Hi, I Need a Second

to breathe or chug a glass of wine or something.

I can't believe it's Thursday already. Sunday night seems like it was so, so long ago...but it was so great.

PhillyGuy and I had big plans of grilling fish for dinner. He picked up some fresh sea bass at Whole Foods. I was doing something when he came home - walking the dogs, or doing laundry? I don't remember. I DO remember coming out into the living room when he got there to see a bit of a spread.

"I picked us up some snacks to have while we watch the game."



Um, yes. Some snacks.



No one should ever try to reduce the fat in guacamole. This wasn't awful or anything, but it wasn't great.



THIS, however, was great. And not in any way, shape, or form reduced fat.



The chile cheese dip was surprisingly delicious on the Food Should Taste Good chocolate chips. It reminded me a little bit of mole. We stuffed ourselves so silly with the "snacks" that I barely had the room or inclination for dessert.



But don't worry, I tried the black sea salt caramel bar anyway. And shockingly, it was only OK. It was filled with a soft, gooey caramel - sort of like an upscale Caramello - which kind of swallowed the sea salt. I'd never have known there was salt in the bar at all if I hadn't read the label.

We ended up putting the fish in the freezer. Oops.

This week's been a whirlwind. Monday night I attempted to run six miles on the treadmill, but it was not meant to be. I made it 3.5 miles altogether before I gave up...and not before I had several incidents involving (1) my digestive system, (2) my clumsy ass hitting the "STOP" button accidentally with my water bottle, and (3) my IT band tightening up. I did some abs and called it a night.

Tuesday I was supposed to have dinner with a client, but it got pushed to Wednesday due to an emergency on my boss's part. When I got home around 6:30, I found my poor husband standing outside on a conference call on his cell phone, holding the dogs' leashes in his hand while they pranced around the grass.

"Don't touch Cosmo. He isn't feeling good." In polite English, "isn't feeling good" means "had explosive diarrhea in his crate and stood/sat around in it for an undetermined period of time this afternoon."

We spent the evening washing the dog (which he hates), washing his collar and bedding (which he also hates - he feels naked without his collar), and wiping up dog-poop-footprints from the hardwood floors (which I kind of hate, but have to admit beats the hell out of cleaning carpets).

Poor buddy's been on a bland rice-and-chicken diet. Instead of treats, he gets spoonfuls of pumpkin hidden inside rolled-up turkey lunch meat. He is not impressed.

Last night I made it to dinner. A couple glasses of wine later, I made it home and barely kept my eyes open for 45 minutes before I had to stumble up to bed.

Today's nuts. Tons of work to get done (apparently, the end-of-quarter rush from last month is turning into an end-of-every-month rush). Lots of training to do with my slave first year associate. And I'm kind of shell shocked for some reason - looking at my to-do list but somehow unable to actually decide what task to do next.

I hope blogging cleared my mind. Maybe I'll go downstairs and get a coffee and then come back and hope that I'm a normal person again.

College Football Party Menu

Yeah, I went there.



Salted caramel hot chocolate. It's a welcome trade for my usual post-lunch Lindt sea salt dark chocolate squares. The barista looked at me like I had four heads when I ordered it, since I almost always get plain ol' iced coffee. But I don't care - I LIVE for salty/sweet combos, and this is one of the best. I also love how they always ask if you want whipped cream - PLEASE. On a drink like this, if I'm being honest? I'd really prefer just a cup of whipped cream topped with caramel and sea salt. Forget the hot chocolate part...it's almost too rich for me. I can only finish about half of a tall before it starts to get to be too much.

Anyway. I'm taking a quick break from blasting through stuff here at work to outline my menu for tomorrow. As I mentioned before, my SIL is coming into town for the weekend, and we're taking the opportunity to host a college football-watching party, open-house style.

Planned menu:

Appetizers/snacky stuff, to be set out around 1pm or so:

- Tortilla chips, baby carrots and assorted dips (Wegman's carmelized onion hummus, guacamole, salsa, creamy parmesan artichoke dip)
- Caitlin's Pumpkin Dip with sliced honeycrisp apples
- OhSheGlow's Canadian Beer Nuts

Mains:

- Chopped tossed salad (romaine, tomatoes, cukes, red onion, maybe olives if I get really crazy)
- Meatballs, with red sauce, provolone cheese, plenty of shredded Locatelli and Amoroso's rolls
- Turkey chili (I'll start this in the crockpot around 10am and when it's done, it's done) with cornbread
- Chili fixins: Fage 0 (instead of sour cream), guac, shredded cheese, chopped onion, hot sauce, salsa, sliced olives

Dessert:

- Jenna's most amazing incredible chocolate chip cookies

I'll make the cookie dough in the morning and refrigerate until it seems like it's cookie time. nothing like fresh, warm delicious cookies :)

Reviewing this, I feel like I'm missing something. I'm thinking about maybe picking up a loaf of bread to add as an additional dipping alternative...not sure that I really need it, but this is how I operate. I suffer from what I believe to be a classic Italian (and, based on my experience, Jewish) affliction of "OMGWHATIFIDON'THAVEENOUGHFOOD?!"

Seriously. I would be so, SO embarassed if I ran out of food at a party. Horrified. I always over-cook, and I get made fun of for it...but seriously. Let's be clear. The chili I'm making? I have about three pounds of ground turkey and four cans of beans. I bought four packages of meatballs and 24 rolls. And I'm STILL worried my husband's friends won't get enough to eat. After all, who am I to decide how many meatball sandwiches is a reasonable amount per person?

