I’ve been meaning to review this event since I attended it with Victoria over a week and a half ago, but what with work being insane and snow insanity elsewhere, I haven’t had the chance!
Before I dive in to the goods, because I’m sure you’re wondering what these are:
Can you tell what these are?
let me tell you a bit about how this event came to be.
You know that little voice in your head, the one that says “Jeez, Lisa. You live in the nation’s capital. Surely you should get out and go to a scavenger hunt in a Smithsonian museum…” or “Jeez, Lisa. You live in a beautiful city with a thriving foodie culture…shouldn’t you get up and get out and see some of it?” or “Who says you have to be Latina to go to a DC Latino Professionals event?”
Well, my little voice is named Victoria. Victoria’s the best – she’s always looking for fun and exciting things to do, and she’s most definitely the cause of fun and exciting things to do in other people. So when she invited me to a DC Meetup event for Latino Professionals, I never gave it a second thought. Well…maybe I asked her once if it would be awkward that my fairly blond, blue-eyed, be-freckled self was clearly not an OUNCE Latina, but that was it (Victoria’s Latina herself, so I knew we’d at least have enough credibility to get through the door).
So what was this marvelous event, you ask? Why, a chocolate tasting of Latin American cacao products at Biagio Fine Chocolate! (Delicious chocolate pictures after the jump) read more…
Yesterday while my roommate and I were romping around in the snowdrifts that are Northern Virginia, my rancher father was romping around a field under a very different set of circumstances…
Sweet beginnings
A new baby on the ranch!
This new baby, whom my parents have yet to christen (they keep going back and forth between Lightning for the bolt across his forehead, and Blaze for the stripe down his side), was born less than 24 hours ago. The story’s actually a bit sad, but unfortunately not all that uncommon among cattle… read more…
Nom nom.
What do you do when feet and feet of snow make it impossible to leave the house? Uh…make cupcakes, clearly.
So yesterday/overnight, this happened:
Feet of snow.
so the roommate and I were stuck at home, watching the snow fall (er…watching it BLOW – blizzards don’t lend themselves to gently fluttering flakes). Luckily (for your eyes, and my tummy), I had recently bought that new 1M tip for frosting and I desperately needed to practice my icing skills…
Woe is me. I’ve macerated my decorating tip. After piping my Oreo cupcakes on Saturday, I had a massive amount of mess to clean up, so the tip ended up in a bowl by the sink.
Lesson#1: Don’t leave tiny decorating tips in bowls for washing up.
I had to rush off to a work event, so I left the dishes as-is (see Oreo cupcake post for the mess) until I could get a handle on them. When I finally got around to washing all the dishes, I rinsed out the bowl and washed everything down the drain. A few hours later, I was doing a second set of dishes, and heard a funny little “Chink chink GRANGK!!!!!” noise when I flipped the switch for the disposal.
Lesson #2: When the garbage disposal makes a funny little “Chink chink GRANGK!!!!!” noise, it’s not just “some big piece of lemon wedge.”
Thinking this was strange, I went to investigate (is there any way to describe that feeling of dread as you put your hand down the drain risking mutilation, dismemberment, and that icky brownish gunge that tends to collect in sink drains? Ick.). Minutes later, I removed this from the drain:
Hmmm...
I was looking at this wad of metal, trying to figure out who put a bottle cap down the drain, when I saw the etched “32.” Awwwwww crap. $2.00 down the drain….literally.
A few months ago, my officemate Chris from grad school got married to a wonderful woman named Holly! They had the wedding in Holly’s hometown, so none of us DC rats were able to make it. To make up for the fact that we missed out, we wanted to have a party here for the happy couple, and they finally chose yesterday evening for a small gathering of friends.
Contratulations, Chris and Holly!
When we first started talking about this party, Chris asked me if I would mind making cupcakes for the wedding. Really? MIND?!? I would LOVE to! So the plan was for Lisa to produce X number of black and white (themed) cupcakes for the party. Got it.
OK so earlier this week I promised you all a story about my sourdough. And I will give you one. But first, let me introduce you to a new person in my life. He’s my main squeeze. He needs words of encouragement, and a place where he can live. He needs constant attention to be happy, but if I do forget him for a little while, he’s still there, waiting for me to rekindle the romance. He takes up my time, he needs to be fed, and watered. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present:
Luc. Not Luke. "Lyooook."
For the proper pronunciation of his name, please see the film “French Kiss.” I’ll wait. Go ahead. And make sure you’ve got a bottle of wine, cuz you’ll want one as soon as you turn it on. Need to go get one? That’s ok. I’ll still be here. Oh, and pick up some cheese too. You’ll want the cheese.
My office soulmate Melissa just found out that she and her hubby are having a little baby girl! (I assume since she’s posted it on her blog, it’s appropriate for me to spill her beans to the rest of the world…right?)
PINK ducky! For a GIRL!
To celebrate, I brought her some Georgetown Deliciousness, aka the Toffee Crunch cupcake from Georgetown Cupcake, which are only available on Mondays.
[Warning: This is a motherlong post. If you're just starting it, read to the end of the paragraph starting "Often", decide if what I'm doing in this post is interesting or relevant to you, and if it's not, skip through, look at the pretty pictures of muffins, and move on. If you're looking for ideas for how to incorporate new recipes into your stock, keep reading all the way through, or skip around. Thanks. 
]
So this past week at work, I was introduced to a new addiction. I’ve never been a fan of banana-flavored desserts. Banana bread’s OK and all, but if I’m going to invest the time and calories in a baked good, you can be willing to bet there’s going to be some seriously decadent chocolate, caramel, or cream cheese involved. So when I saw these little banana muffins sitting on our coffee break table, I immediately bypassed them for the chocolate truffles.
These are not the original muffins. Those were gone very quickly.
…then I saw the chocolate chips. BANANA MUFFINS, with CHOCOLATE CHIPS?! I’m hooked.
Basil, people, what were YOU thinking?!
Ha. Well, today seems to be Gift Roundup Saturday, so I’m going to do another quick post to say thank you to Santa Claus (yes, I’m 26 years old, and Santa Claus still brings me things. Don’t spoil it.) for bringing me a very adorable set of herb pots, to help me in my quest for deliciousness!
Herby pots!
He also brought me a porcini mushroom risotto mix, fancy-shmancy olive oil, roasted mango chipotle sauce, and a decanting wine pourer, all in handy travel sizes for easy transition back to DC, thankyouverymuch. Santa knows me. Quite well. I’m saving most of these for a rainy day when I need some cheering up, except the pourer, which it’s too early to be using today, but in all probability will be put to use before 6PM this evening.
Well happy Three Day Weekend, folks who work for the federal government, and anyone else who gets MLK day off on Monday! I’m celebrating the long weekend by, aside from volunteering Monday morning, leaving my apartment as little as possible. So…blogging is most obviously a necessity.
The Pioneer Woman
First up – a somewhat dated thank you to my Grandpa (not the one from the ranch – the one who lives in a downtown Houston loft apartment – yes, now you see where I come from, right? ha) for a very generous gift he gave me for Christmas.
Cupcake shoutout du jour – Salted Caramel, from the New and Improved Georgetown Cupcake
On Monday, in addition to volunteering for MLK Day, I will be making a trip to Georgetown Cupcake, to see their new flagship location (there will be pictures) and get my absolute favorite cupcake – the toffee crunch (more on that on Monday).
In the meantime, however, Melissa, my office soulmate (sorry, Steve! she’s mine), is helping to tide over my Georgetown addiction with Gtown’s contribution to the salted caramel phenomenon.
Salted caramel phenomenon? Try phenomenAL!
Mmmm – delicious caramel, luscious caramel buttercream, and that moist, tender crumb that I have never, EVER been able to effectively replicate. I don’t even usually like buttercream icing (too sweet – I prefer cream cheese based ones) but this stuff is quite tasty.
Not a great photo, but yes a great cupcake.
I love that they’re wearing brown pants – makes it seem so much more…fancy? Like a french pastry that comes in one of those brown and gold wrappers.
And yes, that is a Starbucks cup you see – thanks to my mom and aunt, I’ve got $8,000 (not really) to spend at Starbucks, and what better way to complement a latté made with half and half than with a cupcake laden with caramel? There is none, admit it. I can feel my thunder thighs expanding even as we speak, and folks…it’s a great feeling.
Ahhh, Georgetown. Can’t wait til I get to visit you in person (and finally spend the giftcard Rob gave me for my birthday!!!)!
Hey gang! MLK Day is Monday, and what’s that mean? It’s time for the national Day of Service! The Day of Service exists to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy of freedom and justice by bringing communities together in service. For more on the day (and the man behind the dream), see the MLKDay website here.
For those of you who haven’t found something, here are some quick tools you can use to find volunteer opportunities in DC and elsewhere.
DC Area:
- DC Cares. Great for a general database of volunteer ideas, plus they’ve got a Volunteer Classifieds section that lists other places that need help.
- Maryland Volunteer Centers.
- (If anyone has a link like these for Northern Virginia, let me know – I couldn’t find one).
National:
- Serve.gov. The President’s call to service, with a fancy tool for finding volunteer opportunities near you.
- All for Good. Here you can input your location and they’ll find local volunteer opportunities.
Feel free to comment and add lists of your own preferred volunteer opportunities below! And check back to some of my archived posts here and here for further ideas.
Finally – MLK Day is a particularly special (and powerful) day to serve, but if you can’t make it out on Monday, rest assured that your efforts on any of the other 364 days in the year will be absolutely well worth your time, so get involved, and stay involved. Thanks!
And a special thank you to Victoria for reminding me of the MLK Day of Service when I’d gotten a little too comfortable in my planning to be asleep at 9AM on Monday. Kudos and snaps, Vic, kudos and snaps.
Well folks, it’s that time again…Restaurant Week! Every year (twice a year, actually) DC does Restaurant Week, where you can get a 3 course lunch menu for around $20 and a 3 course dinner menu (sometimes with booze or coffee included) for around $35. The only real variation in price each year (aside from the $5 hike for dinners) is based on what year it is – e.g. this year, since it’s 2010, the price of a 3 course lunch menu is $20.10.
I have a four-person DC Restaurant Sampling Crew that I gather each season to sample our local cuisine, all of whom are my coworkers.
MeLisa (AKA Lisa and Melissa)*
and
Estepeter. AKA Esteban (right) and Peter.
This is the perfect group to analyze restaurants with because we all four have very differing tastes. Peter is a vegetarian with a die-hard affinity for chocolate, Esteban likes the more outlandish spices (or at least the most creative combination of normal spices possible), and Melissa and I go halvsies on who’s got the bigger sweettooth or bigger desire for bacon in a given scenario.
See?
You should see the size of the dog I haul in my little red wagon.
Well, I spent my Christmas holidays in Texas (shock of all shocks), but more importantly, I spent my Christmas (and New Years) holidays visiting with my family.
Now. I should point out that my family is not necessarily “typical” – particularly for my DC friends. I come from (on my Dad’s side at least) a very … rural-based family. My paternal grandparents both grew up on farms, doing farmy-type things, and generally doing more with their two hands in a day than I have done in the last 8 years.
So upon their respective retirements, my grandparents elected to buy a ranch.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from peaceful Real County.
Downtown DC, covered in 2 feet of snow.
Weeell, as many of you probably know by now, the DC area was hammered with tons of snow yesterday, starting late Friday night and continuing through til yesterday evening. There was actually a blizzard warning – whiteouts imminent. Roads were closed, the Metro above ground stations were closed, and basically the entire tri-state area was shut down.
Sometimes blizzards can be pretty.
So what did this cupcake do to fill her shut-in hours? Why, make candy, of course!
Welcome to the Snowventure!
So wait…if you made candy, why am I looking at a picture of the blizzard? Well, as it turned out, I had forgotten the key ingredient for my candy project of the day: Scharffen-Berger chocolate for the truffles! So I had to foray out into the “frozen wasteland” (as my father calls it) in search of sweets.
