What a Real Kitchen Looks Like

I had a fairly low stress Friday at work, Shrimp still has her nose to the grindstone (crappy thing about working from home!), the dogs are fed and I'm Facebooked out for the night.  Anyone else would probably flip on the TV, go for a long walk (update on DC area weather: GORGEOUS!) or call up another buddy and head out for a few drinks.

I decided to make some soup "from scratch" (the loosest use of term I could ever imagine) again.  That meant I threw a can of crushed tomatoes & basil in the blender with milk and heated it up on the stove.

About half the pictures on my phone are of food.  Generally this is food I have prepared.  I have a confession, though.  It's not always pretty (gasp!).  Compact that with the fact that our kitchen is smaller than most of my friends' closets (and includes our washer and drier), and you get the following...

Step 1: Make a mess in your already-messy kitchen just by opening a canned good. (Check).

Lesson 1: Totally go with low sodium tomatoes if you want to embark on this "recipe."  

This soup probably turned out saltier than Campbell's.

Step 2: Manage to get crumbs and "soup" splatter everywhere.  Think about cleaning it up, get distracted by something in the other room, and return to a foamy overflowing pot.

Lesson 2: Let's be honest here, I will never learn from this, and will continue to be an absent-minded cook.
Note to self: The clock is still over a half hour off from the last power outage.  

Consider changing with daylight savings this weekend.  Or consider keeping the same.  Meh.

Step 3: Grate fresh Parmesan to make it look like you put effort into the meal.  Take a picture of the not-so-attractive product.  Scald tongue trying to finally eat something before it cools.

Lesson 3: Meh.  At least it's better than take out.

Clearly my food photography, kitchen design, attention span and Friday nights need some work.

~Tater

Another Day in DC: Getting Awkward with Our Forefathers

The skies around the capitol region cleared up this weekend and we had some beautiful weather again.  Chilly, but beautiful.  We chose to spend that time yesterday napping with the back door open, but today we headed into DC to see a couple more monuments up close.

We started out at the Lincoln Memorial.  After we visited Ford's Theater a couple months ago Shrimp has been somewhat obsessed with this guy.  I can't blame her, Abe was a pretty cool dude and I can't imagine where this country would be if someone didn't have the guts he did.  We snapped a couple shots, including the obligatory hey-stranger-here's-my-iPhone pic.

Shrimp & me at the foot of freedom

 He must have felt bad when he saw us struggling...

 Standard awkward self portrait... this is what we look like in real life

 I'm not going to save you from the same shots you always see, because I had to take them too :)  Shrimp's are much better (she was using her real camera and I was just dinking around with the iPhone), but mine are already loaded onto the computer.

At the foot of the Lincoln Memorial

 Lincoln's Profile... kind of a cool angle

It might seem creepy that I took a pic of a random little boy, but I thought this was a perfect "photo journalistic" moment.  I love seeing little kids get so excited about history.  He was reading every single word of Lincoln's second inaugural address.

Right after we saw that cute little kid is when things got awkward.  No, mom didn't scold us for snapping a picture of her kid, we maybe seemed even creepier.  We walked into the bookshop to the right of where that little boy is standing and I must have pressed something on my phone, because all of a sudden it was like we had our own theme and entrance booming, "2homos.com.  It's not a porn site, we just like the name..."

With music.

Yep.

Apparently I had pressed the "music" app and the last thing I had been listening to was this hilarious podcast, and the intro to it came blaring out of the speakers of my little iPhone.  To say a couple people turned their heads is an understatement. That bookshop is small and that phone volume was jacked all the way up.  Good thing I'm hard to embarrass :)

So, we headed to the Jefferson Memorial.  Thomas Jefferson is by far my favorite politician of all times.  I know he wasn't perfect, the man used pure logic and I really appreciate that :)  During our cold walk there I snapped this pretty pic of the sky.

 Look at that beautiful blue sky over the Jefferson Memorial!

By the time we got to the memorial we were cold.  It was beautiful but windy next to the water, so we kind of hurried through this one.

