Cakepop Greenmouth, of the Manhattan Greenmouths

Hello, Friends!

I was just reading this other blog that I really like, and it got me thinking that I haven't talked to you guys in a while.  It also served as a reminder that 30 Days of Tacos is now officially themeless.

Last weekend, Derek and I went to his homeboy-from-back-in-the-day Paul's new place for a housewarming party.  He lives in a totally swanky building in St. Paul.  Derek and Paul hardly ever saw each other when Paul lived 5 blocks away.  Maybe that was too close, and now that they have some physical space they can talk more often? 

Whatever, their problem.

So, on the invite, Paul had said that we could, if we felt so inclined, bring a dessert to the party.  And I thought, "EURUEKA!"  (I just spelled that correctly on my first try, boom) I've been wanting to try making Cake Pops since we had them at Jake and Patti's wedding reception.  Cake Pops are so cute, extra tasty, and can be eaten without dirtying any dishes. 

I found a recipe for them (thanks, internet!), and was terribly disappointed to find that, while cake pops aren't acutally all that much work, there is way too much waiting around involved for me to be capable of making them. 

The instructions are something like:
1. bake a cake
2. cool completely.
3. break the cake into crumbs and mix with frosting.
4. chill.
5. form into balls.
6. chill
7. put balls on sticks
8. chill.
9. cover balls on sticks in chocolate
10. chill.

NO, THANK YOU.  I get bored just thinking about putting them in the refrigerator that many times.  So instead, I made Oreo Balls on Sticks.  There's, like, 3 less steps.

MINT OREO BALLS ON STICKS

Ingredients:
1 pkg Oreo's (NOT double stuf)
1-8 oz pkg cream cheese, softened
1 pkg meltable white chocolate
1 tsp mint extract (optional)
Sticks (found at craft store)
Chunk of foam to stick the sticks into to dry (also from the craft store)


Instructions:
1.  Gradually add all of the Oreos to a food processor until completely ground into fine crumbs.  Eat at least one or two of the Oreos while you do this, for happiness reasons.
2. Gradually add cream cheese and mint extract (if using) until mixture resembled dough. (steps 1 and 2 can be done in batches if necessary).
3. Put dough in a bowl, refrigerate until dough is cold and easier to handle.
4. Form dough into walnut-sized balls, shove sticks into them.  Put them on a cookie sheet, and put the cookie sheets into the  fridge/freezer while you finish with the rest of the dough.
5. Melt the chocolate per package instructions.  Dip each cooled pop into chocolate, then stick into foam to dry.  If you're going to use sprinkles to decorate, now's a great time to do that, while the chocolate is still wet.
6. When they're dry, put the pops into the refrigerator to store.  Decorate however you want.

They ended up looking like this:

As it turns out, the green sprinkles were a mistake.  I thought they looked nice on the pops, but they dyed everyones mouths green.  Oops!

I didn't quite know how to transport these things, so I put the foam I used in step 5 into a box, covered everything with tissue paper, and stuck all the pops in.  While I was doing it, I felt very crafty and creative.

Then we got to the party.

The door opened, and the apartment was full of strangers who were staring at us.  That is the moment that I realized that the tissue paper was too much.  Then Derek was all, "You brought the 'Look At Me' dessert!"

And damnit, he was completely right.  I didn't do it on purpose, I just wanted to make some cake pops!  sadface.

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I just checked my Twitter feed, and it looks like the Olympic Wine Drinking Team of which I am a member is talking about having practice some time soon.  Goodie!  (What does it say about me that my first thoughts are about what food stuffs I'm going to make?)  I really like all of my OWDT team mates.  Maybe we should get jerseys. 

There's this other dessert recipe I've been wanting to make, but I can't make it for just Derek and I beause there is absolutely no excuse for us to have this many calories in the house.  The OWDT, however, is full of athletes.  Like, I try to work out 6 days a week, and I am easily the least athletic member of the team.  On any given day, they have probably ridden a zillion bike miles, run half-a-zillion foot miles, and done 58,000 downward-facing dogs.  Point is, they can eat whatever they want.

