Ready for the Weekend!

This week has been a looooong one. I think partially because we were out of town last weekend, so we didn't have a lot of time to prepare for the week ahead. Work is also starting to pick up for me (which is a good thing), but that leaves me oh-so-ready for a relaxing evening tonight and a low-key weekend.

Last weekend was a lot of fun. We went out to Los Angeles to visit our friends Laurie & Matt, and their daughter, Camille. Laurie runs a non-profit, and J is on the board, so we flew out to attend their annual in-person meeting and dinner. We also got to spending some time enjoying LA-- including a trip to the zoo, lunch from In'N'Out, a walk along the park that overlooks the ocean in Brentwood, and a drive past O.J. Simpson's former residence. (We discovered that they have torn down his house, built a new one, and renumbered the street. I don't blame them. Can you imagine living in that house? Creepy.)

The weather was gorgeous! Unlike Texas, which is totally dead and brown this time of year, LA was lush and green. It looked and felt like May. Unfortunately, I didn't get too many pictures, but I did snap a few at the zoo:

Dad & daughter enjoying the sights

Overall, it was a great weekend! I think we found a new little buddy in Camille. Hopefully we'll be able to visit again before she forgets us completely!

We don't have a whole lot planned this weekend, but will be heading out to cheer on our friends Anne & Gregg in the Austin Half Marathon. They have requested lunch at our new favorite burger joint, Hop Doddy, afterward. I am happy to oblige, but sadly will not have just burned 1,300 calories like them. Hmmm... I may need to do a little jogging myself.

Happy Friday!

Labor of Love

J and I don't have a great track record with Valentine's Day outings. The first year we were dating, I was disappointed to find out that I had to travel to Colorado for work on Valentine's Day, so we ended up celebrating a day early with dinner at a casual Mexican joint. (It actually turned out to be a very fun, romantic date, so no complaints here.) The next year, we tried to get our Valentine's Day on in the form of dinner at a very well reviewed and swanky French-Korean fusion restaurant (don't ask...) and found out the hard way that a Valentine's Day dinner out equals two hour waits-- even with a reservation-- and then, when you finally do get to eat, nothing but high-priced, bad food (read: well done filet mignon and cold sides). To be fair, they gave us a complimentary dessert, but at that point we were just so annoyed and tired that it didn't do a whole lot to restore the romance to our evening. After that, we vowed never again to eat out on Valentine's Day, and in the years since we've concocted several very memorable and delicious meals.

This year, I was quite proud of my our endeavor. J has been requesting seared scallops for several months now, but due to an unfortunate and scarring incident involving over-cooked-to-the-point-of-tire-rubber bay scallops many years ago, I've always shied away from this particular dish-- which is silly because I am a far better cook now than I was at 23, and I have mastered many other much more difficult dishes. Searing scallops should be a snap! So, I finally decided to conquer this little phobia, and we selected a surf and turf menu of petit filet mignon and diver scallops with a sweet vermouth reduction sauce, accompanied by yukon gold mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus. De-li-cious. The sweet vermouth sauce was the star, and I will definitely be using it on steaks in the future. The whole meal was super easy to prepare-- the only slightly challenging part was managing the timing of everything because the filets and the scallops cook so quickly and we wanted everything to arrive at the table still warm. The asparagus was a little room temperature, but other than that... success!

(my attempt at food photography)

Sweet Vermouth Reduction Sauce

Serves 4 (although I made about 75% of this quantity for two of us and I thought there was just barely enough)

Adapted from Rachel Ray

1 large shallot, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2 Tbsp butter

1/3 cup sweet vermouth

chives

Heat pan over medium and add olive oil. Add shallots and garlic and sautee for about two minutes. Add sweet vermouth and reduce by half, about 30 seconds. Remove from heat and stir in butter to finish sauce. Pour over steaks immediately and garnish with chives.

Bon Appetit!

Oh, The Places You'll Go!

I've always been (nerdily) fascinated with geography, particularly within the United States. I love poring over maps to figure out how various cities and states are situated relative to each other-- especially for those parts of the country that I'm not very familiar with. As a girl from the west coast, where are the states are all big blocks and usually take at least 5-6 hours (or 18 if you're in California) to drive through, it still blows my mind that one night in college, while I was visiting a friend in Pennsylvania, we drove about 20 minutes from her home in Pittsburgh to pick up her good friend in West Virginia, and then drove another 20 minutes to go to a movie-- in Ohio. Crazy town.

