Food dudette

On thishereblog post, I am going to talk about food. 

I've lost 20 pounds since November, mostly due to dental work, a retainer that I hate wearing, and not eating in public spaces or around people because of said dental work and retainer. 

I'm all about the weight loss, but I think it needs to be done in a healthy way. I don't know that losing a front tooth and having to take nausea medication to wear a retainer is the healthiest of ways that weight could have come off, but it is what it is and here we are five months and 20 pounds later.

That being said, I've been trying to eat more. 

Last night, I made honey garlic lemon salmon, rice and veggies. This morning I woke up like a true geriatric millennial and had avocado toast. 

Here is the recipe for the salmon that I found on Tik Tok. The recipe for the toast is as follows: Smush an avocado with salt, pepper, crushed red pepper flakes and lemon or lime juice, spread that magic on a piece of toast, top with cherry or grape tomatoes that are cut in half.

And that's it, kids. The salmon is one of the best things that I've ever cooked. One minor adjustment I would make is to substitute lemon juice for orange juice. I am not a chef or even that good of a cook, I just think orange would taste better.

Maybe?

Anyway, all is well in Monicaland at the moment. I'm trying to cook more, drink more water, see my family and the kids more, and just do everything in general more these days. 

I don't want to brag, I don't want to boast. I always tell them, I like toast. Toast!

One of the best things I've ever cooked. I ate every single bite of this salmon. 

New Orleans food edition

 I'm not a huge fan of seafood, but I learned something on this trip.

I like seafood if it's fresh. 

In Kansas, I won't order it and I won't go near it.

But in New Orleans? You kind of have to try new things when you're in such a cool place. 

I tried a couple of crab cakes. One was phenomenal, one was all right.

I had fried calamari, which was excellent. I didn't have room for the meal after that appetizer.

Also, beignets are basically just funnel cakes, just in a different shape. Delicious.

And it just feels wrong to go to New Orleans and not order a Hurricane.

:)

"It's like a hipster grenade exploded."

Over the weekend, friend friend and I were walking in downtown Big City.

We saw a sign for a cool restaurant a couple of blocks away, but some girl was hungry, impatient and angry. I suggested a closer restaurant, mostly because it was right in front of my face, and friend friend agreed.

It was a Mexican food joint. Apparently the words "farm to table" were on the sign in front of the business, but I was honestly too hungry to read at that point. (Friend friend says hipsters love the "farm to table" concept and I'm all like...where do they think food comes from? Not a farm?)

We went inside this Mexican restaurant, and I quickly realized this was not only a Mexican food joint, this was a hipster Mexican food joint.

We lost count of how many flannel shirts and manly puffy vests there were around us. Oh, and the big, bushy beards!

When I got dressed that morning, I did not think about how to fit in to the hipster crowd in Big City.
I left my dorky glasses at home and I wasn't wearing flannel.*

I felt sorely out of place, and slightly too old to eat hipster tacos**.

In the words of friend friend: "It's like a hipster grenade exploded."

All I really wanted was a Diet Coke, but this place was way too cool for that. I had a blueberry soda instead.

(A blueberry soda and a taco don't really go well together.)

*We both wore flannel the next night and kind of fit in.

**My taco was tiny, but it was probably the best taco I've ever had. Also, the margarita I had was so strong, I had a dream I made margaritas last night.

I did not take a photo of my hipster tacos, so here's a hipster coffee and some cookies instead.

Cerveza

I don't remember the conversation exactly, but it went something like this:

I went to a Mexican restaurant with my friend and her 2-year-old daughter to eat dinner. Said daughter's name begins with an "A" and the daughter recognized the letter on the table cloth.

Then the 2-year-old recognized the letter "A" all over the table cloth.

My comment: Congratulations, friend. Your kid is going to learn to spell "cerveza" before her name.

Then, the inevitable struggle to get a 2-year-old to eat started. There were threats made that if she didn't eat, she wouldn't get a candy and a ball. (In the end, she got a piece of candy and a ball.) There were negotiations and more threats.

I tried to keep my mouth shut and not laugh at the struggle between Mom and daughter.

Good luck when she's a teenager, Mom and Dad!

We talked about sentences we say to kids that make no sense. Friend's example: Yesterday I told her to not put milk on her foot.

It happens.

At the end of dinner, my friend made two comments.

First, she told her 2-year-old that she just gave Monica a blog post.

Second, she told her 2-year-old to tell Monica thank you for sitting with them and watching them fight over food.

2-year-old: Thank you.
Me: You're welcome. Anytime.

When I got to work this morning, I got a text message. Kid had tacos and rice for lunch, and apparently was not interested in eating the same thing for dinner.

At least she got a ball and a piece of candy out of it.

