This was my first blind tasting; that’s not to say I’ve always known what wine I am drinking. But I was really looking forward to this. We didn’t have much direction other than to bring a red wine and spend around $20 a bottle.  I think it’d be interesting if we’d all brought the same varietal to see how much they all differ; maybe next time?

For our venue, we needed a BYOB restaurant. Our ring leader, James set it up at Campania Pizza in Uptown. They also have a Southlake location. If you haven’t checked them out, you should it’s a great little restaurant and I love that they are BYOB. We waited for most everyone to arrive before we began opening the bottles and tasting the wines.

Here are the wines we tasted:

1. Cooper Invencio – 2008 Red Mountain Red Wine
2. Inwood Estates 2008 Cornelius 100% Texas Tempranillo
3. Petalos Bierzo
4. Cahors
5. Mollydooker The Boxer
6. Bodini Malbec – 2010
7. 2009 Toasted Head Cabernet Sauvingnon
8. Haven’s Meritage – 2009 Rutherford, Napa Valley
9. 2009 Domaine Alain Graillot Crozes-Hermitage Blanc, Rhone, France
10. Pagos del Moncejo Garnacha 2008
11. La Vierge

What I realize now in going back over my “tasting notes” is that I should probably have smaller tastes and I should probably take better, more descriptive notes.  I’m not even sure I have correct list of all the wines.

My favorites were the Cooper Invencio and Haven’s Meritage.  It doesn’t surprise me that those two were my favorites.  I have discovered lately that I really am a big fan of  red blends.  The Meritage reminded me of a Pinot Noir it was very smooth.  And the Invencio was a nice blend of spice, sweet and smoke.  The close runner ups for me were the Petalos Bierzo and the Toasted Head Cab.

Though to be honest I didn’t really dislike any of them…well other than the “secret” extra bottle that James brought as an experiment.  It was the Inwood Estates Tempranillo.  From the start I was thrown off because to me the wine had smell that reminded me of paint chips and it never really got any better.

Here is the aftermath:

To the rest of the Brown Bag Wine Night people, what were your favorites? And if you have better notes on what exactly each wine is feel free to leave them below!

I am a little obsessed with making soup at home.  But really hadn’t ventured far beyond the two recipes I’ve tried to so far.  Thanks to Pinterest finding more recipes has been easy to do!  I even created an “i heart soup” board.  Go check it out!

It was on Pinterest that I stumbled upon this recipe from The Pioneer Woman.  I was instantly intrigued and also a little freaked out…I was going to have to pull apart a chicken to get as much meat off the bones as possible!

The first time I made this soup was the weekend of the White Rock Marathon that my sister was running, so the house was a little busy.  Plus I decided to put up my Christmas Tree that weekend with the help of my five year old nephew.

There are quite a few steps to this soup because there is quite a bit of chopping: a couple peppers, an onion and a jalapeno…chop chop chop! Once the soup was finished I couldn’t wait to taste it and it was amazing!

A few days later I learned that our Christmas Eve dinner was going to be sandwiches and soups for dinner so I immediately volunteered to cook this soup.  What I learned from making it the first time was it makes A LOT of soup!  But then I also learned that is freezes good, so that’s a definite plus.  Remember I like that whole “pre-cooked” meal that all I have to do is defrost!

Needless to say, Christmas Eve this soup was a hit!  So to my cousins, sis-in-law and anyone else…here is the recipe!

I figured there was no need for me to take too many photos because the Pioneer Woman did such a good job of that on her blog!  Also I’m not writing out the recipe because it’s on her website (click recipe in the paragraph above to see it).  The only alteration I made the second go-round was I added another 4 cups of broth, the pasta just seems to absorb it and I wanted to make sure it went far enough because there were a lot of us!

If you are a soup maker I definitely recommend this one; give it a try.  Oh and if you can’t find a cut up fryer at your grocery store, get the butcher to up a whole chicken (or fryer) for you!  I refused to cut it up myself at home; plus I don’t really have the greatest knives.

