Everywhere and Back Again

I’m going to be cheap and use a shot of Jake Gyllenhaal naked to catch your attention:I’m not ashamed.  He is quite the handsome man.  And has come a long way from his Bubble Boy days. ;)

But yes, I just made this late breakfast. Yesterday was a whirlwind and I’m all out of whack it seems.

That can sometimes be a good thing. 

I got up early for a coffee date at O’Hare with my fantabulous friend Ashlee.  She had a 4-hour layover and we were determined to take advantage of it.Hey girl… heeeeeeyyyy!

 O’Hare is a huge place.  And I have no sense of direction.  So it took a bit to finally come together.  Which is sad, because I had a plan.  And a sign for when she walked out from the gate:Totally didn’t get to use it.  But it’s the thought that counts, right?

And yeah- we have nicknames.  I call her monkey and she calls me penguin.

You can try to understand our crazy if you want to.  But I don’t really even know how we became so weird…I already had breakfast, and Ashlee’s not a big breakfast person, so we split a cookie from Starbucks.  The white chocolate icing was fab.  But we both said the same thing.  Crunchy sugar cookies are not nearly as good as soft ones.  Truth.

After a couple hours, she had to leave for her flight home.  I’m being mischievous and am already coming up with ways to sabotage her next layover so she’ll have no choice but to stay in Chicago.  For good.  Muhahahaha…

I also had another friend who was in the area for the weekend from Philly.  We went to college together and there was an MU game on last night, so it only seemed natural that we made our way to The Spread (my favorite Mizzou bar in the Lincoln Park neighborhood).The three of us slowly and randomly worked our way around the city. It would have been faster had we not had a cab driver who hated life and decided to tell us why and then the other cab driver who seemed more lost than we were. 

My favorite spot of the night was at Cubby Bear just outside of Wrigleyville.  The big Northwestern vs. Illinios game was played inside of Wrigley field yesterday and ESPN College Game Day had been there.  Needless to say, the streets were packed.  The bars were full.  The drinks were flowing.

The pizza was also ordered.  And demolished.

We crashed at a friend’s house (drinking and driving should never be mixed, kids!) and I woke up with a bit of a headache.  Which is somewhat surprising considering how much we ate at the end of the night.  I’m not a big believer in Advil (seriously- I’ve only stashed one or two sample packets of Advil at home from work for worst-case scenarios), so my cure came in the form of this: They should really come up with a bigger size for their iced teas.  Like a pony keg.  I’d dig it. Because this was obviously not enough (refer to coffee in the first picture that was immediately consumed after my tea was gone).

I think I have a caffeine addiction.

I also think that is not a surprising revelation.

I also think it may be time to lounge some more.  It’s Sunday.  Sundays are lazy.  Truth.

Football and Sweet Potatoes

Go MIZZOU!!!!  I’m still a little hyped up from yesterday’s festivities.  If you’re not much for college football, you may not care that my Tigers took on the #1 ranked Oklahoma and, after may heartbreaks in the recent past, won!!!  My friend Jon and I were in Lincoln Park at The Spread (a Mizzou bar).  The bar was pretty packed- not only were we playing Oklahoma, but it was our Homecoming.  So the last couple minutes of the game were pure madness.  I’m positive the last round of shots weren’t necessary, but for the sake of celebration, we had to do it… right?

And for that reason, I’m grateful my 8 miles happened yesterday instead of today.  Whew… 

With this longer run, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  Because of busy weekends and um, stomach issues, I haven’t done much more than 5 miles in a session as of late.  But I took it easy when I started out and had no problems slowly increasing my speed up to an average of 8:41 for the run.  The last mile was rough just because I was getting pretty bored being on a treadmill the whole time.  This must be the reason the treadmill times out at an hour.  The manufacturer just knew.

I don’t know about you, but after 8 miles, I get a weee bit famished.  Actually, I’m a monster.  So it’s important to feed me. 

After the baked pumpkin pancakes, it seems that orange would be the color of the day.There are apparently a million ways to roast sweet potatoes.  I’ve got a list of a few variations I want to try (still working my way up to the peanut butter ones).  This time around I went with a bbq/cajun twist and seasoned them with paprika, chili powder, a dry bbq rub and a little brown sugar.

I highly recommend this.  I was eating them straight off the pan.  Before and after I made my big salad for lunch…Since I had cajun sweet potatoes, I figured cornbread on top of my salad would be appropriate.  I was right.  It totally was.

Question of the day: what is your favorite way to make sweet potatoes?  I’ve still got quite a few from the last time my mom brought some from our garden- so keep the ideas coming…

I’m off to watch more football… Go Bears! 

Lunch Club goes Greek

It’s that time of the month again.  No, I don’t have cramps.  I had a date with my three fellow foodies for our monthly lunch outting!  Cathryn picked the place- Melanthios Greek Char House in the Lakeview neighborhood!

Believe it or not, Mid-Missouri doesn’t have a large selection when it comes to authentic Greek food, so this was one of my first experiences in a Greek restaurant.  We were welcomed with this lovely sight:

Luckily, I did not have the full view of this the whole meal.  It’s kind of a little much for me.  I mean, I ordered the lamb.  Because I’ve never had it.  But I don’t think I would have if I was looking at this the entire time.  Ignorance is sometimes bliss in this case.  We started out with saganaki as an appetizer.  I love it.  But I also love anything with flames involved…  I didn’t catch it when the waiter lit it up at our table, but luckily, I still got a shot of the action when he did at the table next to us:

OPA! 

