Last night we ate mexican and it was really good. It wasn’t even that elaborate, but we had ground beef burritos with tomatos, rice, beans, green peppers, cheese and guacamole. But it got me thinking about how much I like mexican and often when we go out to eat, I want mexican. Also, having mexican at home makes me more excited about eating at home and less feeling the desire to eat out. (I desire to eat out nightly). It got me thinking about how I need to start making dishes that I crave from my favorite resturants at home, which would get us more excited about eating at home. It’s a little complicated because I have a small grocery budget, which sometimes discourages cooking exploration, but I am going to be on the lookout for a fantastic Carrabba-style chicken marsala. Does anyone have any faux favorite restuarant dish recipes?
Evan Here. I hope to start contributing to the blog and so, my first post. Nothing profound just a question. What’s with all the stickers on the backs of all the hybrids? I mean are they cars or are they bulletin boards? The short of it is the Kelly and I would in a general sense be interested in buying a used hybrid a few years down the road but I wonder if we will be able to find one that doesn’t have pro choice, love mother earth, and Hillary ‘08 stickers all over the back. I mean I can understand wanting to get your message out there but seriously people it totally kills the car for me and the rest of America that might buy it from you one day.
I am taking a poll on laundry. A little poll, because few people read the blog, but anyways. I am always feeling a little surprised because we have constantly have MOUNDS of laundry that is never done, and I am pretty sure it’s Evan’s fault. 
I am not sure if he wears more clothes, has bigger clothes, or washes his clothes more, but everytime I do a load, we go to fold the clothes and he has an entire stack of assorted garments, and I have like two tshirts and one sock. (Always just one… where does that other one GO!!??) So, the poll is mainly, how often do you do laundry and how much, and what is the his/hers clothes ratio? Also, thoughts on how many times it’s ok to wear something before you have to wash it? Is it different for pants, shirts, etc? General comments?
I’m working late tonight even though I don’t have that much work to do… I am just killing some time since I can’t go home until 6:30pm on account of some people stopping by to check out the house. Yep, it’s for sale… we put our house on the market last week and have had 8 people come to check it out.
It hasn’t been too bad except for one time we had only 30 minutes to evacuate and I was right in the middle of cooking dinner. I had to put everything in the fridge and we went out to kill some time at, yes, you guessed it, Starbucks. The more frustrating part though is keeping it clean all the time. I am not naturally that clean, and I always kind of thought I’d grow into being clean, because my mom is very clean, but that day hasn’t come yet. So it’s a big effort. Every night we actually have to wash our dishes after we eat on them and hang up our clothes when we take them off. When I do the laundry, I actually have to fold it, instead of just piling it on the guest room bed. Hopefully the house will sell soon! You can check out the listing here.
Today we spent some time working on this chair. We are attempting to re-upholster it. This picture is what the chair looked like before we started work on it. It’s from Evan’s parent’s building – a storage shed for random stuff that they have collected over the past decades. The chair was Evan’s great grandmother’s and was made (and originally upholstered of course) in 1943.
This is a short restuarant recommendation post. Last night we ate dinner at Pop’s, a Durham Trattoria near Brightleaf. This was our second dinner there. We started both dinners with an order of mussels (a testament to their goodness). At the first dinner, it was the first time we had ever eaten mussels and it was quite the introduction. The mussels are fantastic, swimming in a savory tomato-y type sauce with red pepper flakes. The sauce is rich, so you want to let it sit on your tongue a bit so you can soak it up. The red pepper flakes add a great level of spice – it’s a good perk but does not eliminate this dish as an option for people with sensative taste buds (me). I have also had a steak over a bed of creamy fried okra which was not only exceptional but inventive. Very different from your standard BBQ restuarant’s fried okra, this one was smothered in a medium cream sauce that enhanced but didn’t detract from the okra flavor. The steak was just right too, the kind of just right that you can cut with your regular knife. Last night the best entree was Evan’s crab manicotti, a shell topped with pink sauce and stuffed with crab and various cheeses. It was a heavy dish, and every bite was satisfying. The crab manicotti combination, although unusual, somehow fit perfectly. You can check out a menu online, at http://www.pops-durham.com/.
Last night, I attended my first ever book club meeting. A friend of mine organized it, and although a less-than-avid reader, I thought it would be a fun social gathering. Much to my sister Brooklynne’s chagrin, I have to admit that in all of 2007 I only read three books. The titles include The Devil Wears Prada, Everyone Worth Knowing, both by Lauren Weisberger and If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name, by Heather Lende. The first two were kind of a fun, flippant read. They were both easy to read and I only read them because I took them on trips with me. The final book I started probably sometime in 2006, and finished up in December of 2007 only because my sister moved to Alaska and I figured I should read up on it. So if you didn’t put two and two together from that statement, the book’s about living in small town Alaska. Anyways, the book that was picked for book club was Ellen Foster, about an 11-year-old orphan. My first impression from the Amazon.com review is that I might end up feeling sorry for Ellen a lot. But I think she will have strength of character, and a wit about her that will keep me feeling that her pluckiness will get her through. We’ll see!
I really want to have a blog. I mean, I guess I do, I just don’t put it to a lot of good use. But some of my friends have started blogs recently and I find myself just a little jealous. I enjoy going to their sites daily in the hopes that they have updated their life story if you will. So I guess I am torn because I don’t feel like I have enough to write about to write daily, but I don’t want to deny other bored desk job employees like myself the pleasure of reading about other people’s lives. Alas, I am going to try and get better. After all, most lives are not really so thrilling that the events are that entertaining to read about, what’s entertaining is the individual perspective on the everyday.