It's called a Deconstructed Chocolate Chip Cheese Ball.

Did you just go to that link?  Doesn't it look insane?!?!?!!?!!

I want to show you guys really cute pictures of my niece, Ellie, who is the cutest, most photogenic baby in history, but I don't know the rules about blogging other peoples' photography, so I'll hold off for now.  Just know that she's so cute that it almost hurts.

Ok, so I guess that's it for now.  I'm gonna go start the crock pot here in a little bit, before I go work out.  We're going to have Chicken Edamame Chowder for din-din tonight.   I'll let you know how it is.

Maybe the theme of this blog will be reviewing recipes that I find in Yahoo.  Maybe some day I'll make my own recipe...

...  that doesn't seem likely...


...

CONFETTI!!

Yesterday, this blog reached 1000 hits!!! 

TRUMPETS!!! 

FALLING BALLOONS!!!!!!

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all 10 of my readers for visiting my blog 100 times a piece.  I couldn't have done it without you.  *tear*

*sigh*

To celebrate our 1,000th internet together, I will today have homework for you guys.  Fun homework.  Homefun.  It's a word problem.  Wordfun.

 ...

If you could have a piece of Harry Potter themed jewelry made just for you, what would it be?  Share with the rest of the class down there in the comments!!

I had a birthday on Wednesday.  It was a really great time.  When I got home from work (that wasn't really part of the 'great day,' although there was delicious cake available, and Derek had some very beautiful and colorful flowers delievered.  I like it when he reminds all the gals at work that I'm a lucky, lucky lady) Derek and I had present-opening time.  He's so good at gifting!  Thoughtful and creative, even if he doesn't feel like that's how he's being.  After that, we went out to dinner at Ngon Vietnamese Bistro in St. Paul.  We've been there one other time for some friends' wedding reception and really enjoyed it.  It's the first time that I'm aware of eating pork belly.  Usually I'm kind of uncomfortable with cuts of meat bearing the name of be body part they came from, as I prefer to pretend that my meat was never adorable.  Pork belly, however, is delish.  Bueno.  Molto buona. 

Dinner was with Derek (obviously), Damon, Nate, and Sarah.  Spending time with Nate and Sarah is a rare treat.  (Damon is great, too, of course.  It just isn't nearly as rare a treat to see him.)  After dinner, we all went to Izzy's Ice Cream for dessert.  I'd heard about it but never been.  It was totally fantastic! 

So, Derek ordered first.  He's all, "single scoop of Whatever in a cup."
And then the young lady behind the counter is like, "what would you like for your Izzy?"
Then Derek is all, "WTF is an Izzy?"
Young lady: "It's a little tiny scoop of ice cream that goes on top."
All of us in unison: "BRILLIANT!!!!"

That's how I decided to remember it, anyways.  It's possible that we didn't say anything in unison.  Possible, but not probable.

I got a scoop of Norweigan Chai with a Cake Batter Izzy. 

I would like to marry Cake Batter ice cream. 

Nate didn't have any ice cream because he'd already had ice cream, like, infinity times that week.  Also because he's a sissy girl.

After that we kind of all went home.  Nate and Sarah gave me a Lego Harry Potter Quidditch set, so I went ahead and worked on that pretty much the second we got home.  It's fun.  Not only are there, like, 5 Lego guys, there are little tiny Quaffles and little Quaffle launchers so that you can play Quidditch!

I skipped going to the gym twice because of my birthday and didn't work out yesterday because it was too chilly and gray to go run after work yesterday.  I haven't actually exercised since Tuesday, so I'm looking forward to Turbo Step later this morning.  I think I'll spend some of the rest of my Saturday doing a little laundry and maybe shopping just a little.  My jeans are staring to look a little 'poopy diaper,' if you know what I mean.

