How I Now Do Sunday Funday

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I can’t drink, so I’ll have my fun with delicious, decadent desserts! Ed came over on Sunday to cheer on the Lions against my Packers. He brought beer for himself and his famous Baked Escape s’mores bars for me. The Packers stomped the Lions, Ed stomped out, and I made off with a whole pan of s’mores. Good Sunday, all around! Good Monday, too, when I invented a dessert called warmed s’mores a la mode. YUMYUMYUM!

If you want to get your hands on these delicious s’mores bars (made with marshmallow fluff and Hershey’s milk chocolate sandwiched between two layers of graham cookie), you’ll have to go online for now. Ed/The Baked Escape were at the Edgewater Farmers Market all summer, but it’s done now. Starting in December he’ll be at the Indoor Farmer & Artisan Food Market in Evanston. Individual bars at the markets sell for $3 each, or you can order a whole pan for $20 via the Baked Escape website.

Danny & Caroline’s Baby Shower


The clothesline before everyone added their onesies.


Danny & Caroline


Caroline


“There is a Revolution Brewing in my diaper.” We got this onesie for the baby.


Wine for Caroline from Cousin. He also got Danny some beer! They’ll probably need it!


The clothesline after everyone added their onesies.

This past weekend Trent and Loden hosted a baby shower for Danny and Caroline. This was my second shower I went to for these guys. There was one around Christmas with Danny and Dallas’s family and was girls only, but this shower was more like a party with a bunch of friends that just happened to have some baby things. Loden had the cutest onesie decorations. She ironed on letters to spell out “B-A-B-Y H-A-R-A” and strung them up along the banister along with a bunch of blue balloons. Trent had a ton of beer and Loden set up a make-your-own-margarita stand and a a taco bar for dinner. Kristin brought guac and I brought cupcakes (more on that later). Everything was so delicious!


Doesn’t quite fit Cousin.

For a fun activity, Loden got a bunch of onesies and some fabric pens and paint and everyone at the party decorated a onesie for the baby. After a couple drinks these turned out pretty great. Mine is kind of an inside joke. At Caroline’s family baby shower I got her a bunch of Green Bay Packers baby things, much to Danny’s dismay. Caroline said that these things went missing and later on realized they were in the garage, where Danny said he “accidentally” “dropped” them. Um. Yeh.


Sugar Bear


Much excitement with two dogs, a turtle and a two-year old kid!

Halle was the only kid at the party and it was fun to hang out with her. Lately she is very shy when she first arrives, clinging onto Jill’s legs, but within about a half hour, she’s lively and talkative and not shy at all. Tent and Loden have two dogs, Charlie and Winston, and a turtle Sugar Bear. Halle has a big dog at home, Vegas, so she was really into the turtle. Like really into it. When Loden took him out of the tank and let him run around for a while, Halle just about lost her mind. It was so cute!!!

It was fun to spend time with everyone and see Trent & Loden’s new(ish) place. We also watched some football. Lions lost. HAHA, Ed. Nice to see Danny and Caroline again. They’re just about exactly one month out from becoming parents. Can you believe it?!? Caroline looks tiny! Before we knew it, it was 1 a.m. and we were still hanging out and talking. Time to go! Hopefully we’ll get to see Danny and Caroline again soon, but maybe not before the baby? We’ll see…

Banana Cake

I made this banana cake the week that the Lions played the Cowboys. I remember because Ed (Detroit fan) came over to watch the game. Luckily Dallas was out of town that weekend, because the Cowboys lost bad in the second half. Anyway, banana cake was in the oven when Ed, a baker, arrived. The thing is, the middle fell and never cooked through. Ed and I weren’t sure what to do, so I pulled it out. I could have left the cake in the oven longer, but I didn’t want to burn the edges. We ended up just eating the outside parts and tossing the middle. Any tips on this? The cake was great otherwise.

It’s a Party for Brian’s Birthday

Before you read any of this, know that you have to sing the post title to the tune of Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA,” because that is Brian’s favorite song.


Lynda & Josh


Brett, Todd, Dallas, Rachelle. Dallas trying to make my camera signal closed eyes. He thinks the icon is racist! He’s not the only one.


Kelly (camera not even turned on), Todd, Brett


Adam, Birthday Boy Brian, Sara


Christine and Adam and to the left, Adam’s brother Todd


Larry and Lilia, Ang & Murph


Brian, Sara, Kelly


Larry is a giant.

