bars and malls...

so yesterday was our company holiday party, which started at noon.  it was held this year down in the sodo district at herban feast.  it was a really beautiful venue and i totally forgot my digital camera in the car so you can't see it.  i did take my kodak flashfun and my kowa six inside, so in a million years when i get the film developed i'll post those pics.

until then you will have to be happy with the rest of my photos from the night!  after the holiday party was the after party!  we got there 3:30-4 and left about 6:30.  it was held at fado, downtown on the edge of pioneer square.  much fun was had by all!!

 why is jon a ghost?

jon got dan some nasty ass drink that was a shot with a pickle juice chaser.  

 that's just not right.

apparently, this is where the whole phoenix jones shit went down, as told to me by a co-worker who will remain nameless.

and then back inside for more hilarity!

the after party was super fun and i could have stayed longer and am glad that i did not.  i'm already looking forward to next year!

then, since the holiday party was on a thursday (who does that???) us ladies took the day off and went to the southcenter mall to do some shopping and see a movie.  this mall was fricking enormous and i'm pretty sure i didn't see half of it.

i was most excited about the sanrio store!!  it was a pretty small store but i had a great time looking at all the cute.

then before the movie we ate at the food court.  i swear, sam has been talking about the goddamn chicken there for like 2 weeks.  i'm not sure who was more excited...me about sanrio or sam about the chicken.

i had a delicious tofu wrap with a side of fried tofu.  it might sound like too much tofu, but the wrap was mostly noodles and lettuce, so it was just this side of awesome.  the fried tofu was delish and i took most of it home to eat later.

sams chicken ended up looking like a pack of wild dogs got into it and tore that shit up.  the texas toast looked especially yummy.

then we went and saw the new sherlock holmes movie.  it was really good and now i really want to watch the first one!  and alvin and the chipmunks invited us into the theatre.

all in all it was a really good fun day and i'm glad i took the day off and went.

then i went home and turned my leftover triangle tofu into dinner!

YUM!

now i'm full and tired and maya and i have some x-files to watch!!

let's do this again next year!!

i love sundays...

i really really love sundays.  it's the only day of the week where i have the house to myself (well, the animals don't count) so i can do what i want when i want.  i always start the day out by drinking my coffee while reading my book while listening to casey kasem's top 40 from the 70's. NICE!

this weekend i had a shitload of stuff to do.  i needed to finish the 5 bags for my friend noelle, make christmas cards, put together the christmas package for alistair to mail to his family in the UK, get what presents i have wrapped and make food.  sundays are usually the day that i make food.  

this sunday i made water proofed rolls from james beard and some bitchin' cheesy cauliflower soup from my soup cookbook.

i was looking through beard on bread looking for an easy roll to make when i came across the water proofed buns.  i had never even heard of water proofing bread before so i immediately called my mom to see if she had ever done this.  she whipped out her beard on bread book and nope, she'd never heard of it either.

so basically, in place of letting your dough rise in a warm place for the first rising, you put it in tepid water. 

here's the dough before i put in the water:

then i wrapped it with string (loosely) and put it in the water.

at first it sinks to the bottom.

but after 30-40 minutes, it's floating on top and had really almost doubled in size:

the string is much tighter now.  i'm not sure you can really tell from the picture.

while the bread was doing all of this, i was doing all of this:

working on christmas cards while watching tv.

i was kinda dumb and didn't take a shot of the dough after i opened it up (duh!), but i just cut it into sections and made buns:

this kind of bun was supposed to be rolled out into a long thin roll and made into an 8 and then dipped in sugar and cooked.  but i didn't want a sweet roll with my cheezy cauliflower soup, i wanted a dipping bun, so i just made them round.  

then they needed to proof again for another 30-40 minutes:

they got quite flat and round, but i thought that was totally ok.  this dough was super soft and kind of sloppy, so i'm totally not surprised this is how they came out.  they would have looked good as 8's.

and the finished product!!

they were a great bun for dipping into a creamy cheesy soup.  i didn't take a shot of the soup because it really just looked like a bowl of milk.  you couldn't tell it was soup unless you were eating it, but it was delicious!!

we ate a couple of the buns and i froze the rest because the book said that they froze well.  so the next time i have soup, i already have buns!

i love sundays.  i'm really looking forward to next sunday, because hopefully i'm going to ivy's to see her BABY!!!!!!!!!  and her, i'm excited to see her too!

urban craft fair

last weekend was the urban craft uprising at seattle center!  it's a great thing to go to before the holidays.  it's all handmade crafts from the northwest.  most of the awesome stuff is totally beyond my price range, but i was able to find alistair a present there so it will be from maya and i.

this year i went with grace, miss maya, dawn, jane and jane's daughter hannah.  it was totally fun!  i thought the doors opened at 10, so we all got there at 10, but they didn't open until 11. oooops.  sorry!  it was really cold out so i'm pretty sure i apologized like 50 times.  it was really crowded in there, so i didn't actually take any pics inside the show, i just took these two:

i did a lot of staring at our feet while we were waiting in line.

grace and maya were trying hard to be mad at me.

it was super fun and even though i saw a lot of the same vendors from last year, there was some new stuff and it was all really awesome.  it was also great to hang out with dawn and jane outside of work and to hang out with hannah.  maya and her are the same age, but had never met.  they seemed to get along fine and a good time was had by all.

butter!

so in looking at food blogs and following links to other blogs and then to other blogs, i've found some pretty awesome easy recipes.  last night i made butter!  BUTTER!  i mean, i basically knew how it was made, i just didn't think it really was that simple.

my friend dawn lent me her mixer for the holidays since i don't have one that works.  and to thank her for letting me use her mixer i made a trial batch to give to her!

so to make butter, all you do is whip whipping cream until it turns into butter.  like 15 minutes.  i made it while i was doing some dishes.  here's the whipping cream.

and i loooove the color of her kitchenaid!  it's awesome!

it's getting there!

