Halloween Weekend Recap

Time for me to throw in the obligatory, Happy early Halloween blog post!

Been a busy girl since my last post. I worked the Madonna concert on Wednesday and Thursday night -- how exhausting!! Great people watching though -- so many 80's style "material girls"! I definitely don't know how the other departments handle the work schedule of working events late into the night, night after night. Guest services, retail, scoreboard ops, probably so many other departments I'm missing, all of those departments are busy with the games and the concerts/events. Granted, they all aren't expected to come to work at 8:30am the next day after they leave the building at midnight, but it's still a rough schedule. I'll definitely stick to my 8:30-5:30 gig and occasionally "moonlight" with retail for extra cash and do the occasional informational shadowing shift with other departments to learn how they do what they do.

I did get my commission numbers from Madonna, this morning. The little bit of sleep dep last week? Well worth it. Money money money money! I will have my iPad soon. The only question is -- iPad 2, iPad 3, or the iPad 4? Chris is recommending the iPad 4, and when it comes to things like this he definitely knows better than I do, and it sounds like it's coming out just in time for the holiday season.

I was totally drained at work on Friday -- seriously, I could barely function just beyond the basic things I needed to do -- but I was able to get the work I had to do done and left a little early. Had enough time to go home and catch a quick nap before Chris came home and then we packed and we were off to Dallas for the weekend to stay with some of his friends for their annual Halloween party.

The Halloween party was a blast -- Chris and I were a little lazy this year and recycled our costumes from last year. He was a marionette, I was a flapper. We figured, hey, the Dallas people haven't seen these costumes in person, and they're damn cool, so yea, no shame. Recycle! We'll have to figure out epic costumes for next year though, don't think I can get away with being a flapper three years in a row. Which is almost too bad -- I love that costume. It lets me be sexy without being slutty and hey, isn't that what Halloween is all about?

But yes, I have big decisions to make this year. Couple costume? Make our own (yuhright on that for me, I am not that crafty), buy it, assemble something from thrift stores? Pirates, ninjas, Greek god and goddess? Only time will tell.

There were some great other costumes at the party -- Tony Stark, a Pokemon, Daria, Cookie Monster and a chocolate chip cookie, Effie Trinket and Caesar Flickerman. And we played board games, so many board games -- Dixit and Netrunner and Zombicide (so much Zombicide! I died -- had to take one for the team) and Mafia (okay not a board game, oh well) and Belfort and Innovation!

And we ate food, so much food! There were candy corn themed fruit and veggie trays -- pineapple (yellow), oranges (orange), sliced apples (white); yellow bell pepper (yellow), baby carrots (orange), ranch dip (white). There were mummy dogs -- wieners wrapped in crescent rolls with little mustard faces. There were cookies, so many cookies. There was guacamole with little chunks of feta mixed in -- how have I never thought of this before?? There was queso dip with Rotel -- yum, a favorite of mine. And there were Minion cupcakes, which were the cutest things ever. But you don't have to take my word for it, I'll let you decide for yourself:

See. Too cute. Orange poppyseed cupcakes with lemon icing and decorated Twinkies on top.

I was rather proud of myself that night, on my food intake. I ate several mummy dogs, one scoop of queso and guacamole and a handful of tortilla chips to go with both. And a pumpkin pie Jello shot, with alcohol-infused whipped cream on top. No cupcakes (....that night. I had two the next morning.). And I think that's about it... Oh and to drink, some Sailor Jerry's spiced rum and tropical flavored carbonated water. Yum! Very low cal. Go me. A nice start to the Holiday Season of Eating. Season's Gr'eatings?

This party got me excited about a game night that Chris and I are throwing this upcoming Friday -- more on that later!!

Dumplings eaten, cookies baked!

Update as promised on Sunday's activities -- the dumpling place Chris and I wanted to try out and the cookies I wanted to make.

Both successful! Yes!! Happy foodie Laura.

