Cake Mail

We've been streaming the PBS series, Mind of a Chef, on Netflix.  The first season follows chef David Chang, of Momofuku.  Momofuku has a sister restaurant called Milk Bar, which specializes in cakes, pies, and cookies.  Some of the sweets are featured in the series.

So, for Chris's upcoming birthday, I ordered him some goodies from Milk.  The cake came on ice next day air from Brooklyn.  It is an amazing Pistachio Cake with lemon curd.

A total indulgence and well worth it to usher Chris into his 40th year!  

Monday Zoey

Zoey all cozy in her new bed.

Zoey & Zoe

Zoey went to Fort Collins with us this weekend too.  She has a little friend Cavashon also named Zoe (or Little Zoe, as we like to call her).  We thought it would be fun to socialize Zoey with another dog that is more her size.  But, Little Zoe is much more of a passive scaredy cat than Zoey is, believe it or not!

Zoey was really interested in playing with Little Zoe.  Zoey would spin in circles in front of Little Zoe and play bow but Little Zoe wasn't having any of it.  She would hide and pretty much looked terrified for our entire visit.

Little Zoe hates it:

Zoey was such a good girl:

Fort Collins with Friends

We drove up to Fort Collins yesterday to hang out with our friends, Chad & Richelle.  Chris works with Chad and they are the couple we went to Italy with - the boys worked while the girls saw the sights.  We have been trying to have a reunion for a long while, and this was finally the weekend that worked.

Our first stop of the day was Odell Brewing Company where we ordered a couple taster trays of beer and took the Brewery Tour.  The weather was beautiful and they have a great outdoor seating area, the best of all the breweries.  Overall, Odell is our favorite Ft. Collins Brewery.

Here we are on the tour with the fermenters:

We moved on to New Belgium Brewing next.  We were especially looking for sour beers on this stop, which are Erica's favorite.  There weren't any exciting new beers, but we did buy a bottle of La Folie, an old favorite, to split between the four of us.  It is a wood-aged sour brown that has flavors of sour patch kids, cherry, and chocolate.

The third stop was a Cider Bar called Scrumpy's.  This was a new place for us.  We tried the Rasbanero, a raspberry jalapeño cider.  It was good, a lot of raspberry with a bit of a burn on the finish. We split a pint - the flavors are a lot for one person.  

The fourth stop wasn't planned, but we saw a new chocolate shop and it lured the girls in.  The boys weren't necessarily opposed either.  Nuance Chocolate has been open for just two weeks.  We talked with the owner and he described the chocolate making process with good smelling visuals of cocoa beans in different stages throughout the process.  We tried two chocolate flights - flavored chocolates and single origin chocolates.  

Chad and Richelle before we started our first flight of chocolate:

The sea salt and coffee flavored chocolates were favorites, but the single origin chocolates were amazing.  The chocolate from Nicaragua and Madagascar were the winners for us.  Nicaragua was herby and earthy while the Madagascar was tart and fruity.  The flavors are inherent to the cocoa beans from those areas.  It was a really cool experience.

The Forge Publick House and Black Bottle were the last two stops before heading back to Chad and Richelle's for the night.  The Black Bottle was full of  lots of men with some serious beards.  We are talking Facial hair ala ZZ Top.  Turns out it was the Remington Beard Boss Let it Grow Tour.   They had a scheduled stop at the Black Bottle on their drive across America to the World Beard and Mustache Championships in Portland, OR.  

As we were leaving, one of the beard guys turns to Erica and says he has a weird question for her: "Did you win a Bright Futures Scholarship with your twin sister?"  Erica had indeed.  This guy, Mike or Mark or Matt (?) Krueger,  said he did too.  How weird is that!?  What is even more unbelivable is Erica doesn't have any recollection of any of the other recipients (besides Emily, of course).  All of the award winners were in a room together for a couple hours at most over 14 years ago, so how he remembered is quite astonishing.  This guy works for Remington in Madison, WI and was taking pictures of the festivities.

With that, we headed back to the house - we were wiped out from the full and fun day.  Fort Collins has gotten a lot cooler since we moved away 3 years ago.

Good to be Back

Hi, Erica here. I made a trip back to Kansas for alumni weekend this year.

I spent the morning catching up with everyone in my old department at the University of Kansas Hospital and then went to lunch with one of my former co-workers.

I am speaking on a panel this afternoon - "The Impact of Health Care Reform on Consumers & Providers"

In the meantime, I am hanging out on campus, checking out the Bookstore, and getting some reading in.

Wish me luck!

Sunday Football

I've dropped to 3rd place in my fantasy football league.  There's a chance I can pull into second if I win my match up this week.  

I made a last minute change before the Packer game on Thursday night and benched Cordarelle Patterson from the Vikings and picked up B. Quick from the Rams to take his place.  So far it has worked in my favor. C Pat only earned 0.80 fantasy points in Thursday's game, now Quick just needs to perform.  He is supposed to have a big game.

Here is my line-up for the week.  If you are watching any of these games, cheer on these guys:

National Taco Day

We walked down the street to have lunch at Pinche Tacos this afternoon.  It just happens to be National Taco Day.

Also, anyone get a chuckle out of the name of the restaurant?  It is our favorite place for street tacos.

Cube Steak

We bought a quarter of a cow this summer.  This is our favorite recipe for cube steak.

http://www.food.com/recipe/easy-cube-steak-311584

Not a Bad Day at the Office

A group of work people took the morning to hike Carpenter Peak at Roxborough State Park in Littleton.  The hike was 6 miles round trip.  It was a beautiful day, although pretty chilly at the start, and the views were awesome.

We are all participating in a challenge to get 10,000 steps a day for 100 days, and everyone is trying to reach Platinum status in our work wellness program.  We all had our fitbits or pedometers on to capture our steps toward these goals.

Grrrrrrr

I got home tonight and Chris had just fed Zoey, but soon after she was standing near her food bowl, and growling.  

As an aside, we just switched dog food from Wellness to Nature's Logic.  Zoey lost interest in the Wellness and we had to add pumpkin to her food to get her to eat.  She loves the Nature's Logic.  It is all natural and supposedly this company can account for exactly where every ingredient in the food comes from, per our local pet supply store.  So far we recommend it.

Anyway, we thought she was still hungry and maybe we need to feed more of the new food, so Chris gave her a bit more.  She was okay for awhile and played some, but soon she was back at her bowl, just standing there and growling.  It's not a mean growl, more like an "I want something" growl, if that makes sense.

Now we both go in to investigate what the issue is.  Is she really still hungry?  Does she need water?  Is there a moth in the house that she is after?  Oh no, we found a single piece of kibble under her raised dog bowl.  That was it.  Just one little nugget she couldn't reach.

We gave her the piece of food and now all is right with the world again.