Fancy LA eats + IOWA awesomeness 5000

I went to LA recently and it was fabulous. I know, I know, you're thinking 'Lauren all you're going to talk about is how you and Justin Timberlake ran into each other and fell in love', well don't worry, I won't bore you with stories about how I hung out with my hollywood BFFs (I did not), or how JT fell in love with me (status pending).

Actually While I was there I stayed on the Anaheim side which means that instead of fancy cars and designer clothes I saw a lot of Disneyworld fanny packs and scrunched 80s tourist socks. You know the kind I'm referring to. That's right Dad, the ones I weaned you off of earlier this year.

I digress. I love traveling for work because I can order fabulous food that I would not have the resources or know how to make at home. Below was a once beautifully presented tower of fruit and seafood (mango, avocado, crab) from M&S grill. I remembered to take the picture post first bite. Just use your imagination. It tasted absolutely glorious.
I also ordered the red velvet cupcake because any slight reference to Steel Magnolias and the armadillo cake gets points in my book.

So I was in LA for a trade show and generally speaking trade show food is continental breakfast at the comfort-inn level in quality so pictures are not generally necessary. But there, out of the blue, came another installment of : ADVENTURES IN NEW FRUIT. I was intrigued. Apparently that fruit with the Encino man hairdo is called a Rambutan (similar to a lychee?) It was the same texture as a grape, with little to no flavor and with tons of work to get to the edible part.

It was gloriously sunny and perfect weather the entire time I was there. Ahh palm trees, so vacation-esque.

One of John's old roomies and friends from college lives in the area so we grabbed dinner one night at a fun Sushi place in downtown Fullerton.

Yummmm...... Sushi......

Except when they load it up with mayo-like substances. Dude, that ruins the flavor.

Although the majority of the rolls were DEE LISH, this one tasted like crab salad on top of the roll. Both hard to eat and kind of bland. Not my scene.

This was my date for the evening. Jackson, aren't you happy that I've showed the world such a completely flattering photo of you eating? It reminds me of the time I went to a sushi place for a first date. TERRIBLE idea. Not only is my hand tremor not conducive to graceful chopstick usage, but they make rolls the size of your fist, and you don't have much choice but to shove the whole thing in your mouth and hope you don't displace your jaw.

Soon after my return to the Show Me State, I left for the annual Carroll Sister's weekend. My mom and her SIX SISTERS have been having an annual sister's weekend every year since I was in junior high. The date and location changes, the jokes and the people are generally the same. a winning combo. This year there were 7 sisters + 4 nieces + 2 aunts + 2 sisters-in-law.

My godmother/aunt/summertime roomie hosted this year and made it so fabulous!

There was a murder mystery the first night. My character was Cinderella (Beth to her friends) which meant that I got to bring out my MORP dress from college. MORP = prom backwards, which we used as an 80s theme. Mom has been trying to get me to throw this out for years (as, obviously, I've been storing it at her house). By the grace of god it fit and if it wasn't so uncomfortable to sit down in it I'd wear it all the time.

What is a weekend together if not ALL about food! We had lots of healthy options this year, go us! (and go Aunt Anne for coordinating it!)

Other highlights of the trip include: Yoga, taught by yours truly (mostly stretching, but it counts), water color lessons, decoupage art time, a HILARIOUS talent show where I played the spoons. As usual, my great Aunt Marilyn steals the show and I even videoed but I couldn't get it to post here so just imagine Betty white dancing to NOW that's what I call music 2010.

We went to a charming house on a charming street in a charming town (star's hollow, anyone?) that a Russian family had converted into a restaurant. I suppose there is a reason that the Russians aren't known for their culinary skills (or healthy eating, yikes), but the ambiance and the company made it a thousand times better than any chain restaurant we could have gone to. Below were our Russian eats.
A potato salad in a kaiser bun that had Beet eyes that stared at me. Plus a cream of mushroom soup that was SO SO SO GOOD. I'm pretty sure it was heavy cream with mushroom flavor, but I'm not complaining.

