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

Taking it to the street

I can't decide what to wear to this wedding on Saturday, so I'm showing you some options and respectfully requesting your opinion. Okay, maybe I'll disrespect your opinion later, but that's neither here nor there.

So knowing full well that I have Vegas, and John's sister's bachelorette Party and Wedding on the horizon, I am in no short supply of cocktail dresses (hi my name is lauren, Hi lauren, and I'm a recovering cocktail dress shopaholic). This coming weekend (as in the day after tomorrow) is between the following two not-yet-worn-before lovelies.

This bad boy I got as a closeout on Ebay for $50 (brand new BCBG and I heart it... originally $375.. what has two thumbs and loves a good deal? this guy) I MIGHT also wear it ten other places so it gets 10 for versatility, 10 for awesomeness and a 10 for making my legs look a foot longer than they actually are. The picture is sort of smallish but it's Silk with beading around the collar and down the front.

This I got from Macy's for $5 (yes $5.... it was a CRAAAZY 97% discount and that day i felt i hit the dig-through-clearance-rack jackpot). However I've had it for two years and though I like it, it's always played second fiddle to whatever I ended up choosing to wear. Part of me wants to save the black one for another occasion (of which there are many, although there are also other options).... But part of me wants to just wear this one. This dress is INC and is also 100% silk. It also reminds me of this shirt I had when I was 8.... and it gets MAJOR points for that because I was quite the accessorized 1st grade fashion plate. But we're getting off track.

I thought Nickie and I had come to a conclusion last week... but here I am, indecisive.... reaching out to the internet at large. Thoughts?

Tell your boyfriend he can suck it

I heart headbands, big time. My head is way too egg shaped for me to be able to wear them often (plus i have a widow's peak, further making it difficult).... But by God thanks to this little lady, I feel like I can wear them post third grade.

John, on the other hand CLEARLY doesn't watch gossip girl nor does he appreciate all things head flair. When we went out this weekend I wore a headband with a large and in charge flower on it and he kept telling me i looked like a third grader on picture day. A girl in line for the bathroom at a bar we went to complimented the headband (because... duh) and I told her THANK you because my date didn't think it was so hot. She said 'You tell your boyfriend he can suck it' it was kind of the highlight of my life. That and this show.

I also tried to sleep in it when we got home. That got vetoed. Fun hater.

Probably John's highlight of the evening was this bad boy. The best freaking enchiladas ever. Seriously, I'll be making this again, I'm guessing it happily will feed a crowd. It's a Tyler Florence food network recipe that utilizes a roasted tomatillo salsa.

NOM NOM NOM. Highlights include:

• cold, deli-purchased rotisserie chicken (this was new for me)
• poblano peppers (because jalepenos and i don't mix)
• tomatillos (i.e. the green tomatoes, also a first time purchase for me)
• cheeses/tortillas/seasoning/cilantro/chicken stock/etc.

I was excited for all of the leftover it has made. Including lunch today!

In other exciting news, something super awesome came in the mail recently.

A DIPLOMA! Now my graduate and undergraduate ones can be best friends next to each other on my wall. Hooray!

Putting the 'issues' in tissues

I hope everyone had a great send-off weekend for their white pants/shoes/shorts/bags/etc. I know that Stacy and Clinton say you can wear them off season (and there IS such a thing as winter whites) but I judge those who sport them after this weekend... and you do too.. don't lie. So where was I, oh yes. Well my reward for laboring all year long was apparently to have to cancel or cough/sneeze/phlegm my way through things all weekend looking like this:

(bow to the queen of filth... BOOO BOOO BOOO)

And feeling like this.....

And having enough of these..... To make one of these....

So I'm just trying to lay on the couch and watch daytime TV (can we talk about what B.S. it is that everything's a rerun on labor day? psssssssssssssh)

and try to find my happy place...

Just kidding, it's probably more like this...

Okay.. my eats have mostly consisted of triscuits, oranges and gatorade so you guys probably aren't' so interested in that. Here's hoping I get a sense of smell/taste back soon so I can stand to be in the kitchen. eh?

Hope everyone had a BOSSY labor day weekend!

Surely there's a country song for that...

You know, for getting kicked out of a Michael Jackson concert? Greetings peeps, this past weekend's adventures were courtesy of the mile high city, Denver CO.

Which is where one of my college besties (several favorite former Missourians live there, actually) resides. Emily and I flew out for the weekend to see her spanking new condo, celebrate her new found homeownership and party like it was 1999 (or more specifically 2005)

After a long day of pooltime, BBQs and other shenanigans, we went to a wine bar and had TAPAS (yesssssss!)

And then went got some PRETTY SWEET TICKETS.

At the end of the concert and we had been boozing ALL. DAY. LONG. We had smuggled our cameras in via the crotch of Kelly’s gay BFF (love him!!) p.s. they were searching purses for cameras, but we took a cab there, what were we supposed to do with them?. So I decided to take a picture of the venue for, you know, the blog….

And after one not-so-worth-it picture of the speaker in front of me and this dude's head, some large-and-in-charge butch looking lady grabs me by the elbow. And well...

Before I could pepper her with comments like ‘isn’t Portia derossi cute?’ and ‘those bugle boy shorts really make your calves look great’ …. I was outside. It was over before it started. I was making friends outside, but my friends came out to get me anyway (aren't they wonderful?). So I didn't get a picture, and I certainly wasn't wearing my specs (which means that anything over 10 feet away might have 15 noses or none at all, but not like I can see)... but I have it on good authority that the lead singer resembled this...

LUCKILY for … well… everyone involved, there was a fun bar/pizza place next door. I am proud to say I converted a table of people to pineapple pizza. It was my everything.

The morning after all of this ridiculousness, I got a craving for Ceasar salad like you wouldn't believe. I decided I would try to remake me own version this week. I discovered that regular Ceasar dressing has anchovies, but what am I..... Heathcliff? Yuck.

I found an eating well recipe with pureed cottage cheese, garlic, yogurt, parm, white wine vinegar, and worcheseterslekjrelk sauce.

The results? I got to use my cuisinart mini prep.. YAY how i've missed it!

I even took some WW bread and removed almost all of it's healthiness by dousing it with butter/oil/garlic. AND WHOAH WAS IT STRONG. I think I warded off plenty of vampires. It was probably strong enough to repel anyone who has even read twilight.

I had it with shrimpies and ...... meh. I was proud of it. And I ate it happily and cheerfully, but i still would've prefered to get a gooey, crusty (effortless on my part) restaurant salad. Applebee's anyone?

John was coming over later, and I was out of shrimp anyway so I threw together an egg salad salad. I actually learned out to make hard-boiled eggs via the better homes and gardens cookbook method (as opposed to haphazardly boiling them and inadvertently leaving a thousand tiny egg shell pieces all over the kitchen/world) I was proud of myself. Plus I subbed half mayo for yogurt, making myself EXTRA proud.

Then I took a photo montage of a Diane VonFurstenburg dress I got on ebay (slightly damaged) that I LOVED but when I got it in it was an old lady fabric in a WAY brighter color than I thought it would be (in real life it's brightest halloween orange). So I was taking photos to send to the former roomie fashion consultant who lives with her closet far far away in California. So, thoughts?

Happy Thursday friends!

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 :)