Dumpling place -- The dumpling place is called E Tao and we were told by a mutual friend that it had really good soup dumplings. Now, any time we hear this we're a bit skeptical because another place in Houston we heard had good soup dumplings had dumplings that could not at all be called soup dumplings. (This place will remain anonymous.) With soup dumplings, you are supposed to eat them with chopsticks, a small bowl and a spoon-- you know the type, the ones you always see in Chinese restaurants. Easiest way to eat them is hold them up over the spoon and the bowl with the chopsticks, bite a small hole into the side and then tip it over the spoon to let the liquid inside, the soup!, pour out into the spoon/bowl. Sip the soup, eat the dumpling. Delicious. The place-that-shall-not-be-named we went to several months ago had a dough that was too thick and the dumplings soaked up all the inner soup so when you bit the little hole, one drop came out into the bowl and nothing more.
E Tao's Shanghai soup dumplings have it right though. Delicious! Probably as close to the soup dumplings we had in New York City as I'm going to find in Houston.
E Tao also had awesome steamed barbeque pork buns. The dough was thick and soft and the meat was a little bit sweet. When I go back again, I'm really not sure what I want to order more of -- the soup dumplings or the pork buns.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Spice Cookies -- I got really busy on Sunday so I didn't end up making the cookies until last night. They were amazing!! So here is the Pinterest version. I figured, a can of pumpkin, a box of spice cake? I can handle that. I love recipes that don't have a mile long list of ingredients. I also chose to add in a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips. Chris was gaming when I chose to make these, so I decided not to use the stand mixer. Love that thing, but it is loud.
The pumpkin is soft enough you can easily mix it all up with just a fork. The hardest part of making these was spooning out the little blobs onto the cookie sheet. I tried using my rounded tablespoon as the recipe suggested, but the dough would not come out of the spoon. I ended up making the first batch a little big and very oblong. I'll have to make them again and perfect how to make them the little neat rounded shapes that you see in the Pinterest version. I ended up baking them about 16 minutes total to get them a nice golden brown. It made a total of 4 dozen.
And I am going to make them again. They're delicious! And super cheap and easy to make. They're still soft today, and now that they're cooled I can taste more of the spice cake.
If I have any complaints it's actually that they're maybe a little too soft. Maybe they'll harden up in a few days but I don't think so. There is a lot of soft, moist pumpkin in there.
Now are these things healthy for you? Probably not. I started to add up the calories in the spice mix, chocolate chips, and pumpkin, and then divide it by 48, but said nah. Don't want to know. You can do the math if you want to. Leaving out the chocolate chips would cut the calories significantly ... but why would you want to do that??
Now I have to find more super easy two ingredient cookies... I'm really curious to see what else I can do with box cake mix. It's so versatile and so easy to keep on hand in the pantry.

Now enjoy some pictures, straight from my phone -- thanks Google+ app!!

 My ingredients!

 Plop the pumpkin into the bowl...

 And the cake and the chocolate chips and stir stir stir until you get this!

 Making little cookie blobs on the cookie sheet. And oh my goodness, I love baking on parchment paper. No Pam needed, they slide right off! And then you can just pick up the paper and let them cool and use the sheet for the next batch and clean up is so easy!

See, they're a little big. And very irregular shaped. Especially when in comparison to Pinterest's version:

But mine have character!! And chocolate chips.

Probably my last blog of the week... Working out with a friend tonight and doing laundry, then tomorrow and Thursday I'm working the Madonna concert. Going straight from my office to meet with retail on the main concourse; I'm not expecting to get out until midnight both nights. Gotta earn some commission though -- I want an iPad! Then Chris and I are going to Dallas for the weekend for a Halloween party with his friends.

Girl power! The Womanifesto

So I read about a Womanifesto Challenge on one of my college friend's blogs over the weekend, and I've been thinking on what mine would be....
(By the way, here is my friend's blog. She is such a strong, confident, beautiful woman who has overcome so much in the last ten years since I met her at TCU! She's pretty inspiring -- Lissa, did I ever tell you that?)

So here it is:

Laura's Womanifesto

I AM
I am strong
I am silly
I am a nerd
I am confident
I am beautiful
I am nurturing
I am loved
I am loving
I am creative
I am intelligent
I am witty
I am charming
I am sexy
I am a good friend
I am not a size 2 and I am proud of it
I am lucky to have my wonderful friends and family (and they are lucky to have me!)