I got the vegetarian option and am so glad I did. I hadn't had acorn squash in forever! It had honey, brown sugar, butter and cheese on it. I picked around the cheese as the squash was plenty flavorful with out it. Also the asparagus came wrapped in a puff pastry, cute and delicious! That other thing was a combination of four cheeses and was uber heavy. Lots of flavor but after a couple of bites I literally had to get up and walk around the block.

Can't wait for next year's Wisconsin adventure!!

In other news, I have been playing Words with Friends like it's going out of style. I play John, my brother, my cousins, my college buds, and John's sister. I freaking love it. I also documented my highest scoring game to date, where I got nearly 600 points. Nerdy scrabble high five!

Also last week I made Jenna's (of Eat Live Run) Vegan Lentil Loaf and it was SOOOOO GOOD. Even John begrudgingly approved. It made an awesome weeknight meal in the following days too.
Two thumbs up!

Currently it is 85 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, my calendar is chalk full of fun stuff going on and I am happy as a clam. YAY summer!

Helllllllllllloooo Nurse!

It is times like this (sitting at my desk, ignoring my to-do list) that I wish I were at home in footie PJs watching animaniacs. Is that show even still on? The hello nurse comment is from there and a nod to Emily Millertime, obviously.

So my fair city has had some lovely guests in the first few weeks of December including but not limited to my BFF Nickie in for a wedding (isn't she beauteous?)

And a rowdy crowd this saturday for a birthday party. My camera caught a moment on the Dance floor and every single one of those hooligans is hilarious and so much fun.

Even this one :)

In other life altering ridiculously amazing things, a vendor sent me a Godiva gift box for spending so much in advertising with them. I can be bought with chocolate, oh yes I can. Highlight of my life. I am never going back to Russell Stover.

In food related activities Jaclyn and I had a little dinner party for ourselves! Our date night was with Julie & Julia and all of the fun apps we could handle. I pretty much love her little house she and her BF live in. Adorable and so fixed up.

I made the pumpkin dip again. Cream cheese + brown sugar + pumpkin puree = basically the pie and complete delicousness. I also made the mini baked potato bites from last NYE. Those are comfort food at it's finest and sound yummy to me even as I type this. I also was curious about an endive recipe that I found.

Endive Boat Things from Real Simple

• Ricotta
• Almonds
• Raisins
• EVOO
• Endive leaves

Truthfully... these had no flavor. Maybe I should've got full fat ricotta? Jaclyn and I agreed a drizzle of honey instead of EVOO would've helped but either way, these were pretty forgettable.

Jaclyn made feta/green apple/craizin bites in a phyllo shells. YUM. Those were rocking my world. Also a hit was the pre-made frozen spinach bites. Sometimes you just can't one-up the pillsbury people. Good stuff.

Jaclyn also made little gingerbread men. Lots of Shrek jokes were going around, obviously.

Oh no... don't eat me....!

Yesterday I rented Funny Girl (i've never seen it!) from the Library because this week's GLEE episode had me singing 'Don't Rain on my Parade'. I think I'm officially a Streisand fan. It was good stuff and made for excellent shower singing. Also I talked John through his first chili recipe that I showed him from one of Paula Deen's sons on the food network. Sounds yummy, no? So proud of him, so proud.

Only 9.5 more days until Christmas vacation!!! :)

I heard it through the grapevine

This Halloween goes down as one of my favorites. Probably because we had the greatest costumes ever..... feast your eyes on these bad boys!

Behold the Inspiration:
Emily and I made them by going to a party supply store and getting vinyl tablecloths in dark purple, black, white, and blue. All at $1.79 each. With the addition of big gloves and microphones/guitar from the halloween store, we still came in under $20 overall. We cut the holes for the head, slits for the arms, and just stapled up the rest. We were pretty proud of ourselves.