On Saturday night we went out for Brian’s birthday. Sara, his fiance, arranged for 16 of us to have dinner at Sakura Teppanyaki. This was a Benihana kind of place where they cook the food on a hot grill in front of you and put on a show. Uh, not that I’ve ever been to Benihana, but I went to a similar kind of place on Mauai called Kobe Japanese Steak House way back in 2009. I haven’t been to anything like this since.


Let the show begin! If you want to see big fire, check out my photo from a similar restaurant on Maui!


Lots of shrimp, scallops, lobster, chicken and steak.


Our chef messing with Brett & Kelly.


Setting up the onion volcano.


The volcano.

All of the teppanyaki dinners were served with a grilled shrimp appetizer, miso soup, salad, grilled vegetables and fried rice. Then you got to pick what kind of entree you wanted. There was a selection of different kinds of fish, chicken, steak, filet mignon, shrimp, scallops, lobster, or calamari. Or you could get a combo. I got steak and scallops. And I upgraded my fried rice to chicken fried rice. I liked everything I had, except I wouldn’t recommend the upgrade to chicken fried rice. It’s not worth it. Otherwise it was all good. Dinners range from about $18 – 30. Not too expensive for all of the food you get. I was so stuffed at the end of dinner.

As for our chef, he was pretty funny. He quickly detected which were the people to mess with and playfully teased them while cooking our dinner. He kept saying “No sake bomb, no happy!” so we bought him a sake bomb when we got a round for the table.


Almost all the ladies were drinking these 100-calorie martinis (on the left), sake bombs on the right.


Here’s the set up: Glass of beer, sake balanced on chop sticks.


All set?


Larry showing Brian how it’s done. Everyone pounds the table.


Then the sake falls into the glass. You can see Larry’s chopsticks flying and the sake glass inside the beer glass.

Our table had countless rounds of sake bombs. I think I had 2-3 total, but some people had more. A sake bomb is served with a glass of beer and a shot glass sized serving of sake. The drinker takes their chopsticks and lays them across the top of the beer pint glass. Then they balance the sake on the top of the chopsticks. This can be tricky after a few drinks. Ask Lynda. She accidentally dropped hers in early twice and had to drink her bomb before everyone was ready.

After you have the sake balanced you pound the table and it causes the sake to fall into the beer. The should be drank immediately. To be honest, the sake bombs mostly just tasted like beer to me, but because everyone feels the need to race and chug, and the fact that there is sake in there, it can make you drunk fast. Also, the sake glass falling into the beer can be really messy. I had a lap of beer on the first round. On the second I just dropped the sake in instead of doing the chopsticks and pounding. Not as fun, but definitely less messy!


Kelly, Brett, Lilia, Rachelle. Front: Lynda, Brian, Christine, Sara.


Some out takes!

After dinner we headed over to some really cheesy Lincoln Park bars. Good thing I was drunk because these were not my kind of places! I asked Brian if I was going to feel like an old lady at the bar we were headed to. You know… not old, just too old for the club, but he said just to sit back and watch and laugh, and so I did. So, we headed to Beaumont, which most people seemed to have been to but not for a long time and not proudly. And not so early. It was dead when we arrived. No one else was there. But in no time if was filled with single 20-somethings. It was actually kind of painful to watch.


The Store til Four


Don’t ask. It was late. I get the willies just looking at this photo!

Later on we went down a few buildings to The Store.. ahem… The Store til 4. Any bar with “til 4” in the name is probably not a good idea. I’m looking at you Tai’s til 4! I learned that lesson a few times many years ago. But Dallas and I didn’t stay out anywhere near 4 a.m. I think we caught a cab home at 2 or so.

I didn’t see Brian on Saturday but I saw him for a while on Sunday at The Scout in the South Loop where we were eating lunch and watching some football (Packers won! Lions lost! We’re the best in the league!) and it seemed like he had a good birthday weekend!

Packers/Lions Season Ending Game

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The Packers played the Lions today. I was psyched because we were almost guaranteed the win with the Lions coming into today with a 0-15 record. .. not that the win meant anything to us really, we’re already out of the playoffs. Ed, who grew up outside of Detroit and is a big Lions fan, came over. He had me scared for a little bit when the game was tied up, but we pulled through at the end.