Food, floats, and fun

Why yes I did just rip off an old McDonald’s slogan for this blog title.  I gotta level with you–eventually I may skip doing titles altogether because that mess is hard.  I’m so bad at naming them that they barely even relate to the post so when I go back and try to link to something, I can never remember what post is about what outfit.  Which clearly means I should name them after I write them.  But having that one bit of writing totally accomplished always makes me feel good.  Okay so new plan: placeholder title, write the entry, then see if the title could be changed to be more descriptive.  Bam, done.  We’re really getting shit squared away today.  Except now I’m attached to my title since I already made a link for it and everything, so we’ll start that plan tomorrow.

Anyway hey!  How was your long weekend?  I’m still off today, so I’m lovin’ it (ok I’ll stop now but what if McDonald’s sponsored me?  That’d be American af.).  I should probably be rotating my laundry or making something of my life, but I was feeling bloggy and figured I better hop to it while the mood was around.  I actually left the house a few times this weekend, so I will tell you about that and then in your blog I guess you can tell me what you did, or we will just catch up later.

Friday, Zach came home from work and made one of his recent favorites, with a twist. He’s been super into the caramel chicken at Pei Wei, which I haven’t had because it’s in the Minneapolis airport, where I will never be.  He’s made it with chicken, pork, and most recently, beef.  I think I preferred the beef, because it stood up well to the pungent sauce. He’s been using Chef John’s recipe, and this time around we paired it with fried rice and some quickled carrots and red onion.  I say “we” because for once I actually helped.  I insisted that all fried rice needs eggs (it’s like the whole point of fried rice, to me), so I cracked a few in and scrambled ’em around and surprisingly didn’t fuck it up too badly. The final result was excellent, though the beef is not super photogenic.  You get the idea.

Saturday, Zach flew back out for one night, so I had some time to myself.  I was very productive and went to Ross, and bought a million things, half of which will end up getting returned.  I got some cute Sam Edelman Circus sandals but they’re impossible to walk in so they will be going back.  On the plus side, returning stuff means I get to go to the other Ross, so I can sift through all of their rubbish to see if there’s anything useful.  I looked pretty cute and even got holla-ed at in the parking lot, but no one was around to take my photo so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Sunday, we went out to one of our longtime local favorites, Brockett Pub.  I’ve been on pub hiatus for a while, for a combination of reasons.  I mostly just hate the atmosphere (dark, wood-paneled bar), but a while back Zach saw an egregious health code violation that soured me on ever returning.  The violator has been terminated, but I’m still struggling to regain my trust of their food.  We shared some fried pickles, Zach got wings (not pictured because wings are gross), and I had a patty melt and a side salad. Everything I had was delicious (and my burg was ACTUALLY medium which almost never happens, even at nice places), so I guess they’re back in my good graces again.  Look guys, I want to be really great at taking food pictures inside, in a dark bar, but it’s not happening.  Also the people who own the pub are incredibly nice, so I feel guilty telling you that Zach saw something gross there.  But it really did happen.  I’m sorry!  Since I don’t own a restaurant or have any children, all of my opinions on restauranteurism (apparently not a word) and childrearing are probably valid and necessary.

Signage

Fried picklage

Roughage

Patty Meltage

Yesterday I decided it was time for another doughnut run.  This time, I wanted to visit Revolution since I hadn’t been in a while.  I hold a bit of a grudge against RevDo, for a particularly petty reason; they make their strawberry sliders vegan.  You see, for a while there, they sold a strawberry slider with fluffy clouds of whipped sweet cream.  It was a perfect specimen of fried dough and fruit, made whole with the addition of cream. Too many vegans caught wind, and now the slider is always served dry.  It’s just dough and berries, with no luscious creamy component (writing about whipped cream is something I plan on never doing again).  Every time Revolution posts a doughnut to their Instagram account, some vegan has to come by and ask if the featured doughnut meets their restrictive dietary choices.  Look, vegans.  I get it!  You love animals so much more than I do because you want to only murder defenseless plants.  That’s your thing that you decided to do!  Leave doughnuts out of it!  Doughnuts are not meant to be vegan, or healthy.  If you want vegan doughnuts, which should be an oxymoron, go make some.  Or go to the vegan bakery, which exists for some reason.  Stop ruining my delicious, animal-based doughnuts!  I want cream in my strawberry slider, dammit.  Which is why Sublime has been my go-to recently–they put cream in their damn doughnut (new favorite euphemism) and make no apologies.

I thought that waiting until 11 would mean that the crowds and kids would be cleared out, but I was incredibly wrong. The line snaked out the door, and toddlers ran underfoot. Or maybe it was just one, extremely fast toddler.  I may have uttered the phrase, “We need a new plague” while waiting.  We eventually emerged victorious–I with my Nutella latte and maple bourbon cro-dough (like a cronut, but without the trademark infringement), and Zach with his apple fritter and nitro cold brew.

*angels singing*

*angels screaming*

*angels hopefully whispering*

*angels doing vocal warmups*

*more singing*

Faces of victory

I also snagged a chocolate-frosted to bring to Heather, my beloved friend and seamstress. She’s altering four dresses, and doing us the solid of watching the dogs when we go out of town, so she is a precious beautiful treasure and I love her so much.  She recently adopted this little nugget of dogness named Mary Jane, and I couldn’t resist documenting this moment of mother-doghter bonding.

Before throwing my clothing to the ground and shimmying into my fatkini for the rest of the day, I wore my dream meal, in dress form.  This dress is by Folter, which is one of my favorite brands available on ModCloth.  I actually only put it on because I couldn’t decide if I wanted Heather to turn it into a skirt, or if I should keep it as a dress.  Once I put it on I figured I should just keep wearing it, so I grabbed these Miz Mooz flats (available on Amazon), a metallic purplish belt (stolen from a dress I’d rented from Gwynnie Bee.  I’m terrible.), and some of my usual earrings.  I got these glasses on my earlier trip to Ross for only $4 which is not a brag, but an explanation as to why you’ll probably only see them once.  I think they’re about to break and I only wore them for a few hours.

We’re members of a nearby community pool, which is a really fancy way of saying we can swim in a dilapidated mid-century swingers’ paradise that has no lifeguard and lots of issues.  Despite its flaws, or maybe because of them, I’m in love with our pool.  The lack of supervision and offbeat location mean that there aren’t a ton of members, and there have historically not been too many kids. We had good luck swimming solo last year when visiting after 7 pm, though we occasionally had company for brief periods of time.

Last night we drove down the gravel driveway, and were greeted by 4 vehicles, and what looked to be a pool party. The pool area only has about 4 tables, and it looked like most of them had already been claimed.  I didn’t feel like making awkward conversation with strangers and just wanted to lounge in the pool, on my mega noodle with a big drink.

Since we were already kitted out in our swimming gear, we figured we’d go in and hang out for 30 minutes, and maybe we could wait out whoever was inside.  Cut to 5 hours later: we’re at our former landlords’ house, doing shots, me in only my bikini and everyone else in clothes.  Not quite the turn of events I’d anticipated, and yet another lesson in always wearing real clothing, even if I’m just going to the pool for an hour.  It turns out that the couple we rented a house from 4 years ago also belong to our pool, and despite our nearly 30-year age gap, they know how to party even harder than we do.  They also have some adorable dogs, as evidenced here by Zach’s interactions with them.  We were sent home around 11, with fresh eggs from the backyard, and a hankering for fast food.

And now I guess I need to think about going back to real life.  I hope I remember where my job is, and how to do whatever it is I do all day once I get there.  Smell ya later.