Also we had a whole dance, because we're WAY into themes like that. Unfortunately by the time we got down to the bar there was no contest (we think, the details are fuzzy but i remember actively pursuing it for about 20 minutes before giving up and heading back to the dance floor where I accidentally kept flinging my microphone and sunglasses)

John was speed racer for the THIRD YEAR IN A ROW. I think he thinks it is hilarious. I fear he will now try to wear it every year.

soooooooooooooooo........ because my diet has consisted most of this for the past several days:



I will be making a grocery store visit ASAP. Hopefully good eats to come. Hope everyone had a BOSSY halloween! :)

I've made a little huge mistake

Greetings! Since we last spoke I've been to a wedding across the state, a shower/bachelorette combo at home, Reno for work, and even accidentally a stall in a Men's restroom at Las Vegas International Airport. I scared the BEJESUS out of like ten guys in my airport fatigue/haze of heading into the bathroom.... ignoring like ten signs telling me to turn around. I saw things. Things I didn't want to see. Shudder.
Anyway, I was *mostly* good while traveling for work. Traveling kind of makes you feel gross and out of it anyway sometimes. So nothing seems homier than fruit and yogurt from room service. Am I right or am I right? One place I even ordered my typical eggs benedict (sauce on the side, 86 the ham and add tomato slices and spinach leaves, fruit on the side) and the waitress told me the Chef was proud of me for being healthy...... at a Casino. Points for me!!!

On the other hand....... there was that one night.... that I had the lobster pot pie (i.e. an entire lobster and a gallon of cream sauce...... get .... in .... my ... belly)

Remember that Monty Python where the guy LITERALLY exploded. I feared that would happen. That would be more like a huge huge mistake.

However before we headed to Reno.................... drumroll....................... the Pink dress won! I will say that I LOVE the black dress more (i mean come on, how could you not), but I wanted to save it. I wore to a bach party (of which i didn't take any pictures....... blad blogger) and it was too dressy but it was too fabulous to matter.

The wedding was WAY fun.
And I got to see lots of friends from school I hadn't seen in YEARS. We were reunited on the dance floor, obviously. Cuban shuffle anyone? (yes I know it's cupid... but it feels so sassy and south american, no?)

Holler back DZ! And Shenanigans, naturally.

While home I made this beauty. A turkey burger inspired by a kids cookbook I have. That's right. Kids. Ground turkey combined with cut up sweet pickles (or relish for those of you with a more stocked fridge than myself) ground mustard, light mayo, bread crumbs and ketchup. Mix it up, shape into patties, bake, and serve... YUM.

I had it with roasted Okra. I'm on the fence about Okrah. It was all fuzzy and slimy but I loved the new veggie unique goodness about it. It's one of those things that I might eat again, but I wouldn't dream of making someone else do it (i.e. John).

Some other SUPER exciting stuff happened recently. In reverse order of importance:

• I wore my DVF dress to the shower last weekend. I also had to sew myself into it to keep from gapping and showing the ladies in Johns family the farm.
  
• John's mom is GIVING me her vintage dress form that was John's grandmas. They are moving and going through old things and she hated throwing it away. I CANNOT wait to get a sewing machine from Santa!!
  
• The bachelorette party was great and fun and made for good bonding time with John's sister (did i mention that the dress I picked out for HER looked amazing?!) I'm going to be the best personal attendent ever at her wedding in 2.5 weeks :)
  
• I realized my Southwest free flight from my work travels was about to expire. After I felt foolish for a long time for paying for flights this year and not cashing it in early.... I decided to GIVE it to one of John's friend's so he could come back to their college Alumni game. He's a teacher and is poor (hey, we can all relate) and lives far far away and often must miss epic reunions. He was SO SO SO excited when I told him he could have the ticket. It made me happy. I felt like Oprah. You get a free flight and you get a free flight and you get a free flight!
  
• and FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINALLY....... my beautiful, fabulous, college roomie and BFF who is often featured here (and makes comments, yay) just got engaged and asked me to be her MAID OF HONOR! :) I'm sooooooooooooooooooooo excited! It's going to be the most fabulous wedding ever and I just can't wait. Thanks Bowler XOXOXO!

Bring on the puffy sleeves

Like Butta...

