Happy National Chocolate Day!

Sorry I've been MIA. As you are all aware, Christmas has just passed, so I've been spending time with family. It's nice to step away from the chaos of life and hang out with family, know what I mean? Even though we have our special brand of craziness, I feel fortunate to have a very loving family.

But enough about that, it's time to celebrate. That's right, did you know that December 28th is National Chocolate day? Look it up, it's totally true! In honor of this special day, I've been eating my weight in chocolate, and urge you too as well. Mark your calendars for 2009, and celebrate with me!

A Successful Meal

Wow, I've blogged a lot this weekend. Can't help it I guess. Especially since I have happy news to report: I found a recipe and successfully executed cooking a delicious meal!

I had a cookbook that I got from who knows where. It was either my old roommates, my grandmother's, or my mother's. Either way, I found a broccoli/beef/tomatoes/noodles recipe that looked promising. I bought all the ingredients yesterday, and her is the result:


I decided to go all out and have a nice candlelit dinner as a reward for my hard work:


Please don't judge from the camera phone pictures. This really was quite tasty!

See what happens when you make your mind up to do something? Never give up on the power of possibility combined with a hungry stomach. ;-)

What to Cook?

Readers, I don't know what's wrong with me. Lately, I've had the urge to do something I don't do often: cook and bake!

It's not that I can't cook, or that I dislike it. I'm a woman of convenience, and since I work all day, the last thing I want to do when I get home is cook a time consuming meal. If it takes more than 15 minutes to prepare, I'm not interested.

So needless to say, this new urge is a strange feeling. It started a few weeks ago when I decided to make some awesome chocolate chip pumpkin bread. Not only was the recipe easy, the product was delicious! This tends to happen with me a lot - when I try something, I find I can usually do it well. Just need to give it a chance.

Now I'm feeling like trying out some new casserole recipes, and this is where you come in. Do you have any relatively simple casserole or hotdish recipes? If so, feel free to send them my way. Maybe I'll post pictures of the result. Only if they turn out well. Otherwise, no one needs to see that.

Sicker than sick

I had an unusual experience this week - I came down with a full blown case of food poisoning. I'm talking the kind where one minute you are fine, the next you are bowing to the porcelain god. Seriously, not fun, and I don't recommend it. I even ended up in immediate care, receiving an IV back of fluids because I was so dehydrated.

So what happened? Well, I'm not too sure, really. Tuesday night I had some strawberries with dinner, and everything seemed to be going just fine. Then, around 9pm I started feeling iffy (kind of gassy, but not really, if that makes any sense), so I went to bed early. Next thing I know, it's 11:30, and I'm puking my guts out for the next 48 hours.

I've been sick before, but this was bad. I couldn't even keep water down it was so bad. Needless to say, there were times over that 48 hour period that I would have welcomed death. Oye, the puking!!

Thursday, at the strong encouragement of my boss and coworker (thanks, btw), I went to immediate care. It was here that they confirmed that I did indeed have food poisoning, and that I was dehydrated (shocking). To help with the dehydration, they gave me an IV of fluids, and also gave me an anti-nausea shot (which you get in the ass, FYI).

Friday I still wasn't feeling well, mostly because it had been two days since I'd had food in my system. On Friday, I was able to keep some food down, and didn't spend the entire day sleeping, which seemed to be a sign that I was on the mend.

Now that it's Saturday, I was excited to wake up and find that I was HUNGRY! For the first time in almost 4 days, the thought of eating was actually welcome! I just ate a light breakfast of oatmeal, and I have high hopes that I will be back to my normal self very soon.

Anyone know when I can start having coffee again?

Food, glorious food!

This past week I had the opportunity to go to a soft opening of a friend's new restaurant downtown. Block 15 is a new brew pub that provides an excellent combination of good food and good beer. The restaurant has been under renovations for 13 months, and I have had the opportunity to see the construction progress. I've always been one to enjoy a good meal out, so it was fun to see the various stages of a restaurant come to be. The location of this restaurant has gone through many phases in it's history. It started out as the location of the town Newspaper, then became a pizza restaurant, then a regular bar. It had been closed for a few years before my friend's purchased the building, and began their renovations.

It felt like it took ages for the restaurant to open after I first learned about the plans. Every time I got a behind the scenes tour of the progress, I became more excited to see the final product. Well, last week, I wasn't disappointed when a few of us had the chance to attend the soft opening. A soft opening is basically a chance for all the staff to refine their rhythm, and get their timing down. It also helps the fresh wait-staff hit their stride with their service.

The food at Block 15 is affordable and delicious. The microbrews they have brewed so far in house have not disappointed. Rest assured that if you come to visit, it can almost be guaranteed that we will head over to Block 15 for a delicious meal that I am confident you will find to be a real treat.