spring in bloom

Spring is here, and so are the weeds. I was waiting for the bus and decided to take an up close image of these dandelions (these are dandelions, right?).


And here are the pretty flowers that are blooming everywhere. I love Spring!


And this is Hank, C's dog. I just thought I'd introduce his cuteness to the world.

salsa salsa

H has this great recipe for salsa that she currently has us hooked on. I already have an addiction to chips and salsa, but with this kind of salsa, I seem to eat even more than I normally do! And I'm an onion hater, but I really can't taste the onions in this recipe at all.

Recipe for H's Salsa Salsa:

1 can blank beans
1 can kidney beans
1 can white corn
1 can diced tomatoes (or you can chop some up)
1 bottle Zesty Italian dressing
chopped onion to taste (H uses about half a medium onion)
chopped cilantro (H uses about one bunch and does not use the stems, just the leaves)

Directions:

1. Put all ingredients in a bowl.
2. Mix it all around.
3. Dip with chips. The chips that are shaped like little bowls work especially well!

spin pizza

There's a new pizza joint near my apartment called SPIN! Neapolitan Pizza. There's a giant SPIN! sign on their building so at first I was super excited there was a business dedicated to spin classes. Upon closer examination of the establishment, it was a pizza place.

CC and I decided to try it out for dinner on Friday. I was a bit confused as to whether this was a fast food place or an at-your-service place (at-your-service meaning we'll seat you and take your order at the table). So they had these really big menus that were really really nice to look at and ponder over. The only problem was that I was looking at the nice big menus while waiting in line, and I was not seated at a table. And we had questions about the menu, but felt awkward asking the questions because we were standing in line and we didn't want to hold the line up by asking the cashier a zillion questions. Anyway, so you order your food, and then you get a number so you can go seat yourself and the wait staff would bring the food out to you. The confusing part is that when I gave them my credit card to pay for the order, I was given a credit card slip that also had a tip line under the total. And the cashier said that it was an open tab so I could sign the credit card slip after we were done eating and then give the slip to the server. HUH? Why couldn't they have just seated us in the first place and then have someone wait on us, and then give us the final bill after all our eating? Anyway, I personally felt like this was worse than my pet peeve (the waiter bringing by the bill BEFORE I'm done eating or asked for it).

Anyway, so I wanted to try out a glass of their pinot sangria. And I was thirsty so I also ordered a diet Coke. Out came three glasses of beverages just for me (as shown above). Apparently, they always serve a glass of water in addition to whatever glass of alcohol you order. I drank it all. CC had a Sprite.

For our pizza selection, we shared a 12" Tre Carni, which consisted of pepperonis, Italian sausage and roasted meatballs (definitely for meatlovers). I really liked the crust because it was thin and crunchy. The Italian sausage was really yummy too.

Overall, the food is really good, although a bit pricey for "fast food". I suggest that they change the way they currently take orders and just use the normal wait staff regime. I think The Boy might like this place though, so I'm excited to take him here when he comes out to KC for my graduation (16 days in counting!).

Thursday treats

To celebrate C's birthday today, we had ourselves a double treat -- 1) our afternoon con law class was canceled so we could have an extra long lunch; and 2) lunch at PF Changs!

C had two coupons for free appetizers (yeah yeah, she was the birthday girl and we used her coupons, so what?), and ordered two orders of chicken lettuce wrap. I love that dish!

We ate family style, sharing the following entrees: beef fried rice, mongolian beef, beef and broccoli, and two orders of crispy honey chicken. Then half of us took part in the dessert shots, with the birthday girl selecting the great wall of chocolate and yours truly devouring the strawberry cheesecake (should have gone for the chocolate cake too).

...


There was also Res Derelicta later in the evening. The only way I can explain what Res Derelicta is that it's sorta like a last happy hour get-together for the graduating class of 2009. It venue was at Boulevard Brewing Co., and there was neverending beer and food. This is just a picture of the food on my two plates (they were small plates!).

There were cold sandwiches, a selection of cold cuts (which included really good slices of pepperoni that I kept returning for seconds and thirds), and a fruit platter. There were also a selection of hot foods, consisting of giant-sized ravioli, meatballs, chicken meatballs/rolls, and this weird flat bready thing that I thought was chicken but J said it was slimy and was probably a mushroom.

Now I'm stuffed and ready for my food coma. Thank goodness it's Friday tomorrow.

life update in numbers

For those of you following this blog, here's an update on my current status as a foodaholic in law school:

-8 more days until the last day of classes.

-14 more days until my first final of the semester.

-19 more days until my last final of the semester.

-23 more days until I turn in my final paper, marking the end of my final semester at UMKC.

-24 more days until GRADUATION and I get "hooded" and presented with a fake diploma!!

-26 more days until the euphoria of graduation wears off and I realize that I have no real summer vacation because bar prep classes starts 10 days after graduation.

-34 more days until I am subjected to bar prep classes.

-60 more days until I find out whether or not I actually flunked out of my last semester in law school.

The following are contingent upon the assumption that I actually did pass my exams during the last semester in law school...

-103 more days until the dreaded three day California Bar Exam.

-106 more days until I sleep for a week and actually enjoy whatever is left of my summer vacation.

-120 more days until sunny San Diego where I will continue with my legal education in pursuing an LLM in International Law at USD.

birthday treats

Yesterday, I celebrated my birthday in a low key style with my roomie and CC. They took me out to a nice dinner, a little shopping, and then dessert to end the night. I even blew off homework for the night.

