I MET BILL CLINTON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I was going to blog this week about the epic birthday party I went to, or perhaps the obscene Christmas cookie making, or even the New Orleans trip chalk full of good food content.

No.  This waits for no man.  For yesterday the Universe smiled upon me.  Birds sang.  The sun was shining.  It was beautiful.

First, let's back up.  I have had a framed autographed picture of Bill since I was ten.  I voted for Hillary.  I am unabashedly pro Clinton.  My desire to be among them is second only to my desire to marry into the Kennedy family. 

My brother is back for the holidays and last week suggested that I take a day off work for us to road trip to Little Rock to see the Clinton Presidential Library.  From Kansas city it is approximately 7 hours each way.  That's 14 hours of driving (through some freezing rain no less) and only 2 hours in Little Rock.  It was crazy.  It was fun. 

Hey Arkansas, how You doin'?

Mad camera aiming skills (PS here we're still on the Missouri side and still freezing.. so ready to make it to sunny AR and their 54 degrees!)

At last!! We made it around 1 pm.  Pay no attention to the guy out front on foursquare and facebook telling the world his location.

Hooray for the Presidential Library!!! (steve holt)

In the exact replica of the cabinet meeting room. 

Sitting in the president's chair.  Those cost 20K each, so keep the swiveling to a minimum, will ya?

Signing up our friends and family for the email list.  You're welcome Dad!

In an exact replica of Clinton's oval office. Check out the Remington, just like yours Dad!

And best for last.  We only had 1.5-2 hours to spend there and then we HAD to get back on the road (as it was I got home at midnight).  We walked down the street to the Clinton bookstore to load up on memorabilia. There were secret service everywhere in the store so we wanted to loiter as long as possible to see if anything happened.  Our library tour guide had said Bill was in town for the library's Christmas Party that night  (if you're wondering if we considering applying to work there, you are correct). 

I was in the back of the shop, and the back door opens and BILL CLINTON and his entourage step through.  I was only two feet away and was the first thing that he saw.  I clearly looked as though I was going into cardiac arrest (an alarming sight to pass I would imagine), so he stopped and shook my hand and asked me my name.  I'm not entirely sure what I told him but I did ask to take a picture.  Unfortunately I COULD NOT find my camera or my phone anywhere in my purse.  This may have had something to do with the my speech and motor skills failing me at the time. (dear God Lauren find your camera say something funny/charming/hilarious/memorable).  The secret service told him they needed to keep moving. I yelled at Bret who was ten feet away to grab his camera.  Apparently he had been fumbling for it in his pocket anyway and then proceeded to drop it on the floor.  A secret service guy took the photo.  They walked out of the room.  Then Bret and I died with happiness.  We left the shop and went next door to celebrate with beer and call the family and put this baby on the internet PRONTO.

 Lack of playing-it-cool aside, this was one of the most exciting moments of my life, and the best Christmas present ever.  Hooray!!!

Aunt Anne... you are the greatest

There has been a package for me at the building across the street for an embarassingly long time. Unfortunately you have to be there during business hours to pick up packages (full work and school schedule make that tricky business for me)... so today, FINALLY I was able to be united with my rolling pin sent straight from THE FUTURE (or Iowa, however you want to look at it)

How great is this thing? And I might add... how GREAT is my food Aunt Anne for getting me cooking (and potentially making pizzas NOT in the shape of the continental United States... or perhaps just on purpose this time)

The FUTURE in baking tools. Does that make this like the dipping dots of kitchen gadgets?

Look how happy it is in its new home (although I will chill it prior to use... per it's instructions).

Which meant this bad boy on the counter is at MAXimum capacity.

Coolest food Aunt EVER :) Thanks Anne!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Off Roading it

Hello lovelies! I can't tell you how GREAT it was to hang with my old college roomie this weekend. For a trip down memory lane... behold the small selection of scanned photos I have at my desk at the moment. Circa 2003 seemed like a long time ago didn't it? And how about this bad boy? P.S. Steph it's weird to see your hair that short... I feel like that is not how I remember it from yesteryear.Anyway in honor of her visit, I raced home from work to prepare the following snackies before we met up with our other friends.

