First up:

BLT Burger’s Bread Pudding Made out of Krispy Kreme Donuts and Rum Raisin Ice Cream

(The Mirage)

Bread Pudding: A

Ice Cream: F

Next time, I’ll skip the ice cream.  Matt suggested I just get vanilla.  But since it isn’t anything special and it really does affect the pudding, I am okay with just skipping it altogether.  Then I won’t get a belly ache.

I do have to say that I LOVED the veggie burger.  It was made of falafel!  Yumm.  We will definitely be back.

Next Up:

Holstein’s Chocolate, Banana and Peanut Butter Slider and Fries

(Cosmopolitan Hotel)

Presentation/Creativity:  A+

Fries:  A+

Slider:  C  (it was too sweet for me – I ate two bites and had to put it away)

The fries are churros!  The ketchup there is strawberry sauce!  The burger is mouse-y stuff and the burger bread is something I don’t know, wafery thing.

The burger was a vegan patty that I thought was good too, but not better than Stripburger.  But the creativity in desserts here was great.  I would eat here again if I was in the area, but not actively seek it out if I was staying further out one end or the other of the Strip.

Third:

Red Velvet Pancakes, Sugar Factory

(Paris Las Vegas)

Yum.  A+ without the toppings.  No need to say more.  Get these.  You’ll stay full all day.  Only available until 11:00

Fourth:

Some candy place in center court at Forum Shops

We did not get these.  These make my face hurt just thinking about eating them.  I just took the picture because I found it quite fascinating.  It was a difficult thing to do because the person working kept coming over to me.

Now we move on to Portland.  It wasn’t as bad there.

One thing I love about Portland is that most of the local restaurants, that is to say, not the national chains and not the specifically vegan or vegetarian ones have at least two or three vegetarian things on their menu.  We went to a pasta restaurant near our hotel called Pastini Pastaria.  I HIGHLY recommend it.  They had a whole SECTION for veg-heads!  It took me a while to decide what to get.  However, there was no doubt I was getting dessert.  It WAS my birthday after all.  Here is my birthday gelato sundae!  :)

Yum.  No, I haven’t magically started liking chocolate ice cream or gelato. I ate around it.

And just to help unclog those pores, here is a representative of the kind of lunch I ate in Portland:

That is a “live” (or raw) falafel wrap from the Blossoming Lotus restaurant. I can hear all the raw food eaters groaning that I mixed all that dairy and ooziness with their raw goodness. But what can I say?  Isn’t vacation all about the food?  Oh, it’s not?

And the best thing of all? I didn’t gain one pound on this trip.  Not one.  Even with two cross-country flights, all those desserts.  It must have been the fact that I ate well around the other food and didn’t stress about it most of the time.

Next post, I’ll tell you a little about the trip highlights.  There’s not many, since it was mostly just sitting in conferences, but there were some (besides the food!)

]]> http://www.jennriffle.com/2011/08/26/july-trips-food-porn-edition/feed/ 0 http://www.jennriffle.com/2011/08/26/kitten-camp/ http://www.jennriffle.com/2011/08/26/kitten-camp/#comments Fri, 26 Aug 2011 01:33:27 +0000 jenn http://www.jennriffle.com/?p=511 Continue reading →]]> Two weeks ago I was asked to foster some almost ready to be adopted kittens.  They had been in a foster home, but the their family was going on vacation so they needed someone to take them for a week or so while the two littlest ones put on a few ounces.  So of course I agreed.

This particular group was again a group of four.  Three boys and a girl.  Two tuxedos and a pair of black ones.  The girl kitten was one of the black ones.   I learned how to tell the black ones apart.  The girl, Lola, is of of thinner, sleeker stature and has yellow eyes and her twin brother, Andy, is rounder, plumper, has longer hair and green eyes.   When I brought them home, Lola and Andy were instantly wonderful and lovely, but the tuxes were a bit, um, not pleased with me.  They did not want me to hold them at all.  They were fine with me feeding them, and touching them. They would purr when I pet them.  But, it is important to know that purring isn’t always indicative of pleasure.  I was very perplexed.  ”Why don’t they like me?” I wondered.  I sat with them for awhile, the tuxedo boys ignoring me, and the twins loving me.  But eventually, I had to get ready for my evening outing.  When we got home that evening, my husband said that he would go take care of and visit with the kittens while I attended to the other cats for the night.  They seemed to like him a little better, but still weren’t too keen on him holding them.

