Days 26 and 27: Nice surprises

What's up, guys?  Having a nice week? 

Me too.

We've been eating out a lot this week (we feel like we're running out of time, and there's lots of places left we wanted to go.)  That wasn't why we went out last night.  Last night we both had some mall shopping that needed doing, so we ate at a Mexican joint over in Roseville.  I'll get to that in a minute.

Tuesday, D&D and I went to Pepitos in south Minneapolis.  We've been there before, but I guess I didn't know that's what it was called, because when we got there I was all, "hey, we've totally been here before!" 

I think Derek suspects I have some sort of memory dysfunction. 

D&D talked about bikes for a while.  I was very bored for that part. 

Pepitos has a Foursquare special for a free beer or house margarita with check-in on Monday or Tuesday.  We were excited for free drinks.  The waitress was all, "wtf?"   Apparently not everyone uses Foursquare.  But her manager knew all about it, so crisis averted.

I got fried tacos, one chicken and one beef, with a side of refried beans and caesar salad. 

The tacos were huge!  Kind of hard to eat, but pretty tasty.  They put what I think they call "taco relish" on them, which seemed to me to be diced pickle.  It was a nice surprise.  I'll be remembering that and adding it to my Regular Kind tacos in the future.

Hey, I just realized that I didn't make original recipe Regular Kind tacos the whole month.  There was maybe something close to Regular Kind once, but I don't think I ever used a packet of Ortega Taco Seasoning.  Huh.  Fancy that.

Like I said, we went to Rosedale Mall on Wednesday night for a little shopping.  Both of us needed pants.  Pants shopping, ugh.

After pants shopping (ugh) we drove over to La Casita.  It's behind where like Good Earth is.  It's a definite 'Carlos O'Kellys' feel, but our server, Denise, was very nice and I was pleasantly suprised by my tacos.

If you've ever thought, "you know what this taco needs? Bacon bits."  then go here and order the Baja Tacos.  Beef, bacon bits, cilantro, avocado sauce.  The bacon bits made it special.

Derek liked his fish tacos, too.  He also commented that 30 Days of Tacos is really feeding into his chips and salsa addiction.  Some time we'll have to do a salsa taste-test.  I suspect French Meadow will win, but you never know.

Last night at dinner, Derek suggested that we should have had cards made with this website on them to leave at restaurants and stuff.  Sad that he thought of it on day 27.  Maybe next year.  sadface.

Bob asked me to talk more about Portal 2.  While we haven't played it in a few days, I do have a thought I'd like to share.

The games puzzles are such that after you complete a level, you feel like THE KING OF MENSA.  Then the next level might be so hard that you have to get mad and consult the internet.  You'd think this'd make you feel dumb again.  It doesn't.  Instead, it makes you feel like the game is so smart and awesome that it stumped THE KING OF MENSA.

 Plus, you kinda leave feeling like you've just learned something about space or physics or whatever. 

Or like you just pushed dimentia a month further away.


The Harry Potter and the Dealthly Hallows part 2 trailer was released.  Feel free to pee your pants while you watch:

As aways, I have to leave you now so I can get ready to go work out.  Have a nice day!!

Days 24 and 25: Many paragraphs, few pictures

Hey, you guys?  I have an important discovery to announce:  Exercising a lot makes exercise way easier.

The gym was closed on Sunday because of Easter, and it was a beautiful day here in the big TC, so I decided to go around Lake of the Isles.  My original plan was to walk around it.  Derek would, meanwhile, be riding bikes.  Anywhosits, I got all my workout gear on, strapped on my heart rate monitor, attached my footpod (it measures distance and pace and stuff) and headed out the front door. 

At this point, I was barked at viciously by this totally adorable little tiny puppy that lives in our neighborhood.  I think he might be like a little weiner dog, but black (do weiner dogs come in black?) and he seems to have a barking fit whenever he sees a person.  His somewhat embarassed owner had to pick him up while I passed, presumeably so the little guy didn't TOTALLY ATTACK!!!  I couldn't help laughing.

The lake is about 3/4 of a mile away from our house.  About the time I started walking around the lake itself, I decided that I was chilly (it was sunny, but apparently not quite warm enough out) and that when my watch showed that I'd gotten to 1 mile, I'd run for "oh, I don't know, maybe a quarter mile?"

