See the resemblance?
SOUP-er Friday 1 month Anniverary!
I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for a month! I expected to make 1 or 2 soups and get too busy so I’m really excited! For this SOUP-er Friday I wanted to expand my horizons and go outside my comfort zone a bit. I decided on Coq Au Vin (chicken braised in red wine).
Traditionally, its made with an old rooster but since I didn’t have access to an old rooster we choose to make it with all dark meat. I’m not a big fan of chicken, and when I do eat chicken I generally don’t eat dark meat so I was a little concerned that I wouldn’t like this soup.
But I shouldn’t have worried. If there is one thing I am learning for making stuff at home is that low slow cooking is like deep frying something. No matter what you put in, it comes out tender, juicy, and delicious!!
SOUP-er Fridays #3 Omnibus
Last week me and The Other came down with the flu. We still did SOUP-er Fridays, but switched to an easier soup than what was originally planned. We ended up making Cheddar Broccoli soup, which I normally don’t like, but this was good. Better than the Tomatoe Cream soup, but still not as good as the Beef Barley Soup.
Over the weekend I had a cat show. In between selling my own wares I was able to shop for some items for me. The best part of the show was when I found a show that stole silly kitty hats! Everyone who knows me will know how much I love 1. – wearing hats, and 2. – dressing up my cats. It’s the best of both worlds!! I also found another booth that sold human hats so I got one for myself as well (see point #1)
There was another shop that sold embroidered shirts…and embroidered toilet paper. Now there is something you have to buy when you see it. This is something rappers would have in their house – Ridiculous!!
I also found another use for my metal Starbucks card – is there anything that card can’t do!
I ate dinner Saturday night with my cousin and her husband at a Vietnamese restaurant. I had never tried Vietnamese food before but I really liked it. I had the Beef Rice Noodle Soup. The serving was HUGE and I had enough for 3 leftovers.
SOUP-er Fridays #2
So I’m a little late in posting this but it was Valentine’s Day! And I may have had a glass or two of wine…….
Regardless – here it is now! The second installment of SOUP-er Fridays! This week we made Creamy Tomato Soup. It was good, I ate it with grilled cheese (duh!) The soup was a little thicker than I like of my tomato soups – almost like eating pasta sauce! For the leftovers, The Other recommended I add more cream and that helped out a bit to make it more soupy and palatable.
And special thanks to Jackie for my Christmas gift of a PlatyPreserve!!! It can hold a full bottle of wine (although this time it only had to hold half). No messing with corks and its doing an awesome job of keeping the slight carbonation in my delicious Moscato.
Celebration Day!
“The Other” and I love an excuse to celebrate. We celebrate good days, bad days, and days where nothing happened. We are always buying each other little gifts and treats so although we don’t celebrate “Valentine’s Day” in the traditional sense, we do use it as an excuse for a celebration! This year I think we did pretty good for each other:
Backpack Tote from Love41. This is absolutly amazing and will last for a million years. I will probably do a separate post on this awesome company.
A chocolate box with chocolate pretzels inside! The Other wants all future storage containers in our house to be made of chocolate.
Dinosaur planters – they are real plants!
Deep fried peanuts – surprisingly delicious! (but what deep fried thing isn’t delicious…)
Some gifts for the kitties!
Brutus asks “Won’t you be my Valentine?”
Meeting Notes
I get pulled into a lot of meetings – some are necessary, some are productive, but most are just people passing the blame or telling each other how awesome you are. I found these while cleaning up over the weekend – I’ll let you guess which type of meeting these are from. Names have been changed to protect the “innocent”.
SOUP-er Friday!
I found this magazine last time I went to Mariano’s. I really love soup so I picked it up and went home to mark which ones I would like to try. Upon handing the magazine to “The Other” so he could begin preparing me my food he asked if it wouldn’t have been easier just to mark the soups I DIDN’T want to try. Perhaps – but that isn’t my style!