My husband is worried about more reasonable things. Like whether we have enough seating for everyone, depending on who shows up when. Me? I'm like "WHO CARES! They can sit on the floor and have four meatball sandwiches and a pound of pumpkin dip and sixteen cookies each!"

Do you overfeed? Do you blame it on your heritage like I do? And more importantly...who's going to come over on Sunday and eat the pound and a half of chili and 27 meatballs that I'll have left over?

BLONDIES!

I love fall.

(really, I love the "big" change of seasons - from the two cold seasons to the two warm seasons and vice versa - because I get to change up my home decor. Last weekend I replaced the pretty vase of white flowers on my kitchen table with my big wax pumpkins.)



I've been in a "baking" kind of mood lately. Last weekend, I treated my football-watching dinner guests to Jenna's AMAZING chocolate chip cookies. This weekend, I was grocery shopping and randomly decided to attempt another Eat Live Run recipe: BLONDIES.

These are particularly great for compulsive last-minute impulsive bakers like me, because they are very quick to make and take almost no preparation.

Unlike the amazing cookies, which require you to pull the butter out of the fridge hours ahead of time, so that it can softed, these call for melted butter. Which means that someone like me, who almost NEVER uses butter, can just pull the butter right from the freezer into the saucepan. I melted mine on low to medium heat and poured it right over the brown sugar.



Combined well and added my egg, vanilla, and salt:



And then stirred in the flour.



It had kind of a yin-and-yang effect with the dark brown sugar/butter/deliciousness mixture.



It was SO, SO easy. So easy, in fact, that when I popped the first glass pan into the oven, I thought to myself "you know, one stick of butter and half a package of brown sugar can't possibly be enough dessert for MY family. I'd better make a second batch." And I did.

My only drawback is that I did not HAVE an 8x11 pan, like Jenna did. I used a 9x9 pan instead, which required me to adjust the cooking time. A lot. Like, "oh, five more minutes" about four thousand times. After spending what felt like the entire afternoon in the oven, I finally got this.



and this.



They were a hit with my family. They were almost TOOOOOO rich for me - I needed a glass of milk or some nice cold vanilla ice cream to go with it, but alas, I had neither. Didn't stop me from eating two, though.



(And it probably wouldn't stop me from eating the entire bowl of raw dough next time. Confession? As much as I love to bake, I can really take or leave completed baked goods. I'm more of a savory person than I am a sweet person...but give me raw cookie dough any day. Salmonella? What's that?)

Unphotogenic

In a word, that's me - unphotogenic. That picture I use as an avatar? It's now more than three years old. I took it (arm's length self portrait represent!) the Friday after the bar exam, at my friend's apartment during our "holy crap that was unspeakably awful but we DID IT" celebration.

In the three years-and-one-month that have passed since then, I have not taken ONE. SINGLE. PICTURE. that I think is avatar-worthy. For a long time, I used a pic from my wedding as my default facebook picture...but I feel like that's only socially acceptable for a certain amount of time. Like, a year, maybe? So now it's back to ol' Miller-Lite-hat.

But - despite not taking good pictures, I am a truly lovely person. Inside and out! The camera...well, she just doesn't see it. Maybe one day.

Know what I have a lot in common with? Indian food.



Baighan bhartha is similarly unphotogenic but beautiful.



Naan? It never looks impressive. (Particularly so when I'm just snapping a pic of it without even pretending to move the foil out of the way enough to avoid the shadow.) BUT IT IS SO SO SO SO SO DELICIOUS. I ate that entire piece.



Cosmo (he's hiding in the shadows at the bottom there) and Sophie also love Indian food - they knows beauty when they see it. (That bitch Sophie, however, is SUPER photogenic. Too cute for words.)

And in the I-don't-care-what-the-pictures-look-like category? This fabulous discovery.



So much tastier than that cupcake-that-wanted-to-be-good. I love you, DiBruno's, and your overpriced "artisan" chocolate that I can get for about $2 cheaper at any number of corner stores. Like Food & Friends at 20th & Spruce.

Despite my rumblings on twitter last night, I ended up having a short but very enjoyable run. I covered about 3.2 miles in 30 minutes, with no rhyme or reason - just doing what I felt like as it came along. That meant starting with a 9:05 mile, followed by four repeats of 90 seconds each at 8.0mph (about a 7:30 pace) interspersed with 60 seconds of walking, followed by an easy job at 6.5 for the balance of my 30 minutes. Music helped - lots and lots.

Go download "Horchata" by Vampire Weekend. My friend called them "the Talking Heads of our generation," and the more I listen the more I agree. Clearly not for everyone, but "Horchata" is catchy and has fascinating, quirky lyrics. I vote appropriate-for-workout.

Tonight, PhillyGuy and I have reservations at 10 Arts by Eric Ripert. I admit, this place is only on my radar because of Jennifer Carroll and her Top Chef fame. Normally, I'm kind of "meh" at the idea of a chef including his name in the name of the restaurant, because...well, really dude? But I've heard a lot of stuff, running the gamut between straight hype and "overhyped," and the menu...she is intriguing. So I made us a reservation.

Hoping to get out of work early today to get my nails done before tonight's dining extravaganza. I'm thinking tomorrow I'll head to King of Prussia to do a little retail therapy and perhaps find a bag that I can obsess over as much as this one:



(Dear Carlos Falchi: I love you and your overpriced $4,000 exotic, out-of-stock and out-of-reach bags.)

Happy weekend! Anyone want a 9 mile running buddy on Sunday morning?