Last year seemed to be super busy and reading a book that took too much concentration seemed to be more than I could handle.  So…I just now read “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.”  This year I plan to be a much more faithful reader and have actually challenged myself to read 20 books this year, though secretly I’m hoping I read more than that!

I first attempted to read this book back in May/June but man, those first 30 pages were just too much.  So I put it down thinking I’d come back to it when I had a good chunk of time to devote to it.  Next thing I knew the movie would be out in a matter of weeks and I still hadn’t read it.  I don’t know about you but I hate to see a movie before reading the book.  And I definitely recommend reading this book before seeing the movie.  So many details are left out of the movie.

My sister gave me a great piece of advice that I will pass on here. If you haven’t read “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” yet, keep a piece of paper handy and write down the characters names and a couple words about them to help you know who they are.  Since the author is Swedish and the book was originally written in Swedish the names can be quite confusing; there never seem to be enough vowels in there.

I did that this time and for some reason once I started reading I could NOT stop!  It was addicting, yet at the same time reading it at night freaked me out a bit.  Yes this book has some gruesome parts that are hard to read.  But overall this book is very well written in my opinion.  After finishing this book I truly felt like I knew the characters.  Larsson did a fabulous job of making you really feel like you felt what the characters were feeling.

Despite this book being really popular and hearing about it all the time, I loved that this book was by a Swedish author and the story takes place in Sweden. My dad’s mom was 100% Swedish; both of her parents immigrated here. Of all the different nationalities I have in my family, Swedish the most predominate, most of my grandparents were “mutts” (for lack of a better word).

I haven’t yet read books 2 and 3 but am looking forward to it. It’s too bad for Stieg Larsson that he did not live to see the success of his novels.  Though I wonder, would they have gained such notoriety if he hadn’t passed away?

Yesterday I went and saw the movie, and I thought it was one of the best adaptations that I had seen.  Yes there were things that were omitted and yes they changed some rather significant parts; but overall I definitely recommend the movie, after you’ve read the book!

I decided to accept the challenge to post a photo a day this year and decided that I’d share them here on Friday’s with a little more detail about the pictures. I also post them on instagram (I’m kateolynch. Fooled you didn’t I!) and on my tumblr.

Jan 1st – Day 1

You should recognize this picture from Yesterday’s post!

Jan 2nd – Day 2

These are the drinks my friend Jodie and I had at The People’s Last Stand. On the left is “Jackie O” and on the right is “Etta James.”

Jan 3rd – Day 3

This is book #1 on my challenge to myself to read 20 books in 2012. I’m hoping to surpass that goal, so I set the bar low! An Tina Fey has kept me cracking up!

Jan 4th – Day 4

Spent most of the night wrapping up a website project for my company I’m getting of the ground this year, KateOGroup. Like it on Facebook to keep up with all that’s happening.

Jan 5th – Day 5

Last night I cut up a jalapeño, an Anaheim chili and a bell pepper to add to my first crock pot recipe.

Jan 6th – Day 6

Before (top) and after (bottom) of my first ever crockpot recipe and it was delicious & healthy!  Here’s the recipe

Technically I didn’t drink this wine on Wednesday, but there’s a good reason. Actually 2! I started a 10 day herbal cleanse, and no it’s not one of those crazy juice cleanses (otherwise you better believe wine would be included for me!), so I can’t have alcohol. I just can’t eat anything other than fruit, veggies or lean proteins. No real reason for doing it other than I’ve just never done one before and figured I might as well give it a try. Reason number 2 I didn’t drink this wine on Wedsnesday was I hung out with my friend Meredith on Sunday. So I thought Sunday was the perfect opportunity to finally crack open this wine.

Since I’ve been a bit MIA on this blog lately, you may not know my little sis got engaged back in October. You can read about her engagement here. And Meredith got engaged on the 23rd on her way to Vail, CO. When I say on the way…I literally mean on the way…her super creative fiance, Tate, popped the question on their flight. Big props to American Airlines for helping make it extra special (maybe I can blog about for her since she is blogless).