BUTTER!!

i added sea salt to it for a big crunchy salt taste and popped it into a canning jar.

yay!  i'll be making more for thanksgiving dinner!!

canning trade...

a couple of weekends ago i got together with my friend sarah, who used to be my manager back in the day at barnes and noble.  sarah is awesome!  she's a totally fun girl who is into canning and cooking!  she also has her own blog, which she is much better keeping up with than i am with mine!

but i hadn't seen sarah in over 10 years since i quit b&n.  we've been friends on the facebooks and have kept in touch and we both thought that having a canning trade was a good way to get together for lunch, catch up and TRADE FOOD WE HAVE CANNED!  i just started canning this year, so i didn't have much of a selection to give her so i gave her 2 jars of marinated veggies (they're small jars!), a jar of blueberry jam and a jar of grapefruit blackberry honey jelly.

we both showed up at blue c sushi with gift bags of jars!

she gave me pear butter, rhubarb ginger jam and peach rosemary jam.

i had a great time at lunch and found out that sarah and i have lots more in common than i thought.  we'll be organizing a game night to get together and start learning how to play mah-jongg!  i'm so excited!  and about once a year i go to eat sushi at blue c.  i think it's such a funny way place to eat sushi.  it's one of those conveyor belt sushi places.

i decided i wanted to try the peach rosemary jam with some veggies on pork, so i baked the chops with the jam and sweet onions and tomatoes and put it on rice.  IT WAS DELICIOUS!  

sarah...you totally have to try your jam with some kind of meat.  it was such a good combination of sweet and savory!  you did a great job on the jam...i'm gonna have to make some next year!

i'm really looking forward to hanging out with sarah again for some photography or games!  YAY!  let winter begin!!

it's halloween again...

oof...halloween again, so soon!  i would have been a little more prepared and ready and excited for it if i hadn't been sick for the last week and missed days of work.  i got back to a TON of work today and halloween at the corporate office is not really a day when much gets done.  people are INTO halloween here.  it's a regular question when interviewing potential employees for our dept..."so, how do you like halloween?"  i was not really prepared for that question when i got interviewed.

this year was different from last year, we're a little understaffed, everyone is overworked and most everyone is sick.  it's a weird holiday this year.  but, we got it all together.  this year's theme was "brought to you by the letter H".  i thought that was a good theme, so everyone dressed up in "H" costumes.  i was a hotel hospitality hostess. we had four hillbillys, he-man, harlem globetrotter, hot dog, houseplant, hangman, hockey player, hippopotamus, hamburger helper, hippie, and hermoine granger.  i hope i didn't forget anyone!

but, there are always skits performed and people decorate their cubes or their whole department.  (we hung up a lot of "H"'s around our department.)  and then the whole corporate office votes on a lot of different categories.

nicole made dead baby cupcakes!!

they were delicious!

 robert really gets into halloween.  he always has a great costume!

 hahahahaha!  carl wasn't in his office today, but his department decorated it for him anyways!!  i love this!

 caleb wore the bullet bill on his head and had a gumba hanging over his torso.  i neglected to get a pic of him wearing it, but this was on his cubicle.  hi peach!  you're my favorite!!

 

andrew. was. awesome!!  he was on stilts!  he's totally tall to begin with and this just makes him even taller.  there will be a pic later where he's standing with the rest of his department and you can see how tall he is!

 for the life of me, i can't figure out which department this was!  they had the best decoration.  they completely enclosed their cubicles and made it into a sanitarium that you would walk around.  fantastic!

 here i am...the hotel hospitality hostess.

dave was a hot dog.  and next to him there is the hollywood starlet!!  that's kyle's wife.  she is a trooper.  she doesn't even work for us and she came in all day and was even in our skit with us!  she was great!  did i get a pic of all of us together in our skit?  no silly...i was in the skit too.  

 here's the HR dept...their theme was "carnival".  and look!  there's andrew!  TALL!

 the purchasing department's theme was "grease".  they all had great costumes and great decorations.  for their skit they made these cars and drove them in (flintstone style!!) and set up and watched a movie they made.  click on the link...they did a good job!!

here is a bunch of employees in our lobby watching the skits.  up above are two balconies also filled with employees watching the skits.  in the front there is the harlem globe trotter, a hillbilly, he-man and the hollywood starlet.

corporate accounting also did a really good job with their skit...it was also a video, the seattle office!!!  you should watch it too!!

i was way more together last year with the taking of pictures.  i feel like i've let ivy smith down a little because i didn't get shots of everyone in our department so she could see what we did.  but that's ok...there's always next year!!!

on the way home, nicole spied these post-it decorations in some windows!  MADE OUT OF POST-ITS!!!