Just enough to warm up, anyways.

So I stared jogging.  A quarter mile came and went, and I felt pretty good.  I kept giving myself little goals ("maybe another half mile?") and then I'd look down at my watch and see that I'd gone past my goal while I wasn't looking.  By the time I got back to the street I take back home, I'd run 2.47 miles.  I had to stop running because I got to my exit, not because I was totally out of running.  I thought fleetingly of continuting on around the lake again, but I knew for sure that I'd get part of the way around and then be very bummed out that I was on the wrong side of the lake, a few miles from home, and very, very tired.

All of this is only impressive if you know that 2 1/2 miles non-stop is roughly 1 mile further than I've ever run non-stop before, and I haven't acutally run at all in several months.  I'm sure it's all of the classes I've been going to at the gym, but I'd like to give a little extra credit to Ignition Jump Rope.  25 minutes of jumping.  Intense stuff.

Ironically, the running I did on Sunday made Ignition Jump Rope way harder on Monday.

After I got home and cleaned up and stuff, I started on our Sunday tacos.  We had them as a snack mid-afternoon.  I used the dessert taco shell recipe from that other blog (too lazy to link right now) and made "fruit salsa" by chopping and mixing up strawberries, blueberries, pear, and orange.  Thinking back, I feel like there was another fruit in there, but I can't think of what it might have been now.  Anyways, the fruit salsa was over ice cream and drizzled with caramel sauce.



It made a lovely snack.  I made a cheese plate to go along with it.  Then we napped.  Then we played Portal 2.  It was rad, obviously.  Then we went out for sushi at Midori's Floating World Cafe.  I really like everything I've eaten there, they have a very nice tea menu, and I think it's maybe the best name for a resteraunt ever.  If it was a book title, I'd read it right away without even glancing at the back cover.

Monday, after a full day of work and working out, I came home to Derek telling me that he'd decided we should go out for dinner. 

I sighed with relief.
He even had a place in mind. 

Another sigh, this one because neither of us had to say, "I don't care, where do you wanna go?"

What a great guy.

So we went to Pineda Tacos on Lake Street.  It was An Experience.

It's sort of set up Chipotle-style, with a long bar that you start at one end of, and tell them what you want in your taco/burrito/enchilada/etc.  Unlike Chipotle, beef tounge is a meat option.  I got 3 tacos; beef and onion, chicken in green sauce, and chicken in tomato sauce.  All 3 topped with onion, cilantro, and mild salsa.  They were delicious.  Every kind  I tried was flavorful and interesting and a little spicy but not too much.  Derek liked all of his kinds, too.  He got beef and onion, regular beef, and spicy chicken, all with hot sauce.  All of it served with rice and refried beans.

After you pay for your meal, you can go into the next room where there are tables.  It's a strange selection of tables and booths, like they were purchased at fast food restaurant garage sales.  The dining room's walls were white plastic paneling.  At about seated shoulder height running around the room were weird orange stains on the walls, like there used to be something glued to the wall there.  A strange array of pictures lined the walls (think motivational poster next to Christmas themed mini-Thomas Kinkade print).  It smelled a little like a bowling alley. 

I was totally into all of it.  Put together, it's a strange and awesome experience filled with delicious tacos.

I'm starting to feel like we're running out of time.  We'll probably be going out a lot this week, because there are several places we'd still like to get to during this 30 days.  I suppose we could keep going into next month, but it won't be the same. 

Looking at the clock, I see it's about time for me to get ready for work.  Thanks, all, for tuning in today.  I'll type atcha again soon.

Piece!

Day 21, 22, 23: Fire up the slow cooker

I kind of told myself that I wouldn't do any more 3-day posts after the last one, but then Portal 2 came into our lives, and I kind of had to play some of that.  You know how it goes. 

If you don't "know how it goes," please go buy Portal 2 immediately and play it.  It's one of my all time favorite games so far.  I mean, we're not that far into it yet (Derek and I are playing co-op mode), but I loved the first Portal very much, and this is turning out to be just as neat. 

But lets get into tacos. 

