Lessons Learned

Learned two lessons yesterday. One - There's a lot about cooking and chemistry I don't know.

And Two - NEVER cook milk on the stove top if it's starting to go sour. Here's the story behind it.

Before I ever pour milk into a bowl of cereal, I take a whiff to make sure it's still good since we all know there's almost nothing worse than taking a spoonful of delicious cereal goodness with nasty spoiled milk. So yesterday was no exception. I took a whiff and could tell the milk was starting to go a bit sour. It had that kind of fruity smell, but still seemed like it could be salvaged. So I thought, maybe if I heat it on the stove top to make cream of wheat it won't be as noticeable.

HOLY COW I couldn't have been more wrong. Not only did the milk start to curdle, but the smell went from slightly sour fruity smell to straight up PUKE smell and permeated the whole friggin' downstairs. Super dang nasty.

Note to self - never ever ever heat up milk reaching it's expiration date on the stove. ew.

WICKED

I forgot to post about the show...
Well, it was awesome. I had never been to a broadway musical before and was surprised at how awesome it sounded in person. It was like a CD was playing - it was clear and crisp - just amazing. And the story itself was very clever. Nathan really enjoyed it (I knew he would be he was skeptical). Anyone that somewhat enjoys music and the movie the Wizard of Oz will get a kick out of this show. And there are tickets for around $30. And there isn't a bad seat in the house. The only draw back - the songs will be forever stuck in your head...
Seriously, we both wake up with the songs playing in our heads. (I guess it doesn't help that we got the soundtrack). But we stopped listening to it and STILL wake up with those songs in our heads. Granted, they're fun songs, but I don't necesarily want to be singing them all day long. Oh well.

Does it smell like updog in here?

Anyone remember this joke??? CLASSIC and HILARIOUS. I taught it to my niece and nephews while in Washington (a huge hit I might add). Never gets old. For those of you less fortunate to not have ever played this joke here it is...

Ask someone the question, "does it smell like updog in here?"
To which most people will inevitably reply, "what's updog?"
And then you say, "nothing what's up with you?!"
And then laugh your head off while they're scratching their head. LOVE IT!!!! bahahhaahahah

By they way, if you don't get the joke, you're probably not cool enough to use it so I'm not going to explain it. KIDDING. I'll give a hint, instead of spelling DOG, substitute with DAWG...

Washington

We were able to visit some family in Washington a couple weeks ago. Too much fun to write all out. But I wanted to comment on how friggin' clean that place is! Not to mention the greenest place I've ever seen. They don't even have billboards there which was so weird to not see any but made the place look even cleaner. And get this...while sitting outside, we saw a BALD EAGLE just hanging out flying low overhead. I was like "oh cool, check out that hawk!" And then I was like "hmmm, hawk with a white head...never seen one like that before..." And then it quickly registered in my brain what I was actually seeing. Neat-o! I mean, maybe I don't get out much, but never seen one of those in the wild.

5 Years baby!!

Heck yes! Our 5 year anniversary is tomorrow! Wow-wee that sounds like forever but feels like only a couple of years. And it's cool tomorrow cause it's the same day of the week we were married on. So if you're putting that together, we were married on Friday the 13th!!! Good thing we're not superstitious.
So Nate surprised me with tickets to WICKED!! I'm pretty darn excited. I don't know that the seats are that great, but I've got binoculars so I'm good. I'll have to post again after we go tomorrow. Super darn dang crazy excited here people.

Food for Thought - Literally!

I LOVE breakfast. LOVE LOVE LOVE IT! So Saturday we decided to go out to breakfast which I was pretty darn excited about. We try to find cool hole in the wall places and Nate remembered a place he used to go to in Costa Mesa that he liked called the Side Street Cafe, but it had been years since his last visit. Now, I don't know if it changed or if his standards for delicious food were lower back then, but it was so NOT what my anticipation had built up to. Not that he said anything special to build up my anticipation, it's breakfast and so I'm automatically anticipating something delicious. After all, how do you mess up breakfast?? Well, let me tell you how. First, you hang up a three year old award for "greatest restaurant" (or some crap like that) next to where your customers eat. Then you serve them their slightly warm/cold food on plates too small to hold the already small portions so when you try to put syrup on the pancakes you ordered, it would only run right off the plate. Then you'd put two pieces of cold, undercooked bacon that have probably been sitting in a massive pile of cold, undercooked bacon since yesterday and put them on top of the pancakes since there's no room on the plate for them and make sure they taste like crap (I've never met a piece of bacon I didn't like until Saturday, cold or not, as long as the bacon tastes good I'm satisfied). Then you bring out the nasty bright yellow eggs on their own plate 5 minutes later than the pancakes (which is kind of a long time). And then you put an $8 price tag on it.

