LolaGeek

What have I been doing for the past month?

• GG planned an awesome dinner for us at Garces Trading Company. He said it was to thank me for doing our taxes and taking care of him while he was sick with the flu, which is very sweet of him, but I think really we both just wanted an excuse to go there again :o) Of course we started with a cheese plate, and GG asked for one cheese in particular to be included, which they forgot (it’s usually just the chef’s selection), so later the waiter brought out a whole plate of just this one cheese for us! It was good, but… that was a lot of cheese! So thoughtful of them, though! We shared a Roasted Baby Beet salad, but it was mostly mine, and it was amazing. Then we each got one of their flatbreads, and for dessert we had Smoked Chocolate Torte with Salted Carmel.
• We went to Washington, DC for a birthday party the Saturday night before Easter. It was at a very neat bar that rents out board games and doesn’t serve any food, but you can bring in your own food, so they had the party catered. They also had an amazing game-themed cake! The best part was getting to meet all of my friend’s friends, who I’ve heard a lot about and had seen on Facebook. They were all very smart and funny, as I’d imagined. And I got to play Mr. Bacon’s Big Adventure. Coming home on Sunday morning, GG’s tire slowly exploded, which was not cool, but he ended up getting two new tires, so it’s all good. Things could have been a lot worse.
• Right after getting home from DC, I turned around and left for a 3-day business trip to CT. I drove up with two co-workers, had one day at the office up there, packed with meetings, and then we had a whole departmental meeting for a full day before heading back home. It was great to see everyone – I wish we had the opportunity more often.
• The day I came home, GG had left for Kentucky, to visit friends. He was gone for five days, and had a great time. If my big work meeting weren’t that same week, I probably would have gone with him, but it was probably for the best because I’m not really interested in all the distillery tours…
• I went to a party hosted by one of my oldest friends from elementary school. We see each other about once a year now. I got to meet her best friend from college, and this girl and I wore pretty much the exact same outfit! Coincidence? Haha!
• I don’t know if it was because of the cheese class we took, or if that was just the next stepping stone in my cheese addiction, but I’m seeing and recognizing more cheeses, and realizing that I know stuff about them. We spot different cheeses we recognize while we’re out and about; I’ve been recording this show Cheese Chasers, and sometimes he talks about things I already know about different cheeses and how they’re made; and last week a co-worker told me about this cheese with a funny name, and when I looked it up I realized that I was familiar with another cheese that’s made by this one particular farm. I also ordered a cheesemaking kit (which, as I was told, is like an alcoholic opening their own distillery – but I decided I really just enjoy eating cheese, I don’t need to do the work of producing it).
• It got really warm! And then it rained a lot. And then it got cold. But today was nice.
• Today, GG and I took the train in to Philly for the Philly Farm & Food Fest. It was way more crowded than I’d expected. We went through the big exhibit hall, looking at booths and trying food samples. Then we went to the one workshop we were interested in, given by Josh Lawler of The Farm and Fisherman. The restaurant is known for its Bloody Beet Steak, and his recipe that was printed in the show’s program even involved beets, so I figured it would be a beet thing. Nope! He taught us how to butcher a lamb! We ducked out a little early so we could instead get dinner at the Reading Terminal Market before catching the train home.
• How am I doing on my 2013 goals? Well, I am exactly right on track with book reading – but I will need to finish one book every 2 weeks from now through the end of the year to keep up. It’s not that I’m a bad reader, but a lot of times it takes me a while to get into a story, so I sit on it for a while. If I just powered through it, I’d be able to fit a lot more books into my schedule. I just finished Gone Girl, which was recommended by someone I work with because I think she wanted someone to discuss it with! As far as the other goals … Well this is my first (and likely last) blog post for April, and don’t ask me about the “just because” cards.

Ok, not children, but people who are ~10 years younger than me. Last Thursday I went out to my alma mater for an “Alumni Mixer” my fraternity was putting on. I hadn’t seen the current brotherhood for a while, and also a couple other alumni I knew were there, so it was fun to see everybody. My own lineage has apparently exploded, and it was so cool to meet these people who know me in name only! I learned that I am very unfamiliar with the music and dance moves of today’s young people (have you ever heard of “Bernieing?”). They were all really cool kids, and I had a great time meeting everyone. I had sent a (small, in my opinion) donation earlier this semester, and they were all so appreciative. They had even passed around a thank you card at a recent meeting for everyone to sign for me. I was really flattered. Hopefully I can do something else to help them out a little more this semester.