Fried cheese is not for the faint of heart.  And when I say that, I really mean you can feel your arteries slowly dying inside as you eat it.  Is it worth it?  Sort of…

And here’s the run down of the meals.  Obviously, they had some rotisserie lamb going on, so we took that as a sign to try it.  Three of us ordered it.  Jaime and I both got it with a side of green beans :

It was good.  But lamb is probably not a thing I will order often.  Plus, there was no way I could eat it all.  I’m not used to meat taking up 2/3′s of my plate.  Very intense.  But I cleaned up those green beans- holy cow they were awesome. Nom nom nom…

Scott mixed it up by having Greek potatoes with his… 

And Cathryn decided to go against the grain and order moussaka.  Which I luckily got to try and decided I need more eggplant in my life.

The things we chose really were from the dinner menu.  Ironic, since we’re the “lunch club”.  But we went with it.  And of course, if you’re doing dinner, you need to have a proper dessert.  We were going to get one thing to split four ways.  But couldn’t agree.  Jaime wanted baklava, Cathryn wanted chocolate, and I was pulling for tiramisu.  So what’s a lunch club going to do?  Get all three- with a side of homemade ice cream.

My favorite by far was the tiramisu.  Clearly- I was craving it.  But everything was amazing.  We did a little take a bite and pass it around until it was all gone.  My stomach cried happy tears.

Can't talk now, I'm busy!

Luckily, I got to walk some of this food coma off.  After lunch club, I had a date with some boys from my hometown who were in the city for the weekend.  I caught up with them at The Spread to watch the Mizzou basketball game against Nebraska.  GO TIGERS!

After that, I played tour guide and took them to my fav stomping grounds – Wrigleyville of course.  We hit Sluggers, Red Ivy, and Merkles.  Merkles was the place they had randomly ended up at the night before, and they really liked, so that’s how we rounded out the night.  The waitress and bouncer remembered them.  Is that a good thing?  Depends on who you ask.  I’m so glad I got to catch up with them all- and I really miss my friend Brian- he’s one of the few that puts up with my friendly sarcasm.  And shoots it right back.  I need to be kept on my toes more often.

Today I woke up a little sore thanks to Jillian’s Level 2 workout yesterday.  Not sure what this means for the rest of my day.  I also didn’t get to bed until 3:00 last night- so slight fatigue may keep me from hitting the full four miles I’m allowed to do.  A chilled out run might be necessary.

Plus, I’m getting a workout hopefully later when Mon gets back.  We both have some energy that needs to be let out and think batting cages might be the solution.  This is what I  like to call passive aggressive behavior.  Is it healthy?  Probably not.  Will it help?  Who knows.  But I do know, however, I am going to have a hell of alot of fun in attempts to get it out of my system.

Opa!

M-I-Z…. Z-O-U! Good Ending To a Great Holiday Weekend

Earlier in the week, I had mentioned to Chuck that we should try to watch the MU vs. KU game somewhere. So we chose The Spread, which is one of the biggest Mizzou bars in the city. I had also scored a $25 gift certificate on Restaurant.com for food there, so we were good to go!  They had some decent bar food.  I had “The Banker”, which was a chicken sandwich with buffalo sauce.  Very hot and spicy- just the way I like it.    I had the sweet potato fries as well, which I didn’t realize was an acquired taste.  I had plenty leftover, but only Kyle was willing to even try one.  Maybe boys are just picky. 

The game was a long one. And intense. The entire bar was going crazy for most of the fourth quarter and erupted with cheers as we ended up winning with a field goal, four seconds before the end of the game.  We all danced around a little to the fight song when the game was over.

The game was good- but there are problems with a long game when you watch it at a bar. We set the foundation for a solid night of drinking when we took out quite a few $3 stadium cups of beer as we watched. We went back to Chuck’s and took a break before we headed out to Wild Goose to eat a late dinner and start the party again. $6 Bud Light pitchers helped us out (I had more beer last night than what I probably drink in an entire month!)  I had spent some time at the gym in the morning before we went to Chuck’s (elliptical still- no running yet), and I don’t eat bar food nearly as much as I used to, so I had no problems with chowing down on the cheesy greasy awesomeness.  But, the chicken quesadillas at Wild Goose kind of sucked.  I still ate them (girl’s gotta eat!), but had plenty left over.  They could have been thicker.  And they didn’t come with guacamole (HUGE gasp).  Who serves quesadillas without guac?!?!  Or sour cream for that matter?!?!  Shame… 

On a side note, I am simply amazed at how many wings and fries my guy friends can go through.  Simply amazed.

We weren’t into the band playing at Wild Goose that night (you can only take listening to Dave Matthews acoustic covers so many times…) so we headed to Wrigleyville (my favorite!). We hit Moe’s Cantina first. It was ok. There was alot of us just standing around looking at people, so we took a few shots to get things rolling.

Maybe that was a bad idea.

Casey Moran’s was next on our trek up Clark. I always get deja vu when I got there now because it was the first bar we went to in the city when Jessica and I first moved up last year when a bunch of my friends were in town. Chuck knew one of the waitresses there and she really hooked us up. This includes a round of tequila. I don’t do well with tequila. Apparently, neither does anyone else in our little group.  We were all pretty simple by the time we got back to Chuck’s to crash.  Chuck and Abel extended their night a little longer and were quite entertaining when they returned at 5:30 in the morning.

I think the 5:30 wake-up really disrupted my good night of sleep.  Crashing on a futon really didn’t help much either.  Nor did drinking for a 12-hour period.  I sense that a trip to Redbox and a nap are in my near future.  Question is when I’ll get my butt up to hit the gym.  It won’t be pretty, but I feel like all the cheese and grease are still sitting in my stomach like a brick.  And as good as it was, it needs to go…

I really have sucked it up at taking pictures these days.  Something I am sure to fix in the near future.  Promise!