When I was around this age.....
I would eat sticks of butter like they were candy. Gross right? They were delicious. My affinity for butter continued grossing out friends and roommates well after college. Then of course, when I decided to be healthy I abandoned my buttery ways for healthier options. Possibly that is why I forgot to include it when baking this weekend?

So I found some recipes for brownies and blueberry muffins on the stonyfield website for cooking with Yogurt (i.e. as a substituting for oil). I was WAY excited because I had all the ingredients on hand (pro of baking versus cooking, more shelf stable items) ....... Too bad that 'ol 'room temperature' butter thing meant that I microwaved the butter...... which is where it sat forgotten UNTIL I had already divided the muffins into the pan. A few expletives later I thought, well......what the hell, and swirled the melted butter into the already-mixed-already-in-the-pan muffins. Guess what? No bueno. That coupled with the addition of whole wheat (i went half and half as opposed to all white flour per the recipe) and probably too much oven time = hard and grainy muffins. They were decent when eaten immediately (but obviously i was full from batter), but the next morning they probably couldn't chipped a tooth. YIKES.

And THAT ladies and gentelman..... is why lauren can't bake. Muffin.... FAIL.

The brownies weren't horrible.... and by that I mean I ate most of the batter and was pretty indifferent about the actual baked goods themselves. MEH.

In an effort to show a picture of something I was successful at.... here was my lunch yesterday. I successfully had multiple food groups (protein of the animal and plant variety, grains, veggies.... that's hummus in there and WW pretzelsl, FYI) .... so let's redirect our attention to that, shall we?

This last weekend I got together with some friends for a slumber party and the hannah montana movie. What's that you say? Well, our respective ages were 24, 26, and 28......................... going on 12. It was so much fun, just being goofy and ridiculous at the sorority house. It was pretty much my everything :)

TGIthursday homies :)

Mullet City

Hands down, the highlight of my week was when this beauty popped up on my car after running home for lunch one day.

I mean can you believe it? He used to text me all the time during the campaign (you know, telling me where to register, volunteer, reminding me when Joey B was coming into town for a rally, etc.), he's even still in my phone as 'Barack'...... *sigh* it was lovely. In totally unrelated news, after discovering this note I spied Emily's car 10 feet away from mine in the parking Garage. Hmmmmmm.....

It was a pretty political week for the parking garage, what with O'Reilly, Bob Dole, Ann Coulter and even Bill Clinton stopping by (dear emily, you're the hottest thing since my wife in a pantsuit) to leave sweet nothings on Emily and I's cars.

(dramatization below)

Much further down on the excitement-o-meter for the week was food I'd assembled. I was particularly impressed with this combo... Even if i did steal it from graduate meghann.

WW toast with ricotta on top and grilled eggplant and yellow squash (marinated in balsamic) YUM.

And this salad was pretty so I took a picture.

You know what else was pretty? the shoes I was wearing while I ate. Hello lovelies!

John and I also went to a free Blues Traveler concert a few blocks away. Too bad word was out. It was the MOST packed I have ever seen that place.

This was us unhappy we could not move.

It's okay, we burned out a bit early and I came home and BAKED! Since I was going to be living on the interstate all weekend, I decided to make my friend Kelly cupcakes in honor of her Bday I would miss. I WANTED to make a super healthy kind... but I realized a) it's her birthday give the lady what she wants and b) there was a pretty good chance they might not turn out anyway, so let's opt for the best tasting kind possible.

The result? Barefoot Contessa to the rescue! Pounds of sugar and butter later (the cupcakes were made with sour cream and the frosting with cream cheese!) ................................ I over baked the cakes. Mo**er F*****************!! I was WATCHING them the whole time and they were just in the oven a minute too long. They weren't burnt exactly, but they weren't close to being moist and delicious. AW SNAP.

It's okay, Kelly said she liked them anyway (i told her just to eat the tops like they were muffins)

After work Friday Emily and I VAMOOSED to get to the center of the state (world) to the STATE FAIR! We had some sweet concert tickets.