I knew I’d be getting home late on Thursday night, so I preemptively took Friday off work. Being the 15th of the month, I did have to get online to do one thing, and there was an inspection going on in the UK so I had to be on-call in case of any requests, but other than that I really did have the day off. After doing my one thing first thing in the morning, I got back in bed and… accidentally fell asleep until like 11:30 :o/ I finally did get up, did some errands, then… took another nap. Then it was time to get ready, because…

On Friday night, GG and I took the train in to Philly and went to Cheese 101! Remember a couple years ago when I said I’d like to go to a “cheese tasting?” Around that same time, someone recommended the classes at Tria, so I signed up for their e-mail newsletter so I could keep an eye on what classes were offered. Most of the classes I was not interested in (most are about wine, or wine and cheese pairings), or they were not at a convenient time. After a couple years of getting their e-mails, I was seriously about to unsubscribe myself from the one I received this week, when I saw it: Cheese 101 offered on Friday night, and we were free! I signed us up immediately! I’m so glad we got this opportunity. It was really a great experience! The class was two hours long, and was led by the guy who is in charge of cheese for Tria – he is young and really excited about cheese. We learned all about how different cheeses are made, and the history of how different cheeses came to be in different regions. Oh and we got to sample all sixteen cheeses currently on the menu at Tria. (I was especially proud of GG for trying all the cheeses, even the runny ones and stinky ones. I starred my favorites on the list; he ranked each one with a face.) It was really awesome.

We were thinking of going to Monk’s for dinner afterward, but all that cheese was really filling! So as we were walking back to the train, we thought we’d go to this Insomnia Cookies place we’d noticed on the way to the class. Then we made a last-minute decision to go next door to Honeygrow which seemed a little healthier and lighter. We’d never been there or heard of it, but I was intrigued by the touch-screen ordering system. We each ordered the honeybar, which is basically a bowl of fruit with honey on it. I had banana, strawberry, blueberry, and mango with wildflower honey, almonds, and Greek yogurt. It was a really neat idea, and the perfect (relatively healthy) way to round out our evening.

So it’s been another couple of moderately exciting weeks around here. GG contracted and then recovered from what I originally thought was a Man Cold, but when I actually took his temperature and it was almost 103, we decided maybe it was the flu. With the power of orange juice, Emergen-C, Tylenol, and a lot of couch time, he was totally back to his normal self within a couple of days. I felt like I might have started coming down with something (you know that feeling you get in the back of your throat, when you know you’re getting sick?), but luckily it didn’t pan out. Clearly, I have the stronger immune system.

Since she wasn’t able to get out much over the holidays, I took my grandmom to see “Les Mis” at the movies. This was the first movie she’d seen in a theater since I took her to see “Moulin Rouge” (and when was that? 1999?!). I took her to the one theater around us where it was still playing, and she got all confused because 1) there are 24 theaters, and 2) the screen is bewilderingly huge. But, she loved the movie, and was still talking about it when I went to see her the other day. I told her I’m taking her to see “The Great Gatsby” when it comes out, too – that’s one of her favorite books!

I did our taxes, finally… Usually I have everything done in February, but I was really dragging my feet this year.

As usual, I feel like there were a bunch of other things I actually wanted to write about, but once I sit down to write, I forget them all. I probably wanted to say something about how I read a book about saving on groceries written by “America’s cheapest family,” and either it was really dumb and common-sense, or I am a grocery genius, because I am already doing most of the things they recommend that it makes sense for us to do (as a family of two). I’m doing okay with my book-reading goal for this year, I think I should definitely be able to hit 25, especially if I read more books that interest me. If I’m just not into it, I drag my feet finishing a book, and that takes too long. I was hoping to be able to get more eBooks via my library, but they have kind of a limited selection, so it’s tough. But a friend just added me to her Amazon Prime account, so maybe I can get some good books from the Amazon Lending Library! Yay, technology!

Speaking of Amazon, I reluctantly ordered Nanobots… even though you can stream the whole thing online and I already heard it and wasn’t so impressed. But maybe it’ll grow on me. TMBG, what has happened to you?

A few weeks ago, I was napping with QVC on (it’s great to nap to), and happened to wake up in time to see the Ninja Kitchen System Pulse. I’ve had the Ninja Master Prep for a couple years now, and it’s nice, but shortly after I got it they came out with the 3-blade version, so I’ve had blade envy (the two blades in mine never seem to reach everything). And with all the baking I’d been doing this winter, I kept thinking it would be nice to have something other than a hand-held mixer. This set was on special, so I went ahead and ordered it.