Now that I'm done complaining, here's your food for thought that occured to me as I ate my sad breakfast. Scrambled eggs. I love me some scrambled eggs and order them every time I eat breakfast. After eating here, I may start ordering a well done fried egg. I'm going to try to make sure I check out other peoples plates with scrambled eggs first to see if they look normal. Here's why: when my cold eggs came, I couldn't help but notice how ridiculously bright yellow they were. So I realized one of two things here - one: they weren't real eggs. Or two: they were real but made up of 90% cholesterol filled egg yolks. What are the chances that a small mom and pop place would waste all those egg yolks from the customers ordering egg white only dishes (which I saw was an option on every egg dish for an additional charge)?? Chances are slim and from the looks of the nasty eggs i got, I would be willing to put money on it. And if that isn't enough to convince you, I used to work at the snack bar at a golf course and know that they used to keep a tub of prescrambled raw eggs and would just use a laddle to scoop out some for the frying pan. Their eggs were good though and i can see the advantage of doing it that way, but I can also see how convenient it would be to dump all the egg yolks in there to save some $$.

I'm really not that picky of an eater, especially breakfast. But I gotta say that the food at girls camp easily would have given this place a run for their money.
What's mind boggling is I read some reviews online that raved about this place. Do yourself a favor and never go there. Hit up The Filling Station in Orange. It will change your life. Amazing food at an excellent price in a cute, quaint part of old town Orange.

Favorite T-shirts

If you ever feel the urge to buy me something, feel free to buy me a t-shirt from this site. Here's a link to one of their shirts that I personally find HILARIOUS!! If you don't think these shirts are funny, you may be arguably dead inside. I love this website. Check out their other shirts.

http://www.palmercash.com/product.asp?3=125


This one is on my list to buy for myself:

http://www.palmercash.com/product.asp?3=1505

Video Games and Fat kids

I'm an avid video gamer. I LOVE video games. I'll literally play for hours sometimes. I've read so many stories about why kids these days are so fat. Everything from the parents over indulging them with food, lack of exercise, school cafeteria food, etc.
Tangent - we all ate the same cafeteria food growing up and were never considered an obese generation. But the fact that many schools have cut PE out of the kids daily routine at school not only creates lazy fat kids, but teaches them there's nothing fun to do outside. They never get introduced to fun sports like soccor, baseball, etc since those are now too "dangerous" at school so unless the parents are into sports, the kids will probably never know what else there is to do.
Back to my point - Video games have also had the finger pointed at them as being a culprit to causing fat kids. Here's the thing, if anything, our generation has spent at least an equal amount of time playing video games, if not more, than today's kids--and we weren't fat as kids because of it. Proof - well if you had brothers, the proof lies there. You can probably remember the countless hours wasted in front of the TV playing games. But here's the real proof - video games have come a LONG way. It wasn't until I think N64 that you could even SAVE your game to pick up where you left off whenever you wanted. All the older systems we grew up on didn't have that capability so it pretty much forced kids to sit for hours and hours in front of the boob tube if they ever wanted to actually beat a game. And every kid I knew beat all the games they had. So there it is everyone! We can now rule out video games as being the culprit to obese kids. You're welcome.

Some people are still raising good kids

I probably won't do the story justice thanks to my crappy memory but it was so nice to hear such a thing I had to pass it on.
My mom lives on a residential street that is abnormally busy for it's location. Her house sits on the street where it starts to curve and has had countless accidents near or in front of her house from people taking the curve too fast. And when all the kids lived at home, we would get a lot of visitors and so long story short... whether it was a visitor backing out of the driveway or a crazy driver going too fast, her mailbox has been hit and taken out too many times to count. Not to mention the pesky turds that would go on mailbox bashing sprees, which most of the time I would guess were friends of Spencer.
Anyway, some months ago a local teen hit her mailbox. Something in his car malfunctioned and caused him to lose control of the steering wheel and caused him to knock over the mailbox. Instead of the usual hit and run, the kid knocked on my mom's door to not only apologize but promised to be back the next day to fix it. She accepted his apology, which was more than enough and didn't really expect to see the kid again. But low and behold, the next morning the kid was out there, with his father near by watching, as the kid not only replaced her whole mailbox, but packed in some cement to help keep it in place. Needless to say, my mom was shocked, as was I when she told me the story. Sad to admit, but shocked was really the feeling. I don't know how many kids would do that. Maybe I don't get out much.
Anyway, cool story.