Part 2 - Food.

There comes a time in your life when you have to stop eating pizza rolls and hot pockets on a regular basis.

I'm kind of embarrassed to say how much of those foods I eat on a monthly basis. 

When I went shopping on Friday after work, I wanted to make a grown up meal. And what's more grown up than steak and potatoes?

I found a recipe on Pinterest for potatoes, and I kind of followed it. I diced the potatoes up, put them in a pan with two tablespoons of butter and olive oil, then threw all kinds of spices in there as well.

I put them in the oven for about an hour, and stirred them every 15 minutes.

Those potatoes were delicious, guys. Patience is not my strong point, so the fact that I spent an hour putting love into them was kind of amazing. 

While the potatoes were cooking, I cooked my steak. The first one I cooked on Friday night was perfect. It was seared perfectly on the outside, and still nice and pink on the inside.

A masterpiece!

After the steak was done cooking, I let it rest. I threw the potatoes in the pan the steak had cooked in for a few minutes.

Guys, did I mention how delicious those potatoes were?

I'm proud of myself for this one.

Part 1 - Steak and poop.

This week, I'll have a five-part series on my weekend events.

My weekend involved calling 911 to report a fire, frantically running away like a little girl, and a few other weirdly memorable events.

The first story I'm going to tell you involves a conversation I had about steak and poop.

Yesterday afternoon, I watched my 2-year-old nieces for a couple of hours. I made a big supper, which they basically ignored.

Along with their meal, I cooked myself one last steak that I had in the fridge. I made some potatoes, and I sat down to eat my delicious meal.

One of my nieces came up to me, and looked at my plate. She pointed to my steak, which was brown.

"Poop."

Okay, little girl, do you honestly think I'm eating poop?

I told her it was steak. I asked her to say the word 'steak.'

"Poop."

No, goober. Steak.

"Poop."

After a conversation about poop, I put the rest of my steak in a container and put it back in the fridge.

Somehow, my appetite disappeared in the middle of that conversation. I'll finish my steak tonight, when I don't have to talk about poop to a toddler.

:)

Food

I've been a bad blogger lately. I have tons of things to say about my recent trip, but not enough time to actually get them all written down.

This post is going to be about the food in Cancun.

Now, let me just tell you something. I don't like fish. I hate the smell of it, and 99 percent of the time when I eat it in Kansas, it tastes like snot.

It's kind of stupid to go on a beach vacation and order chicken and beef, so I stepped outside my comfort zone and ate things I wouldn't normally eat.

It was delicious!

Mahi Mahi was my favorite. So much flavor! Grouper was acceptable, but not my favorite. I had lamb a few times, which might be the best thing I've ever tasted.

Lamb. It was delicious.

We also had lobster, shark, and probably some other things that I can't think of right now. I tried plantains for breakfast one morning. Yummy!

One of my friends also introduced me to breakfast crepes. Minus the lamb, I'm pretty sure it was the best thing I've ever tasted.

You can't go wrong with peanut butter and chocolate in the morning. I put learning how to make crepes on my list of things to do in life.

:)

A co-worker's adorable dessert one night.

And I didn't even mention the fruit. Let's just say that I'll never eat canned pineapple again. When I ordered room service, I always ordered a fruit plate to go with it.

Delicious!

Room service food. Pretty much the best thing ever.

Margarita pizza, also room service. 

For desserts at night, I just said "no milk" and let them surprise me with something. (Meh, lactose intolerant.) All of the restaurants brought out incredibly beautiful desserts for me. I usually don't even bother looking at the dessert menu, because I know I can't eat most of what's on it.

But they actually made me a milk-less plate. And it was beautiful.

Non-dairy dessert. Yum.

Notes

The first week back from vacation is usually pretty tough. On Monday morning, I had my headphones in, jamming out while working on some weekly tasks.

Somebody walked into my office to talk to me, so I pulled my headphones out. Except, instead of pulling on my headphones I pulled on my earring. I tugged for a few seconds before I realized that my earring was not my headphones.

That was how my week started.

-----

On the topic of stupid things...

In Kansas City we were eating downtown, and one of my friends made the comment that the water in the fountains was a really bright blue color.

We looked in awe. Why the blue water? That's really weird.

I realized last night that the water in the fountains was blue because of the Royals.

Ha, ha. It took me practically a week to figure that out.

I'm an idiot.

-----

On my first road trip last week I discovered a CD that I made in college.

My car is too old to play iThings, and I haven't invested in an iThing updater thingy yet. When I go on long road trips I bust out the CDs (God, I'm showing my age).

This CD I made around 2005, judging by the songs on it. I'm too embarrassed to post the songs on my blog, but listening to it just reiterated how much of a moron I was in college.

