I dreamed a dream in times gone by

Tonight I have a girl date!!

One of my very good friends Lauren and I decided to get season tickets to Broadway Across America this year because the season line up was just too good to pass up. Don't take my word, see for yourself:

1. Beauty & The Beast - was so good! I first saw this in 95 or 96 when it was first touring.
2. Les Miserables
3. Catch Me If You Can
4. Jersey Boys
5. Sister Act
6. Wicked - cannot wait to see again! I think this is my third time seeing Wicked

Probably the best line up in years, since about 04-05 when I moved to Houston. I remember my sister and I had season tickets the first year I was living with her and going to University of Houston. I don't remember the line up from that year though. I think Wicked was in there. And some odd Disney thing, Off the Record. Unfortunately I didn't keep my stubs from that time period. Now I keep stubs -- I even have a stub shadow box for them!

I have everything I need! My ticket, my free drink ticket, my fancy outfit... although after texting Lauren to find out what she's wearing and what our plan for tonight is, I may need to drive home and change into jeans and a nice top and then get back downtown so I'm not standing next to her and making her look under-dressed. We'll see. I also have my reusable, theater approved wine cup. That's their name for it, or something similar to that. I call it my wine sippy cup.

It's new this season. I bought it at the last show. It has a twist lid to close the opening so you can get a glass of wine during intermission, or before the show, and if you don't finish it, pour it into the cup and twist the lid and you can bring it into the theater! Boom! Wine sippy cup. What could be better?

Weekend Recap (AKA, Thank you Pinterest!)

Just a quick little weekend recap this morning.

The Game Night went awesome! Everyone who was invited except for one person was able to come and everyone who said they'd come, actually came -- amazing!! We played a lot of games, had a lot of laughs, drank a lot of beer and Chris and I still have so much beer in our fridge! And my food was a hit. Yaay. I am the hostess with the mostest. Ranch dip made with low fat yogurt? A hit. Ham & cheese roll ups? A yummy, so easy to make, hit! Pizza rolls? A delicious hit! But the big winner of the night was definitely my Funfetti dip. Oh my god. It is definitely something I can only make when I am going to be around a bunch of people who will help me eat it. Chris is no help, he doesn't really crave sweets and most of the time, sweets are too sweet for him. I wish I had that problem. But back to the Funfetti dip... It's so thick and creamy. It's like eating cake batter -- which it essentially is. It made a lot more than I thought it would. I ended up having to change bowls as I was mixing it. I ended up with about a cup and a half remaining, that is now in my fridge and being snacked on day by day. A cup and a half I can handle. About 6 cups I cannot. I don't want to just give myself diabetes. According to the recipe though, 1/4 cup of the dip is only 3 Weight Watcher points.

Not sure exactly what that means, never done Weight Watchers, but it sounds a lot better than just sitting down and eating frosting straight from the tub. Which I used to do in college -- it was my finals study snack. But that's basically what the Funfetti dip tastes like. Frosting. Yum.

Didn't have a chance to make the chocolate chip pumpkin spice cookies again before the game night. So that means I didn't have a chance to test out my new cookie scoop. I figure I'll just hold onto the ingredients in my pantry for another two weeks and just make them for Thanksgiving. I really don't need anymore sweets at home -- not while I still have Funfetti cake batter deliciousness dip in my fridge.

The rest of the weekend was nice and relaxing. Slept late on Saturday -- I woke up at 7am to feed my cat then went back to bed then woke up at 2. PM! I never do that anymore. Hung around the house then headed out with Chris to meet up with a friend for dinner at Les Givral's on Milam, then the three of us headed over to watch the home opener Rockets game against Portland. Great game, didn't get the win though. But it should be an interesting season with the brand new team.

Sunday was another lazy day. I woke up at my regular time though and then pretty much read the entire day. Went through about 6 issues of The Walking Dead. Ahh so good! So dark... Now I need to head to the library and pick up the next few issues and then I'll almost be caught up. Also read some more on J.K. Rowling's most recent book, The Casual Vacancy. It's an interesting read just... very slow going. If I didn't have about 3 other books I'm juggling I'm sure it would go a lot faster.

Finished off the weekend with dinner at House of Bowls with Chris in Chinatown then we swung by Jusgo to see if they had red bean popsicles. Something Chris has been wanting to buy and get me to try since he found out I like red bean, probably about a year ago. We were pretty freshly dating. They did have the red bean popsicles, and I stole some of Chris' when we got home. Yum. They also had...

MONSTER POMEGRANATES! Seriously, I bought one at HEB about a week ago and it was the size of a small apple. These things were all the size of grapefruits. That's Chris' hand for comparison. Here's the monster at home in my fruit bowl with some small Red Delicious apples for comparison:

Pomegranates are one thing I really love about this time of year. (I also love Cuties -- the little super-easy-to-peel tangerines. They just smell like Christmas to me.) But now I know I definitely have to buy them in Chinatown. I can't go back to little poms, I just can't!

Did a bit of Thanksgiving menu planning with my sister via email. I really do love this time of year. It's made even more interesting as I'm getting more into cooking. Going to make my green beans this year and the chocolate chip pumpkin spice cookies, Chris is going to make his signature cheesecake... Most of the other food still is falling on my parents and my sister and brother-in-law to make. I'll have to do my share by helping to cook stuff that morning for the meal.