(that’s me with Tate & Meredith)

Meredith is one of my oldest friends, the way I like to tell it, our parents made us become friends in 2nd grade (please don’t do any math…let’s not count how many years ago that was) and we’ve been friends ever since!

Even though it has been months, I hadn’t had a chance to pop (well technically it’s a screw cap) this bottle with Beth yet…I thought why not celebrate with Beth and Meredith? Sounded like the perfect excuse to open the Mollydooker Carnival of Love. 2 birds, one stone or rather 3 girls, one bottle.

I got this bottle for Christmas last year from my dad with the help of my sister. Needless to say, I was pretty anxious to open it up.

Here are the technical stats: it’s a 2009 Shiraz and Syrah

I may be an avid wine drinker but that by no means makes me a professional wine critic, in case you forget in my absence. I enjoyed this wine, it was very dense and had a lot of body to it. Because I knew we were going to be drinking it I poured it into my fun wine decanter (above), from my sister in law (did you know I have one of those now or did I leave that off the blog too?). Due to the density of this wine it almost reminded me of syrup which then made me wonder if that’s where the name Syrah came from. But I could not find anything online to back up my theory. Anyone, anyone?

Lately I have been on a bit of a Pinot Noir kick so this was quite a change, but I would still recommend it if you can get your hands on it. Locally I have been able to find quite a few Mollydooker wines and many different stores but have never seen this one. So if you find it, let me know!

Cheers

I’ve been on it for awhile…but only recently started playing with it; and now I can’t stop! The more I look at it the more I want to cook. So that’s just what I did this past weekend. Let me just tell you…it was SO fun and now I won’t have to cook dinner for over 3 weeks!

After a long day at work, the last thing I want to do is come home and cook dinner let alone even spend time thinking about what to have.

I decided if I was going to take the time to cook, then I was going to make things I could freeze and have later.  So, I set out on a mission to pick a few recipes that used chicken and some of the same spices to get the most bang for my buck!  Then I headed to the grocery store and spent a whopping $95 to get all of this:

The strangest item I bought, because it was new to me and not something I ever thought I’d buy was ground chicken…so I was totally nervous about that recipe.  Also, I should note, these were all new recipes and not things I’d tried.  But based on everything I saw these recipes would freeze really well and that’s what I was going for!  If you are looking for a guide about how long foods can stay in the freezer, I think this is a great index!

First recipe was chicken noodle soup. I picked this recipe because I thought her suggestion of freezing servings in large muffin tins was BRILLIANT!  However I totally botched the chicken and made this way too bland…no fault of the poster; it was my own mistake.  Which means this soup may just be the last thing to leave my freezer.  I know this because I made sure the soup was ready in time for dinner on Saturday night.  Even though I had some for dinner I was still able to freeze 6 servings.

When I cooked the chicken for the the soup I went a head and cooked the chicken that I needed to make this enchilada recipe.  I went with this one over the many other recipes that I saw on Pintrest because it seemed the lowest in calories.  My best estimation, a serving (2 enchiladas) of this recipe is right around 500 calories.  Not awesome, but not bad.  The chicken had to be shredded so I worked on that for a bit Saturday but ended up building the enchiladas on Sunday.  When I had these for lunch I was impressed.  Though I think next time I want to make my own enchilada sauce the one I bought was just so-so.  Also, I decided to use whole wheat tortillas.  After lunch I still had enough enchiladas left over to freeze 9.5 servings.  Though since I had opened the enchilada sauce I froze the remainder in mini muffin tins and bagged it up in serving increments.

Next up was Chicken Parmesan Meatloaf. To be honest, I thought this recipe sounded both gross and intriguing…you know the whole ground chicken thing.  But needless to say, I made it any ways.  And it was awesome.  I used giant muffin tins (thanks mom!) to portion it out and then freeze.  While cooking my serving for dinner that night, I froze the remaining 5 servings.

