Some goodies and Pasta Plus, Laurel.

When I get behind on posting, sometimes I just want to trash the old pictures and start over again.  But I really want to show off a couple of the dinners that I missed over the past week that I am proud of :)  They were awesome.  Not neccessarily healthy, but awesome.

I made Ina's fish and baked chips.  I am not great with frying food and I don't tend to make fried food very often for health reasons, but I will DEFINITELY make this again.

G said it was "restaurant quality".  One of the best compliments that I've ever gotten :)


On Thursday, I made cheese fondue from a little kit that I got from TJ's a long while back.  We dipped veggies, apple, bread, and potatoes.

I also tried making a chocolate one, but it just didn't work out...

Yesterday I was going to pamper myself and get a manicure.  I haven't had one in forever.  I had forgotten that President Obama was in Baltimore yesterday.  They blocked off so many streets!  I ended up being in the car for an hour, and all I ended up doing was going around the block and back into m garage.  I'll get my mani soon, hopefully.  But luckily when I got home there was something waiting for me:

CHOBANI!  The nice people there sent me some samples to try out.  I am really excited about them.  There are a few flavors that I've never seen before.  I decided to try the strawberry banana one first.

I love strawberry-banana anything, and this is exactly what you want in a yogurt.  It tasted like real fruit and not like flavoring and the texture is awesome.  I haven't had Greek yogurt for a while so it's going to take a little bit of getting used to again.  I hope I can find this flavor in stores!

Last night I made dinner plans for myself and 7 of my friends to meet in Laurel at Pasta Plus. 
 I had gone there last May after my graduation with my parents and I liked it a lot.  I had originally suggested that we go to a different restaurant (mainly because I just want to try every restaurant that I can), but my other friends suggested that we go here.

The line was pretty long.  We were waiting for quite a long time before we were seated, but it didn't really bother me too much.  It was Friday night, after all, and we were a large group.  It gave me a chance to look at the menu.  I finally settled on one of the specials:

Ravioli di Zucca

homemade pumpkin ravioli sauteed in butter with sage, prosciutto, peas, and sund-dried tomatoes 

 

 

It was pretty good.  My friend Becca and I were discussing it and both had mixed feelings on the cream sauce.  Since the filling was so creamy and sweet, the sauce could have done something a little bit different to contrast that.  Some acidity maybe?  It was still yummy.  It came with a house salad and bread.  G and I also split a glass of the house merlot, which we liked a lot.  His Margarita pizza was good, too, but he said he liked the one that he got from Upper Crust better.

All in all, it's definitely one of the best restaurants in the Laurel area (trust me after living in College Park for 4 years, you try to look outside of the Rt 1 corrider).  I don't think that it's the best Italian ever, though.

The leftovers were good, too.  Plus the photo is better.

 

Wow, snow is really starting to come down outside.  So I really have no excuse for working on homework.  Stay warm!!!

Sick puppies and dinner parties.

Wow, yesterday just felt like a crazy busy day.  I had so many errands to run and I was running around all over the place.  On top of that, I'm on-call for work, so I'm constantly wondering if my pager is going to go off and I'll have to run to the hospital.  And worse, Ollie is sick.  He's just been really tired and lethargic and not eating too much.  We took him over to the vet and they said that he's probably just burnt out from traveling.  But there is nothing more sad than a sick puppy :(

In the morning, I had some Cheerios with cranberries.  That was about all we had in the house.

 Grocery shopping was definitely on the list of things I had to do yesterday.  While I was out, I had a cereal bar, some popcorn, and some apple slices with caramel.

After the vet's office, I had plans to go over to my friend Brian's house with some friends for a little dinner party.  I like that we have grown-up dinner parties now.  It's just really great to catch up with everyone and see where everyone is.  Why not revolve that around food?  Brian picked some Indian food from a restaurant nearby.  I've never really had Indian food, so they all tried to fill me in on everything.

It was all really good!  I didn't take any pictures of people because Brian had an amazing camera and I left that to him.  I made a chocolate pear cake and Brian had made some banana pudding for dessert.

We decided that I really need to host a dinner party soon.  And also combine it with a book club.  Ambitious?  We'll make it happen.

I just finished some comforting maple brown sugar oats.

I am in serious need of comfort food, with the cold weather and my poor baby puppy.  Any ideas on how to help him out would be appreciated.  I hope that everyone enjoys their Wednesday!