PINK'S

We love to watch the food network and they have this Drive In's and Diners show that shows all these cool places to eat at all over the US. They showed this place called Pink's in Hollywood. The coolest little place. Been in business for almost 70 years. It's a little hotdog place and for whatever reason, I love hotdogs.. and chili. So I'm a pretty happy camper with a chili dog.


So, Saturday we decided to check it out. You can't see the line in the pics (which wraps around the building), but we waited for 45 minutes and the line didn't even seem that long, so be prepared if you venture out there. They prepare your hotdog right when you order in front of you and then there's only one person ringing up the orders who may have been the slowest moving cashier ever. It was a bit pricey, a long wait, and quite a drive out there. But ssoooooooooo totally worth it, at least once. It was dang tasty and with the added nostalgic we were happy with what we got. Lots of famous people have eaten there and there's autographed photos all over the inside. It was about $17 for us to eat, so like I said, it's a bit pricey, but worth it for at least a one time thing (especially if you like chili dogs).
I got the chili cheese dog, fries and a cream soda.
Nate got the 'Today Show' dog, onion rings and a cream soda. Here's a link to their awesome menu. Check out the Super Specials...

http://www.pinkshollywood.com/pgz/menu.htm

House Walk Throughs

I just remembered this hilarious story and thought I'd share. As you know, when you're looking to buy that perfect house, you do walk throughs to check out the digs. Our realtor, who is a member of our ward, took us out to different homes to check out. He made sure to schedule appts with the owners to make sure we had a convenient time to stop by, something that isn't necessary since realtors have special codes to open those little boxes on the door handles to get in if no one's home, but it's a nice gesture.
So we show up at this one place, knock, no one answers. The upstairs window was open so he kinda shouts, "hello, anyone home?" but no luck. So our realtor opens the door with his special code. Seconds after we step in we heard something upstairs. Couldn't quite make out what it was, thought nothing of it and proceeded to walk into the first room. And then we heard the moaning. Oh yes, you heard me right... moaning. Followed by the sound of the bed. Needless to say, we hurried our butts out of there giggling the whole way. We were there maybe 5 minutes. I'm not sure if the people there knew someone had walked into the house or not--or just didn't care. I gotta say though, it was a bit embarrassing being there with a member of our ward and I don't know that anyone would feel very comfortable in that situation. Kinda the feeling you get when you're watching a movie that starts to show a slightly risk-ay scene and your parents are in the room watching the movie with you and it just gets really awkward and you just wish someone would fast forward, but you don't move because you don't want them to know you're uncomfortable... yeah, that's kinda what it felt like. And then a few weeks later he was called to be bishop. Good stuff.

Boys will be Boys

Saturday we had a at the Montoya's. While there we were treated to some fantastic homemade pizza courtesy of Chris Montoya. Seriously the tastiest. You'll never order in again. Anyway, there were leftovers that everyone was lucky to be sent home with.

So I'm in church thinking about how delicious my lunch will be since I'll be devouring my left over pizza. We get home and I go upstairs to change while Nathan doesn't waste any time getting his 2 slices ready to eat. After I change, I walk into the kitchen to find my 2 slices on a plate. But one of my slices had a huge bite out of it! And it was the first bite, which is my favorite (don't know why but I just love that first bite). So I started badgering my husband and he was adamant that it wasn't him and that it was like that before he took it out of the bag. I was starting to believe him and then scolded him for snaking the two good pieces... and then he could no longer contain his laughter. And I knew that laugh! What a turd! Who the heck takes a bite out of someone elses pizza when they have their own equal amount of pizza! I gave him an earful, but there was no getting through. He was too pleased with himself. He's been warned though. I don't go down without getting the last word. I haven't decided my revenge yet...

By the way, this sort of behavior is soooooo something my brother Spencer would do. I guess I can thank him for grooming me my whole life to be a wife. Without brothers, a girl would be in for the shock of her life when she gets married.