town this afternoon, I noticed just how different a walk in my town versus a walk in Chicago truly is. No tall buildings to crowd out the light or funnel the wind. No sirens going off every 5 minutes or so. Still, the walk is the same walk I’ve taken loads of times and I know practically every nuance of the walk. I can’t say the same for my walks in Chicago. (I’m sure if I lived there, I’d wind up knowing every nuance.)

I love visiting Chicago. But, as the saying goes, I wouldn’t want to live there. Sure, it takes me the same time to walk to judiang‘s grocery as it does for me in town to walk to my Aunt Becky’s house. It’s neat being able to take public transport instead of driving everywhere. But in my home town, I know a lot of the folks, and if I don’t, it doesn’t matter, we still say “hi!” and maybe even have short chats. Some smiles & waves to folks in Chicago, but not as many, percentage-wise, as here.

I’ll miss the wonderful dining. We ate at Zapatista, a Mexican joint near Judi’s place the evening that elsaf arrived. Actually, “joint” is too coarse a word. It was definitely a restaurant. But even though it was a little hoitier toitier than my usual Mexican joints, the prices were rather reasonable for Chicago. I started with a rather yummy and refreshing mohito, then I had pork carnitas with a pineapple salsa that were quite yummy. I liked the Mexican rice (thankfully a small portion) but not the refried beans (I had expected to get black beans, but got these instead – maybe I misread the menu). For dessert, I had the tres leches cake. Yummy and moist, but not quite as good as the one I had in Minnesota (that’ll take some doing to beat).

We waddled back to the apartment to enjoy the company and wait (and wait and wait) for Judi’s partitioning to finish. Thankfully, it was done by 1am and the OS wasn’t hosed. I’ve since gotten the backup going and I hope Judi’s computer is now nice to her from this point on.

Saturday was Dim Sum day. Yes, I’d been eagerly waiting this meal for over a week. No Dim Sum places around here, so I must take them when I can get them. After the delicious Dim Sum, Elsa drove us to Costco so Judi could purchase her birthday present – a new TV for her bedroom. The whole time Elsa was driving through Chicago streets, I was thinking “thank god it’s Elsa and not me!” (Another reason to love living in my dinky town!)

Before my evening flight, I talked the girls into going to Marble Slab (since we’d been cheated on Judi’s birthday) one final time. I had chocolate peanut butter ice cream in a waffle cone. And that kept me sated until I walked in the door of my house. (Whereupon I had a handful of cashews and a slice of toasted beer bread. Heh.)

Oh, and another advantage to small towns & cities? I was actually in the shuttle to my parking place at the time that my plane was supposed to touch down. Heh. Columbus airport – almost as small as Dayton International. 🙂

Anyhoo, a fun trip was had by treen. I hope Judi and Elsa have some excellent fun until Elsa has to drive back home on Monday. Thanks, girls, for the fun time!

Have Tech, Will Travel

So last night & today, I’ve been in full-on tech mode, helping poor judiang get her PC back to some semblance of normal after it had been Geek Squaded (not a pleasant thing to happen to any technology). It’s currently having its OS partition joined with the formerly locked & hidden “recovery” partition which is now useless since it became Geek Squaded. Here’s hoping I don’t bork the OS!

We had a lovely day yesterday. It was another sunny & chilly day in Chicago. I walked over to Jewel in the morning to get some cereal, milk, and fresh fruit for breakfast and became jealous of Judi when I noticed it only took me 5 minutes to walk there. (Takes 10 minutes to DRIVE to my nearest grocery.) Judi was off getting her hair done (to repair an earlier job that hadn’t gone to her satisfaction), so I had some time alone with Patty in the morning.

We had considered walking all the way to Whole Foods to eat at the food court & explore the food, followed by Best Buy to pick up an external drive. But Judi decided it was better to bus there and head to Manny’s for lunch instead. I was OK with that. Manny’s is a relatively famous cafeteria/deli in Chicago – even Obama ate there. You definitely don’t leave the joint hungry!