Well, I don’t stand for that kind of behavior in this house and two weeks later, the tuxedos are now lap kittens, and allow me to trim their nails, put eye medications in and do whatever else I need.  I guess they just needed to get used to me and my environment.  They are now, however, unwilling to be foster kittens any longer.  When I open their door, they jump the baby gate (that is really quite adorable, as they are so tiny and yet so agile they can pull themselves up and over) and run all through the basement.  They want to be real cats now.  They want to have owners who love them and will let them have free reign of the house and explore and have a lap ready for them at all times.

They go back to the shelter tomorrow and I hope they all go home over the weekend. It is generally not hard for me to give them back to the shelter and to give them to new people.  It is hard for me to split them up from their siblings.  I’m also glad that I don’t have to choose which one of them to adopt.  Although I’d probably choose Andy, cause he is the cuddliest.  But I had to work hardest to get Thomas to like me.

Below, the first four pictures are my favorites of each of them, then I included some candids of their brief stay.

This is Thomas.  It took me nearly two weeks to get a good shot of him as he would never look at the camera.

This is Isaiah.

This is Lola (even though her eyes look green, they are yellow) .  She is wanting to sit on my lap, which is currently occupied.

Andy the lovebug

And some other photos just for fun.

See – he’d always close his eyes right when I’d snap the picture!

I love this one!

Bye-Bye Baby Kittens!  I’ll miss you guys and your fun antics!  Good luck in your new homes!

Yesterday, I had my last physical therapy session and a check-up with my orthopedist. Neither feel more PT is necessary, as long as I continue to weight train on my own. Which I can certainly do. They both did some strength tests with me, where they pressed on my leg and told me to push against them and not let them push me. When I first started all of this, I couldn’t resist them at all on my right and now I can. I still need to do lifestyle changes, such as cross training, resting when necessary, losing weight, going to yoga. All of those things I can do.

I have to admit, I haven’t exactly missed running. It’s been a cold difficult winter. I am relieved to have not had the burden to feel like I had to train. And now that Matt is up to his 3+ hour long runs, even though the weather has been lovely for the most part, I am relieved that its not me!

Kitty health around here is stable. Indy is still on medication to bring his liver values down. I didn’t expect this treatment to go on so long, but his last result was still 130, and we need to get him under 100. Joey was not pleased with the treatment he got for his mouth … liquid antibiotics, but it did get him to eat and the mass has massively shrunk. Yay. He will be on/off antibiotics in two week cycles for a long time. He is not happy about it, but I can live with the treatment.

So my husband and I have bought a new house and have slated 5/7 for the move-in date. To prepare for this, we have been doing some massive amounts of decluttering. It is amazing to me how much stuff can accumulate in seven years. One weekend, we started working on the basement. I had actually started that project myself a few times and had a big pile of stuff for the thrift store, which we still need to bag up and get out of here. We spent 108 minutes that weekend mostly breaking down boxes and cardboard. The municipality we live in does not recycle cardboard and I never actually set up a system for dealing with cardboard. I do have a need to keep some boxes that are in good shape, as I have seven nieces and nephews that live in other cities, so I do ship things to them. But I certainly didn’t need to save all of these.

Fortunately, the new township we are moving to recycles cardboard. That makes me very happy. I am a recycler! I just hate having things go to waste. I like to find some use for things, if I don’t want them. Maybe that is the reason behind my packrat tendencies. Some of it is laziness. As in the case of the big pile of shredding … we never shredded this stuff … who wants to mess with that.

This is just a small sample of the shredding we accumulated from various parts of the office, mostly our lovely filing system:

Fortunately, there are companies that will shred for us!

Magazines? I’m addicted. Glossy paper, matte paper … doesn’t matter as long as its paper and pretty. Here were what I considered the “extraneous” magazines in my craft room.

A post on freecycle and they were gone in a few days!

Whoo.

And cooking? Have I been cooking? Well, not too much. Sorting and reorganizing has been taking center stage. Although a few weeks ago, I made the following Sweet Potato Stew from Joel Fuhrman’s book, Eat for Health. This recipe is from the phase one section.

It was yummy. You can make the veggies smaller if you wish and have it more soupy, but I liked it just the way it was.

Recommended side dishes were brown rice (that I didn’t cook enough) and braised bok choy. I had no idea if I would like the latter item. It was okay. I had never braised before, and honestly, I can’t remember how to do it. Here is what it looked like:

This weekend, we will be working on that basement some more. Surely that is the hardest thing to do before we move … besides actually moving. Oh, and making phone calls. I hate making phone calls. There are a lot of phone calls to make in order to move. Does anyone want a job making my calls for me?