Pub Crawl! The things I do to get a free glass.

Just a placeholder post really for me to think a few things out... I plan on going to the next St Arnold Pub Crawl which is in just over a week and I have to figure out their clues of which bars they'll be crawling.

Got my Google Maps pulled up to Rice Village... Here we go.

• One will be somewhere on Dunstan between Kelvin and Morningside. Sounds like a Scottish pub.
•  Kelvin Arms (Thanks Carol)
• One will be on Kirby between Robinhood and Quemby. Think of New Orleans nicknames.
•  Big Easy Social & Pleasure Club
• One will be on Quemby between Kirby and Kelvin. Half of Hans and Franz.
•  Hans Bierhaus
• One will be on Bissonnet between Greenbriar and Morningside. Has a Texas table inside. 'K?
•  Kay's Lounge (Thanks Carol!)

Hm. Think I need to enlist outside help for those two.

Edit: Almost forgot about the final location... that's the whole point! That's where you get the glasses!

• At 6:00 PM, we will proceed from these four locations up Morningside to Bissonnet and look for someplace to congregate! There will be bratwurst with sauerkraut available here as well. Think: hot lava.  
• Under the Volcano

Hmm. Got it! Thanks Foursquare.

Got my route planned...

New Kitchen Toys

Almost forgot to mention my new kitchen toys!

I took the day off of work yesterday because I had an AT&T installation scheduled for the morning (which is a whole other story...) and then after lunch, I ran a few errands. Went to the bank, got my car inspected, went to Bed Bath & Beyond. Meant to do my early voting but forgot to look at the map of locations before I headed out.

So I went to BB&B originally looking for a tea sock, so I can make Thai Tea. They didn't have it -- I ended up buying it on Amazon. But they did have a few gadgets I decided to pick up:

Cookie Scoop - I think this will help me make better formed cookies, which I learned last week when making my Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Spice cookies is not my forte. I just need more practice or the gadget for it!

Corer - I've been debating about getting an apple corer for the longest time because I really dislike gadgets that have one use and one use only. They just seem so wasteful and take up room in a drawer... but there's really nothing else that will do the job! Thus, the whole reason these silly things exist. So I got one. Whatever! We'll see how it works.

I mainly got it because now that it's fall I am dying to try out a Crockpot dessert recipe: Baked Apples
It's amusing, I pinned this recipe about 5 months ago when I first found Pinterest and haven't made it yet. And I swear, every time I get an email that something of mine has been repinned, there is a high chance it is this recipe. So. I have to try it. I bet it's going to be good. Maybe I'll make the apples this weekend. Crockpot Sunday IS approaching.

I also took a picture of one of the kitchen gadgets at Bed Bath & Beyond because I just had to share:

So yes. Apparently, according to Nantucket Seafood brand, doohickeys is totally a word.

Who knew.

Game Night, Food Provided By Pinterest!

It's already November!! Can you believe it? I really can't. Feels like just yesterday I was ringing in the New Year. The sad thing is, even though today is November 1, I already have most of my Thanksgiving and Christmas plans done. At this point, just waiting to find out what days off my sister-in-law will have for the Christmas weekend to figure out when we can go down to my parents' house for the holiday. And also need to figure out when we're spending time with Chris' family for the holiday.

This actually is our second holiday season together but last year around the holidays, we were still rather freshly dating, so we spent our holidays separate. I think the only time we saw each other over Thanksgiving weekend was on Friday night, when a mutual friend had a "Thanksgiving leftovers" party.

Speaking of parties.. I'm starting my holiday season off with a bang! Chris and I are having a Games night at our apartment tomorrow evening. About 8 of our friends are invited. Should be a fun night -- hopefully the first of many game nights to come! It's actually a little bit of a housewarming party. It'll definitely be the most people at one time who will be over at our place.

We have lots of games available for playing -- Perudo, Blokus, Zombicide (LOVE this game!!), Flashpoint, Dixit, RoboRally, Ricochet Robots, King of Tokyo, Ticket to Ride, Taboo, Pandemic... I know Chris has more than that, but that's all I can think of. 

And I have quite a spread planned. Most of these recipes I found on Pinterest. Ham and Cheese Roll Ups -these are actually something Chris recommended that he's made before when he had game nights at his place. They sounded really good I had to find a pin to pin! Pizza Balls - something I actually found on Pinterest ages ago and I've been wanting to try. I'm going to have a veggie tray as well, with baby carrots, cucumbers, broccoli, and little tomatoes. To dip in, I'm going to have hummus and Ranch dip made with Greek yogurt. For food I had to keep in mind one of my friend's capsaicin allergy. I don't have an Epipen and don't want the night to end in a call to 911. For dessert I have two things planned: those Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Spice cookies I made last week and Dessert Dip which I saw on Pinterest awhile ago. Plan to use as dippers animal crackers and pretzels and sliced up apples, if I can get them not to brown.

Am I having a game night as an excuse to try out a bunch of Pinterest recipes? Um ... I plead the Fifth!

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.