Thursday, Derek went to Ignite Minneapolis so I, once again, found myself eating alone.  Although I didn't especially feel like it, I went ahead and made the meal I'd planned for the both of us. 

OMG wait a second...I was just looking at the Portal 2 website, and they have this personality test.  If you've played the game, you should totally go take it.  If you haven't played, you won't understand the result, but you will get an idea of how funny the game is.

So anyways,
When I got home from work on Thursday, I made myself Beef and Mushroom Tacos with Avocado Salad.  It's a Rachel Ray recipe.   Usually, Rachel Ray recipes take (me, at least) about 45 minutes to make and have as many ingredients.  This one, however, was very simple with few ingredients.  Basically gound beef, onion, mushroom, garlic, and avocados.  It was simple to make and tasty.  Not super amazing or anything, but I'll make it again for sure.

Both of these tacos have the beef-mushroom mixture and the avacado salad in them, i just alternated which was on top for the picture.  As you can see, I also chose hard shells for this meal rather than the soft shells the recipe calls for.  Come to think of it, I've been on something of a hard shell kick this week. 

"Come to think of it" is a phrase that I say out loud from time to time, but typing it out just now, it occured to me that I don't really write it.  It doesn't seem to make as much sense as a written phrase as it does a spoken one.  Oh, language, you vex me so.

Friday was my day off this week, so I chose it as slow-cooker day since I would be home at the right time to get things started. 

Here's the thing about slow cookers:  I really like the idea of "set it and forget it" or whatever, but there are an awful lot of recipes that are supposed to cook for 7-8 hours.  The problem with that is that on work days, there are far more than 8 hours between when I'd get it started in the morning before work and dinner time.  I suppose I could ask Derek to start dinner cooking before he leaves for the day, but again, it feels like longer than 8 hours before dinner.  Harumph.

So we return to Friday and the slow cooker.  I went to the gym in the morning, and did an hour of step class followed by an hour of yoga.  It's the longest workout I've done, but I skipped yoga on Tuesday and really missed it.  Plus, the gym is closed today for Easter, so doubling up on Friday seemed wise. 

It was totally great, by the way.  I'm going to do that every time I have Friday off.  I'll have to take a different shirt or something to change into, though.  Going from a very sweaty step class to a much clamer yoga class (in a much cooler studio) made me rather chilly by the end. 

Anyways, I got everything into the crock pot right when I got home from the gym.  It only took a few minutes.  The result was FANTASTIC!

It's so hard to tell with these darn pictures, but theres pulled pork in there.  It's basically salsa, oregano, chili powder, cocoa powder, and pork shoulder in a crock pot for 8 hours.  It was so simple to make, but really tasted killer.  We'll be making this again for sure, probably for more people than just the two of us.  The hard shells turned out to be a questionable choice since the pork was so juicy, but really, if that's the biggest complaint...

Joining Friday's tacos in this picture are Spanish Rice (90 seconds in the microwave-DONE!) and Jicama Slaw.  The slaw was surpising.  There was an awful lot of raw red onion in there, but I rinsed it under cold water first to mellow it out.

This plate reminds me of something that I've been meaning to tell you guys for quite a while:  this month, I've gone through more limes and bunches of cilantro than probably in all the rest of my cooking-years combined.  I've finished at least 3 or 4 cilantro bunches and, I-don't-know-how-many limes.  Several. Lots.  A good many.


Last night, I was thinking we'd either have meatball tacos or chicken finger tacos.  When it got to be dinner time, however, I felt like I'd eaten a number of lazy tacos and didn't really want to make anything.  Luckily, Damon texted just as we were trying to decide what to eat.  Damon to the rescue!  The three of us ended up at Pancho Villa on Eat Street.  I feel like Damon said he'd never eaten there before, but Derek and I are big fans.  They serve good food, do so quickly, and have a huge menu.  I'll warn you, though, that one time I ordered a fish dish and got a whole fish-head included.  I know that some people think that's great or whatever, but I like to think that my meat never had eyes.  That, and deboning an entire fish is a little more work than I like to have to do in a meal that I didn't prepare myself. 

But none of that is Pancho Villa's fault.  We all got some tacos.  Mine are chicken tacos in a combo meal with a chalupa, rice, and beans.  Had a sangria cocktail and margarita as well.  Which reminds me, something else nice about Pancho Villa is their drink prices. 


