It's a Doctor's Life.... #1

You know your husband is a surgeon when....

1. You pick up a pencil from the holder and find this:

Just some evidence of knot-tying practice.

Gotta make sure those stitches don't slip!

Getting Lost in Atlantis

I'll start this off with an admission: I'm a lucky girl. Now that's out of the way, feel free to be jealous. Just kidding - mostly. :)

My new company goes on a holiday trip every year at the end of January. We celebrate the successes of the previous year and just generally have a great time together. There is no work - just play. The company pays for airfare for each employee and a guest as well as a hotel room for two nights. Pretty sweet deal. And this year's trip was to... (drum roll please)... 

Atlantis! That paradise-like resort in the Bahamas.

From the moment I found out about the trip, A knew he couldn't go. So I asked my sisters if they wanted to go and we could all three split the third person's airfare. Unfortunately, sister S works for the slave-driver that is Disney and wasn't allowed to take vacation. Thankfully sister A was able to come with me!

We were on different flights getting in that Friday afternoon. We grouped up with one of my fellow Chicago office employees and grabbed a taxi to the resort. On the way there we stopped at a supermarket and bought some food for breakfast and snacks. (MUCH cheaper than the food at Atlantis!)

After getting our room, we went straight out to the beach. Such beautiful water!

Friday was unfortunately an overcast day and even in the Bahamas, it's cool in January. (The water was not heated, either!) We sat by the beach for a while but soon had to get ready for the first of two planned events - a happy hour. They held it on an outdoor patio.

After the happy hour, we played some blackjack and hung out with people in the casino. We were glad we didn't sleep in too much - we had plans to do as much as we could on Saturday!

This was the view from our room:

I forgot to mention the other errand we ran on Friday... we walked across the street to a liquor store and bought a bottle of rum. What is the Caribbean without rum? Plus it was the cost of ONE drink at Atlantis. Well worth it.

The morning was sunnier than the day before, so we hit the beach first. Sand, beautiful water and rum and Cokes!

Then we made our way to the pools. Atlantis has a ton of pools, along with slides and a not-so-lazy river. Think lazy river (drifting along in tubes) plus rapids. We rode along the lazy river and tried some slides. But first we warmed up in a hot tub!

That night we had a company dinner which included a D.J. Much dancing was done. More time was spent in the casino. Sadly, blackjack was not good to me this time.

On Sunday we had a few hours before we needed to head to the airport. It was the most sunny day we had all weekend. First we tried the part of the rapid river we had missed the day before and also a tube slide - super fun! Then we took a break to splurge on frozen drinks and conch fritters for lunch. Yum!

The beach was gorgeous in the full sun.

We had a really fun time. I can't wait to hear next year's destination!

Oppa Korean Style

Two of our friends have spoken to us of a mysterious Korean barbecue experience for a while now. We finally were able to merge schedules and go out to dinner. (Tough to do when they are just as busy as we are!) They took us north to Hae Woon Dae in the north Chicago neighborhoods. Since they've been before, they knew to ask for a private side room. We all took our shoes off and sat on the floor - traditional style.

Korean barbecue is similar to fondue in that you cook your own food. In our case, it was mostly the ladies doing the cooking. 

They bring you a grill on top of a fire. Then they bring the food. We only ordered three things to share and we had TONS of raw meat. We tried the beef, chicken, and pork. What they were called, I do not recall (and could not pronounce correctly). So glad we were with friends who knew what to do!

Along with your meat comes tons of side dishes. All small amounts of different things. What were they? We played a guessing game. There were veggies, tofu, all kinds of things. We also tried a Korean alcohol called Soju. It's kind-of like sake and also like vodka. If you know us, that means I liked it and A wasn't too impressed. 

It was a really fun and tasty experience!

You Know It's Winter When... #1

You know it's winter in Chicago when...

#1 You can use your "outdoor freezer".

It's perfect for keeping cider (or beer) nice and chilled. Wine too. The outdoor freezer comes in especially handy for parties.

I'd Like To Buy The World A Coke

It's time to admit it... we have a spice problem. While I think the problem is having enough space, some people think we just have too many spices. (Too many spices - is there such a thing?!)

However you see it, we've struggled for a long time now to have spice storage which is actually useful while cooking. In our last apartment, the spices were in drawers as well as a spinning rack. The rack holds 20 spices. In the drawer we had almost another two times that amount. What can I say... we cook all kinds of food and we like our spice! In the condo, we didn't have enough drawer space, so we moved them into a basket on our pantry shelves. That was a mess.

While we are moving toward growing fresh spices (currently have basil, parsley, and oregano) as well as using whole spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, etc), there are still a ton of jars. While perusing the internet one day, something caught my eye and grew into an idea.

Vintage wooden soda crates turn out to be the perfect size for spice jars! And they hold 24 each!

I love the fact they are vintage. Inside each crate the location it was from and the year it was made are stamped. Two of ours are from Chattanooga in 1969. The third is from Dallas.

All I had to do was give them a good cleaning and have A use some wood glue on a couple rough spots. Then we hung them on the wall.

I love seeing the Coca-Cola label!

And voila! Enough storage for all our spices (yes, still using the spinning rack) and room to add more! And now they're right at our fingertips while we cook.

And I bought an extra crate... I'm sure I'll find a use for it some day!

Milk Would Have Been A Good Choice

Back to blogging... it's been a busy start to the year! The first weekend in January, we woke up early on a Saturday morning to participate in a community service event with my new company. We gathered at the Greater Chicago Food Depository, an organization which takes food and monetary donations and then dispenses food to Chicago area food banks. They tend to get large donations which have to be sorted and/or broken down into smaller portions. Our group was assigned to cereal (just narrowly missed having to sort good from rotten potatoes).

For A, it was just like getting ready for surgery - mask, hairnet, and gloves included!

The GCFD is very organized. We had assembly lines with assigned roles. 

Here's how it went:

1. Shovel cereal from 400-pound bag into plastic bins.

2. Scoop cereal from plastic bins into 1-pound portions.

3. Weigh bags to ensure accuracy. Adjust as needed.

4. Tie bags.

5. Label bags.

6. Pack bags into boxes. (I was really impressed to see a list of ingredients on the label. Gotta be aware of food allergies!)

We were assigned to the weighing/tying station. It was really fun. So much fun, the whole room opted to keep working through the break.

 

At the end of the morning, we had packed over 2,000 1-pound bags of cereal! (It was some sort of cereal with chocolate inside the squares.) We had a great group come out!