Category: Food

Fun Weekend

Posted on

Last weekend we went to the movies to see Hot Tub Time Machine 2 which was just ok. This weekend it was Kingsman: The Secret Service. What’s funny is how I’m always looking more forward to seeing the comedy but it’s the action film I end up liking. I hadn’t even heard of the Kingsman movie before but Joe and E wanted to see it and I’m glad we did. It had some really cool fighting scenes and the music was awesome. Once the library gets the soundtrack I plan on borrowing it.

Saturday evening we went over to my parents’ for dinner and to play Apples to Apples.

Apples to Apples

Brother # 1 and I agreed later on that it doesn’t hold a candle to Cards Against Humanity. Maybe if I had never played the latter before I would have enjoyed Apples to Apples more but I felt like it was pretty weak in comparison. But I really don’t want to play Cards Against Humanity with E. Brother # 1 was trying to make a case since E is now 17 and has probably played the game before with his friends but it still would make me uncomfortable. Even though he’s not my kid biologically, I still see him as a child I need to protect. Plus Brother # 1 takes vulgarity to a whole ‘nother level and often lacks a filter. I don’t want E to be fully exposed to that at his age. Maybe when he’s 21 or something, haha.

It was a fun night, though, and we left around 11 pm. With the hour drive home and the time change for Daylight Savings we didn’t get to bed until 1 am. Yikes! As a result we only got about five hours of sleep so Sunday after we did some grocery shopping we just relaxed and watched tv the rest of the day.

Today I decided to try a new crockpot recipe and am making stuffed cabbage. I’ll link to it later if it comes out good.

College Buddies, Free Food, & Petting Snakes

Posted on

Joe had to work on Friday so I spent a good portion of the day spending time with the rats and cleaning all their cages.

Before doing that, though, I called an old college friend of mine and we had a nice hour long conversation. We hadn’t spoken since last July when I drove out to visit her and meet her kids. She’s very busy with three young kids and doesn’t do social media so it’s tough to keep in touch. I sent her a Christmas card which had triggered her to write me a very sweet letter that included asking me to call her. She thought I had changed my number since she had texted me awhile back but didn’t hear back. I never got those texts though so I’m not sure what happened. I wish we were able to see each other more often. She’s one of the very few people I feel comfortable enough around to be myself and not feel weird.

Saturday it was alternating between raining and snowing so we spent most of the day at home just watching stuff on Hulu and Netflix. We got a free two month trial of Hulu for buying the Chromecast and I signed up for a month trial of Netflix. Neither seems to have any current movies we haven’t already seen, but they are great for binge-watching old TV sitcoms and clips from SNL. Netflix is especially great for watching comedy specials, so we watched the latest from Chelsea Peretti, Aziz Ansari, and Bill Burr. We also watched a movie called Peep World that wasn’t as good as the trailer promised. So many familiar faces too, but it seems like that’s how most of the IFC films go. For instance, I had been dying to see Skeleton Twins starring Kristen Wig and Bill Hader ever since I heard about it, which we rented it from Redbox the first week it was out. While it was better than Peep World, because it actually had a plot, it still was pretty disappointing. I guess I just prefer action and comedy movies instead of weird independent film dramadies.

We did leave the house briefly to get some groceries at Aldi, pick up Joe’s repaired sweaters from the tailor, and grab some Qdoba. They sent me a BOGO coupon for my birthday and a coupon for free chips and guacamole because it was also my anniversary signing up for their rewards program, and they let us use both coupons together which was nice. They were also extremely generous with the food portions, almost too much. I decided to try the pulled pork burrito bowl and there was too much pulled pork in it! It’s been awhile since we’ve eaten there so I was surprised to learn that you can get their three cheese queso and guacamole on your burrito for no extra charge. Needless to say, I had them load mine up and I swear it weighed a pound! It was so filling that I didn’t end up eating dinner, though, so that helped a bit with the calories.

Our first stop on Sunday was at Jamba Juice so I could get my free birthday drink. I also got two $15 gift cards from Groupon for only $15 total, so we used one of them for Joe’s drink. Then we headed over to the arboretum since we had always talked about seeing it after a fresh snowfall which had happened the night before. The road in the arboretum was a bit slippery in places and one of the cars ahead of us actually got stuck. Everyone in “line” had to back up so they could back up to try and make it up the small hill they were getting stuck on. Three bicyclists who were sharing the road actually had to push their vehicle to help them gain traction.