This picture is sideways, but I care just enough to mention it,
 not nearly enough to fix it



This morning, I learned a valuable lesson as I blogged.  I can listen to music while I do a great many things; drive, exercise, clean, nap...but not while I write.  I find that I use most of my concentration trying to ignore the music, making it very difficult to write anything coherent.  Like my brain is trying to shout at the page over the music.  It's a bummer as I enjoy music, but I guess it's nice to know.  Even now, just thinking about music is making me tense up a little.   

So....ok super.  I'm going to go ahead a go now.  Plenty to do today.  Laundry to wash, walks to be taken, Harry Potter to be thought about. 

You crazy kids have a lovely Easter, and I'll talk atcha again soon!

Days 18, 19, and 20: Taco Taco Taco

Hey, guys!

I should have blogged last night, and I'm very sorry that I didn't but after tacos at La Sirena Gorda at the Midtown Global Market, Sarah came over and we watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt 1.  If you've read any of my other posts, you've maybe noticed that I have Potter Fever.  Sarah hadn't even seen the movie at all yet, so it was kind of a big deal. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  First, let's talk about Monday.  (It feels so long ago that I sort of forget what happened). 

This is what happened:



These are Portobello and Zucchini Tacos.  As always, thanks, Martha Stewart!  It's a really easy recipe.  Mostly, you just roast a few things for a little bit, and then throw them in a tortilla with cheese and salsa and mow down.  Derek and I both went into this meal assuming we wouldn't be all that into them, but were both pleasantly suprised.  They were filling and flavorful.  On the side is a Southwestern Quinoa Salad.  This recipe is from a blog that I've really been enjoying reading.  The salad is totes great.  It's just quinoa and a bunch of diced veggies.  If you haven't tried quinoa yet, go get on it right now.  It's kinda like rice, but it take half the time to cook and has roughly a bazillion times more nutrition in it than white rice. 

Bazillion.

There's a joke about GW Bush.  The punchline is something like: "Oh my God.  How many is a Brazillian?"

Ok, so then last night, Derek, Damon, Sarah and I went, like I said, to this place at the Midtown Global Market.  I'd never been in there before.  It's cool.  It's a fleamarket kind of a thing, but with lots of eateries.  We got fish tacos (Sarah got shrimp, and liked them I think) and Hibiscus tea.  Usually I enjoy weird-tasting stuff.  The tea, however, was a little too weird.  I don't know what we thought we were getting ourselves into, but it was sort of salty our sour or something, and almost tasted thick to me.  It was one of those things that I could sort of understand that someone else was really into it, I just don't happen to be.  Like with beets.  Or jazz.

The tacos, on the other hand, were good.  The fish was in a pineapple orange sauce.  Zesty!

Tonight, I came home from the gym to an empty house.  Confused, I texted Derek asking, "Where TF are you, bro?"
He was out to dinner.  I completely forgot he had plans.  It made me relieved because I didn't feel like cooking.  Left to my own devices, I will usually choose to make the easiest possible meal, but since I was going to have to take a picture of it for you fine folks,  I went ahead and plated the hell out of it.

So here we have 3 jicama sticks (jicama is one of those foods that Derek and I have always both enjoyed, but the uncut version of it looks so scary that I'd never brought one home to cut up on my own.  Turns out it's really easy.  Acutally, cutting up a jicama is a pretty gratifying experience.  It's just one big solid mass, and the texture is as pleasing to cut through as it is to bite into.)  Below that is some leftover Southwestern Quinoa Salad, then alternating cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses, then some Trader Joes Frozen Mini Tacos.  These are beef-filled.  The center of the plate contains Trader Joes Fresh Salsa.  These tacos are pretty good, and very easy to make.  And faster than pizza bites.  Oooh, I should have had the mini tacos with pizza bites, damnit. 

Anyways, I ate dinner with a beer while I watched whatever on tv. 

Dessert was very special.  Last night,  I had a stroke of genius and made a very fancy looking candy dish out of a clear glass teapot.  I filled it with jelly beans.  It worked well for HP night.  We also had caramel toffee scones and Butterbeer.  For this version of Butterbeer (is it weird that I have more than one recipe for Butterbeer?) I dunked spoons into Smuckers butterscotch caramel ice cream topping, then stirred them into glasses filled with diet cream soda.  Add ice and voila!  (I had no idea that I knew how to spell 'voila' until just now... so that's nice.)

So anyways, dessert 2 nights in a row;

Teapot full of jelly beans.  BOOM.

 

So now I have to go and try to not eat the rest of those delicious beans.  Not only do they definitely not help me meet my weight loss goals, they also make me feel like barfing by the third of fourth pound of them.  It's just, they're so good. 

Until next time, remember: I LOVE JELLY BEANS

Days 16 and 17: No judging me allowed.

Hey, kids! 

Did you all enjoy spending all yesterday watching HP 7.1?  Me too!  After i got home from the gym, I put it in just to watch while I snacked and until I cooled down enough to shower (at least, that's what I told myself I was doing).  At some point, I had to force myself to hit "pause" so I could get ready for the day.  As it turned out, "the day" acutally involved a lot more Harry Potter watching, and shopping for just the right meal to prepare for watching it again with Derek. 

I watched it twice yesterday.  Don't judge me.  I'll do it again later tonight, too, given the opportunity.

So we ended up eating what I named Cornish Tacos with a side of Spice Roasted Butternut Squash and Onions.  The squash recipe is a Weightwatchers one that my boss gave me to try.  The Cornish Tacos were really just the filling from the Cornish Pasties recipe from the Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook cooked sans-pasty and put into whole wheat flour tortillas.

 

As you can see, I had it with a cuppa.  (I'm like 90% sure that means "cup of tea" in British.)  We put some A-1 Steak Sauce on our taco because, well, we're American, so we like flavors.  This great country of ours is, afterall, birthplace of Baconnaise*.

(*disclaimer: I've never acutally tried Baconnaise and I didn't do any research to make sure it's actually American, but I saw it at the store today and bacon flavored cholesterol-spread stuck me as being extra especially American.  amiwrong?)

Basically, Cornish Pasty filling finely diced beef, carrot, potato, onion, and I added celery.  Then it's baked for a while.  I chose the roasted squash because the spice it uses is Garam Masala, and I like English food with Indian.  It seemed right.  I'm pretty sure they do stuff like that there.  If any of you fives of readers are British, perhaps you can shed light on whether that sounds like something you'd do?

So anyways, we really enjoyed our Cornish Tacos, and Derek hardly fell asleep at all watching HP 7.1. 

So, when you guys watch it again, use Maximum Movie Mode.  It's on the Blu Ray copy for sure, I sort of doubt it's on the DVD.  Anyways, it's totally great.  At certain points, cast and crew members will sort of stop the movie to tell you interesting things.  There's also the option to jump to extra little videos about things like Privet Drive and House Elves and stuff.  (Anyone that's seen any of that stuff, did the kid that plays Dudley have a prosthesis on his face?  I think he grew up too thin and they put him in like a fat-face.  Maybe his makeup just looked weird.  Something struck me as "off."  And if not, I hearby officially apologize to him for saying his face looked weird.)

Today, we forwent (there I go, using my new favorite word again) the breakfast tacos, opting instead to eat them for lunch.  There's a great little place in St. Paul called Caribe Bistro.  Totally delish.  We ordered 2 dishes and shared them both.  The Caribe Eggs Benedict was probably the best eggs benedict I've ever had.  It was different and interesting, and everything about it was wonderful.  The taco portion of our meal was the Cuban Pork Hash.  It came with corn tortillas (and we got a couple more tortillas, too).  It made a very good taco.  It was tasty and juicy.  It had eggs on top.

 

Doesn't that look good??!

I took a picture of something else while we were there.  Derek ordered a banana soda.  If you like banana flavored candy, YOU WANT THIS.  I had a few sips and was so jealous that I was drinking iced tea. 

Ok, so PSA, if you ever see this bottle anywhere, BUY IT:

This afternoon at the grocery store, I finally found some Masa, which is the corn stuff used to make tortillas.  I brought it home and Derek spent some time practicing with his new tortilla press.   I think he got mad at the whole process, but I have faith that he's gonna get good at it and add a whole new dimension to taco eating.  I'm looking very forward to trying some. 
Finally, I'll leave you with one more for the OMG I <3 HP photo series. 

Yeah, we're going to have to go back there very soon.  *sigh*

Days 14 and 15: So easy a Derek can do it!

Good morning, and Happy (belated) Harry Potter day!!

I want to talk more about HP, but I have to wait until I get there, chronologically...you know how it goes.

I think when last we spoke I'd just recently enjoyed myself at the Taco Party.  Woohoo, taco party!!

Thursday, Derek made dinner!  He's a fine cook, although I don't think he enjoys it especially.  I do most of the cooking around here, which I'm totally into, but it is nice to get home late from work to find the Jacqie and Dan Special Sloppy Joes Tacos already simmering for it's final half-hour. 

So we got this message from Jacqie (hey, girl!) about a taco night recipe they'd just used and enjoyed.  It was super duper easy (so easy Derek could do it!) and was quite delicious!  If you want the recipe, I can ask Jacqie about posting it.  We had the sloppy joe stuff on whole wheat flour tortillas with spinach.  On the side, lentils.  I'd never made lentils before, and I've only eaten them one other time that I'm aware of.  And to be clear, I'm using the word "made" to mean "put the presteamed-ready-to-eat-lentil-bag in the microwave."  I put salsa verde on my lentils and a little mustard on my tacos. 

We will definitely be eating this sloppy joe recipe again.  Probably in tacos.  SO GOOD!

We watched Archer while we ate.  Anyone else watch that show?  Funniest cartoon on television.  Go watch it.  The first season is on dvd (there aren't that many episodes in a season, so I think it's only one disc). 

I'd put "restaurant" on the calendar for Friday before we chose the 13th for Taco Party night, and then never changed it because, well, I'm extremely lazy.  Like, really really lazy.  So since it said "restaurant" right on there, and because going to a restaurant is easier than cooking (did I mention I'm lazy?) we went out.  We chose a restaurant in St. Paul that Derek had heard good things about called Rusty Taco.  OMG, you guys, GO THERE.  It's this great little place where you go in and order at the counter then wait for your name to be called.  The menu has all ala carte tacos for cheap, a couple of sides (we didn't have room to try any of those, we were busy stuffing our pig faces full of tacos!) and beer. 

Here's the first round:

I don't remember for sure which ones we got, but I think I ate the Fried Chicken, Beef Fajita (Damon will be so excited for the Fajita taco), Rajas (mushroom), BBQ brisket, and some other chicken one later.  Derek had Fish, Fried Chicken, Brisket, Rajas, and Picadillo (ground beef and potato).  Every one was totes tasty.  The fried chicken sticks out most in my mind because I'd just been thinking earlier that day about making shake and bake chicken fingers and putting them in tacos.  Maybe with honey mustard or bbq sauce? 

I also had a bite of Dereks fish taco, and it, too, was delicious. 

The last taco I had was a chicken one (I'm not sure which...chicken fajita maybe?) and it was very spicy.  By then, however, I had finished my beer.  Derek let me sip on his, but it was really spicy and I was trying to be careful to not finish his beer.  I had a moment when I looked down at my iPhone and just for a moment, got really mad at it for not having "an app for that."  Immediately after, I decided that my phone and I spend too much time together. 

Don't get my wrong, I'm not going to spend any less time with my phone, I just wanted you to know that I recognize that it's weird to be upset that my phone cant stop the inside of my mouth from burning. 

After dinner, we went to the Trader Joes next door in search of some Masa to make homemade tortillas with Derek's new tortilla press.  No luck.  Didn't find it at Target before dinner, either.  I'm worried that we're going to have real trouble finding it.  Worriedface.

Oh, that reminds me, though, that I forgot to mention that after work, before taco time, I stopped at Target for a few things, including Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt 1 on Blu Ray.  OMFG YOU GUYS, YAY!!!