The fruit/cheese/nut plate. FYI for maximum efficiency I assembled this exactly as is (the triscuits were still in their own bag) then I saran wrapped it several times so I could just pull it out of the fridge and unwrap. However the almonds got STALE. boo boo. lesson learned.

This was pre-made spin/artichoke dip that kelly brought over last weekend. In my processed food snobbery of the moment, I decided to thin it out with NF Plain yogurt.... it was a good move (considerably less gunky)... so yummy and oniony though :)

A SUPER easy bruschetta recipe that had the following:

• tomatoes (obviously)
• basil (mcduh)
• garlic
• parm
• balsamic vinegar
• EVOO
• ?? eh can't remember (onions? does that sound right?)

And best of all.... SANGRIA! :) It was the same recipe I've used before:

• merlot
• ginger ale
• gin
• oranges
• lemons
• limes
• strawberries
• love.... the most important ingredient.
  

It was fun getting ready and pretending to have a roomie full-time live-in fashion consultant again! We headed over to our friend's house who has the most adorable front porch ever... which is where a group of us sat, chatted, boozed, reminisced, joked, and she smoked while we attempted divine intervention:

Ash-tray art/miracle. She's catholic so maybe that guilty conscience will start creepin' in. Then we went to the bar where a purse set of the alphabet and numbers in post-it notes came in pretty handy as we schemed our way out of paying the cover. FYI.. this lady turned 26 two weeks ago.... NOT 33.

She was having fun though... i think she convinced herself it WAS her birthday. The letters started falling off so we borrowed some scotch tape from the bartender and wrapped it around her torso 5 times. CLASSY. but hilarious... right?

The highlight of my life was when we tried to walk to the next bar a few blocks away. Trying to use a shortcut we found ourselves trapped at the end of a parking lot, and someone's brilliant idea was just to hop down off a wall and cross the street to where we need to be. Brilliant.. right? I don't think ANYONE'S shoes or cat-like-reflexes were ready for ........

Falling into the bushes. MWAHAHA (below is me holding my friend's cigarette and falling down laughing)

We celebrated our hiking/mounting scaling success by romping in some fountains by our destination and wall summit. (please not the masking tape still around miss 33rd birthday)

All that work for a bar that was SUPER packed.

We hung around and played with letters anyway.

And decided that we don't need third party vendors to laugh all night long. Spontaneity makes for the most hilarious of evenings.. no? Anyway all in all it was a FABULOUS weekend. I celebrated it's coming to a close by preparing a vegan take on Chili Mac:

Chili Mac (fatfreevegan.com)

• WW elbows
• onion
• spinach
• kidney beans
• tomato sauce
• chili powder
• crushed red pepper
  

John liked it (GASP!)...

Hope errrrrrrybody had a crazy fun weekend.. and a Manic Monday. Later gaters.

The Rhythm is Gonna Get Cha..

One of my besties came in town last weekend (and brace yourself, another one's coming this weekend) ... and in honor we decided to catch up over a couple bottles of wine. Snacks.... obviously... were in order. Have I discussed Paula Deen's secret VEGAN recipe? The queen of butter and fried things accidentally made something healthy. It had to have been an accident, and what a delicous and healthy one that it was. She has an amazing black bean salsa recipe that includes the following:

• tomatoes
• black beans
• corn
• avocado
• onion
• cilantro
• red wine vinegar
• lime juice

ridiculously easy and heaven on a stick. I make big batches of this and eat it all week long (with fish, with cream cheese as a queso, in quesadillas, tex mex breakfast scramble...the options are endless).

I made a BIG 'ole batch to take to a Hog Roast the next day too. It was hit.. mostly because i was spreading rumors of how good it was. Also I made Zesty Cook's (food blogger extraordinaire) super easy greek dip. It basically included the following:

• cream cheese (like you could go wrong after that)
• feta
• NF plain yogurt
• dill
• tomatoes
• olives
• green onions

it was also supposed to have cucumbers but i forgot to add them to my grocery list..... so..... you know how that goes. Anyway with warm pita bread it was heaven.

Amy grabbed triscuits, some sort of summer sausagy thing and a delicous new kind of herbed cheese that for the life of me i can't remember it's name. This was the kind of gourmet lunchable that pseudo adults like us just LOVE.

