Binge Eating in the Name of Love

As promised, I am finally posting some pictures from Valentine's Day. It just felt wrong to go through February, the month of love, without paying a little homage. Plus, I love Valentine's Day and I love my amazing husband.

To start off the day, Josh surprised me and took me up to Evergreen to go ice skating on an actual frozen lake. I have to admit I was a little nervous when he told me to bundle up because we would be doing an outside activity (on a cold/slightly snowy day). It ended up being a ton of fun and luckily, neither of us got hurt, depite our poor skating skills.

When we got back home we started working on dinner. Josh bought two huge filet mignons, plus salmon, tuna, and octopus to make our own sushi. The sushi took a while to make, but it turned out fabulous. During the preparation, we discovered that our puppy Riley also likes sushi. We mostly fed her scraps, but I did make one tiny octopus nigiri just for her.

Here is a picture of the spread. I totally binged. Everything tasted amazing. I swear the filet Josh cooked for me was the best steak I have ever had. He cooked the filets in butter with crushed peppercorns. Then, he made a congac peppercorn cream sauce to go on top. It was to die for! I know it seems silly for me to have taken pictures of the food, but a lot of work went in to the meal and it was truly one to remember. Plus, its my blog so I can do whatever I want :)

For the finishing touch: a crepe cake. Josh made this all on his own. . . . from scratch. It is a cake made up of several layers of crepes. Between each layer is home-made whipped cream and sliced strawberries that were macerated in Amaretto. He served it with warm nutella on top. It was delicious!

Hogs, Hobos, and Earth Raping

Sorry. I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ve been meaning to post some pictures from Valentine’s Day, but I haven’t loaded them onto the computer yet. So, instead of discussing Valentine’s, I’m going to share a few funny things that I saw/heard while I was in Pueblo for a conference recently.

1. My uncle's housekeeper vacuumed up a piece of poop and it took hours for my uncle to clean the vacuum.

2. I was stalked. Yes, stalked. A man I met during the DARCA (Ditch and Reservoir Company Alliance, sounds exciting right?) conference last week exchanged cards with me the first day. By that evening I had a call from him on my cell. I didn’t answer because it was late, but I listened to his message which went roughly like this, “Hi Erin, we met earlier today. I looked for you at happy hour and didn’t see you. I also missed you at dinner. I really want to talk to you about some items of water importance. Please find me tomorrow.” It was a little weird, but my work is weird in general, so I looked for the guy the next day. When I found him he told me he had looked for me at breakfast and even called the hotel to see if I was staying in one of the rooms. Luckily, I spent the night with my parents! It turns out, in the end, he was only seeking me out to tell me I was raping the earth and sucking it dry. In sum: Erin, you are a terrible person and you should quit your job. Isn’t that crazy!! I have to give the guy some credit, he was really committed to conveying his message.


3. The people living across the street from my parents have a full grown cow living in a dog pen. I’m pretty sure they are trying to fatten him up so they can eat him. If they aren’t, I have no idea what they are doing.


4. One of my parent’s other neighbors are raising a monster hog as a pet. . . . . or to eat people (like in movies). The thing is enormous!! It is really impressive (and scary) when it stands near its heat lamp at night. It’s shadow is like a nightmare.


5. I don’t know about you, but a few times a year I start thinking about what I would do if I won the Powerball Lottery (it’s up to about $150M right now). I usually think about things like buying a new house, paying off my current house, going on vacation, etc. My family members mentioned similar things, but when Josh’s turn rolled around he pointed out what a ridiculous amount of money $150 million actually is and that you would get really bored spending it. . . . unless you decided to really have some fun. These are his plans, in no particular order:


a. Build a ball pit and release snakes into it


b. Buy a fishing boat. Go deep sea fishing. Catch a shark and then blow it up with dynamite.

c. Learn to ride a bull. If that doesn’t work out, learn to ride a cow that doesn’t mind wearing fake horns to look like a bull.

d. Buy a fleet of scooters and then hire an army of hobos to ride them and do his bidding.

Isn’t it funny when you get a glimpse into someone’s brain. . . .


P.S. Josh doesn’t really want to kill a shark, but tell me there’s not a more dangerously appealing combination than sharks and dynamite???

Damn those Tag-A-Longs!

Something both wonderful and terrible happened to me yesterday—my Girl Scout cookie order arrived. I think I broke a record with the time it took me to tear open one of the boxes. It had to be less than a minute. I think I have already eaten 10 cookies. I can’t seem to control myself. I love the Tag-A-Longs!! Chocolate, Peanut Butter, crunchy cookie!! How can you go wrong. . . . well I guess if they used the salmonella peanut butter. . . . but I feel good, so I’m going to assume they are safe. Well, relatively safe. I don’t think consuming 70 calories/cookie is a great idea, but it could be worse. Plus, in order to combat the cookie intake, I purchased a new work-out DVD: Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred. It had a lot of good reviews, so I figured I might as well try it out. I turned it on last night to see what it was all about and was impressed. It incorporates cardio, strength and ab exercises and compresses everything into 20 minutes—and believe me, you are moving the entire 20 minutes. Needless to say, I’m excited to get shredded (a ridiculous term I can’t wait to start using on a regular basis).

Le Coq Monsieur

Happy Friday! I thought some funny animal pics might be good for a day like today. I took these pictures at the National Western Stockshow a few weeks ago. I call this one Le Coq Monsieur. Don't confuse this with le croque monsieur, which is a french grilled cheese sandwich.

These guys are too funny! They look like they belong in Fraggle Rock or something. I call them the poofy ball chickens.

They twirl like a dream. . .

My friend Catherine's birthday was this past weekend. For her birthday celebration she invited Josh and I to come to the "Off the Clock" show at Lannie's Clocktower Cabaret. I had heard a lot of positive feedback about this place (and I love birthdays), so we agreed to come. . . . I was not disappointed! The show was a blast! We saw several burlesque performances--all very unique and fun. My favorite was choreographed to Cher's song Half Breed and included a feather head-dress, papoose, and lots of tassle twirlin'. There was also a performer who did an entire routine while twisting and flipping from two long pieces of fabric hanging from the ceiling (did I mention the performance lasted through the duration of Bohemian Rhapsody. . . and she was taking her clothes off at the same time?) Between the burlesque there was also some singing, comedy, puppets, accordian playing, and commentary from the two hosts: Fannie Spankings and Pierre Jean-Pierre St. Pierre. I have to admit, I have a crush on Fannie Spankings and her sparkly red lipstick. Josh was certain she looked and sounded like Rachel Ray. Either way, she was funny, charming and kept the crowd cheering. Everything was very tasteful and fun. We had a great time and I can't wait to go back again some time. It turns out, burlesque is big in Denver and it is gaining popularity all of the U.S., so keep your eyes open for a show near you.

A little sugar

and

A little spice ;)