Anyway, not surprisingly, one of my goals has always been to visit each and every one of the 50 states.* So I started keeping track a while back, and realized that now, due to our move to Texas and my job here, I'm making pretty good progress. Behold my "visited states" map (oh and the color coding is totally arbitrary-- it's just for pizazz):

Clearly, the middle of the country has not been my forte. Then there's New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Alaska. I'm confident I can knock off a few of these, but North Dakota? That will take some creativity. Some highlights:

• Oregon: Born and raised in Portland.
• California: Lived in Orange County for a few years during elementary school, LA during college, and San Francisco for 3 years after college.
• Washington: Lived in Seattle for 5 years.
• Hawaii: I've spent some time on the Big Island, Maui, and Kauai. I am dying to go back!
• Idaho/Montana/Wyoming/Nevada/Utah/Arizona: I grew up in a family that loved to camp, so we took many long road trips to visit the National Parks of the west, including Glacier, Yellowstone, Zion, and the Grand Canyon.
• Colorado & South Dakota: At my last job, one of my big accounts was Vail, CO, so I had to travel out there once every other month or so (tough life!); I also worked briefly with a fast food client based in Sioux Falls, SD-- not my favorite account ever, but at least I got to cross South Dakota off my list!
• Ohio/Kansas/Georgia: Since working at my current job, I've been able to travel to each of these states for work... more states I might not have gotten to otherwise. And Lawrence, KS? A very cool little town.
• North and South Carolina: Just added these to the list last summer when J was working in Charlotte and we took a road trip down to Charleston. Beautiful!

So my grand total is 33 states visited with 17 to go... not too bad! I'm hoping to knock one or two more off the list while we live in Texas.

What are some of your favorite U.S. destinations?

*I only count a state as visited if I've actually gotten out and seen or done something in the state. So, while I've traveled through New Jersey and Minnesota several times, and Rhode Island and Kentucky once each, I'm not counting airport layovers or any sort of transit through the state if I didn't actually stay there, or, as in the case of West Virginia, at least spend several hours sight-seeing and exploring.

Have you ever returned groceries?

Because I have. And let me tell you... awkward! Granted, I have a totally valid reason (at least that's what I told myself yesterday). Basically, I bought a bunch of ingredients to make some appetizers for a Super Bowl party that we didn't end up attending, and now we're heading out of town. Considering my near obsession with using up everything we have in the fridge each week-- including, um, "creative" techniques to utilize past-its-prime produce-- and my extreme aversion to ever wasting food (blame it on the OCD), I definitely wasn't going to let this bag full of groceries sit around and go bad. And, now that we're on our all-cash, Dave Ramsified budget, my frugal tendencies are flaring into overdrive. Not only do I not want to waste food, I also don't want to waste money from my precious grocery budget. So I decided I would just return my groceries.

Logical, right? Returning my groceries toooooootally makes sense.

Too bad genius over here decided the perfect time to take care of this little errand would be at 6:15pm on a Tuesday night, smack in the middle of the dinner rush at the grocery store. Long lines, crowds of people, the works. Then, when I finally get up the register, unload my bag, and give my spiel (while enduring heavy sighs and massive eye rolls from the people behind me), the cashier has to page the manager over the intercom. Yeah, that's not embarrassing.

Ultimately, they did take back my groceries, and I'm sure it's not the first time it's ever happened at that store. But, moving forward, I think it might be time to impose some limits on my frugality. (Or, on the occasions when I can't tame my OCD tendencies, I will at least save my embarrassing errands for very early in the morning or very late at night!)

Please tell me I'm not the only one who is this crazy...

A sight I never thought I'd see...

Snow day in Austin! We got two very light dustings last year that melted within the hour, but this is real snow. It's barely more than an inch, but in Austin that means no school, no work, no transit of any kind. And I am more than happy to oblige. Snow day!!

Birthday Celebrations

Jason celebrated his birthday on Monday, so we enjoyed several fun outings over the past few days. On Saturday evening, we met up with a group of friends at Austin's legendary (and enormous... holy cow, that place is big!) TexMex establishment, Matt's El Rancho, for queso, margs, and all kinds of ooey gooey enchilada deliciousness. Afterward, we enjoyed some libations at Red's Porch. We ended up staying out until 1am, and, boy, I can tell J's not the only one around here who's aging. That was rough. I only had three drinks during the entire night-- dinner through 1am-- but the fatigue alone left me feeling so worn out the next day! Is it sad that a home-cooked pasta dinner, a glass of wine, and a Netflix movie that wraps up around 10:30pm is my idea of a perfect night these days? (That was essentially our Friday night.) Regardless, we had a great time on Saturday and it was nice to have a bunch of friends come out to celebrate J's birthday.

Sunday was absolutely gorgeous-- sunny and 78 degrees. There were actually people laying out by the pool. Were it not for the queso and margaritas the night before, I would have joined them. Instead, I opted for a long walk around Town Lake. It was so nice to get some sun and even a little color on my arms and cheeks! Later we went to our Dave Ramsey class, which we're still digging, and then enjoyed our pasta leftovers and more Netflix.

Monday was J's actual birthday, so the celebrations continued with a little wine and cheese course at home, along with some presents and cards, followed by dinner at Olivia. We went there for my birthday a year and a half ago, loved it, and were looking for a good reason to go back. Another birthday fit the bill, and it was as delicious as I remembered it. He had the Kobe beef grilled tri-tip with sea salt frites (and an amazing aioli), and I had the pan seared sea scallops on a bed of Parmesan risotto with blood orange, celery root, and cashews. We wrapped it up with a deconstructed apple pie a la mode for dessert. Tasty!

In the meantime, our beautiful 78 degree weather has vanished thanks to the massive blizzard currently wreaking havoc on the Midwest, and it's a balmy 22 or so right now. I just wish we would get a few flurries so we could enjoy a snow day like everyone else! Come on, snow... come on, snow...