The main difference between this and the Master Prep is that they’ve gone to a more traditional blender/food processor design, with the motor in the base and a pitcher or bowl that sits on top. But there are no buttons on the base. The only thing the Ninja does is pulse, and you do this by pressing down on the lid of the container you’re using. This set comes with a couple different options:

• A pitcher with corresponding top and storage lid, and blades
• A bowl with corresponding top and storage lid, and blades
• Two 16-oz cups you can blend in, with sipping lids; one cup-sized blade
• Two discs with different slicing/grating/shredding options for the food processor
• Dough paddle (for mixing)
• Dough blade (for kneading)

I wanted to try it out right away. Here’s the things I’ve done so far:

• Slicing: I ran an apple through using the slicing disc on the food processor bowl. It was really fast! And made perfect, even slices. The down-side is that you have to cut things into small enough pieces to fit into the slot on the food processor lid. (A quarter of an apple fit perfectly.) So if I were just doing one apple, and I already had the knife out, I’d probably just go ahead and cut the thing myself, rather than dirty the whole Ninja. But if, like GG suggested, I was slicing up a bunch of apples like for apple pie, this would make it go really quickly. I also used it to quickly and evenly slice up a bunch of bell peppers for fajitas. I don’t mind slicing, but I had so much to do, this made it go much faster.
• Shredding: I used the shredding disc on the food processor to grate a bunch of cheese for making mac and cheese. Last time I made this meal, I grated 1 1/2 big blocks of cheese with my box grater, but this made it so easy – just shoved it in, and ended up with a couple buckets full of shredded cheese. This was pretty soft block cheddar, but it went through the food processor just fine. The only problem was that a couple little chunks of cheese ended up getting caught in the nooks and crannies of the lid. To just do a little cheese it wouldn’t be worth it, but to save me 15 minutes of grating time, it worked well.
• “Snow” and Smoothies: One of the features they talk about a lot is the Ninja’s ability to crush ice into “snow.” And something I’ve used my previous Ninja for is to make smoothies with frozen fruit and milk (and whatever else – cram some spinach in there, you’ll never taste it!). So I crushed up some ice cubes, and yes, it made pretty nice snow. It wasn’t 100% even, there were some bigger bits here and there, but for the most part it was very good. To my snow, I added some frozen strawberries and peaches, and a little milk, and ended up with a very nice smoothie.
• Single-Serve Cup: I made a breakfast smoothie in one of the cups, which turned out great. I put in a single ice cube first, and ground it up into “snow.” Then added my fruit, milk, and honey, and blended everything together. The cup actually sits upside-down on top of the base, and you press on the cup to make it blend. There was no leakage or anything. I could have switched to a sippy lid and drank straight from the cup, but I transferred mine to a glass, so I can’t speak to the quality of the lids. I wouldn’t call them “travel” lids, though, because they don’t seal shut completely – there is a little opening to drink out of.
• Mixing: This was the last thing I was waiting to try before posting this review, and it was a little disappointing. I used the dough paddle to mix cake batter (which is on the list of things you can mix), but I would have gotten better results just stirring it in a bowl myself. I feel like a lot was wasted because it got stuck up in the lid of the bowl, or in the little slots of the mixing paddle. The parts that did pour out of the bowl were well-mixed, but it wasn’t worth the time and effort of scraping out all the little bits that got stuck everywhere. I may try this again the next time I make cookie dough, but for just regular mixing of boxed cake mix, I don’t recommend the Ninja.

Based on my experience with this and my other Ninja, here are my main tips:

• Be gentle. Both of these basically work by interlocking plastic gears to attach the components to the motor. If you’re rushing and just cram it together, you’ll strip those gears and break it. So take your time and make sure everything is assembled correctly.
• Start with quick pulses until it seems like everything is pretty well blended/chopped. Then you can do longer and longer pulses to smooth it all out. If you just do a long pulse from the beginning, half the stuff in your bowl won’t get chopped.
• Blend similar-textured things together. If you’re doing ice, crush the ice first, then add your other ingredients.