I WILL
I will write a novel
I will have my own opinion
I will be a strong role model
I will make my own decisions
I will become a wife, a mother
I will be a strong female in the workplace
I will always read at least 20 books a year
I will always remember to schedule time for myself
I will one day know what I want to be when I grow up
I will love as passionately as I expect to be loved in return
I will continue to be someone my parents can be proud of
I will dedicate myself to losing 20 pounds so I look good in a bikini -- not for you, for me
I will enjoy the culture the world around me has to offer -- delicious food, art museums, science museums, symphonies, and ballet
I will never apologize for who I am

I WANT
I want to inspire
I want to be inspired
I want to become a mentor to others
I want to run a 5K, and we'll just go from there
I want to travel and see the world -- the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids, the Great Barrier Reef

I am Me. I will be Me. I want to be Me.

There. That seems pretty good.  That was fun! Let me know if you do your own Womanifesto. I'll keep a little link archive here.

Time for some gourmet!

There has been talk of games, but not nearly enough gourmet in this blog yet! So let's change that now.

I've been eating some awesome food the past few days... Let's review.

• Friday: For lunch I headed to Pot Belly in the Park Shops to get my delicious chicken salad sandwich on wheat, toasted, with provolone cheese. Mayo, lettuce, tomato, Italian seasoning. And it's hard to go to Pot Belly without indulging in their delicious desserts, which I do far too often. And I admit that. And I will try to change that. Maybe I should make this my last Pot Belly dessert for the next .... six months? We are entering the holiday season, in which there will be a plethora of delicious goodies. Anyway. I got one of their oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. So good. Then later Friday I had my Howl at the Moon Happy Hour. Every Friday from 5-7, Howl offers a small appetizer buffet and that night it was salad, spaghetti, and garlic bread. Pretty good, filled me for a few hours but then around 9:30 the people who remained at the Happy Hour and I went over to a Houston late night staple, Katz's on Westheimer. Um. Yum. I had their Challah French Toast and scrambled eggs with cheese and a Fire Dog. The Fire Dog ended up being for the table to share because I could not finish that ridiculous meal! It was so good. 

• Yesterday for dinner Chris and I joined my sister Carol and her husband Kevin at The Melting Pot for her birthday dinner. Yum!! I had not been there in about a year. That's really as often as I need to go to that restaurant though, once a year. I love how easy going we all were in agreeing on a cheese, broth, and chocolate and yet how different all of our meals were! We started off with one of their seasonal cheese sauces -- brie and bacon. Oh yum. With the pretty basic dippers - granny smith apples, bread, broccoli, cauliflower, and baby carrots. Then on to the salad - Kevin with his Caesar, Chris with his strawberry almond, Carol with her spinach mushroom, and me with my house salad (with Ranch dressing on the side, go me!). Next up was the main event -- the entree course. We went with the Court Boullion broth - just a basic broth seasoned with herbs, it goes with everything. Carol and I had Lobster Indulgence, Kevin had Land & Sea, and Chris had Fondue Feast. And finishing off the decadent meal, we had the Cookies 'n' Cream Marshamllow Dream fondue... Here's their description:  Escape in a world of dark chocolate topped with marshmallow cream flambéed and topped with bits of delicious Oreo® cookies.  So good! I highly recommend fondue for anyone who hasn't tried it. Melting Pot is expensive but it's such a great meal for a special occasion. 

• So as if the last two days weren't enough, that brings me to today. Today I plan to make a Pinterest recipe I pinned awhile ago: Pumpkin Spice cookies - with 2 ingredients! I bought the ingredients yesterday. I also plan to add chocolate chips, because mini chocolate chips make everything better. Chris and I also plan to try out a dumpling place we keep hearing is pretty good, in the Galleria. 

There, I think that hits my gourmet quota for the day. I'll update back on how the cookies turn out -- will they be a Pinterest Fail? And how the dumpling place is. 

That's a Bingo!

Oh that's right, it's almost Bingo time!! So in honor of that, I treat you to a clip from one of my favorite scenes from Inglourious Basterds.

