Friday Musings #34

I seriously cannot get enough of Pic Stitch. Who doesn't love a collage!? I traveled to NYC this past weekend with my sister and friend Megan. I ATE SO MUCH.

Waffles & Dinges = heavenly goodness. It's a Belgian waffle and you can pick what toppings you want.... speculoos, nutella, bananas, berries, whipped cream, powdered sugar... etc. Words can't even describe how good this is. If you ever go to NYC, you can find their cart at the south east entrance of Central Park. Unfortunately it is as messy as it is delicious and I proceeded to drop a big piece in my lap. Nothing like having a big brown chocolate spot on the front of your pants as you're walking into Tiffany's to oogle all the sparkly. I am the picture of class.

I ran 8 miles Saturday morning through Central Park.(Which hopefully just about burned the Dinges off...) It was fantastic. I ran by the Bethesda Fountain which was in one of the more recent Doctor Who episodes I watched. I had never seen it in real life before so I was not prepared to just stumble upon it while running and I got WAY too excited. Like it was seriously one of the highlights of my trip.

The other highlight?? MEETING CHRIS HARDWICK. I've been listening to the Nerdist podcast while I run. I highly recommend it. He interviews tons of people: comedians, actors, video game people, scientists, authors... the list goes on. I'll get back into crafting eventually... when I'm not busy travelling all over the place. But not this weekend! I'm heading to Charlottesville to visit a friend. Happy Friday!!

Hunger Games Party: Nobody's Hungry Here!

I looked through the Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook for recipes to make for the party. I picked 3 different ones - Lamb Stew, Prim's Goat Cheese Truffles, and Cheese Buns.

For the Lamb stew I pre-chopped everything 2 days before and then threw it all in the Crockpot the morning of the party.  It cooked well but there are definitely things I will change next time I make this recipe.

1.)    I'm going to buy pre-cut lamb or use beef instead. Lamb is a pain in the butt to cut up and its pretty expensive to boot. 

2.)    I'm leaving out the sugar. The recipe has 5 cups of plums plus granulated and brown sugar - so it was pretty sweet. I think it'd taste better minus the sugar.

3.)    Cut the recipe in half. Nobody LOVED the stew. It didn't taste bad, it just wasn't fantastic. So I have A LOT left over. The recipe says 8-9 servings, but it made way more than that. I've been eating the leftovers all week, and probably have enough to eat it all next week too. 

The goat cheese truffles were my favorite - a little bit of a pain because it calls for all fresh herbs. But they were delicious and ALL of them got eaten

The cheese buns were yummy too - kinda tasted a bit like red lobster rolls. Shout out to my friend Amanda who actually made these while I ran around like a crazy person decorating and getting my costume together.

I also made croissants (because how can you have a Hunger Games party without them?) I sprinkled sesame seeds on top to give them more of a "District 11" feel. 

I decorated with toy parachutes to look 

like the capitol sent the bread to us.

This one just makes me laugh.