After that we decided to leave instead of visiting the other half of the arboretum. We ended up going to Willowbrook Wildlife Center. I love the two resident gray rats and got some cute photos of them.

Rats

One of the volunteers offered to take one rat out so I could get a better photo of her since their aquarium glass was smudged, but she was so hyper she would barely stay still! Her fur was so soft though! I also can’t believe how small she is compared to my boys especially since she’s full grown.

Rat

After that the same volunteer brought out a milk snake that I was able to pet. It felt a lot softer than I was expecting! Unfortunately I couldn’t get a great photo of it because it too wouldn’t stop moving.

Milk Snake

We picked up some litter from Petco, some carrier oil from Whole Foods (to be used with the jasmine essential oil Joe gave me for Christmas), and then had lunch at Noodles & Company (free bowl of noodles for my birthday). Gluttons that we are, we headed over to Red Mango after lunch to cash in my free $5 of yogurt they put on your membership card for your birthday.

So if anyone is keeping track, so far I’ve consumed the following free items for my birthday – Red Robin burger, Qdoba burriot bowl, Jamba Juice five fruit frenzy, a bowl of pesto cavatappi at Noodles & Company, and frozen yogurt. The irony? My one goal this year is to lose weight. Hahaha!

New Years

Posted on

Well, it was definitely last minute, but I was able to get my home sleep study in before the new year! Tuesday after work I picked up the equipment and slept with all this crap strapped to me that night to measure my breathing and whatnot. I slept like shit thanks to that and some stuff going on with Joe’s son that had my mind going at 120 mph.

After work on New Years Eve we returned the equipment to the sleep center and had dinner at a favorite nearby Thai restaurant (Happy Elephant) which we don’t get the opportunity to visit often enough. I think their main entree prices may have gone up, though, and I didn’t feel that the portions were large enough considering. I think I’d stick to their crab rangoon in the future as they are AMAZING. Hands down the best crab rangoon I’ve ever had.

After dinner we headed over to my parents house to ring in the new year with them and both my brothers. We worked on my parents new computer briefly and then ate a second dinner. We also got a chance to play Aggravation which we haven’t done in awhile. We didn’t end up leaving until a little after midnight.

We slept in on New Years Day but eventually made our way to the mall in the early afternoon so I could cash in on my free birthday burger at Red Robin. We also hit up Kohls as is our tradition but neither of us ended up buying anything. In fact, we didn’t end up spending anything at all since I also had a gift card for Red Robin.

I feel like I’ve lost the ability to shop just for the sake of shopping which is definitely a good thing for our bank account. It’s not like I need more jewelry or clothes anyway. I’m glad I’m so picky or I probably would spend more.

Christmas Eve

Posted on

Merry Christmas!

Last night we picked up E on the way to my parents’ house. But before that we stopped at Portillo’s to pick up some beef and salads. My mom wasn’t in the mood to cook so she asked us to get that while she had my brother pick up KFC. I was impressed how Portillo’s handled all the people picking up catering orders – they had a table set up with various stations where you checked in, paid, and people packed a nice box with your food. Everyone couldn’t have been nicer! It never ocurred to me how many people would want Portillo’s for Christmas until yesterday. Unfortunately, the beef didn’t end up tasting like a classic Portillo’s beef sandwich so I’m not sure I’d go that route in the future.

Once Brother # 2’s girlfriend got there we worked on getting the food ready to eat. As always, there was still more food than necessary so I couldn’t try everything, but what I did have was really good.

Surprisingly, my mom got really emotional over us buying her and my dad a computer. At first she thought it was a toaster oven based on the box size, so that was awesome unintentionally tricking her like that. I’m pretty sure when we bought them their last computer she guessed it right off the bat which kinda sucked. We grabbed their old computer so we can retrieve all their music files and whatnot from it, burn it to DVD, and then transfer it to their new computer next week when we’re over there for New Years.

Crazy BINGO Gifts
Crazy BINGO gifts before I wrapped them a week ago

Crazy BINGO was a bit of a letdown simply because no one wanted to steal except my mom who stole my dad’s present much to his dismay. They were both getting kinda angry over the whole thing which was funny since neither present was anything exceptional. My dad got the dollar store electronic candles, and my mom got the decorate your own reindeer. Brother # 2 got the ping pong game, Brother # 1 got the Christmas sign, R (Brother #2’s girlfriend) got the Pot of Gold, E got the pickle in the plastic canister, I got the coal in Santa’s pants, and Joe got the paddle with the $5 gift card (and he didn’t cheat because only I know what was in each present and even I forgot and grabbed a lame gift).