At this point I had 22 meals in the freezer and had eaten 3 meals…remember, I only spent $95.

Next up, I made a Baked Penne & Creamy ricotta dish for bunco on Tuesday night.  Naturally I froze it since bunco wasn’t the next day.  For this particular recipe I used Jennie-O Italian flavored turkey, whole wheat penne pasta and low fat cheeses.  This recipe was HUGE or maybe I didn’t pile it on enough…but it was 2 9×13 baking dishes.  We ate one at bunco, then my sister and I had enough for 2 meals each…not counting the part eaten at bunco, I was now up to 29 meals.

Lastly, the recipes I made didn’t use up all the chicken that I bought, so I cute the 2 left over breasts into normal portion sizes; in this case it was 4 and dropped them in a baggie with the left over BBQ sauce I had in my fridge.

I’m not going to lie; I was pretty darn impressed with myself for creating 33 meals for $95…and they will all be home cooked and delicious….well maybe minus the chicken noodle soup (again, my fault).

There are several more recipes on pinterest I’m dying to try…but I’m going to be good and wait until I start to get low on frozen meals.

At this point I still have 22 meals ready to eat…maybe when the stash runs low I’ll finally stopping being so proud of myself

Follow me on Pinterest if you want to keep up with the rest of my finds; happy pinning! Got any freezer friendly recipes? I wanna see them; post them below!

Saturday morning we took our time getting up and going but of course, since we were with Chase our first priority was getting Starbucks! Something neither Beth nor I minded.

Next stop was gas station breakfast tacos. I was excited to try these, being in the Valley I figured these would be really good, but sadly all the options were premixed with eggs which meant I could not try them. Oh well.

Our plan was to head north to Corpus early afternoon and let Chase have a little of his weekend to himself. But first we had a really authentic send off meal at Jason’s Deli…we know how to do it up right!

As we were about to leave, we were reminded via twitter that we needed to try corn in a cup. The mixture of white sweet corn, mayonaise and cheese with some spice sounds really gross to me but I hear it is amazing. So, Beth and I went on a bit of a hunt for a food truck that sells it and had no luck. We were kind of bummed. But we did manage to come across the Iwo Jima memorial, I had no idea there was one in Texas.

After that we set out on our journey northward looking forward to going through the border check point in Saritas. Though neither of us quite understood why an hour north of Harlingen we needed to go through a border checkpoint, we weren’t after all at the border. Luckily we made it through with no problem and kept on our way.

We weren’t really in a big hurry to get to Corpus because we had gotten a call earlier from Todd & Lindsey that they had to run their dog Rocco up to San Antonio to the Vet so they wouldn’t be back until close to 5:00 pm, I was sad we weren’t going to get to see him:

So, since we extra time we decided we had to stop by and see “Big Jesus” as Mom calls it. This giant statue of Jesus is out infront of the church Ryan and Sunny got married in a few years ago:

After that we let ourselves into Todd and Lindsey’s and watched “Adventures in Babysitting” while we waited for them to get back.

That night they took us to Sushibar Downtown for dinner. It is the Sushi restuarant that is in the back of their night club. It was delicious and I actually tried everything they ordered included raw stuff…well most of it.

After dinner we headed to Aria for “Project Slicker.” It’s a fundraiser for Family Planning of the Coastal Bend that featured a condom fashion show. It was actually pretty impressive the outfits the designers were able to create.

Sadly I wasn’t really able to get good pictures because some girl decided to stand RIGHT in front of me. And since I’m so short I could not see over her. Luckily the fashion show was filmed and I could kind of see it on the video screen. We ended up hanging out until about 1:30 just chilling with our “cuddies.”

Here is Beth and I with Todd:

Here is Lindsey and her fabulous sister Ashley:

The beerstaches even made an appearance!

We dropped Ashley off and before we could even make it back to Todd and Lindsey’s we lost Beth: