Weekend Update!

It was one busy weekend! I had to work both Thursday and Friday evening. We ended up going to Cafe Select downtown for Julie's birthday dinner. I don't think I have ever eaten there but I did try to go for dessert there once with some girlfriends. The lady asked us if we were going to eat and we told her we'd be ordering desserts. The lady refused to seat us because we were only going to order desserts! Well anyways, on Friday the experience was no better. We got there and for groups larger than 8, they charge an automatic 18% gratuity. We had 14 (I think) in total. I'll just do a quick run through of the evening. We ordered the Wild Mushroom Fondue for 4 to start and a "dinner" to share. The "dinner" was part of Downtown Dining week and came with calamari, chicken florentine and creme caramel. The mushroom fondue came over 30 minutes later but the chefs accidentally put wine in it. We opted to not get it replaced and instead ordered 2 entrées, mac & cheese and linguine with prawns. The waitress clarifies the order because she thought I wanted mac & cheese with prawns so I tell her, "No, mac & cheese and the linguine with prawns". Another 30+ minutes go by and the linguine and chicken come. After we finish those, 20 minutes go by and the waitress comes to clear our plates. We tell her that we're still waiting for the mac and cheese. Turns out, the waitress thought I had just wanted the linguine with prawns. As the waitress points out, "Bad things don't usually happen to the same table." The final strike is for dessert, she comes to us and goes, "We're actually all out of the creme caramel but we can give you a creme brule". That worked out for the better but at the end of the day this is what we got. Mediocre tasting overpriced food that took way to long to find it's way out of the kitchen. Not sure if the kitchen was having a bad night or what the deal was but our lovely waitress still got her %18 gratuity despite us having, well, no food! Did she do anything for us to make up for the kitchen's issues? Of course, she did not. That place has officially been crossed off my list of places to go. Onto somewhere that was tasty now! 

We had a surprise engagement party for Le Bao at Kyoto. We all shared a bunch of different items and it was not only affordable and delicious, but it was faster and they actually got our orders correct. After dinner, we had a night of games for Le Bao and it was great fun! It's too bad I had to work all darn weekend and with daylight savings, we lost 1 hour of fun times that could've been had yesterday. As Murphy's law always works, today also had to be insanely busy at work. I ended up working straight from 9:15-4:15 and took my lunch break at 4:15. I couldn't even fill myself up on water in between clients because then I'd need to find a bathroom! I got home not long ago and decided it was time for another drink. 

One might call this ghetto sangria but as Julie pointed out, it's actually quite classy! Why? If Sorrentino's can use their house red wine with Oasis fruit punch to make sangria and charge $8, I'd call that classy! Cheers! 

Marilyn's Famous Laksa!

So yesterday Jamie and I had the honor of eating at Jason and Marilyn's house. What was the special occasion? Why, it was Jason's birthday! I just thought I'd share a couple photos of the delicious meal that Marilyn prepared. The photos were taken with my iPhone using an app called Camera +. Definitely worth $0.99! 

You start with a bowl of plain vermicelli noodles and then top it with an assortment of yummy items. Mar's prepped a huge amount for us to choose from as you can see from the picture. 

Finish it off with some spicy hot broth and dig in! I was really greedy with the toppings so I wasn't able to fit in round 2. Definitely something we'll need to try making in the future. Maybe with less toppings because man, that's a lot of prep! Thanks Marilyn for a tasty meal and we owe Jason a big thank you too for being born so that we could have this yummy birthday meal with you. 

Valentine's Day

It's been a whirlwind of a weekend. I've been going non-stop since Friday and I'm glad I had a restful Monday off. We had a Valentine's Day themed girls' night. We needed to wear and bring food that was either red, pink or white. 

Unfortunately we forgot to take a group photo but as you can see, it was super fun with all the matching colors! As for food, we had a huge assortment! 

Marilyn not only made meatloaf with heart shaped ketchup topping, but she also got ENGAGED!!! She strategically planted her promise ring into some mini banana loaves that she baked. After coaxing us girls to eat the loaves all night, we finally discovered this ring in the midst of all these loaves. First thought? "Sick, who left their ring in the banana bread?" That's when Marilyn put her hands up to her face exclaiming, "I've been looking for it all day!" I'm not drawing a very good picture, but she basically had her engagement ring on while she was exclaiming. Very sneaky of her! And yes, she claims she cleaned the ring first.

We also had red nachos with red salsa and pink sour cream, heart shaped pizzas with a bunch of red toppings and a beet salad. After all the eating, we decorated our own mailboxes and handed out Valentine's Day cards! 

We even had a special visit from cupid! 

And to finish off the big day today, I made a card for Jamie. As you can tell I sorta misjudged my word placement. Oh well! 

P.S. The card isn't my design. I CASEd it from Kristina Werner. You can see her original card here. 

Turducken for Friendsgiving!

Jessica at work had a little gathering of friends and called it Friendsgiving. That's what it felt like yesterday at Newell & Julie's house. We had all been talking about trying this little invention called a Turducken. A chicken stuffed into a duck stuffed into a turkey. Sounds deliciously disgusting doesn't it? We were planning to do this for Christmas but with all the snowstorms happening, we kept delaying cooking the monstrous bird(s). Newell ordered it from... somewhere and they de-bone all 3 birds and even throw in a bit of cranberry stuffing. It was hard pulling it out of the roasting pan because of the lack of bones. It sliced up like a dream with his electric knife and it was moist and flavorful. 

Jamie and I agreed that although it was tasty, we would rather have our birds separate. 

New Year's Eve Party

Jamie and I didn't have any real plans for New Year's Eve. We decided to hang out with my brother and SIL because they were going to just sit at home. We figured we can bring the dog and sit at their place with them, have a few drinks and spend the night. We brought along Khuno and some drinks and made the trek over to the other end of the city. Our supper consisted of pizza, cheesy chicken macaroni and ribs. I was totally meated out. A quiet night turned out to be quite the party as a few of their friends decided to come to the "party" house. After supper we played a game called...Ping Pong? I have no idea... Basically you split up into two teams and take turns trying to throw ping pong balls into the other team's cups. If you get the ball in, the person you were up against has to drink and the cup gets taken away. Once all cups are taken away, the losing team has to drink. 

Then we decided to play Power Hour. A very simple game. All you do is take a shot of beer every minute for an hour. I don't think I've ever lasted more than 20 minutes but this was a special occasion. I had to bail out at 34 minutes. The timer I'm holding was counting down from 60 minutes but I started it 2 minutes late. The buy out option if you were to bail out is 2 shots of vodka for girls and 3 for boys. Cynthia was smart and bought out early. I wasn't as smart. Nor was Jamie. 

Then we decided to play a game called Flippy Cup. I have no pictures of this intense game. You split off into two teams and it's a relay of drinking. You gulp your drink and "flip" your cup until it stands on the wide end. Then the next person starts. The team that finishes first wins and of course, the losing one drinks. 

Then we decided to play Kinect on the Xbox? The game where you're the controller. And lastly we busted out some good old Ride The Bus. It's a bit lengthy to describe but when Rob asked me what does "Ride the bus" mean... I told him, "You basically die a little bit if you ride the bus." He understood why after one round. 

Hopefully everyone had a Happy New Year. May your resolutions work out and you're happy and healthy this upcoming year.