Round 1 - Dinner @ McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurant. Of course, this birthday celebration started off with a drink for each of us. I had a Raspberry Cosmimosa (raspberry vodka with a mimosa), CC had a Autumn Apple Martini of sorts, and the roomie had sangria. I really liked the raspberry mimosa drink because it tasted like a raspberry orange juice mix, and we all know that I like alcoholic drinks that don't taste like alcohol.

The roomie had halibut and shrimp tortellini. We were under the impression that there would be a bigger slice of halibut and just a side of tortellini. Let's just say the roommate didn't have to cook lunch today because of the leftovers.
CC ordered trout baked with sliced almonds over it, and the sides were asparagus and mashed potatoes. I think her meal looked the healthiest out of the group. I had a taste of the trout and the almonds added a nice flavor to the fish.

I ordered the lobster and shrimp ravioli, which here it looks like a plate of orange goo. The sauce was tomato based and although it looks kinda lumpy here (the lumps are the ravioli), the sauce was really good. There was an equal amount of saltiness and sweetness, and even a little spice to it that I was using bread to wipe off any remaining sauce on the plate. The lobster and shrimp ravioli were also amazing! It was so full of lobster meat that tasted so sweet, especially with the tomato sauce. And I could even order the lobster ravioli to cook at home - who would of thunk it?

The waiter surprised me with a slice of apple pie - on the house - for my birthday celebration. Gosh that thing was so good. Warm apple pie is always so good!

So then we attempted to walk off dinner because we planned on having actual desserts at another place (the apple pie was a surprise addition to the evening festivities). Forty five minutes of walking/shopping wasn't enough to digest our food, but we managed to continue with our plan and headed for the dessert place.

Round #2 -- Dessert at The Melting Pot. I always wanted to eat here, but the food is so overpriced! Fortunately, the restaurant has a very good happy hour special of $3.75 per person cheese or chocolate fondue, and half price martinis. Score! So, the roomie was very happy she was able to drink a Godiva Chocolate Martini (chocolate is her most favorite thing in the world), and I had a Raspberry Martini (the raspberry mimosa was a lot better). CC couldn't drink anymore so she had coffee.

And here's our chocolate fondue! We chose The Original chocolate mix -- milk chocolate with peanut butter and caramel. Yummmmmy!

Above - a slice of banana being taken hostage by the chocolate. Below - my birthday plate of "dippers," which included strawberries, bananas, marshmallows, rice crispy treats, pound cake, brownies, and a slice of cheesecake. I really loved dipping the fruits into the chocolate. I think that was the best combination. The rice krispy treats were really good to dip also. But then I started to feel a sugar overload when I ate the marshmallows dipped in chocolate. Next time, I'm requesting an all fruit platter for chocolate dipping.


And after all that eating and drinking, I wasn't surprised that I woke up with a hangover and a very upset tummy. Oh well, birthdays only happen once a year, even if I do gorge on food more than once...=)

sugar hangover

We had a girls night yesterday and it was a feast of yummy goodness!
D brought this artichoke cheese dip (to be spread onto slices of bread) that was a little too cheesy for my liking, but everyone else at the table loved it.

D also made fruit salad and fruit dip, which was really sweet and yummy considering it had cream cheese in it. It was a nice selection of fruits for the salad.

J contributed the great garden salad, which was very yummy with the variety of dressings she also brought along. It was funny that J added everything she didn't like to the salad, just to accommodate everyone in the group. I think J might have picked out pieces of stuff she didn't like. I had my own onion pile on my plate.

The main course, prepared by C, was lasagna. It was tough to cut through, but the meat filling was sooo good that I helped myself to seconds even though I was full. And of course there was plenty of garlic bread to accompany the lasagna.

Now, I titled this post "sugar hangover" because this morning I woke up to what felt like a hangover but I didn't drink any alcoholic beverages the night before. After our lasagna dinner, the girls surprised me with cupcakes from Baby Cakes for my birthday (which is on Wednesday). I was truly very surprised because I was not expecting C to come walking out from the other room with flaming cupcakes in hand (she put candles on the cupcakes). We were all too full to immediately dive into the cupcakes, so we started playing boardgames and saved the sweets for later, when our stomachs had digested some food first.

Here's where my sugar hangover came from: red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting; and vanilla cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting (which is sitting in my possession awaiting for me to devour tonight because we devoured the velvet cupcakes last night).

D also made this sort of dessert cheese ball, which I can only remember that it consists of a lot of sugar, cream cheese and chocolate chips. You put the dip onto some graham crackers and it's like sweet cream cheese chocolate chip heaven.

And of course I contributed this massive heaping pile of chocolate chip cookies (Nestle Tollhouse recipe).

Between the cupcakes, dessert cheeseball, chocolate chip cookies, and some pretzels that are not pictured here (we had to have some salt to counter the sugar high), we had a great time hanging out playing board games, nertz and girl talk. It was a good thing I could sleep in today, too, because I was definitely suffering from some sort of hangover as a result of consuming all that sugar last night.

mini donuts

Krispy Kreme has these new mini donuts, as seen on the left side of this picture. They were so cute! Instead of gorging on 20 mini donuts, I was able to exert some will power and just had my usual, one custard filled donut with chocolate on top.