x-biking, comedy and cooking

Yesterday and weekend plans...blah blah...

Well, we're back from hiking...

...and ready to go again!

Getting ready for hiking...

I gots my stuffs and I'm ready...if it stops raining...

Thank you to my vlog viewers!

I just wanted to say I appreciate the emails I've been getting...

Making Banana-Split Tea Bread from Vegan Planet

I decided to do a little baking at home...

I broke my Amazon Kindle!

Okay, really I think it was Rodney...

Netflix shipping on Saturdays...but not for me!

I had a problem with my Netflix account today and had to call them. The woman I talked to on the phone said they put a temporary hold on my account because I'd reported a few dvds missing. Hey, is it MY fault they're missing????

So then she tells me "well, I'm going to remove the hold, and I see your distribution center is San Jose, which is now shipping movies on Saturdays so you should have movies going out tomorr....oh....well, I don't think we ship on Saturdays to you."

Oh, so that's how it's going to be, huh? I think I'm throttled right now anyway, due to my tv series binge of the last few months, but now I am denied Saturday service?

I'm quite irritated right now. First the hold on my account so my bf and I won't be able to watch Little Britain Season 3 this weekend, now I am not even approved for Saturday service.

Just now I dropped my service down from 7 at a time to 4 at a time. Maybe I'll even make that 3 at a time. That'll show 'em...right? Right? I mean the thing is...SOME months a rent a lot of dvds, but some months I am very bad at returning them in a timely manner, so I am pretty darn sure Netflix ultimately makes a profit off of me, and I shouldn't be denied Saturday service. That sucks.

Now if I could only find my Roku remote...I'd see if I can get my digital streaming service throttled, too!

Spiced Sweet Potato Fries Recipe

Spiced Sweet Potato Fries Recipe

sweet potatoes, one per person
1 T. olive oil (or more if making more than two sweet potatoes)

Seasoning Mix:
2 T ground coriander
1 T ground fennel
1 T dried oregano
1 T pepper
2 T kosher salt

Preheat oven to 425 F. Peel sweet potatoes and cut into strips about 3 inches long and 3/4 inches thick.

In
mortar and pestle or spice grinder, grind together coriander, fennel,
oregano, and pepper. Mix in salt. (This makes enough for several
batches of sweet potatoes, so you'll need a small jar to store the
extra.)

In large-ish bowl, toss together cut sweet potatoes and olive
oil. Sprinkle on half of spice mixture and toss again, then other half of spice mixture and toss until spices are more or less evenly distributed. You will need about 1 T olive oil and 1 T. of
the spice mixture for every two sweet potatoes, depending on how spicy
you like it.

On a non-stick cookie sheet, spread out sweet potatoes in single layer. Roast about 35 minutes, turning about halfway through. Sweet potatoes should
be softened through and lightly browned when they're done. (They will
only be slightly crisp, sweet
potatoes never get as crisp as fried potatoes.) Serve hot.

About hiking and such

Still with the vlogging...

My satisfying weekend

I did the vlog thing again...I feel like I'm cheating not doing any typing.

What happened after Vegas (a REAL vlog entry!)

Haha, today we have video rather than the printed word!

Part 1


Part 2

Vegans back from Vegas

Well, I'm back from Las Vegas so let me sum it up...

TheRoom:
We stayed at TheHotel and it was pretty nice, or at least as nice as a 3000 room hotel can be. The lamp in the living room was bolted to the desk and the pretty glassed-in shower made a high pitched screeching noise the entire time it was turned on and leaked all over the bathroom, and despite all the hype about the beds, I think my bed at home is more comfortable, but the good news is they charge $8 for a tiny can of pringles so you are in no danger of eating too many of them. The bathtub looked big enough to be a sheep dip, but despite going to Lush and buying a big bag of bath products almost as soon as we'd finished checking into the hotel, we never actually used the bathtub, and that is shameful. At least I think my bf is a little bit addicted to Lush products now, especially the facial scrub and the shampoo bars.

TheFood:
The food started out great and went downhill. Saturday we ate at Fleur De Lys at Mandalay Bay. That place has a vegetarian menu available on request and they can easily and enthusiastically make that menu vegan upon request. They also had a super nice GM who was also a certified sommellier. The problem that started here is, if you remove all the meat, cheese, cream and butter from your food, you end up with a tasty and healthful meal but (especially if you are exerting yourself) you will end up hungry maybe four hours later. Totally normal but not always convenient. So, we ended up ordering a pizza with no cheese and some fries (and an awful bottle of wine that remained mostly un-drunk) late in the evening.

Since Sunday started out with *surprise* daylight savings time, we not only wandered around longer than we should have before finding a place to have brunch (we were going to have champagne brunch at Bally's but it seems they have closed their Sunday brunch or maybe just closed their buffet altogether) but it was also way past time to have a first meal of the day. I ended up having angel hair pasta with tomato sauce (the dish that reminds me of being totally broke, since it's so cheap to make you could have it for every meal for a whole week for about $10, except it's about 20X as much per serving at a "nice" restaurant) my bf decided to be vegetarian instead of vegan for the rest of the trip and had a calzone stuffed with about 5 pounds of cheese.

We ate lunch so late that we didn't feel like going to our 6:30 dinner reservation at Spago. We ended up at the bar at the Eiffel Tower instead. The champagne drinks there are, I must say, amazing, and the service is great, too. I can't imagine eating a whole (vegan) meal at the Eiffel Tower restaurant, but the bartender managed to get the GM to bully the chef into preparing their jeruselem couscous dish vegan for us. It's such a shame to think they can make such a great vegan dish and yet they are so loathe to do it.

After the show that night we were once again left starving so we went on this great quest for something to eat that involved some crazy taxi driver taking us basically to the back door of Denny's while trying to pretend he wasn't taking us to Denny's because I think the guy just had no clue. We ended up going to this restaurant that is supposed to be the upscale sister of The Cheesecake Factory but ummmm...give me Cheesecake Factory any day (avocado spring rolls with tamarind dipping sauce! Portobello burgers!) because this place sucked great big donkey balls. The server started out pretty cool, asking the kitchen some questions about the pizza which basically there is no chance in hell of getting vegan because it turns out there is cheese already in the pre-made crust, so Mr. I'm-vegetarian-Now-Not-Vegan had pizza while I had...oh boy...angel hair pasta with tomato sauce. Wait...didn't I have that a few hours earlier???!? Our server forgot the fries we ordered and forgot to bring my second drink, too. Someone else brought the drink just as we were about to leave and oh boy...he put it in a to-go cup for me...because I really needed to drink some more after three champagne cocktails at the Eiffel Tower, a drink the size of a small child at The Beatles: Love, and the drink I already had at this dreadful place. We took a cab back to the hotel and I wasn't quite drunk enough to end up on Taxicab Confessions, but I probably wasn't that far off, either.

Monday we had a nice brunchy type meal at TheCafe at TheHotel. Well, I say nice although I decided to order a salad because I wanted to be the kind of person who goes out to a restaurant and orders the salad, but I was less than thrilled to get a big plate of all sorts of mixed greens with a bunch of little strips of beet mixed in and some vinagarette on top. Don't get me wrong, I can eat a humongo salad at home full of ingredients of MY choosing, but I'm not head of the beet cheerleading squat and I'm rather suspicious of mixed greens that look like they could have been growing in the sidewalk cracks (if it weren't the desert.) So, when I say nice I mean that my mimosa with fresh mango juice was nice, and having a relaxing meal with my bf was nice.

TheShows:
I think my expectations for Cirque Du Soleil shows are quite high. Especially in Las Vegas with the high prices and all the hype. And when it comes to Mystere and "O", I think the shows really deliver. My expectations of "Ka" were perhaps especially high after seeing some behind the scenes stuff featured on the tv show "CSI". Ka just didn't really deliver for me, though. Not only do I expect a wow factor, but I want to see amazing physical feats and only the guys running, leaping and jump-roping around two attached spinning drums really gave that. The Beatles: Love was even worse, although my expectations weren't as high. Ahead of time I would have said Ka would be the better show, but once I saw Ka I was sure The Beatles: Love would be better. It wasn't. The music was good although maybe people have heard all those songs SOOOO many times, they just don't have the impact they should have, plus I really, really had to pee the whole time I was there. There were two dancers that were really excellent, but still no "wow" factor. Maybe we should have gone to see "Le Reve" and the russian ice skating show instead.

TheGambling:
My bf and I don't really gamble, but he did throw some money into a video poker game the second day (and lost it instantly). Waiting for the plane to go home we played a slot machine, which passed the time for quite a while as we lost for a while, then were up $70 then lost most of that and then finally my bf won back all the money we lost plus the money from the video poker game the day before and was ahead $8 in total. I can't say I felt that invested in it, since I know if we win that it wasn't MY money we were playing with, but still...I did spend about $6 of my bf's money on a magazine at the airport, so maybe I'm the one who came out furthest ahead.

TheWalking:
Saturday night we hadn't really planned on walking for miles and miles, but then it seems like we did. So although I tried to wear some of my more comfortable heels, I still ended up with a few blisters on one heel which isn't exactly how I wanted to start out the trip. My bf patched my heel up pretty well with a couple of band-aids though, so I survived the rest of our marathon treks without any limping. It's amazing how much walking we did, as well as how tired and cranky one can get when walking so much, especially in that dry air and with all those smokers. Las Vegas is like, smoker's heaven or something. I think the general population nation-wide consists of maybe 18-20% smokers, but in Las Vegas it seems to be more like about 80% and we ended up feeling scratchy throated and watery-eyed and like we were coming down with something the whole time. These symptoms disappeared back in California.

TheNightlife:
We spent way too much time wandering around looking for something to do after seeing a show. In the future, I am pretty sure we will decide to EITHER see a show OR find some nightlife kind of thing to do. Saturday night in Las Vegas standing around trying to get in to some club that is pulsing with loud house music is not my idea of a good time...I'd rather be enjoying TheBathtub and TheLushProducts. There are some fun events, but once you get out of a show that starts at 9:30 pm, everything is very clubby and/or smokey.

TheShopping:
Shopping = walking. Ugh. I lost my lipstick, so I ended up getting some more at Christian Dior. Then since I was there I got some Miss Dior skin creme as well. Actually, my bf bought these things since somehow I forgot my credit card in my bf's other jacket. Oops! He almost bought me a purse, too, but we ran out of time to go back and get it. I'm happy to know that shiny patent croc bags are in vogue right now...since I have one in a purpley berry color. I would have loved to get one in eggplant, intense red or grey and black, though! I also noticed that dress lengths right now are either very very mini (bleh) or very very maxi (yay!) Made me wish I'd brought MY maxi dress with me. Made me wish I had more than one maxi dress. I might have to see if they have one at H&M in San Francisco sometime this month. My bf also got himself a few things but I won't tell you what or he's going to ask me why I'm on the Internet telling people what he bought because it's NOYB.

TheConclusion:
I probably sound negative, but to me the trip is all about how much you enjoy the company of the person you're with, and I enjoyed the company very, very, very much 80% of the time, so I think we came out ahead and I'll chalk this trip up as a win.

Next post I'll tell you about how I came home to two very freaked out cats and no Internet service.

You got me a what?

Sometimes I have the dumbest ideas. Like last year when my bf and I were going to the gym quite regularly and I suggested we get jump ropes and jump rope between sets. My bf actually agreed this would be a good idea, but then we both forgot about it. Until now. Today my bf brought me my very own Valeo speed jump rope. Whoopie! Instead of jumping at the gym, though, he seems to think we should each jump for ten minutes a day at home.

I'm not sure which I'd rather do, knock over furniture and stacks of magazines and such, thwack a length of rubber against my ceiling a bunch of times and terrorize my cats in the privacy of my own home -or- flail about at the gym tripping over a length of noisy rubber with my body bouncing about in the most undignified manner when I'm already dead tired from lifting weights.

I'll have to think about that one. Meanwhile, let me tell you about TODAY's great idea...

Today we worked out triceps and hamstrings, and there is some kind of rule my bf totally made up (or so I think sometimes) where we don't do cardio after we work out legs. This time I was asking him "why" as I often do. "Why did you choose this parking spot?", "Why do we have to do deadlifts?", "Why is the sky blue?" and of course the ever popular, "Why don't we do cardio after we work out legs?"

The answers are as follows...

"Because the spot I wanted was taken when you insisted we go to Jamba Juice."

"Because if you hate them they must be doing something good."

"Because I'm your mother and I say so." (Ooops, sorry, my mom already answered that question for me years ago.)

and...

"Well, we could do cardio if they had stair machines here, because that is a hamstring exercise so it would fit in with what we're doing today. But they don't so I guess we can't do any."

Aha! But actually there ARE two stairmasters hiding at my gym, which I had to point out because I love to be right so much. My reward for being right was...we did ten minutes on the stairmaster. Dang that machine is freaking hard. In ten minutes I burned almost as many calories on that thing as I do on the treadmill in 25, and I was sweating like a sweater (because that's what I do, I sweat. It's a talent I have.)

I have a feeling I am going to be hobbling around tomorrow, which is too bad because I have a lot of errands to do (on foot). On the bright side, I feel very virtuous from all the working out we've been doing this week and I'm THISCLOSE to fitting into the skirt I want to wear to Las Vegas on Saturday.

Another Day, Another Gym

What is a great Saturday night with your sweetie?

How about a couple hours working out at the gym followed by a chocolate smoothie then 70 minutes of yoga at home and a glass of wine while watching Little Britain?

Works for me!

My bf is bound and determined to get back in shape and take me with him, and once I'm on board with an idea I'll give 110% to it, so after going to 24 Hour Fitness last night (which was very cool for me, it's not my regular gym and I enjoyed checking out the different machines and equipment and got to kill myself for 25 minutes on a Precor AMT. This is the third gym we've been to together. How many gyms have YOU been to with the same person?) and then doing 70 minutes of yin yoga (not really strenuous like yang yoga) we got up this morning and tried Tai Chi. We even got his sister involved. And we're still planning to do more yoga today (and maybe a little salsa lesson?) after we get back from seeing a movie.

We would have gone hiking today but it's raining. Can't go next weekend because WE'RE GOING TO VEGAS, BABY! (At least Las Vegas involves a lot of walking.) But after that we have a big book of hikes you can do on the Peninsula and so we're going to be backpack toting (have to put the picnic lunch somewhere) goofballs.

We're trying, really trying, to change the way we spend our time, not just go on a little fitness bender and then give it up for lazy brunches yet again. I'm kind of hoping it can involve a little more dancing than weight lifting. (Ooooh...did my bf really agree to try the belly dancing dvd I have???!!?!??)

Actually, we still managed to fit a lazy brunch in today. Maybe you can have your fitness and eat brunch too.