My brothers seemed to like the gifts I got them. I got Brother # 1 a Fart Ninja t-shirt and some candy (including five packs of Super Mario gummies that only come out around Christmas) and I gave Brother # 2 some hot cooca, candy, a “lens pen” to clean his camera’s lenses. Brother # 1 tried to give us a card with $60 in it and I made him take back $20 of it (I tried to make him take back $40 but he refused). He still doesn’t get that the whole reason I stopped the gift exchange years ago is because of what he just did. I don’t want someone to hand me cash. It means nothing. No thought is put into a gift of cash. I only started giving my brothers small gifts last year because I missed buying for more than two people every year. I enjoy finding stuff people would like. It’s too bad it’s not reciprocated. *sigh*

Anyway, overall the night went pretty well and even though it didn’t quite live up to my expectations it was a good time.

Spending moolah & my leaky Jetta

Posted on1 Comment

We are bleeding money over here!

I decided to go ahead and buy my parents a computer for Christmas this year and it’s turned into a bit of a hassle. I ordered an ASUS from NewEgg at the beginning of the month. It arrived a week later but I waited a week to unpack it so I could configure it, and then learned the damn thing wouldn’t even turn on! It was like the power button wasn’t actually connecting with anything inside the case. I would have opened it to investigate but that would void the warranty so instead I sent it back to NewEgg for a refund.

We ended up buying a Dell from Staples last Sunday instead. It was about $27 more since we had to pay tax, but has 2.5x the memory and the hard drive is twice the size, so it ended up being a great deal once the associate forced the system to give us the price advertised in the sales ad. Initially, he seriously asked me if I was ok paying $50 more than the price in the ad since the computer was giving him trouble. I told him absolutely not and that he should get a manager to give us the correct price, which he did. We had to have it shipped to our house since none of the computers in the ad were actually available in store. Hmmm… and you wonder why these office stores are having a rough time financially. Anyway, at least the new computer works. I installed Firefox and a bazillion Windows updates on it. Now I just need to install TeamViewer and test that it works with our PC so we can help them remotely when issues arise.

This week we spent money buying gift cards with bonuses to be used during the coming year. We bought:

Two $10 Savers gift certificates and received a free $5 certificate that is good through January 10th.

One $25 Buona Beef gift card and received a free $5 certificate that is good through the end of February.

One $100 Lou Malnati’s gift card and received a free $25 gift certificate that is good through the end of June.

Two $25 Culver’s gift cards and received two free value basket coupons that are good through February 22nd.

So in all we spent $195 but got approximately $53 worth of freebies which equates to a 27% discount at places we would have spent money at throughout the year anyway. I call that a win-win! The challenge for some might be to use those certificates before they expire (something each establishment is counting on), but I just added reminders to an app on my phone so we don’t forget.

We also hit up Omaha Steaks to use up the gift cards I had accumulated. We got $100 of food for $52 out of pocket. Included in our assortment are some steaks and pork chops I’ve never tried before, so I’m looking forward to that. If you would have asked me what I thought of Omaha Steaks a few years ago I would have told you they sound overpriced and I’d never buy anything of theirs, but after years of getting gift cards for Christmas for their products, I think overall they’re a pretty good value. If you think about what you’d spend on a nice steak dinner at a restaurant, they are actually more affordable. We really enjoy their burgers, hot dogs, and Italian sausages too. The only thing I’ve tried that I would caution against are their chicken cordon blue bites. They are just terrible! I actually ended up throwing away half of them. My mom gets some from Market Day that are eons better.

During all our running around today, Joe noticed my car was leaking fluid, so we brought it to the local dealership for a diagnosis. They told us the thermostat needs to be replaced and they wanted nearly $700 to do it. Joe told them no thanks, ordered the part from AutoZone, and will replace it himself which will save us over $500 even after paying the dealership $66 to look at the car. I guess it’s a good thing that a) I’m only working two days next week and b) my commute is so short (2.5 miles each way) I can safely drive the car before it’s fixed since it’s not leaking enough coolant to cause the engine to overheat.

I’ll be glad when my birthday comes and goes in early January since then we’ll be done with the spending for awhile!