My man, Jeff up close and personal

 I have a bunch of pictures of the Washington Monument from different angles.  

This one is from inside the Jefferson Memorial.

After all that walking and cold, we or course needed to fill our bellies with something warm and delicious, so we hit the famous Ben's Chili Bowl.  Yum!

 Inside Ben's

Chili dog, chili half smoke, fries, and sodas (which we never get!)

Let's just say we went home and took our "before" pictures, which we will NOT be sharing, when we got done with this meal.  Surely we will still be eating delicious food, but there will have to be much more running around the monuments and more color in the foods we choose.  Sigh.  It's not much fun being nice to your body.

Have a great week!

~Tater 

Mojitos & Masterpieces

We set out yesterday with the mission of exploring Adams Morgan and its cultural oddities while enjoying food (as usual).  After hitting a couple shops that smelled like my brother's high school basement bedroom and looked like my grandmother's attic converted to a hookah bar, we decided to fill our bellies with some tapas at Rumba Cafe.  I love remembering Groupons I purchased months earlier, then it feels like free lunch!  The food was great (I absolutely loved the ceviche and Shrimp loved everything) and the mojitos weren't half bad.  We wanted to explore the area a little more after we finished, but all the bottomless drink brunches were over, Madam's Organ doesn't open until 5pm, and the weather was NOT quite as comfortable as last weekend.  Instead we stopped in at Tryst to grab some coffee and a slice of carrot cake, but there were no seats.  And no sign of any seats coming available (as evidenced by the presence of several small gaggles of people trying to look sly while eyeballing every Macbook-using, coffee-drinking creature in the place).  So, we got it to go... this would make great dessert later!

On the way home Shrimp spotted a grocery store we hadn't yet visited.  As foodies, we've been on the hunt for the perfect grocer since moving to the DC area and haven't quite found it yet.  But this little place was great!  Shrimp reports a scarey restroom situation, but the produce (and most else) was so cheap, there were at least three cute older gay men couple, ("Tom!  Tom!  I found the jelly aisle!"), a whole mess of adorable little (well-behaved) children, and an AUBURN fan (insert obligatory WAR EAGLE! here).  Yep, we stopped and talk to the Auburn fan.  That's how we roll.  After filling our hippie granola re-usable grocery bag we hit the liquor store and headed on home.

Immediately upon walking through the front door I whipped up a pitcher of mojitos (what can I say, I was inspired!).  We griddled up some sirloin burgers, and finished up the first disc of Modern Family's first season.  It is a terrifying series.  Not scary in the traditional sense, scary in the oh-my-god-this-is-too-much-like-real-life sense.  I hardly watch TV anymore (save for college football.... War Eagle... again), but I absolutely recommend this show to anyone who wants to feel normal :)  The mojitos helped me feel better about it too.

 Good drinks and good company.  Like my mojito-stache?  I love Urban Outfitters!

Then it was project time.  Yep, Saturday night and these exciting girls decided to try their hand at exciting internet-inspired, hallway-quality art.  I gathered all the acrylic paint and canvas in the house, and we sat down with (more) mojitos to make things happen.  But the yellow paint was dry. Oh no!  Our night was practically ruined!  Not to fear, there is a craft store about two miles from our place that is open until 9pm, and I managed to save the day.

We made it through most of the project with lots of laughs and limited "I suck at thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis"es from Shrimp :)  She downright enjoyed herself, until she got tired and tipsy and just wanted to go to bed.

Shrimp, aka Picasso, hard at work on her masterpiece

And at the end, we had beautiful art!

The final products... Shrimp's on the left, mine on the right.

Like I said, hallway-quality!

Don't be confused, we didn't intentionally hang our art at 11pm when we finished, there are these two GIANT screws with anchors in the wall that we just don't feel the need to pull, but are always looking for something to hide them with.  This week, OWLS!

In the end we forgot the carrot cake even existed until crawling into bed last night, so cake for breakfast?  It's about that time!