I ordered a bowl of cream of broccoli soup and half of a pastrami on a Kaiser roll sandwich (which also came with pickles and a potato pancake) and some strawberries. They put about 4 tons of pastrami on the sandwich and I highly suspect they gave me cream of chicken soup instead of the other (or else it just didn’t have much of a broccoli flavor). It was good, but I did leave some of my sandwich on the plate when we left.

Despite Best Buy being the home of the Geek Squad, we went there next so Judi could get a new external HD (her old one was a measly 320GB in size and she’s got 1TB of storage on her PC now) and a USB hub. She picked a WD 2TB external drive (me, jealous?) and the second cheapest USB hub and we were off home again. I then spent much of the afternoon fixing her music collection and beating iTunes with a hammer.

Did you know that, if you have to do a fresh install of iTunes with no iTunes backup, you have to go to the iTunes store and attempt to repurchase EVERY APP you originally bought for your devices? Thankfully, you don’t have to pay for them a second time, but you have to find & install them all individually. Thank goodness I don’t have an iPod Touch or iPhone. Judi’s gonna have so much fun!

For supper, we opted for default Thai. So we walked to Ma & I for pad thai (mine with tofu, Judi’s with shrimp) and while there, noticed that Marble Slab (ice cream joint) is open again for the season. So after supper, we headed across the street for ice cream. I got coconut, which was yummy.

Today, I had a light breakfast just like yesterday and Judi and I walked to Target for a USB flash drive. She couldn’t find the Ultimate Boot CD USB drive I’d given her a couple years ago for Xmas, so I recreated it on this new drive. It’s now doing what I said earlier. We went to A Capella for lunch, where we both got soup and BLTs. I had the tortellini soup, which was yummy. The BLT was yummy too. No one else was there in the restaurant, but that didn’t stop our waiter from being late serving Judi her tea…

We WERE going back to Marble Slab for more ice cream, but despite an opening time of 2pm (which it was), it wasn’t open when we arrived. We popped into a corner store for a bit, but 15 minutes later, the joint was still closed. We walked back, sad that there’s no ice cream.

elsaf is apparently on her way. Here’s hoping she’s having an easy drive today!

A Visit to Judi’s

Usually Spring Break and judiang‘s birthday coincide and this year is one of those years. So I have broke open my piggy bank and bought a ticket to Chicago. Today, I flew there and I’m currently sitting in her den and typing this up. She’s playing Rift and her doggie (Patty) is sleeping beside me.

The drive to Columbus was uneventful this morning, though there was some snow. I discovered hoodies aren’t and ideal apparel for flying since they needed to pat down my hood. Only they couldn’t get a female TSA person to do it, so I had to pat myself down. I didn’t find anything untoward in my hoodie.

The flight was also uneventful. I skipped lunch since the food choices were high in points, and I wanted to save my WeightWatchers points for supper. (Besides, I wasn’t hungry at the time). The only eventful part of the trip was the long wait for my bag to appear. Southwest is free for checked bags, but they take a long time with ’em at Midway.

Judi met me at the train station (though I came out the wrong entrance and was across the street from her – whoops!) and we walked back to the apartment. The day was sunny and chilly – a forecast for the rest of my stay, I believe.

We vegged for a bit and chatted and Patty got all excited cuz hey, another person! Eventually, we went across the way to The Little Branch Cafe for supper. Well, lunch & supper for me. Lentil soup with goat cheese to start, followed by a Monte Cristo sandwich (basically a ham & turkey club on French toast – ish.) Judi furthered the evil by showing me the gelato choices. I picked pistaccio (with an ugly green dye-job) and chocolate. Very yummy.

On the way back, we stopped at the game room at her complex and played 3 games of pool. Judi won the first two and I lost the last game twice, followed by Judi losing it once, and then me scratching on the 8 ball to lose it for sure. If’n you don’t know how it’s possible to lose the same pool game 3 times, you’ve never played pool with me. 🙂

Glad to be visiting Judi again. Should be a fun time. Alas, only a small overlap with elsaf this trip, but at least there will be some overlap!