Acutally, they look like that even if you don't know what I mean.  My jeans' appearance is not conditional on your understanding. 

I almost forgot to tell you guys something:  So last night we were playing Portal 2 co-op mode, and neither of us could figure out the puzzle we were working on.  We both got majorly P-Oed and decided to quit playing. 
Cut to this morning.  I woke up at 6am with a fully formed solution in my head.  I don't know if it'll work.  I think it will.  I'm kind of excited to try it later.

Ok, so I'm gonna go now.  I think I've typed at all ya'll enough for now.  Don't forget about the homefun assignment.  What kind of HP jewelry would you want?  Go comment about it. 

Days 28, 29, 30, and 1 bonus day: Finally!

Hey, so I'm really sorry it's taken me so long to get to this post, guys.  I've just been too busy not feeling like blogging to get it done.

Let's jump right in, shall we?

On Thursday, I got off work late, and Derek and I knew there were places we wanted to get to by the end of the month, but couldn't think of any.  I think the conversation was something like:

"Qdoba?  Was that on the list?  I don't remember talking about it, but I also don't remember discounting it."

"Ok, well I guess let's go to Qdoba.  I've heard it's fast, which is sure nice at 8:30 at night."

Shrug.

I'd never been there.  We went to the one in Saint Louis Park.  It was ok, I guess.  I wouldn't say no to eating there again, but I don't think it'd be my idea.

They do know how to hand out cheese, thought.

Here's my Chicken Tacos before consumption

At least, I'm pretty sure I ordered chicken.  It's kind of hard to tell from the pictures.  Update:  Upon further inspection, I'm fairly confident these are chicken.  See?

We were there pretty soon before they closed, and so I think we were the only customers in the joint.  It wasn't much of an experience, but I took a lot of pictures on account of all the cheese.  Here's my basket, post consumption:

Just as we got home, Damon Foursquare checked-in at Common Roots.  SHIT!  We had that on our mental lists and forgot about it!  That'll teach us to have mental lists instead of physical ones.  So we didn't get to have any of their tacos for 30 Day of Tacos, but I can tell you that the Bison Tacos there are quite good.  They have Fish or Tofu ones also.  Derek's had the fish ones, and really liked them, too.  Still, I was hoping to get to show you guys pictures of how good their food looks.  Cuz it's good.  Go to Common Roots.  Get an Almond Earl Gray Latte while you're there.  You'll thank me.

Friday, we drove to Des Moines for James and Amanda's wedding.  It was a nice wedding.  It was in a barn.  It was good to see friends I don't normally get to spend time with.  Good times.

But the wedding was Saturday night.  Before that, we had 2 days of 30 Days of Tacos to get through. 

When we got into town on Friday, we had some business to attend to downtown.  On the way from I-80 to downtown Des Moines, we drove past several taco joints.  One in peticular was called Leo's Tacos.  It looked authentic as hell.  We decided to hit it up on our way back to the interstate. 

When we got to the parking lot, we were disappointed to discover that the Leo's Tacos sign was acutally in front of a Mexican bakery.  Damnit.

I feel like it was after 2 by this point, and we had 6pm dinner plans with Dereks family that we kind of needed to be hungry for.  Plus we were both, like, totally so super hungry.

"Wasn't there another place down that way on the other side of the street?"

So we ended up at Pueblo Viejo (they don't seem to have a website to link to).  Since we were there sort of between meals, we sat straight down and had exceptionally fast service.  Like, he wanted to know what we wanted to drink as he handed us menus and showed us our table.  I found that suprisingly stressful, even though I was really only going to order diet coke or iced tea.  I think we made him come back an extra time, since we hadn't decided what we wanted to eat in the 2 minutes it took him to come back with our drinks. 