Emily made fried green beans. She used some seasoned flour and fried them. With ranch they were SO good.

After mucho catching up and killing a few bottles of wine we got ready (this all went down just after work on friday, necessitating quick snacks and brief wardrobe changes). While we listened to some serious MJ hits and decided to be 'man in the mirror'

Which lead to this....

Which lead to a suggestion (I think emily gets the credit for this).. for pulling out a pair of white knit gloves from an OLD winter stash of warm things. It made it out with us for dance party madness. In recapping the evening the next morning on the phone with my mother she asked what others thought of us. Truthfully...... not sure. We actually just walked to bar area, proceeded to dance out in the open (where there's a DJ but no cover, etc.) and then go home. We actually had little interaction with others (minus friends of ours that were nearby and met up/hung out/dance partied too)

HIL.AR.I.OUS.

Lots of moonwalking happened too... I'm just saying.

Awesome.

Technology Upgrades and a Staycation

Happy post-Memorial Day! Oh man... as someone who semi-lives out of my car/suitcase, it feels pretty strange to be staying in town the one weekend where everyone and their dog is traveling to a lake or 3-day weekend destination. John and I had a very grown up weekend (nearly everything we did had more old people and families than kids our own age). I always am wanting to experience what my own city has, so John and I decided to have a KC tourist-themed weekend.

But first, let's start with the most exciting thing that happened this week/year/century/A.D.. Perhaps you've seen me cruising around town looking like this: Well... after four years, I thought perhaps it was time to upgrade (yes, it is possible to have a phone that long, and yes, i felt like Oprah would be proud of how 'simple' my life is with my lack of technology). Behold the cell from 2005:

Behold, the cell as of Thursday evening:

TA-DA!!!! I solemnly swear not to be one of those obnoxious i-phone people who insist their device is the answer to everything and bring it up in nearly every conversation *cough* my brother *cough* BUT... it is great. After just 2 days I had four pages of apps. Yowza.

Satuday was all abou the Great American BBQ festival. Too bad it turned out to be the red headed step child of KC's HUGE bbq festival (the american royal) in the fall. Is it bad that it made John and I missed how classy the state fair was?

It had a lot of old-timey root beer. I love things that are old-timey. Do you see where it says deep fried twinkies on the sign? awesome... and gross... but still awesome. I resisted. Does that make me awesome?

We didn't stay long because it was 90+ degrees (creeping up in boy band territory) and on miles of hot asphalt. Also we walked right past the free samples place and it was closed by the time we figured out where it was. Ahhhh nuts. There was a country-esque band playing that was good.... but kind of hilarious in their name/marketing pitch. Miss Major and her Minor Mood Swings (or something to that effect) that stressed how much SASS they had. Awesome. I love these country festivals. (and below for your viewing pleasure, a not so photogenic photo of two heat exhausted people)

Sunday we hit up the World War I Museum. It's the only WWI Museum in the country (there's not even one in DC, isn't that crazy?) and let me tell you, it's awesome. It ranks right up there with Museums/Memorials on the Mall... if not outshining them. We only gave ourselves an hour to go through, but spent the whole time saying we need to come back when we have 10 hours. Good stuff, people.

Then John and I had a picnic in-between Union Station and the Liberty Memorial/WWI Museum. The Kansas City Symphony played as they shot fireworks off from behind the memorial. It was really neat... (minus when the 50,000 people there... no seriously, that's how many they estimated, tried to leave the same parking garages at the same time)

There was a lot of saluting and paying tribute to the troops. I kind of felt like I was cheating on the fourth of July with these moments.

Monday was a Royals Game. BOO they lost. 9 to nothing. And it rained. However the new stadium renovations look AWESOME.

Then we tried to go to the renovated movie theater a few blocks from my apartment. They've got recliners and all you can eat seats and we were STOKED. However, the show was sold out. So... obviously... we went for redbox and a trip to the bakery down the street.

And then John fell in love with Red Velvet Cake.

YUM.

Hope your holiday weekend was fabulous!! :) I'm getting a facial tonight (woohoo) and then this week will be cooking up a storm. A healthy storm. A Hurricane of vegetables and other good things. Eh?