Jan 7th

It was a nice day here in Dallas, so Top Golf was packed! And the perfect day to celebrate two friends’ birthdays.

Jan 8th

I know, I know, I’m such a slacker. I waited until the 8th to take down my Christmas Tree today. Bye, bye Christmas!

Jan 9th

My friend Kandice gave me this Roasted Cauliflower recipe. I left out the Kosher salt but it’s delicious! And word of advice go easy on the red pepper flakes. My mouth was on fire!

Jan 10th

The little sayings on the back of the Splenda packets crack me up! I want that person’s job.

Jan 11th

I work in the same office space as my dad and I’m totally spoiled. Everyday he brings me coffee from Starbucks; but today I got 2 deliveries!

Jan 12th

A blurry picture of a picture I took in San Francisco a few years ago that my dad tweaked in Photoshop and then framed for me. Makes me smile when I see it! (and definitely looks better in person)

Jan 13th

Today I got to have lunch with my dad and my sister; we don’t do that enough! We headed up the road to Nate’s Seafood and this bright red cow on top of a bright pink building cracked me up!

Technorati Tags: cauliflower, Golden Gate Bridge, Nate's Seafood, San Francisco, Splenda, Starbucks, Top Golf

Apparently New Year’s Day is not the best night to eat out. Originally I had wanted to take my friends to this little Italian place I grew up going to. But of course they were closed and we had to come up with Plan B.

Being the responsible people we are, we pulled into a parking lot before pulling up the Yelp app on our iPhones to pick out a new destination.

We landed on Penne Pomodoro. I’ve never been but have heard about it several times so when I scrolled to it we decided that was the place; besides we’d already planned on Italian!

Luckily we all love to share, so we ordered a bunch of different things to try. We started with calamari, but I have to admit, I was still in awe of the Zio Cecio calamari and wasn’t all that impressed with this calamari.

We then ordered a pizza because we wanted to try it and the Pizza Bianca con Prosciutto  just sounded so good.  It is a white pizza with prosciutto, mozzarella, sautéed mushroom, baby spinach & Parmesan.  Told you it sounded delicious, even though I’m not a mushroom fan.  And guess what, it was SO good!

I am a sucker for good gnocchi and love to try it when it’s on the menu.  So naturally we had to order this.  I’ve discovered that I really like gnocchi best in a cream sauce but because of our other menu selection we went with their Pomodoro e basilico sauce.  It was a basil and roasted garlic tomato sauce that was that was good.

Our last selection was one of the specials of the day, it was Rigatoni with sausage in a garlic cream sauce.  This was amazing!  I would say this was my favorite dish of all of them!

Needless to say after this feast, none of us had room for dessert. Guess I’ll save that for next time!

This was the wine we had with our dinner. I’m not sure that a Malbec was the best pairing for this meal but it was quite enjoyable.

Have you been to Penne Pomodoro? I want to go and try out their brunch some time!

Technorati Tags: Calamari, Dallas, gnocchi, Lakewood, Malbec, Penne Pomodoro, Yelp

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!

Technorati Tags: blind tasting, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Mollydooker, wine

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.

Technorati Tags: Christmas Eve, Soup Recipe, The Pioneer Woman, White Rock Marathon

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!

Technorati Tags: books, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, reading, Stieg Larsson

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

You should recognize this picture from Yesterday’s post!

Jan 2nd

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

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

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

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

Jan 6th

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

Technorati Tags: books, crockpot, jalapenos, Mollydooker, reading, Tina Fey

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

Technorati Tags: Mollydooker, Shiraz, Syrah, wine