We both ordered tacos.  Mine were some special kind, although I don't remember what they were called.  Less than 10 minutes past between us ordering and recieving our food.  Crazy fast.

They were pretty darn good.  They tasted almost exactly like cheeseburgers.
It's a difficult thing to stop eating before you're super full when you're super hungry.  It's extra difficult, it turns out, when you're eating cheeseburger flavored tacos. 

After lunch we continued on down the road to my parents' new house.  They just finished building it (erm, having it built by professionals, obviously).  It's beautiful and smells new and is just the right size.  I'm excited to go back when the landscaping is done. 

After a full tour and spending a little time hanging out with them, we hopped back in the car and went over to see Dereks family.

It also was wonderful.  Their shy, one eyed Boston Terrier, Mollie, is getting a little more friendly.  She let us touch her this time, at least.  And Buddy, the little black OCD dog is getting a little better about letting us touch him, too.  It's like the 2 crazy little things are in doggie group-therapy, and it's making a difference.

Saturday, after a lovely breakfast with my parents, brother, sister-in-law, and niece Ellie (omg, you guys? Ellie is so cute! She's 3 months old, and she's starting to get a fat little baby belly and she's moving around more and staying awake and I got to feed her a bottle and burp her and carry her around as much as I wanted and SQUEE!!!)

Excuse me. 

After that, we went to the saddest sidewalk sale I've ever seen at the Shops at West Glen, and then later Derek and I met up with Scott, Jess, and Ellie for lunch at Tasty Tacos. 

Seriously, though?  We've been excited about finishing 30 Days of Tacos with Tasty Tacos since I realized we'd be in Des Moines on the 30th.  If you're ever there, EAT AT TASTY TACOS.  Their shells are fried soft flour ones, so they're very soft and all puffy and warm.  They also use really finely grated cheese.  The tables all have squirt bottles of salsa on them. 

There's other stuff on the menu, but when you go there, at least one of the things you order needs to be the original taco.  It's a masterpiece of folded food.



Do you like how I fit the Tasty Tacos logo in the picture?  Yeah, me too.

It was a magical way to spend day 30.

Saturday night was the wedding.  Hickory Park catered.  I'll have to take Derek there some time, because the actual restaurant is kind of an experience, but the food is good no matter where it's served.  The ceremony was short, followed by a nice reception.  Their first dance was very sweet.  I got to see my homeboys.

Sunday, we left Des Moines a little early (after breakfast as the Ankeny IHOP with Derek's mom and dad) so we could get back in time for 30 Days of Tacos Bonus Day!  It was over and Josh, Aleisha, and Sam's house.  Dan was there, too.  Jacqie couldn't come because she was sick.  Yucky :(.  Damon and Becky were going to come, too, but I think Becky's sister had a baby, so they had to go and smell it, I think.  Which I totally get. 

So it was a best-of meal, each of us providing one of our favorite taco recipes from the month.  Josh and Aleisha were nice enough to make ours for us, since it required a crock pot and we couldn't quite manage that while we traveled. 

THE SPREAD



Dan brought Sloppy Joes tacos (the recipe Jacqie gave us a couple of weeks ago), Josh and Aleisha made roasted chicken tacos with an avacado-mayo-cilantro sort of dressing, and we were represented by pulled pork.  

It was a fantastic meal and a really, really fun way to spend it.  Sam is super friendly and energetic and seems to like everyone right away.  It's kind of fun to watch people parent their children.  As an adult, I can appreciate the teamwork that goes into parenting in a way I couldn't when I was younger. 

Oh, geez.  I just looked at the clock.  I'd better go get ready for work. 

But this isn't goodbye.  I know the blog is called "30 Days of Tacos" and that those 30 days are over, but I'll still tell you guys about every little unnecessary detail of my daily life all the time!  Maybe I'll work on another 30 days concept.  Or start a band and name it "30 Days of Tacos".

Or something.

But I'll for sure see you guys again very soon. 

Until next time!...