Austin Restaurant Week

I am bursting with excitement for next week. Or more properly, next Sun-Wed and then the next Sun-Wed.

Because that is Austin Restaurant Week.

All the best restaurants in town offer three-course menus for $25-35 and give a part of the proceeds to the Sustainable Food Center in Austin.

I’m going for the charity.

Not the delicious food from nice restaurants.

Not the delectable combo of appetizer, entree and dessert.

I’m a giver.

Anyone else want to be a giver?

Check out the menus and I think you may start to feel the salivation of generosity on your tongue.

I’m overwhelmed by the options so any help in picking is also appreciated.

Snow

When you live in Texas, snow is wonderful and refreshing.

Your employers let you off work early.

Kids run though the street giggling.

But there is a dangerous side to snow too.

FACT: Snow makes red berries look delicious.

FACT: Sometimes red berries are poisonous.

(ALMOST) FACT: Snow can kill you by making you eat delicious looking, possibly poisonous berries.

Good thing people are getting off work early.

It is a dangerous world today.

The Giada Week

Well, at the end of my week of Giada cooking, I’m kind of disappointed. I know so many people that love her and her cooking so much and after cooking from her cookbook for a week I wasn’t very impressed. We ended the week with only one recipe that was great and one that was good. The rest were just incredibly lacking.

The winner of the week was her bread pudding, I mean sugar+eggs+cream+bread+delicious liquor sauce = awesomeness. Every time.

The Linguine with Shrimp and Lemon Oil was good too. We wouldn’t mind having it again but I probably won’t be going out of my way for it. Not when there are so many wonderful recipes in the world.

I can’t understand what went wrong.

Maybe I picked all the wrong recipes.

Then again, wrong recipes should NEVER end up in a printed cookbook.

So I absolve myself.

This week did make me really like Giada as a person, I read a bit about her and watched a video of her on FoodNetwork and she’s really incredibly endearing.

But the food sadly spoke for itself.

This week I’m not meal planning at all.

Craziness.

I have a full fridge and a full pantry and so I’m making up meals as I go this week, attempting to use up extra food in combinations that I can only hope will be palatable.

Wish me luck.

Also, if any Giada lovers have specific recipes to help redeem her in my kitchen, please feel free to send them my way.  I really want to like her cooking.

New Calendar System

If you haven’t caught the idea yet, I really love being organized. And I generally love using google apps to organize myself because then it is all safe and sound in the gentle, protective memory of the world wide web.

So today, I did a major overhaul of my calendars in Google Calendar.

I know that the mere thought of organizing and list-making makes some people want to have an aneurysm on the spot.

And that’s why I share this randomness.

To make it a bit easier for you NORganizers. Does that word even make sense? Surely not.

So as of today, I have 8 separate calendars within my Google Calendar.

Color-coded.

Scheduled for the year.

Beautifulness.

I added a Financial Planning Calendar containing:

• Repeating  monthly schedule of when all our bills are due, with links in the about section of where to pay them online
• A weekly schedule of when to update quicken and our budget (Every Monday)
• A bi-weekly task of sending in any insurance documents, random payments and depositing checks to the bank (I needed this reminder!)

I added a Birthday Calendar containing:

• Birthdays of family and friends (Neither Evan nor I are great at remembering birthdays, let alone early enough to get a card or gift in the mail and we both decided it was something we wanted to get better at this year-so with the help of facebook I went through and added all the birthdays to the calendar)

I added a Home Management Calendar containing:

• My weekly house cleaning schedule (yes, I actually have one of those)
• Monthly, Semi-annual and yearly house chores (like cleaning out the fridge, changing air filters etc.)
• Weekly house goals (this event is scheduled on Monday and I just add random things I want to get done around the house that week-next weeks has touching up paint in the bathroom, and ordering new pillow shams for our bed, the week after that is open to whatever comes up for that week)

That’s three of the eight. And don’t worry about a cluttered calendar, you can hide any of the calendars you’d like. I usually only have my main personal calendar visible after I check the whole day.

So there it is.

A look into the ridiculous simple pleasures of an organizing-obsessed mind.

Pardon the aneurysms.

Google Calendar is a blank slate. Go make it yours.

30 Day Shred

Apparently, this DVD is how all the cool kids work out. I know because I’ve already seen several blogs about the subject. So  I bought it with an iTunes gift card. But why write another blog about it? Well, because I have something else to offer: a motivation system.

Being healthy, losing weight, getting toned, looking awesome in a bathing suit-those are all great reasons to work out, but not one of them motivates me to the point of actually beading up a single drop of sweat.

I’m motivated by progress and accountability, among a few other things, like dessert-but that is counter-productive here.

It takes a while to see actual progress in any of those areas, so I went back to the original progress-tracker, the gold star chart.

As kids, we got gold stars at school for bringing our homework and keeping our cubbies clean. At home, we got them for brushing our teeth and using the potty.

If it weren’t for gold stars, it is possible that we would all have rotten teeth, adult diapers and a kindergarden level education. Not likely, but possible.

Gold stars are powerful.

So I decided to use this simple, powerful little motivator to make me work out.

I went to google documents and made a simple gold star spreadsheet. Then I shared it with Jess my workout accountability partner. It updates any time one of us adds to it, and we can share comments/complaints and even  excuses on our little workout sheet.

The really amazing thing is–I really want gold stars. I want to look at an entire week of gold stars. I love updating my star chart right after I work out.

I want them so much that the first thing I do in the morning is Shred.

I want them extra badly when Jess has them.

Motivation.

And I really don’t want a little black fail mark.

I’m not saying this would motivate anyone, but if you like seeing progress before it’s physically visible and are at least a bit competitive, it very well might.

Here is a sample of our workout chart:

Gold *STAR*s are for Shredding or other serious workouts

WALKs are for low intensity workouts (you get credit but not as much )

fails and for sitting on the couch, watching tv and eating bonbons.

The awesome names are for extra motivation.

It’s all about figuring out what motivates you and making a system that works for you.

Happy sweating!

A Week of Giada

So I love Allrecipes.com. And I mean love. For the most part, that is where I get my recipes, then I add them to my shopping list for the week, e-mail it to myself and use my phone to access and manage my grocery list while shopping. It does bum me out that I don’t try as many recipes from other sources though so I’m going to start periodically picking a chef or a cookbook and cooking only their recipes for a week.

BECAUSE I CAN, SO WHY NOT?

So this week, I’m starting with the lovely Giada de Laurentis. Mostly because her name sounds awesome and Jessica Hill loves her. Plus, I’m borrowing one of her cookbooks from a friend. So here are my Giada recipes for the week.

MONDAY: Dinner at Thai Spoon with friends-I severely doubt they will use a Giada recipe

TUESDAY: Garlic and Sun-dried Tomato Corn Muffins and Tuscan White Bean and Garlic Soup

WEDNESDAY: Pork Chops with Fennel and Caper Sauce

THURSDAY: Chicken Tetrazzini with Mushroom Risotto and Panettone Bread Pudding with Amaretto Sauce (Small group is coming over!)

FRIDAY: Linguine with Shrimp and Lemon Oil

SATURDAY: Out of Town

SUNDAY: Out of Town

Now I’m off to make my grocery list. The lame old-fashioned way. Let’s hope Giada is as wonderful of a chef as I’ve been told. I leave you with a picture of the Jessica and her dog, Giada. I told you Jess loves her.

Are you a WARRIOR?

I came across some awesome pictures last week of the Tough Guy Competition on the beloved Big Picture blog.

Wow.

Intense.

The race takes place in England and is lauded as being the toughest race in the world. The competitors race through rough terrain while engaging in obstacles ranging from  slithering through mud under a ceiling of barbed wire, jumping over pits of fire and swimming.

In January.

Through frozen lakes.

Intense.

In fact, during the duration of the Tough Guy Competition no one has completed the race according to its designer’s strict rules. And two men even died trying.

So naturally, I send this post off to the LSM (my favorite group of manly men) and tell them I want this to become an LSM event.

Aren’t I thoughtful?

And do you know how awesome and manly they are?

They all rally together and decided to do it.

Now, since flying to England for the race isn’t exactly in the average LSM budget, they’re rocking a race much closer to home, The Warrior Dash in Forney, Texas.

And I. can. not. wait.

The Warrior Dash still has many of the fun elements from the Tough Guy Competition including fire, mud and barbed wire, just replace the freezing lakes with Texas sun and lower the casualty count to zero. I feel much better about any race where Evan isn’t required to sign a “death warrant” pre-competition.

Again, the LSM has proven why it is the greatest group of men ever assembled.

Also, they get viking hats.

They also got Vikiing names via this awesomeness.

So I present the finest group of men competing in the Warrior Dash this year.

• Josh “Bearsmasher” Meeh
• Travis “Þorbjörn Stronglegs” Bearden
• Daniel “Dufniall Strongthews” Weizel
• Kyle “Kolli Bonecrusher” Wood
• Don “Dufniall Strongjaw” Shannon
• Evan “Wulfcrusher” Prothro
• Matt “Möttull Steadylegs” Sloan
• Chris “Kóri Deercatcher” Hill
• Michael “Nikulás Blackheart” Fermier
• Geoff “Gufi Moosepounder” McDonald
• Ben “Bekan Warhawk” Williams
• Brad “Barði Bearsbane” Wilcox

May 2nd will be a glorious day!

My cup!!!

I need it to be known that my favorite mug from IKEA, the one I talked about here, was on 30Rock last night. And I literally screamed at the TV when I saw it. Then I proceeded to get very defensive towards those who claimed it was not the same mug.

BECAUSE IT WAS MY CUP.

I was famous by proxy.

Here is my proof, don’t be jealous that my mug is cooler than your mug: