Celebrating a Friend at Founding Farmers!

My law school is in close proximity to Founding Farmers--a restaurant that EVERYONE raves about.  I went for the first time a few days ago in honor of my friend Catherine's birthday!  It was a little on the expensive side for a graduate school budget (but let's face it, even Sonic or Chick-fil-A is a bit much on a graduate school budget), but it was delicious and totally worth it to celebrate a special occasion!  In this case, Catherine was turning 24 in the middle of finals weeks so she and the rest of us deserved a good cheering up!

Founding Farmers is well-known and well-loved around DC because of it's delicious food and laudable mission.  On their website it says: "A collective of American family farmers owns our restaurant. We source our fresh products from family farms, ranches, and fisheries across the United States. We celebrate and share the longstanding connection between farmers — the first to lead the “green” movement — and their historic stewardship of natural resources."  As the granddaughter of a farmer, I can't help but love this place! :)

 Everything is made from scratch on the premises as well.  Including the cream in my coffee!  Everything was so good.  Blake got to eat some of that french toast too since I couldn't finish it!

Easter Brunch!

Over the weekend, Blake and I enjoyed a fun Easter brunch with friends!  I spent the morning cooking up some delicious food.  I wanted to make something fun for brunch, and I stumbled across a picture with no recipe attached.   I was determined to recreate it as best I could, and this is what I came up with:

Using the source-less picture as inspiration, I ran to the grocery store and picked up the following ingredients:

1/2 pound of strawberries, quartered
1 small container of frozen whipped cream
1/2 a block of fat free cream cheese
Toothpicks for display!

And some skim milk to go along with the Bisquick that I used for the pancake portion of my recipe.

The recipe looks a lot more complicated than it was! I diced up a few strawberries and added the cream cheese and frozen whipped cream together.  Blake masterfully mixed it together until it was smooth.

Meanwhile, I made the pancakes.  I don't know if you can tell, but the pancakes are in the shape of Easter eggs and hearts!  I used our metal (I would highly suggest NOT using plastic haha) cookie cutters on the hot pan and poured the batter into the cookie cutter about 2/3 full.  When it started to get close to the top of cookie cutter, I flipped it over to get the other side.

Side note: This was not exactly a smooth process.  I kept burning myself on the pan and spilling the batter when I was flipping the cookie cutter over with tongs!  It was definitely a learning process ;)

After the pancakes were done cooking, I passed them off to Blake who had a system of extracting the shapely pancakes from the cookie cutter.  From there, I let the pancakes cool a little, and topped with my fun cream cheese mixture!  Afterward, I speared a quarter strawberry through the middle.  I sprinkled some syrup on them, and they were ready to go to Brunch with me and Blake!

Ohhhh and what a brunch it was!  Cat, always the creative cook, made Eggs Benedict with a deeeee-licious hollandaise sauce and myriad of toppings.  We ate well on Easter, that's for sure!

Poached eggs

After brunching ourselves silly and sipping on Mimosas, we sat around and chatted and ended up playing Taboo.  Taboo's the game where everyone is split up into two teams.  One person draws a card and has to get her teammates to guess the word on the card.  The person is restricted from saying certain other words though.

I was HORRIBLE.  You'd think I should know how to talk, right?  I was sooooo bad.  For example, I pulled the word 'Impeach' and then couldn't say the words: President, Clinton, Hearing, and something else.  The only thing I wanted to say after seeing the words I couldn't say was "President Clinton was Impeached at a Hearing!!!"  My team lost. Sorry guys!  I'll work on my Taboo skillz before next time!

Regardless of my horrible board game skills, we still had a lot of fun!  Brunch turned into  dinner time before we left!  It was a great way to spend the holiday.  Much better than last year... I had an exam the next day! :P

I hope everyone had Happy Easters!

Valentine's Day Smoothie!

Blake and I made a Valentine's Day-inspired smoothie to share yesterday.  Some chocolate powder, ice, milk, cream, and frozen raspberries blended together made up a delicious treat! I topped it with some whipped cream and another raspberry, and Blake and I ate it up!

Sacrificial Soup

On Saturday, I had to judge a competition at the law school.  I made sure to wear two of the SAME shoes for this competition, instead of what happened last time:

Notice the different shoes please.

The competition-judging went just fine.  I judged four different teams of two for an hour per team while they counseled a "client" in a hypothetical initial meeting.  Last year, I played the part of the client, and I was a distraught attorney seeking legal advice because I forged a client's signature on a will.  That was fun!  Throwback to my acting days! :)

Before I left for the day, I decided to make broccoli cheese soup.  I'd been craving it for forever, and I'd pinned a recipe to try out.  I didn't realize how much time it was going to take, but I'd like to think it was worth the effort!

I also made some bread in our bread machine!  Let me just say, the smells emanating from our kitchen were delicious!

 Here's our soup in the crockpot.  We used our blender to make it nice and smooth.

The meal was not without sacrifice.  Part of the recipe called for julienned carrots.  Who has the time to julien carrots?? Instead, I got out a cheese grater, and used the biggest size to make strips of carrots. I managed to cut my thumb and break my fingernail.  Blake took over at one point and cut his finger too!  Who knew a cheese grater could be so dangerous??

Yummmm...

 We ate our lunch paired with an episode of Bones! 

Banana Smoothie! Had to share!

I am currently sipping a banana smoothie and watching the Colbert Report, and I think that I must absolutely share this delicious concoction!

In my beautiful KitchenAid mixer that my rockstar husband got me for Christmas, I mixed:

• One frozen banana, cut in half
• About 3 spoonfuls of 0% plain greek yogurt
• 2 packets of splenda
• About a cup of vanilla almond milk
• 2 ice cubes
• A teaspoon of cinnamon

I turned it on liquefy and let it go until smooth!

To be fair, I think I have a superpower with smoothies.  Everything I make in a smoothie is absolutely delicious!  Now I know that sounds conceited... but I can't contain my own amazing skillz in this area.  I will continue making amazing smoothies because with great power comes great responsibility!

I'm totally kidding. I hope that the sarcasm came across :)

Break Revolves Around Food

Friday, Blake and I got to eat lunch with Courtney and Heather again.  Courtney was on a 'hang out date' with a new guy from her grad school class.  I am pretty sure it's safe to talk about this here, since Courtney may or may not read the blog, but Lance certainly doesn't!  Regardless, we all LOVED him, so there's no bad news to pass along on the blog anyway!

Lance is the one in the middle! Haha of course.

I'm the queen of the self-timer for group shots.  There's nothing awkward or staged about this picture AT ALL!

Yummmm... the food was so good! There's definitely a lack of good Mexican food in DC.  Or Americanized Mexican food... if this isn't very auténtico. :)

Speedy Gonzales

 After lunch and hanging out for awhile, we went back to Heather's apartment and participated in a GLEE marathon!

Source

 I was never a huge Glee fan, but over the summer I started watching some of it.  Our Glee marathon got me all caught up with this season! It was blissful!  Blake and I don't have cable, so this whole On Demand thing was freakin' awesome!

During our Glee marathon, Blake got a call from one of our friends who is living in Alabama and attending medical school there.  Dylan was passing through on his way to North Carolina and wanted to catch up.  Blake was really excited!  Though they have talked all throughout the year, the last time they actually saw each other was at Dylan's wedding.

Dylan and Blake at Dylan's Wedding

Dylan and Blake at Blake's Wedding!

They went to a nice restaurant in Nashville to catch up and, as Blake said, commiserate about their medical school experiences!

Heather and I went on a little date of our own to a BBQ place down the street!  We didn't take pictures though, so right before we left we jumped in this random booth and took a picture of ourselves!  Hahaha I love Heather!  Who else would do this with me?

Quick, act natural! We've been sitting here all night!

Brunch, Lunch, Dinner, Family, Friends, Friends who are Like Family: Part II

The second part of our Thursday was equally fun and exciting!  We went over to see some of our good friends, Tyler and Brittney.  They live near some of my family and Heather, so I love visiting since I get to see so many great friends and family (and friends who are like family haha).  Brittney made dinner and Tyler made guacamole and had us all over for dinner.  Just look at how cute these place setting are!

 There's the gracious hosts!

 We started the night the way I like to: with presents!  Brittney got Blake and me the sweetest gifts.

 First, she made us this wreath with our initial in it.

 AND she made us a scrapbook of our wedding!  She is so great.  She's also the same gift-giver who gave me the birthday present I wrote about here.

 My cousins and Aunt Kathy also came to Brittney's for dinner!  These are my "little" cousins.  They are both over 6 feet tall!

 And there's my favorite only aunt-on-my-mom's-side!

 Here's Brittney opening up her present from me!

 I just love her!

After dinner we went upstairs to the entertainment room and played Kinect!  It's like Wii but without a wand... you just use your hands!  They made fun of my little avatar when I played because I moved a whole lot!

Blake and Tyler playing!

Brittney and Tyler!

It was such a great day!  We stayed up late talking and my sister, Becca, came over after she was done babysitting.  Can't wait to hang out again!
--Catie