After further discussion in which I told him that every Friday we would cook a soup from the magazine and he rolled his eyes I picked the first soup – Beef Barley Soup. Probably my all time favorite soup.
I had a lot of fun shopping for the ingredients for this soup and couldn’t wait to try it. It was going to be a long soup – especially since we opted to make the stock from scratch rather than buy it in a box/can
The first step was to soften the onions and brown the bones and beef for the stock. It was a long process – especially the bones.
After that you added some more ingredients (red wine, bay leaf, etc) and let the stock simmer for 2 hours!
Once the stock was done, you strained out the onions, beef and bones, keeping the beef aside to add to the soup later. Ideally we would have let the stock cool (at least overnight if not longer) so we could de-fat it. However this was dinner and I was way to excite to care about a little extra fat or a slightly foggy broth.
The other ingredients for the soup were barley (obviously), mushrooms, carrots, onions, diced tomatoes, thyme, and the beef!
The beef was delicious after being slow cooked for 2 hours. Even with little to no seasoning it was fantastic! I can tell you I ate more than a little while prepping the other ingredients. Brutus like it as well.
Once the ingredients went it, it was another hour of simmering until the soup was ready. Luckily I filled up on all that beef during prep 🙂
The final product was delicious. My only complaint was that the beef to vegetable ratio was off (we had added all the beef since we didn’t have another use for it, but you were only supposed to add 2 cups). I know its a silly complaint – too much beef? how can that be? But here we are. I think in the future I am going to serve it over some egg noodles or mashed potatoes. Carbs will help – carbs always help!
Brutus on the other hand had no complaints except that he didn’t get enough beef. Here is him in a sleepy stupor
Watch Haul
I love watches almost as much as I love kittens and hats and shoes. I got a couple of new additions recently that I am excited to show off
The first couple I got for Christmas. The green Freelook is from my parents and the acetate Nixon is from Bri. They are both pretty awesome. The Freelook has a rubbery band so it stretches and never gets too tight. The Nixon I enjoy more than I thought I would – especially after years of teasing my brother for buying only Nixon watches. It’s very light, classic but not boring, and due to the color pallet goes with a wide variety of clothes.
The next watches I picked up from Macy’s one Friday evening. I was actually in there for two different watches (the Lacoste and Kors shown later) but those weren’t available in store. So we got to shopping and ended up with a Diesel and a Guess. Neither of these are brand I would normally buy but I love the steampunky look of both and the Diesel is ridiculously large and a lot of fun to wear. You can’t tell from this image but the Guess is actually a rose gold which is a color category I have been looking to fill for sometime.
These last two watches were what I went into the store for but ended up having to order online.
The Lacoste was mainly to replace my other Freelook watch which is all white and sparkly. I wear it so much though it is getting worn out and who doesn’t love a rainbow alligator!! The second watch is a Michael Kors and is a kitty face with sparkly eyes which is absolutely amazing! You can’t really see well in this image but there are actually little kitty ears as well. Its adorable! kitties!
Does this discount card make me look old?
My AARP cards arrived in the mail today – time to start raking in the discount!!!!!
So what this tells me is my online browsing and buying habits have pegged me as over 50 – super. I did check the AARP discounts site and my first thought was “these are all deals for old people” but I guess discounts at Denny’s and the Geek Squad are what I have to look forward to in my future.
Freehand Nail Art
I have been using nail stickers which are cool and I am getting better at applying them straight. They go on dry and with the addition of a top coat (Thanks for the tip Bri!) they do last a lot longer. However most of the designs are so intricate that you can tell they aren’t painted.
Yesterday I wanted to try some nail art on my own. I tried some ideas but they didn’t work as I thought (basically sponging one color over another). I then searched YouTube and found this helpful video: http://youtu.be/eFtkkiV8HrI
This is my first attempt at freehand nail art. My right hand isn’t as good as my left due to my right-handedness, but overall for a first attempt I think its pretty good. I am excited to try more things in the future and I will post when I do.
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