So a few weeks ago, one of my coworkers found out about a place in town that does Bingo every Thursday (this place, Houstonians, if you're interested) so she got together a small group of us to go tonight. Pretty excited! I love doing stuff with coworkers outside of work. It always amazes me how different people are out in their own element, outside of the office. I know I'm different.

A few days ago, my coworker who organized this (Megan) and another coworker who's going (Sonia) and I were talking about it and Megan asked if we were going to bring our significant others. I just laughed and shook my head and said, "No, I haven't even mentioned this to Chris. It's not his thing. I don't want to get The Face."

For those of you with a significant other, I think you know The Face I'm talking about. For those of you who have clue what I'm talking about, follow along. I think you'll understand very soon.

So that very night I'm hanging out with Chris at home and mentioned that after work on Thursday I would be home late because I was going to Bingo with some coworkers. Then I got it. The Face. So The Face is that look that guys get when you mention something, something that they'd never want to do. Every guy's Face is different, but for Chris it's always one eyebrow up and a quirk to his mouth. It's the look that says, 'Oh you know there's no way in hell I'm doing that.' There's shock and horror and pride in that look, pride because they KNOW they'd never do that sort of thing. But there's also a touch of fear in The Face... Fear that you will try to convince them to go. And they'll give in.

I also think the fear is there because they're afraid that they'll be convinced to go, and go, and LOVE it. 

So that's The Face. Tread carefully when you see it... But don't let it completely deter you! Sometimes they can be convinced to do things even if you get that look. It just takes a lot of work. And sometimes a few favors. And I know I like to pick my favors, and my fights, very very carefully.

So wish me luck tonight! I haven't played Bingo in awhile... And Megan was teasing Sonia and me earlier this week, that we wasted our luck on a raffle at work because we both won something, so yea. It's on. Bring it! Brought my A game. Got my game face on. And insert other cliche idioms here.

First post, like a first date. Let me tell you a little about myself.

Well I've been thinking for awhile of creating a blog, I just couldn't figure out a good title, so here it is. Finally figured one out.

Here's a few things about me, and an explanation to the title.

I'm a 31 year old female and I love food. I love finding new restaurants, eating out, eating in, and a new love of mine is learning to cook and finding and trying new recipes. I LOVE Pinterest for this. Here's my Pinterest page - feel free to follow me, I post a lot of food! I discovered Pinterest a few months ago and got addicted. I'd heard of it for awhile but didn't really get what it's about. Then I tried it. Now I get it.

So, I'm a gourmet.

In April of this year I moved in with my boyfriend of, at that time, 7 months. We decided to move in together right around our 6 month anniversary. We've now been together just over a year (for those of you who want to do the math, or don't want to do the math, we started dating in Sept 2011). He is a definite gamer. I thought I could consider myself a gamer and then I met him. I only did the occasional video game and online writing rpgs years ago. But him... Board games, video games. He did his stint with World of Warcraft, he's currently an avid League of Legends player, and he has the coolest collection of board games I've ever seen. And we're not talking Pictionary, Monopoly... Hard core, strategy-based games. Eclipse, Settlers of Catan, Kingdom Builder, Dominion... good stuff. And stuff that's a little lighter that I like too. King of Tokyo, Flashpoint, Zombiecide, Blokus. We actually first really bonded at an Events & Adventures game night -- he's not a fan of the house games so he brings his own and so we played Pandemic for 2 hours. We saved the world from a mass epidemic.

So, he's a gamer.

So that's use. Gourmet (in training!) and Gamer. Does he even know about this blog? Nope. But he's such a large part of my life, it just made sense to have him as part of the title. I'm still an independent woman, we're not completely attached at the hip, but he is definitely an integral part of the life.

So this is my life. I work, I cook, I eat, I drink, I do adventures. I've gone skydiving, I have my scuba diving certification, I've done hang gliding. I want to go bungee jumping. I'm rappelling down a 22 story building in November - for charity!

And I think that's enough of an opening post. Got to leave some mystery in the relationship -- can't tell you everything about me in one go. What would I write tomorrow?

Do I plan to write every day? Probably not... We'll see. I'm sure I'll need to make and stick to a schedule. Just like exercising. Blah. That's a topic for another day.