Eat, DINK and Be Merry » Houston

Toasty in Texas

Amber — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 03:41:12 +0000

We had a long, mild winter, which has been followed by several weeks of the kind of weather that makes me want to stay in Texas forever. Sunroof open, windows down, not a care. With the flowers and palm trees you can almost pretend you’re in Southern California, except for knowing that soon the air will be hot and thick as soup until November. I got a taste of that Saturday when I ran an errand and came back to my car to find the black interior resembling a blast furnace. When I opened the door and the wave of hot air hit me I felt surprised and then dumb for being surprised; it hasn’t been that long since it was hot here! I suppose air conditioning season is nigh.

The other toast popping around here is good old Toastmasters. This past week was Toastmasters-intensive for me. Not only did my work club meet (I’m now the president of that club, and we have a lot of work to do to become a smoothly functioning club), but the next day I had the privilege of acting as chief judge at our area contest. A contest is like the old adage about the duck on the pond — if you’re sitting in the audience, everything looks pretty smooth. Only when you’re behind the scenes do you see how hard the feet are paddling! Fortunately for me, our area governor was the contest chair. She juggles an amazing number of things and she made it as easy as possible on me. (She has opened a lot of opportunities for me and I have made it a practice never to say ‘no’ to her. It’s served me well so far!) At the end of the contest she called up the functionaries to thank them and say excessively wonderful things about them. She presented me with a beautiful note and this book, which I am excited to read:

I take that photo a lot, I just realized. Insert book/tchotchke of the moment, hit shutter. Anyway, on Friday I attended the gallery opening of a Toastmasters acquaintance and ran into some other members there. On Saturday I attended another area’s contest (as a spectator) plus a couple educational sessions — one about listening effectively and the other about running productive meetings. Two of my favorite topics, for sure. One of the reasons I attend nearly everything I can — aside from my own edification, of course — is the opportunity to interact with some of the most knowledgeable and influential members in the district, and this event turned out to be a great one for that.

I feel like the pieces are moving into place for some really exciting things to happen in my little Toastmasters-nerd world. I can probably count on one hand the number of times in my adult life when an opportunity seemed limitless. I’d like to put this moment under glass so I can come back to it over and over.

Red velvet rodeo

Amber — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 01:46:49 +0000

This weekend we brought my sister with us for our last rodeo visit of 2012. I had a very specific food checklist and completed it in this order: sausage on a stick, fried red velvet cake, fried cookie dough. Yes, I did the cookie dough last time, but it was worth a repeat. Enough so to supercede fried oreos.

Watch for my friend Natalie’s take on fried red velvet, but here’s my assessment: solid 7 or 8, but not a game-changer. Would be better with more frosting, or a post-fry frosting schmear. Would eat again.

We minimized our visit to the livestock, but stopped to admire the chickens.

There was plenty of livestock at the actual rodeo events. It was the second to last night of the whole rodeo so we got to see some championship shootout rounds, which meant we got double the rodeo for our money! BTW, can you spot the amateur in this collage?

Obviously it’s the kid with the camera in her face, but the calf scramble is no joke. Torn shirts and torn jeans are common results!

This time the concert was Brad Paisley. I don’t know his music, but it was a pretty good show. I left my telephoto lens home this time, so my photos of his alter ego were better than my photos of him:

Also, did you know that ladies love Brad Paisley? It’s true. Every time he stepped from the stage onto the dirt, the fence instantly looked like human flypaper.

Ah, rodeo, I will miss you for the next 11 months. Why haven’t I bought a lifetime membership yet?

Springing forward

Amber — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 03:00:01 +0000

If you asked me, “Amber, how many of your rodeo photos have you sorted through since last weekend?” I would have to admit that the answer is 15. Those would be the ones from which I am posting tonight. After that, I am springing forward to the next rodeo day! If you guessed that I’m still going to take just as many photos, you’re probably right.

Anyway, the photos I have tonight are from the John Legend concert after the rodeo events. Of all the performers of the various rodeo weekends, John Legend was the only one I actively wanted to see, and he did not disappoint. In fact, the sound was uncharacteristically good for Reliant Stadium, which has made many a Grammy winner sound terrible. He opened with Adele’s ‘Rolling In the Deep’ and performed a great selection of his older hits and new material. This was not his first rodeo (literally and metaphorically) and he even dressed for the occasion. Maybe we’ll go see him again next year!

Rodeo, Rothko and fried cookie dough

Amber — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 04:12:46 +0000

My parents visited this weekend and we took them to the rodeo! If you have been with me a while, you know that I LOVE the rodeo and took a million photos while I was there — too many to sort through tonight. However, I can show you a photo of this year’s game changer:

Fried cookie dough on a stick. I’ll be eating that again! I had a longer list of must-eats than I accomplished, but I’ll get a second chance in a couple weeks. Anyway, it was fun to get to finally show my parents what the big deal is at the world’s biggest rodeo.

This weekend we took advantage of the last weekend to see the Byzantine Fresco Chapel. The two frescoes date to the 13th century and were originally stolen from Cyprus. The Menil Foundation paid the ransom and restored the 38 pieces for display as intact frescoes. They’ll be going back to Cyprus after this weekend.

We also stopped into a very famous Houston landmark, the Rothko Chapel. I apologize if you are an art buff, but I am calling BS on the Rothko Chapel. It’s an octagonal bunker with some enormous purplish-black canvases on the walls. I’m happy to let wealthy art patrons commission whatever they like, but the pamphlet makes a bit much of it for me:

“It is a place where a great artist, turned towards the Absolute, had the courage to paint almost nothing — and did it masterfully.”

Can someone show me a non-masterful example of painting ‘almost nothing’? Has anyone ever advised a student of art who has failed at painting almost nothing to go back, study the masters, and try again?

The works of the Rothko Chapel and a few other surreal about-town experiences made for a weekend replete with hilarious (to us) inside jokes and commentary. From this sprung my idea for my next blogging venture. I’m pretty sure it is destined for greatness.

Backyard Valentine vacation

Amber — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 04:00:03 +0000

Since we both had to work on Valentine’s Day this year, we decided our gift to ourselves would be a fancy weekend in a hotel right here in downtown Houston! It turned to be a perfect weekend to stay in one place, with incredible thunderstorms passing through on Friday and Saturday.

We checked into the Four Seasons on Friday evening and headed downstairs to dinner at Quattro. Truffled fries, veal cheek bolognese, lava cake, oh my! I was glad we didn’t have to drive home because I was so full from the amazing food.

Saturday we started with an amazing room service breakfast and spent the rest of the day in the spa, enjoying massages and having the fourth-floor outdoor whirlpool to ourselves. We finished the day with another room service meal. You can get 24-hr room service at the Four Seasons (required to earn a five-diamond rating from AAA), which is awesome — not that I can stay awake late enough to need it after a spa day. What is it about relaxing all day that makes me so tired?

I was probably most excited for brunch today, which was even better than I’d imagined. There was a breakfast station (eggs, bacon, french toast, etc), a dessert station and a savory area (it requires you to walk into the kitchen, which is interesting) that appeared to have some of everything offered throughout the hotel: seafood, Italian, sushi, meats, cheese & charcuterie. I usually like to keep to traditional breakfast foods before noon, but I had to try some grilled chicken, pasta and bacon-wrapped quail.

I would pretty much like to live at the Four Seasons now, please. The room was elegant, quiet and comfortable, and the service throughout the hotel was befitting of royalty. I wish the spa had a little more going on as far as relaxation areas, but that’s all I would change.

It was finally sunny and pleasant today, so after we brunched and checked, we wandered over to Discovery Green to walk around and sit in a butterfly garden. If the weather were always like this, I would never want to live anywhere else! Finally we made our way back to the hotel to get our car, but not until we wandered through the new downtown Phoenicia Foods and picked up a little something to take home.

It was an indulgent weekend, but we won’t be able to do this kind of thing when Mark is in school, so we’re enjoying the flexibility now. Hopefully we can squeeze in one more weekend like this before then!

Not just for breakfast

Amber — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:24:45 +0000

Bacon broke free from breakfast a long time ago, but why not chorizo? (And why don’t I have any photos of chorizo??) Granted, I can get chorizo con huevos at any hour here in Houston, but let’s see you do that in Philadelphia. It’s time for chorizo to shine!

I guess Austin has been on the hipster taco tip for a long time, but Houston is finally catching up. We got a Torchy’s Tacos and Mark and I have been eating the heck out of that. Green chile pork for him, chorizo egg & cheese for me. It’s beautiful when you can get breakfast tacos for dinner, and they’re open late.

BUT — tonight we tried Tacos A Go-Go at the new Heights location, and I’m afraid that after tonight we may have to just be friends with Torchy’s, because the chorizo, egg, bacon and cheese tacos that I ate have won my heart. Plus they’re open until 2 AM on weekends, which might as well be all night for us.

I have a growing list of chorizos I’ve sampled in Houston. Like bacon, I don’t think I’ve had a bad one, but some are better than others. I think the ground chorizo we get from the Whole Foods meat counter is as good as any restaurant’s, and never gristly.

And then there was the time Mark cooked my chorizo and eggs in the pan in which he’d cooked a habanero omelet earlier in the day. My heat/spiciness tolerance is offset by about an order of magnitude from Mark’s, and that may have been the hottest thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. The suffering I endured through that meal is a true testament to my love of chorizo.

Fall comes to Houston

Amber — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 01:36:46 +0000

So we’re four days from the first day of winter, but better late than never!

There are some beautiful autumn colors on my drive to work, as well. We’ve had the odd 80-degree day here and there, but the weather has mostly been cool enough to enjoy long sleeves, tights and leather jackets. We got the car back from the body shop this past week, so now I’m ready for another arctic blast that will let me enjoy the seat heaters! Also, Enterprise gave me a substantial discount for the rental car being dirty and smelly, so hooray!

I can’t believe the holidays are just about here. My work days are as busy as ever, which I generally like, with the exception of staying 90 minutes later than usual this past Friday. I have a three-day week and a lot to try to accomplish, and then I’m off for the rest of the year. Mark and I are looking forward to seeing his side of the family for the first time in over a year.

I also have a Toastmasters speech to prepare — our last meeting of 2011 is this week. My topic is bad PowerPoint habits. I am starting to think that PowerPoint may be my life’s passion. What exactly does that say about me? I don’t want to think about it. I’m just going to go back to devouring these books.

The internet needs more cat photos

Amber — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:29:49 +0000

Has anyone seen my blogging motivation?

I usually come home from Toastmasters and blog, but tonight I took a nap while Mark did the cleaning and then we went for pho, and now it is suddenly super-late o’clock! It’s good to have those days sometimes.

Speaking of pho and good days, we’ve finally gotten a break in the heat and we are down (down is relative) in the high 80s with humidity around 50% or lower. It’s sunroof weather! The last couple days have been the kind that make Houstonians feel like there is no other place in the world they would rather be. We may not have autumn leaves, but we do have this!

Hacked and packed

Amber — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 03:00:30 +0000

My web host got hacked today and my site looked like this for a little while:

Fortunately, they fixed it. Not everyone was impressed by the hacker. I didn’t lose any data and I didn’t have to do anything to restore my site, but I’m making a mental note to back up my stuff more often. If I’d had to rely on my last manual backup, I’d have been in a world of hurt! Kudos to InMotion.

In unrelated news, I’m off to Chicago again tomorrow. Another going-to-Chicago-without-going-to-Chicago trip. My poor officemate, who just moved to Houston from Chicago, has to go there this week for the same seminar I’m attending, come back to Houston, and then go back the following week. I asked him, “Aren’t you glad you transferred to Houston so you don’t have to be in Chicago anymore?”

One of things about living in Houston is that, by September, you can’t really remember what temperatures below 90F feel like. It makes packing for other parts of the country tricky. I know I’ll be cold, so I should pack warm clothes. On the other hand, I know that 50s-60s aren’t really THAT cold. On the third hand, I know that what 50s-60s feels like to me is not what it feels like to most of the country. So after two days of a clothing merry-go-round, I finally made peace with the idea that I’ll be wearing a sweater and a jacket, and Chicagoans will be wearing shorts — and now my suitcase is ready to go.

Finally, I’m putting this here just so I can pull it up and enjoy it any time I need to this week:

I’ll probably be too busy to post this week — seminars all day, and then someone has to look out for the old guys who think they can out-drink the young bucks after dinner. Talk to you soon!

Delicious weekend

Amber — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 03:00:48 +0000

You know what we had this weekend? Rain! A drop in the bucket of this year’s terrible drought, to be sure — but good, hard rain nonetheless. We took the car through the carwash today and were rewarded with another little sprinkle of rain for our effort.

Oh, we also had these beautiful ribeyes:

Our favorite butcher had tweeted about them on Thursday and although they sounded wonderful, I was awfully tired at the end of the day and figured they were probably gone anyway. When they were mentioned again on Friday morning, I started planning my day around them (following Revival’s tweets has made me hungry non-stop and may end up being very expensive). We didn’t have any sides, so while I was there I picked up some extremely long beans:

And of course, the most important part of any meal:

I needed some lunch anyway, so I also brought home one of these, which I immediately enjoyed with great gusto:

The dog is supposed to be served with relish, but I don’t like anything on my meat except cheese or more meat. Figured the house-made chicharrones were close enough to meat, so I allowed them. Oh, and if you’ve never have Zapp’s chips, you should rectify that.

How did your weekend taste?