Workin' Weekend!

Hi loves!

I hope everyone is having a relaxing Sunday and has had a great weekend overall! My weekend started out as a "working" weekend but has ended up being pretty relaxing, whoot!

After a rough Friday with the brats, I mean students I was happy to come home, eat a snack plate of leftover's from the Thirty One party and then chill on the couch with the NetFlix delivery of Doubt and grade all my biology tests. Grading tests isn't too bad when you have a movie to distract you. Then this party animal went to bed. At 11pm. On the dot. Crazy. haha, I'm so lame. But it was AWESOME. Especially since I was up at 8:30am (some of you call that sleeping in, but I sure as heck don't!) to work on the storage shed. It had been 2 weeks since we last worked on it, due to conflicting schedules, so it was actually great to get back to work and after 4 hours of profuse sweating (Fall, my arse!) and inhaling more than a years worth of concrete dust, we are finished with phase one of the Abarnment! I promise to have a full recap out for your reading pleasure sometime this week! yay!

After such a successful day, I decided some celebrating in Gville was in order and texted all my "in town" ladies to see who was available for a Saturday dinner. My 'Stiner was game, as usual! (have I mentioned how wonderful it is living only 40 mins from her? Cause it's freaking fantastic!). So, after Mass I drove over to her supercute townhouse and after a long and lengthy discussion of options for dinner, we decided on Chopstix! And I'm totally kidding about the "long lengthy" part I think our convo when like this"

C: "Do you want want to go to Chopstix for dinner?"
J: "Hells Yeah!"

*Both run for the car as stomachs growl menacingly*

Because I totally say things like "Hells Yeah!" no, really I do! Just ask around!

I actually had never been to this restaurant, but I love "pan-Asian" restaurants, especially since I used to work in one, Freshman Year of college. Chopstix did not disappoint.

We started off with some Veggie Tempura:
This amazing plate of lightly fried vegetables included: eggplant, zucchini (my favorite!), huge broccoli florets, mushrooms (I got them both, since Christine is not a fan!) and a surprise treat of sweet potato. I love how light tempuras are, even though they are fried. (Thanks to Christine, for being the "hand model")

I also ordered the Crazy Gator Roll, which was Tuna, shrimp, avocado and masago... not sure what was "crazy" about it....to "share" but my partner in crime, I mean dinner, wasn't feeling it...so this little piggy ate the whole roll, minus one piece, herself... I was so busy chowing down I nearly forgot to take a picture....so yes, there were more than 3 pieces at one point! haha.

Some how, after all the lovely appetizers I was still able to munch on my wonderful entree of Vegetable and Tofu Rad Nar- which is pan fried wide noodles in a mildly hot and sour sauce.
I love going to Pan Asian places, since you can usually customize your meal....mine totally was, since the options were only Beef, Chicken or Seafood. I just asked if I could have veggies and tofu instead and it was awesome! I do wish it had a bit more of the "sour" aspect, but it was so good. And Huge! I ate maybe a 1/3 of this? And have now had some for lunch today (Sunday) and am taking the rest for lunch tomorrow (Monday).

Christine got the Chicken Pad Thai and has lunch for sure too! Any guesses on our bill? We got 2 noddle bowls, the tempura and a sushi roll all for 31 bucks! (plus tip of course). Maybe it's just me, but I think that is a fantastic value these days. If you live in the Gainesville Region check out Chopstix for sure!

Mom asked if I would do breakfast this morning...so seeing our abundance of bananas around the house as of late I figured some banana pancakes were in order. Plus fried eggs and sausage to keep the Papa Bear Happy.

While these weren't the best pancakes I've ever made (I just used the Bisquick recipe and then doctored it up with the bananas- 1 mashed plus extra for each cake, cinnamon and vanilla extract) the carmaizled bananas hit the spot.
As I said, leftovers were a tasty lunch, after an emergency run to my Mom's Elementary school to bootleg some copies, since my high school copier is down and out still and I NEEDED these tests copied. In repayment I rewired her computer and showed her some tricks on excel. We are both fairly computer savvy, but I'm more handy in Excel and she in Word/Publisher, so between the two of us we do ok! I would still love to take a class on Excel or just all of Microsoft Office...maybe I'll work that in when I go back for my masters.

I've also been snack-snacking on some Archer Farms "A Handful of Everything Mix"...this, like most Archer Farms products, is high quality at low cost and I really enjoy the mixture of nuts, dried fruit, and chocolate chips! Yummy.

Dinner was Sunday Classic, that we haven't had in a looooong time. BBQ "halfbaked" chicken, green beans and mushrooms, plus grilled potato and onion packets! Oh, so good. Now worries on the 1/2 baked...the chicken is cooked all the way through, Dad just splits whole chickens in half and grills them as is...this time basted in BBQ sauce.The potatoes really hit the spot though. It's such a simple dish to throw in with any grilling night. Just slice a whole backing potato and an onion and then layer the slices together, in the potato shape. Add a pat of butter if desired and wrap in foil..."bake" on the grill and serve up with a dollop of sour cream (or greek yogurt if you are me!).

Now I'm off to catch up on last week's episode of Glee and finish grading papers/writing lecture notes!

Love to all,
~A full and contented, Jess

PS. I was just laughing as I edited this. My "relaxing Sunday" was chockful of paper grading, notetaking, copymaking and computer moving....not what I used to consider relaxing at all!Here is a cute, if slightly blurry picture of Luna dog-to round out an overlong long post!