You better believe I listened to those songs the whole trip. Haha.

I might not be able to play iThings, but at least my out-dated car is paid off.

Did I ever mention that to anyone?

I finally paid it off!

-----

Speaking of college, earlier this week I hosted an alumni dinner in my hometown. I use the term 'hosted' loosely because I certainly don't have a big fancy pants house to invite people to.

In fact, I don't have much of anything in the way of material possessions, but the small things I do have I'm really thankful for. I have a career. I have potential. I have a degree that I'm using. I have friends in some really cool places and I've done some really interesting things since I graduated.

There were some really successful people there last night. I enjoyed talking with them. I look forward to being that successful myself one day.

I've been wanting to do that for a couple years now. I'm glad I finally crossed that off my to-do list.

---

"I feel like a rabbit when I eat leaves." - My brother talking about the salad I was eating yesterday.

Whoever invented feta cheese, I love you.

I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I just made delicious Greek pizza and made my own pizza dough.

I'm not saying I'm going to open a pizzeria soon, but it was pretty good.

In Nebraska a couple weeks ago we ate at a delicious beer and pizza place. I skipped out on the beer part, but did order a Greek pizza and added some chicken on it.

I can't even begin to describe how delicious it was. It had olive oil, sun dried tomatoes and black olives on it. The crust was perfect, thin, and crunchy.

And, oh darn, I had to eat it for breakfast one morning. What a terrible life I have, right?

I knew after that I was going to attempt to make my own pizza.

It started with a shopping list and several different recipes. In the end, I'll be honest, I just made my own recipe up.

I have no patience for recipes and I'm not really one for following written instructions anyway.

I knew I wanted to make two different kinds of pizza. The first one was my version of the pizza I had in Nebraska. My version had feta, black olives, spinach and onions, chicken, and roasted red pepper.

It was my favorite of the two. I did a pretty good job rolling the crust out in a circle, and it actually looked like a real pizza.

The second one, um, not so much. But it still tasted okay.

For the second one I added chopped up canned tomatoes for a sauce and threw some mozzarella with the feta.

This pizza wasn't round, it was kind of oblong, and I put way too many toppings on it.

Like I said, though, it was still pretty good. Whoever invented feta cheese, I love you.

A few pizza notes:

• As with many other things in life, I completely failed at some aspects of it. I didn't put enough flour in the dough and it wasn't as crisp as I wanted it to be. I also messed up and bought a roasted red bell pepper instead of sun dried tomatoes. Gah. Who does that? 
• Also, making your own pizza is definitely not cheaper than buying a pizza. 
• I spent an entire afternoon making two teeny tiny expensive pizzas. I have plans to do it again, too.  
• I have no idea how people on Chopped cook in 20 or 30 minutes. It took me 20 minutes to pit 15 olives. I could have used more, but I got annoyed and gave up.

Kansas girl tries southern food, hilarity ensues.

I want to apologize in advance for the ignorance of this post.

Last night we went to a fancy pants reception at a museum. 

It was beautiful, wonderful, and I had a great time.

The food was also beautiful, the kind of food you eat with a tiny fancy fork wearing fancy pants clothes.

Please note that I do not fit into the crowd of people who do this.

But it was fun!

The food, though, was not something I'm used to. There was shrimp, stuff in a shell, some type of fish on a waffle. It was all southern food.

I'm from Kansas. I eat things with four legs, not things that swim.

I did try one of everything. At least the one shrimp I ate didn't have eyes and wasn't looking at me. That's a plus.

Somebody asked me if I was eating an oyster. I looked at her, thought about it for a second, then said: "I'm from Kansas. I don't know what I'm eating."

Everyone laughed. Honesty is usually the best policy.

The real meal afterwards was this.

That's a big bowl of watermelon sorbet with sprinkles and chocolate candy.

I have no regrets.

Eating on the road is tough. I'm lactose intolerant, allergic to cinnamon and have a whole slew of other issues when it comes to eating food.

My main requirement for food is that it walks, not swims. 

You can take the girl out of Kansas, but you can't take Kansas out of the girl.

Food and Wine

It started out as a Pinterest idea for a recipe called hot naked spaghetti.

It called for spaghetti, Parmesan cheese, red pepper flakes and olive oil. I used some of my spaghetti earlier in the week, so I had to improvise.

I used penne instead, which worked out just fine.

I also found some leftover pasta sauce in the fridge. People, it looks like we're going to make a Monica original here!

I grabbed a couple of zucchini, sliced them up and then threw that into a pan with olive oil. I had a little bit of red wine left that I'm not really fond of drinking, so I threw the rest of that into the pan with a little bit of balsamic vinegar.