Let me zoom in for you:

Come on now... everybody sing, "HOW DO I GET YOU ALONE....... ALOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE!" you can bet your bottom dollar (the state fair always brings out the 'folksy' language a la Palin, no?) we were belting that out at the top of our lungs when it came on.... thank goodness for EVERYONE we were sitting near a loud speaker to drown ourselves out)

Emily and I went with John's sister, her fiance and his fam. We all had a little cowboy flair.

Including my SWEET Frye cowboy boots that I thrifted in San Francisco this Spring! (hello my lovelies)

We also saw my sister, made a visit to the beer garden, ran into college peeps (only at the fair, I tell you) and saw some pretty sweet tats and mullets.

Then it was once again time to hit the road!

We were en route to the STL to visit our friend Jessica for HER birthday celebration. Jessica, the lone adult-acting friend I have, had a baby in March and was SO ready for a rowdy night out (we were happy to oblige).

The road trip fun-level took a nose dive when we had to pull over (twice!) because there was a MONSOON on the interstate. BOO.In my still-in-PJs glory, sad face.

We got to the STL just in time to decorate the hotel room. Beauteous no?

We were staying in the Casino hotel, so OBVIOUSLY yummy restaurants, cheesy bars and losing money until the wee hours of the night were in order. How LUCKY were we when we found a funk band playing in one of the bars.... I'm not kidding you, not a single person there wasn't moving/grooving/being friendly and/or hilarious.

Look closely, you can see my third-favorite mullet from the weekend across the bar. My friend Amy got WAY better pictures once we were inside the casino itself (we're talking Kentucky waterfalls, folks)..... until she almost got kicked out for taking pictures there. What is this, Russia? Who knew you couldn't do that. Totally worth it though.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE being with my friends. Shenanigans ensued.

Five seconds before this picture, this guy was crouched on the floor sticking his head up this girl's skirt like he was going to put her on his shoulders (it's okay, they were together.... er.... we think) He did it like three times in a row. It was a sight to behold. We did a lot of clapping.

Then we got back to the hotel room and we learned that when you have a friend with a baby, they carry around Breathalyzers when they breastfeed. ......... = hilarious = a confusing phone call with John where he was NOT amused to be thinking I'd been arrested. Simmer donna.

Once the weekend came to a close (tear!) I decided to use my once again available weeknights (no grad school remember, how great is that?) to use a cookbook that had been neglecting. I made this recipe:

From this cookbook (Eating Well In Season w/ Kaiser Permanente) :

It was called Caramelized Onion Bean Dip Flat bread Pizza. (or something to that effect). Which was basically all of those ingredients. I got to use my rolling pin from outer space (Thanks Anne!!!!!)

Unfortunately the water I used for my dough was apparently WAY too hot and killed the yeast, which means the bread didn't rise. F*****. However mom said I could use it as a flat bread or something instead (BINGO!) which was actually what I WAS going to use it for. Whew, nice recovery.

Instead of sauce, there was a hummus-like paste (that I added WAY too much Oregano to, I might add) that was originally supposed to be brown but I think the red onions turned it a dirt-esque brown.... making it slightly less photogenic.

Jerry's thoughts (things I learned this week):

• The first time you bake your pizza dough (prior to baking with toppings), check the middle of the crust to make sure it's not too doughy..... so it won't be total mush when it comes out the second time ready to eat.


• Dough hot water isn't supposed to be hot, it's supposed to be sort of luke warm. Note to self.


• Under cook cakes/cupcakes. Everybody likes that dough anyway, who are we fooling.


• I'm not going to be able to wait until I get married in the year 2333 to get a Kitchen Aid stand mixer. I'm going to put myself on a payment plan to get it long before then. And maybe a Juicer too, and an emulsion blender...... yeah, that too.


• The state fair has more ankle tattoos than the wal-mart by where I work. .... and that's saying something.


• If you 'love' push the person next to you at a bar in a casino (for making faces at her... yes Amy), and you don't know your own strength and push them out of the booth. Both by that act and the laughing about it *might* get you kicked out.... good thing we're such smooth talkers.

Anything I'm leaving out?...... All in all a productive week, I'd say. Happy Hump day friends :)