 After we got home from our after dinner errands, I watched the special features DVD while Derek did other things.  Poor guy is going to have enough unwanted exposure to this movie in the near future, it's ok if he skips some of the extras.  Today, I'll maybe watch some of the extras on the movie disc, and then we'll watch the movie together tonight over dinner.  I'll spend some time today looking throught my Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook for British Taco ideas.  Probably Bangers and Mash tacos.  Maybe Steak and Kidney tacos.  If Derek liked pumpkin more, we'd almost certainly have a dessert taco version of Pumpkin Pasties.  Maybe I'll get some diet cream soda and butterscotch schnapps so we can have butterbeers, also.

OMG I <3 HP series #3: 

From whence my Butterbeer, sadly, does not come

And a special bonus picture:



Winged Boars at the school gates

So there's my blog for the day, I think.  If I hurry, I can get quite a bit of HP watching in before Turbo Step starts at the gym.  And a lot of coffee drank, as well.  And I'm so Harry Potter excited that I'm kinda done talking to you guys, so no hard feelings?  Wait, what am I talking about?  You guys aren't even reading this right now, because you're all too busy watching HP, too, aren't you?  Well then it'll be like we're watching together!

Cherio!


Days 12 and 13: TACO PARTY!

Ok, So this time I acutally have had a couple of busy days.  Tuesday, there was working, grocery shopping, chiropracting, and yoga.  While I was at yoga, Derek went to a cycling race thingie.  So busy day for us both, really.  For dinner, we had Beef Tacos with Radish and Avacado Salsa from the same Martha Stewart cookbook that brought you the glazed carrots from the other day.  What a great cookbook.  Plus, it's so nice of her to put the recipes I want to share up on her website.  I thank you, Martha. 

They were pretty good tacos.  I'd never broiled meat before.  In retrospect, I don't quite know how I've avoided it for this long.  It was so easy!  The steak ended up maybe a little rarer than I meant it to be, but neither of us really has a problem with rareish beef.  We used white corn tortillas (we doubled up on each taco since they were so juicy).  Sadly, I could taste the tortillas more than any other ingredient.  The radish and avacado salsa was very tasty.  Now I have a nearly-full jar of pickled jalapeno slices that I have no idea what to do with. 

Do you guys know what I can do with pickled jalapeno slices?

I served them with a Dole bagged Southwestern salad.  It's one of my favorite ones. 

Actually, I like all of their bagged salads.  The dressing is always really good.  This dressing especially.

When yoga class wrapped up on Tuesday night, I left a little disappointed at the length of our Savasana.  It's the last pose of the night, where you just lay there on your back and, you know, be.  It's a big part of why I like yoga, and it's always a huge bummer when we run out of time for a good one.  But then, on my way home, I was skimming through the satellite radio channels, looking for something relaxing to maintain my calmness, and my radio landed on the Cinemagic station, which plays movie scores.  And so I drove home listening to the Ghostbusters music.  It was fantastic and perfect.  It was the bouncy part of the score, when things in the movie were going well. 

Then, last night, I skipped the gym (I just tried to type the past-tense version of "forgo" instead of "skipped."  Then I thought, "Forwent?  I'm not sure that's a real word??"  But then I thought, "eff it, I'm gonna use it anyways, because eff the establishment, that's why!!!")

Then, last night, I forwent the gym for the Taco Party at Rojo Mexican Grill in St. Louis Park.  There were 9 of us total.  It was really fun!  We had a couple of drinks, and ate some delicious tacos, and had a super-duper time.  I'm sure the mixed drinks were great, but I have to suggest the red sangria.  Very summery and refreshing. 

I ordered the chicken tacos and Derek the fish, and then we swapped one so we could each try both. 

 The Chicken Tacos

The Fish Tacos



There were refried beans and "sticky rice" on the side.  Both delicious.  The tacos were totes delish, too.

I have to go get ready for the gym in a minute.  I'm tempted to skip the gym and go walk around outside, but I think I'll be disappointed with the temperature, and I'm 100% sure I won't get as good a workout in as little time as I would at the gym.  Sadface.

OMG I <3 HP series, photo #3

Honeydukes

This (clearly) is Honeydukes.  Full of magical treats like chocolate frogs and Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans and such.  It's connected to Zonko's joke shop.  This is one of my favorite pictures from our trip.  The whole park felt sort of whimsically crooked like this. 

Let's all take a moment to be a little too excited that HP 7.1 comes out tomorrow.  HIZAH!