I have no idea what I'm doing, but I taste tested it along the way and it was pretty good.

I threw the veggies, pasta and sauce into a pan.

But wait, we need protein!

I cooked some chicken and added the rest of the wine into the pan. Hey, why not? After that was done, it got thrown into the pan with some Parmesan cheese on top.

Throw that into an oven at 350 degrees for 30ish minutes...and I can't begin to describe how awesome this smells. It smells like wine and happiness.

Delicious!

I'm not a huge fan of zucchini, but it's pretty good if you cook it in wine.

Trust me.

I want to talk about the booze.

There's a certain restaurant in town I like to describe as fancy pants.

The decor is nice. Everyone in town talks about how good it is.

My confession? The first time I ate there, I didn't like it. To be fair, I ate there a few days after I ate what I consider the best food I've ever had (out of state).

I was expecting really, really good food when I went to this restaurant in my hometown the first time around. The bar was set pretty high. I left with a meh feeling.

But hey, I'm willing to forgive, forget about the past and give it another chance.

Last night we ordered pasta, fancy pants pizza and french fries. Looking back, maybe that wasn't the best or healthiest decision, but I'm happy to report that the food is good.

Not spectacular, the best food I've ever had good, but it was pretty good (The next time I go there I need to order like I'm not a hungover college student, though).

But I don't want to talk about the food. I want to talk about the booze.

The margarita I had last night (with blueberry!) was very, very good. It had raspberries on top, which is a plus for me. The more girly my drinks look, the more I like them.

You guys, that margarita was delicious. I'm usually a frozen margarita kind of a girl, but this one on the rocks knocked my socks off.

So what if I squirted lime three feet away from me and flung my bread clear across the table. Who cares, I was too busy enjoying my drink.

I might have also told a friend that I was going to buy the lottery.

The margarita was that good.

I woke up insanely happy this morning. Dammit! That was a good drink.

I'd go back to said restaurant in the future. There's one more chicken dish I want to try. Or I could try something new...which makes me and probably everyone who knows me well laugh.

Or maybe I'll just return for the booze.

My life!

I had the bright idea to take vacation time last week and not go on a vacation.

True story: I've never actually gone on a vacation while taking vacation time off of work. Ah, bummer.

Anyway, it turns out that my vacation was pretty terrible. I didn't sleep in, I didn't read as much as I should have, and I really didn't do anything for myself.

Instead, I worried about multiple extra projects I have going on. Why did I volunteer to do all of these things at the same time? I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure I shouldn't have. I worked two hours using a new program and didn't press the save button.

Sigh. That's the kind of week it was.

I read maybe 10 pages of the book I'm reading, and that's it. I don't even think I went to Hobby Lobby once.

The horror!

The only positive thing that happened is that I improved my quesadilla recipe. Now, in addition to chicken, mozzarella, feta, and spinach, I add the juice of half a lime.

Delicious!

I don't regret taking that vacation now.

Yummy.

On expanding my horizons

I'm going to follow a post about working out with a post about food.

Ha, ha.

I had the itch to experiment with recipes today. After work, I looked at Pinterest, and decided to try three new(ish) things. I cooked two of them tonight, and I'll probably make the last one tomorrow night.

First of all, before I started cooking I downed a bowl of fruit first. If I could eat fruit every day for the rest of my life, I would.

But there's more to life than fruit, and I need to expand my horizons. Hmm. I saw a recipe on Pinterest that involved quesadillas made with feta cheese and spinach. Sounds yummy!

I'm kind of a carnivore, so I added chicken that I cooked with a liberal amount of pepper, a little salt, and some random spices from the cabinet. I also added some mozzarella cheese to the feta, chopped up a handful of spinach, then threw all of that stuff between two taco shells.

Pair that with lime and cilantro salsa, and ladies and gents? We have a total winner right here.

A plus is that they're so big, I have leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Hooray.

The second thing I tried was mozzarella sticks. This involves two ingredients, string cheese and egg roll wrappers.

I've made these before, and I was craving them again. After cooking them on the stove, they get nice and brown with a good crunch on the outside and gooey cheese on the inside.

The only downside to these is that they're very, very dry. I bought a new type of marinara sauce and was hugely disappointed at how watery it was.

Side note: What is marinara sauce, exactly? Is it different than pizza sauce? How about spaghetti sauce? And what was that vodka sauce on the store shelf? I mean, it's vodka, and that has to be good, right?

This cooking stuff is confusing.

Regardless, it makes me wonder if I can make my own sauce instead of buying something that sucks in the store.

That recipe was ho-hum.

I'm still impressed by my quesadillas, though. At least I got that right.

Tomorrow night, or whenever I get to it, I'm going to try pepperoni roll ups. Expect a report about that later.