The State of Me

A quick update to spout the following:

  • The 2011 Chili Competition was Saturday. I decided not to enter (I won last year) and instead talked mom into entering. There were 9 competition chilis to pick from – wow! Usually I have some of Jacki’s non-competition white chili that she brings each year, but I was too full from the competition. They were all yummy. But another member of the second generation won this year – Emily, Gary & Marcia’s daughter. You go gurl! 🙂

  • Went to the baby shower for my cousin’s step daughter on Sunday. It was a nice 2-hour little gathering. Mom won the memory competition (you go gurl!) and we didn’t have to eat babyfood. The cake was very yummy, too!

  • The juniors were having a special fundraiser at Culvers last night where they received part of the evening proceeds. And, well, their wall-eye is back. It was excellent (best I’ve had from them) and hopefully will sate my fried fish desire for some time.

  • And some of you are probably wondering “Um, Trina, aren’t you doing Weight Watchers?” Alas yes! This was not a good weekend. I’ve used up my bucket points (last night’s Culvers meal was 30 points – eep!) for the week and today I actually stayed to my daily 33 points. Shut up tummy, you can’t be hungry!

  • My evenings have been spent with Lynda and my cats in the library comfy chair. I’ve been doing lynda.com training on PHP (the basics, to start with) and learning a lot. It’s made me jealous of a newer laptop, but thankfully Walmart was sold out of the $428 one I’d been eying.

  • Lucy and I are currently in the library. I’ve got XAMPP on my 1GB flash drive and will be continuing my lynda.com training as soon as I finish this. Yay for learning! Yay for 1-year subscription to lynda.com!

    • So that’s the State of Me for now.

A Good Time for Dicks & Other Things (wait a second…)

I know, I know, you think I’m talking about Terrance Dicks in that title. But no, that’s not what I’m talking about.

This has been my week for reacquainting myself with my favorite Detectives. Last weekend I started rereading my collection of Albert Campion novels. This week, the latest DVD set of Columbo movies came out. Then I got back into watching Monk, where I’d last left off near the end of season 6. So I finally got around to ordering seasons 7 & 8. And to top it all off, The Doctor Who TV Movie finally came out on DVD this week in the US.

So of course, on Thursday, I received two packages in the mail. I knew one was one of the two seasons of Monk, and suspected the other of being Columbo and Midnight Riot (a mystery/sci fi novel by Ben Aaronovitch) which I’d ordered together. I decided on the walk home that if it were season 7 of Monk, I’d start watching it, but if it were season 8, I’d watch Columbo first.

It turned out that Amazon combined two of my orders together (probably to save themselves the shipping costs, since I always go freebie when I can) and the package ALSO had the TVM! Well, Sylv trumps all, so I watched the TVM with Sylv & Paul commentary first. And then have been freebasing season 7 of Monk ever since. (I watched 4 eps today. Might watch another after some computer time.) It helps that the latest Columbo batch has only one story that I really love (it’s the one written by Peter Falk, of all things…) The last batch will have quite a few gems, including my favorite story of all, Columbo Undercover. (It’s the only Columbo where no one is murdered.)

Midnight Riot, BTW, was a fun read and I’ll be getting Ben’s second book, Moon Over Soho when it comes out. I wound up reading for almost 4 hours straight last night to finish the book. I love freebasing on books too, apparently. 🙂 Hope he gets some more novels out there for my enjoyment. 😉 (The Also People by Ben A has been in my top 3 Doctor Who books list since I first read it. The other two are Left-Handed Hummingbird and, hey, a book by Terrance Dicks: Timewyrm: Exodus. Maybe I was writing about Terrance Dicks in my title after all!)

In other news, I spent my birthday money from the folks and my sisters on a Kitchen Aid mixer, which arrived early this week. And today I finally used it – to make bread! Yay! I include a photo for your disbelievers!


My first loaves of bread and my new mixer!

I made honey whole wheat bread from St. Marten’s Table (Amy got me their cookbook this Christmas. Alas, the restaurant is no longer in business.) It’s pretty tasty and the smell is (as all bread) WONDERFUL. For supper I had a sandwich of the bread, Black Forest ham, Havarti cheese, lettuce, and baba ganoush. Very tasty! (It’s about 8 points, but I think it’s worth it.)

Oh yeah, points… We decided to try Weight Watchers at work and I figured “what the hell…” We started Thursday, though I actually started keeping track on Friday. Been dipping into my extra points bucket this weekend, but I’ll probably do OK. I’ll be interested to see if I lose any weight over the 12 week period.