• Had an all-day workshop at work on Valentine’s Day, but at least I didn’t have to travel to New York City for it, as originally suggested. The whole thing went pretty well, but I ended the day with a major headache and just went home and crashed.
• Went out for a nice Valentines dinner on Friday night, to a local restaurant we hadn’t been to before. It was nice, but I don’t know if I would go back. Among other things, I asked for my steak well done and it was bright red and bloody throughout. And I ordered the raspberry sorbet for dessert and they brought out a giant bowl with at least a pint of sorbet in it. It was like they took a whole container and dumped it into the bowl as a joke. Also we were accosted by a man in a bear costume on our way out (it is next door to a theater, and they were about to put on an outdoor show).
• For two weeks in a row, I had 33% savings on our weekly food shopping (I would like to thank Extreme Couponers). Then last week, GG came shopping with me, and our savings was 9%. Boo.
• We went to the Franklin Institute on Presidents’ Day to see the Titanic exhibit. It was very good. But I underestimated the amount of kids that would be there… Of course there were lots of kids, they had the day off school and their parents wanted to take them somewhere educational. We were the only adults there without kids of our own. We did go through the rest of the museum anyway. I was pleasantly surprised to hear Bloodmobile playing near the heart exhibit! (Of course, now that I’m looking at the wiki, I see it was written for the Franklin Institute!)
• My side job is going extremely well, and this has been an especially exciting couple of weeks. I have lots of exciting plans in the works and am making great connections, which is really the best part of all.
• I got discount tickets so we went to the local Home Show at the expo center, which we should really stop doing. It’s like being in a live version of those coupon packets you get in the mail every couple weeks for gutter guards and replacement windows. Except they’re in person and talking to you. We don’t need any of that. There was a stand with some dip mixes, which I am a fan of, and someone selling hot pickles, which GG went nuts over, so we didn’t leave empty handed.
• We had kind of an “oppressed peoples movie night” last night. GG rented “The Help,” which we watched over dinner. It was pretty good. I liked that they didn’t change too much from the book, though there were a lot of things left out (for the sake of time, I’m sure). Then I had to go make some phone calls, and when I got back, GG had “Schindler’s List” on, so I watched the end of that as well.

Another month, another set of bullet-point updates…

• I watched the 30 Rock finale twice. I was delighted by the ending the first time. The second time I really watched it and realized that everyone saying their goodbyes to each other was actually how they really felt about the actual show ending, and I did get a little misty…
• Watched the Super Bowl at home again, which is really the best way to do it because nobody’s interrupting the commercials. I actually paused the football parts, went and did stuff around the house, then came back to the TV and fast forwarded until I caught up to the commercials! (My favorites: Doritos with the goat!, genie granting wishes, old people getting Taco Bell, the one with Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen, and anything with a panda.)
• I was a little concerned about Katrina last week, because she was throwing up every time she ate. They all throw up a lot, so it wasn’t that unusual at first. And the first couple times, there were hairballs among the food she threw up, so I figured it was a hairball issue. But then she threw up a couple times without hairballs, and at that point it was like the third day of this, so I started to worry. Since she pretty much had no food in her stomach, I decided to see if she’d eat some straight tuna. She wolfed that stuff down and had no problem keeping it down! I sat with her all day (was working from home), and she didn’t throw up a thing, and hasn’t since. So… I think she was just being a brat and staging a protest against cat food.
• Survived the “blizzard” this weekend, which really turned out to be nothing here, but a lot of my co-workers in CT are still digging out from 2-3 feet of snow (not to mention power outages)! Heard we might be getting another storm next week though… Ugh. Weather is so inconvenient.
• Keeping up with my 2013 goals: about to finish my fourth book of the year, blogging more regularly… Didn’t send any notes last month, but felt weird about it since we just did Christmas cards. I’ll do double for February to make up for it.

One last note, I’ve started getting these terrible headaches when the weather changes. I often get a headache on rainy days, but the last two times it’s snowed now, I’ve gotten the most horrible migraine (seeing lights, feeling like I’m going to throw up, etc.). I assume this is related to the barometric pressure. I’ve seen a lot of friends mentioning that they’re getting headaches when it snows, too. Not cool, body, not cool…

So much for being a better blogger :o( Speaking of which, last call to take the reader survey!

Things I’ve done since I last wrote:

• Went to the PA Farm Show. Had a very long day looking at animals and farm equipment and eating all the food. Once again GG proves that you can’t take him anywhere! (At first it was kind of amusing, but after a while I think our friends L and S were getting just as frustrated as I was that he has to talk to every vendor or presenter… We wanted to go see stuff!)
• We had our big learning event at work. This is the third year and every time it’s been a little different. The first year, we had on-site events and tons of technical issues with the online part. Last year we kept it very simple and everything was online, very few problems. This year, we went back to having on-site and online events, and there are two 6-hour weeks (instead of one 12-hour week), one in January and one in July. It’s just as much work for us running it each time though, so it basically doubled our work. But everything went very smoothly, plus we had our contractor from Michigan in town, and it is always fun hanging out with her. I had a couple of the girls over for dinner one night, which was a hit.
• GG and I went to dinner with one of my very oldest friends and her boyfriend. She’s given me my last two annual haircuts, actually, and last year we decided that we should do dinner, but it took until this year to actually plan it. It was a lot of fun. We lost touch a little through high school and college (she moved away), but now thanks to Facebook we’ve reconnected, and we can still talk up a storm like we never spent any time apart. That’s the sign of a good friendship.
• I went out over the holiday weekend to take advantage of some sales and restock my work wardrobe. (Best deals: NY&Co was selling tons of stuff for $10 a piece. I ended up getting a bag full of clothes for the price of one of those items regularly!) Turns out every item I purchased was black, gray, or purple. (I would’ve gotten turquoise or teal things too, but those don’t seem to be in style this season…)
• I had two events for my side job. One of which was my biggest ever. The other required me to drive out in the rush hour snowstorm we had on Friday (it took almost three hours to travel what normally would take an hour), and GG came with me out of concern for my safety :o) (and because I talked him into it). I still made it and it went well, though!
• We went to see Jim Gaffigan at the Tower Theater! My friend J had asked me months ago if we’d be interested in going with her and her husband S, and got tickets. Then MB mentioned that she had gotten tickets to the same show for A’s birthday! So the six of us ended up going together, going out to dinner, and then to the show. They all actually met each other 5 years ago at my 25th birthday party, but I’m not surprised they don’t remember each other. They are the parents of all our favorite superbabies, so it was cool to get them together. Oh and the show was fabulous! My face hurt by the end from laughing the whole time. I loved the routine about shellfish and seafood, because I don’t eat it and feel exactly the same way!

Also, I’ve been reading on my Kindle, and watching TV (yes, I cried at the Fringe finale, and I will probably cry this week at the 30 Rock finale, and the upcoming finale of The Office).

Looking forward to a couple restful weeks coming up, because I see another busy period on the horizon…

When I went out with my friends for our pre-Christmas shopping day, we had lunch at the California Pizza Kitchen and ordered their White Corn Guacamole as an appetizer. It was barely enough to feed three of us (but ok as an appetizer I guess), and I vowed to figure out how to make it at home. Luckily, the internet took care of that for me, I just had to make a couple little adjustments. Enjoy!

• Cube and mash 3 avocados
• Add the following:
  • 1/2 cup sweet white corn
  • 1/2 red pepper, diced
  • 1/4 cup black beans
  • 1/4 cup jicama, diced
  • 1/2 cup onion, diced
  • salt and pepper, to taste
  • 1 whole serrano pepper, diced (optional)
  • handful of cilantro, chopped
  • juice of 1/2 lime
• Combine and serve with tortilla chips

Ok, the photo may not be that appetizing, but I promise in real life it’s green and creamy with just the right amount of crunch and texture, and if you like guacamole you will love it!

I love a good hand scrub. I haven’t used any for a while, and I had this jar hanging around, so I thought it would be a fun project I could do on my own. I found these basic recipes and mixed up my own batch, using mostly things I had on hand. (I did buy a bottle of grapeseed oil – you can use olive oil, but it might smell too strong.)

So here is my recipe:

• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/4 cups Epsom salt
• 1 cup grapeseed oil
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Mix all ingredients in a bowl until well blended. Transfer into a jar.

The great thing about this is that it’s so versatile. You can use more sugar (for a finer scrub), or brown sugar, or kosher salt, or whatever you want/have. I used vanilla because it smells nice and I have some, but you could use any essential oil, lemon, etc.

It works great, and my hands feel so soft (but not greasy)!

One of my goals for this year is to be a better blogger. I used to write multiple times a week, sometimes multiple times a day! Lately, it’s more like a couple times a month. Sometimes I have a topic I really want to write about, but I just never get around to getting my thoughts in order. And more often, between Twitter, Facebook, etc., there’s just a quicker, easier way to share. But one of the things that I really like about being a blogger is that I can go back to almost any day (actually, between all my old blogs, as far back as 1999!) and see what I was doing, what was going on in my life, what I was thinking about, etc. And by being a bad blogger, I lose that ability. So primarily, I am keeping this journal for myself. But, I also like sharing my opinions, and writing about things I enjoy (or don’t enjoy). Some of my most popular posts have been on specific TV shows or products I’ve reviewed (that eShakti review really took on a life of its own for a while!), and if I can steer someone toward something good or away from something bad, I enjoy helping out.

So… I have developed a quick, eight-question survey for readers of this blog! (And really, three of those questions are your name [optional] and comment boxes.) Please take a moment to tell me what you like reading here and what you could do without. Also, I know I’m connected with a lot of my readers via other social networks, and I try to post different things in different spots, but I’m sure there’s overlap (and even more now that it’s so easy to post from my phone). So let me know if that bugs you, too. Thanks!

Take the survey here!