Happy 2013 from Napa, California! I haven't made a New Years resolution in a long time, but this year, I want to blog more. I used to do it every day, and now I do it more like one time per month. It will be hard once I start classes again for the new semester, because my schedule is CRAZY! Regardless, it shouldn't be too hard for me to update recipes, exercises, and fun happenings with friends and family. 

I was supposed to post this below in November when I had dinner with a small group of friends from school at Demera in Chicago, but I failed miserably. As I said before, being a student makes me a much less-reliable blogger. Don't let my low-blogging frequency put a damper post, though, because this place was awesome!

I have heard stories about Ethiopian food, and it never sounded that great to me. I thought it consisted of eating paste with your hands. It seemed more or less fun (if you can handle meals sans silverware), but not delicious. Once I immersed myself into the world of food, culture, and nutrition though, I learned that people I know actually like Ethiopian cuisine. Perhaps I could like it too. 

With some research, I learned that Ethiopian food is not necessarily eating paste with your hands. It usually consists (most popularly) of a flavorful thick stew called wat and bread called injera that you use to mop up the wat. The injera is a thin, iron-rich bread with a spongy consistency that is made from fermented teff flour (source). Don't let the spongy consistency fool you; injera is very filling. 

The top picture shows assorted types of wat on top of one large piece of injera. I was in charge of ordering, so I made sure to get one large platter that included beef, lamb, chicken, seafood, and plenty of veggie wat options. This met all of our dietary requirements. For a group of five of us, this was plenty. We could not even finish everything.

The next picture shows the injera that they gave us on the side. They are large, rolled up pieces that somehow resemble building insulation to me (but they tasted much better than I think building insulation would taste).

To eat everything together, we ripped off pieces of the injera and used them to pick up pieces of wat on the shared platter. We also used our hands to rip apart the injera underneath the wat. After a while, the bread soaked up all of the flavor and it was delicious. Overall, our group had a lot of fun. We preferred this over ordering individual plates, because the food became the central part of our conversation. It was a great way to bring us together and discuss the food that we were eating. 

If you have any interest in trying Ethiopian food in Chicago, give Demera a try or look at other Ethiopian restaurants around the Edgewater area (near Broadway and Montrose). Along with African food, Edgewater is an outstanding hub for authentic international cuisine. 

I hope that everybody had a wonderful holiday. I'm escaping the crazy cold and wind in Chicago for Napa to spend time with Al before I have to get back to the grind of my 21-hour semester schedule. Happy Friday, everyone!

Yesterday was my 26th birthday, and it was pretty much perfect except for my aggravating trip to the DMV. My driver's license expired yesterday, so I was thinking that I could just waltz in there, take a picture, and then waltz back out with a shiny new license. 

While I did leave with a new license, there were some extra unexpected steps that I needed to do before that was possible. Since I still have a speeding ticket on my record from 2008 (I got it in rural Indiana while visiting Andi at IU, and the county gave me a choice: never step foot in that county for a year OR go to driving school. I chose the first option, but I forgot that it was still on my record. Ugh.). 

As a result, I needed to sit down and take a written test in order to renew my license. 

I was a little terrified at first. Living in the suburbs without a driver's license means that you are like a needy poopy toddler needing Mommy and Daddy to do everything for you, so I really didn't want to lose Illinois' permission to drive my car. I asked the two ladies in the testing area if they thought that I needed to study to do well on it, and one of them made a joke about the fact that she already knew all of the answers and so it wouldn't be hard for her. They then told me that I could take a book and study for as long as I wanted, which was more helpful than the first remark, so I did that. I reviewed chapter 9, which went over all of the street signs. Then, I decided that I was ready.

The first page had a bunch of street signs without labels, and I had to write down what they meant. It seems like it would be easy, but we're used to seeing signs with writing on them. We had to know the sign based on the shape and color. The stop sign was a no-brainer, but I know that I wouldn't have done nearly as well on that page without first looking through the book. 

The rest of the exam was all multiple choice. Some of the questions were like this (and I'm paraphrasing):
- Will you lose your license if you hit a pedestrian, kill them, and then drive away?
-Can you talk on your phone without a hands-free device?
-If you are driving and you see a pedestrian in your lane, do you: a) report them; b) hit them; c) carefully drive around them

That was pretty much how it went. There were questions about driving according to the road conditions, if the solid yellow lines mean that you can't pass another vehicle, etc. As you see, it was a piece of cake. I passed. 

Speaking of cake, the rest of my birthday involved just that. I came home to four giant cupcakes. Say hello to Carrot Cake I, Carrot Cake II, Mrs. S'More, and Mr. Peanut Butter. 

Then, my friend Betty picked me up and treated me to a manicure and a pedicure at my favorite nail place called Shalom Nails in Arlington Heights. They are extremely reasonably priced, and they do a better job than anywhere else (at least in my experience). A mani/pedi combo costs $35, and they do such a great job that all of my manicures last at least a week. Plus, they give you massages when they're finished. 

After the pampering, we met Meredith and Kate at Yard House in Glenview. This is legit one of my favorite restaurants in the world for a multitude of reasons (two of them being that their BBQ chicken salad is the size of a small child and is just incredibly amazing and they have a ginormous beer list). 

I order the salad 9 out of 10 times, but I was craving something Mexican last night. I opted for two street tacos with rice and beans. You can pick any two tacos from the list, so I got the baja fish (grilled; not fried) and chicken tinga tacos. They usually come on flour tortillas, but I asked for corn tortillas. In my opinion, corn tastes a million times better and is more nutritionally beneficial for you. Why NOT choose corn?

I also ordered two beers throughout the night: a Sea Dog Bluepaw Wild Blueberry (my favorite!) and a Hacker-Pschorr. 

At the end of the night, I got a little cake with ice cream for us to share. My friends sang to me, too. 

Meredith surprised me with a necklace that I'm wearing in the picture below. I love it! 

My friends spoiled me rotten, and it gets even better since I have more celebrating planned for the weekend. 
I hope that everybody is having a great (and not too hot!) Thursday!

In addition to my wine and cheese party, there are other happenings that require catching up. One of them is a brunch I attended a few weeks ago at Orange in the River West neighborhood. It has a few locations throughout the city, but this one was the closest to where I was staying. I've heard about Orange a gazillion times, and I quickly learned why everybody was raving about it: it is fantastic. 

Although Andi, Shelly (Andi's sister) and I had a to wait about 30 minutes for our table, we were still able to order juice from the bar and chatted the whole time with the very friendly staff. I expected the orange juice to be orange-tastic and amazing at a place called "Orange" (it was fresh-squeezed- the only way I will ever drink it), but I wanted to try something more creative. I ordered an orange-ginger-carrot juice. The ginger was very strong (never try this if you don't like ginger), but I felt better knowing that I was pumping my cells full of anti-oxidants. I still found Andi's juice to be a lot more appetizing: just orange and grapefruit. 

One of my favorite things about the restaurant is that all of the water has a slice of cucumber in it. It's so simple and very refreshing. I prefer cucumbers in my water over lemons or limes. 

Orange has a stellar breakfast menu, but my body was craving something hearty and savory. I ordered a chicken caesar wrap and requested the dressing on the side. It came with fries, and they were perfect for dipping into the dressing. The fries were very flavorful, and you could also tell that they were not bathed in grease. Andi and Shelly loved them, too. 

Andi ordered the Caprese benedict. The English muffins were topped with poached eggs, buffalo mozzarella, tomato, and their homemade pesto-hollandaise  sauce (that does NOT contain pine nuts!). It came with some sort of a potato cake that was very tasty. 

Shelly ordered the Chai Tea French toast. She apparently gets it every time that she goes there. 

I tried everybody's food, and it was all great. The place was bright and cheerful, the service was friendly and efficient, and I didn't feel like a fat lard ass when I left there. Thanks to all of those factors and the fact that they put cucumber in their water, I can confidently say that this is one of my favorite brunch places. Thank you, Orange!

Here are some other fun photos from the past few weeks:

Below: Nicole, me, Julie, and Andi at Moe's Catina in River North. ( I am wearing a jacket that I bought from Abercrombie and Fitch when I was in high school, and I still wear it all the frickin' time. I am not ashamed of it.)

Below: Andi and Nicole at Durkin's in Chicago. I won a happy hour there and cashed it in. 

To understand the final picture, you have to know that my fingers are very double-jointed and can do things that nobody should be able to do. For one thing, I can bend the distal phalanges on my fingers (the part furthest away from my hand) without bending the rest of my finger. On that same night, I met a girl at the bar who could do the exact same thing with her fingers. Observe: 

Aren't we cool? We learn new things about people every day, don't we?