Been having some quality parental time of late as well. Had dinner with the folks on Thursday (we went to Club 55 where I had ravioli stuffed with smoked artichoke hearts – yum!) and then yesterday was Hoity Toity Grocery Day. After a lunch at First Watch (a breakfast & lunch joint) we shopped at Trader Joe’s, and then on the way home stopped at the ginormous Kroger in Englewood that has everything from an olive bar to a sushi bar. (It’s where I got my baba ganoush.)

Today I did laundry and baked bread. Those two go well together. 🙂 Oh yeah, and watched several episodes of Monk. 3 good things that go good together!

The 2010 Chili Champ!

To my great surprise and pleasure, I wound up winning tonight’s Chili Cookoff. (See photo of trophy below.) There were 5 chilis in the running. They were all tasty (as usual – we haven’t had a lousy one yet in the years I’ve been coming). But in the end, mine got the most votes! Go me! I think Gary was a little miffed that I beat him. (It’s one thing, he said, to be beaten by someone his own age, but to be beaten by a younger person…) It helps that Moe didn’t have her 6-time winning recipe there. (Apparently she agreed not to enter the contest if Gary did a long-term sub for her husband earlier this year. Heh.)

Still, to put me and Moe in our places, we played 2 games of pool against Gary and Garry and lost both of them. Then Michael and Moe tried against the two Gar(r)y’s and lost as well.

We all had a lovely time at Gary & Marcia’s and I am stuffed to the gills with not only excellent chili, but also fabulous desserts. Mmmmmm!

Recipe Request

I love homemade Chex mix (though I rarely use Chex brand cereals to make it – thank goodness for generics). And I make it very well (if I do say so myself). 🙂

However, I’d like to try something new, I think. So I’m asking you wonderful flist folk out there for your favorite savory snack mix recipes. High fiber would be wonderful, lower calorie/fat content would be good too. (One reason my Chex mix is so yummy, IMO, is that I use butter. Not low cal/low fat, but damn yummy.) I’m not adverse to a bit of sweet in it, but the main purpose of this is to accompany my packed lunches as a savory side with a bit of fiber.

So go on, wow me with your favorite recipes. My lunches could use a punch up. 🙂

Baking Day 2009 (day 1)

It’s either because mom & I are getting older or because we like to bake far too much stuff (probably a combo of the two) but Baking Day now takes more than 1 day to do.

Today we couldn’t start first thing in the morning because I still had to go in to work. But we had an early dismissal (planned), so I told the folks to expect me for lunch.

I got to Troy around 1pm and we headed off to Night Sky Cafe for lunch. They have a lunch buffet, which we all took advantage of. I like their broccoli soup (even though it’s rather thick) and it was on the buffet. Baked tater (topped with chili & cheese), salads, and baked goods rounded out the filling lunch.

We popped into Kohl’s for a bit – I got a couple of Xmas towels (for my guests coming next week), slippers for wearing at mom & dad’s place, and some wrapping paper (since I’m almost out).

But once we returned to the house, mom and I got down to business. She began baking her Icebox Cookies (butterscotch cookies) which she’d made the night before. I started on the Peanut Butter Fudge. (This is a first for us this year.)

Once the fudge was done, we made the cookie dough for Lindy Cookies (oatmeal chocolate chip cookies) and then the batter for Aunt Alma’s Pecan Cookies. The pecan cookies are the stickiest thing we make and our first attempt using heavy wax paper on an old cookie sheet didn’t work too well. But Kitchen Aid cookie sheets worked fairly well.

During the Lindy Cookies baking time, we decided we were ready for supper. We all had ham sammiches and nachos. Then back to chocolate chip cookie baking. Mom then made the batter for cheesecake cupcakes. In fact, they’ve just finished baking. Yay!

Tomorrow, we’ll do a few other things – Peanut Butter Blossoms (aka nipple cookies), Cracker Jacks, sugar cookies (from Market Day – the fun here is in the decorating), and lemon bars (a store bought mix). There’s Good Eats here, I tell ya! 🙂