Sunday 8/21 | Making Albondigas Soup for Soup Club
Todd made three pots of Sopa de Albondigas (Mexican meatball soup), for the Soup Club exchange.
It took him 4 hours, but now all the Soup Club members can enjoy it!
Monday 8/22 | Making Salted Caramel Ice Cream
We took the day off on Monday 8/22 and made salted caramel ice cream, as well as go to San Diego Zoo’s Nighttime Zoo. This was the first time we’d ever made an ice cream with egg custard, and we were nervous that we would curdle the eggs. Everything turned out GREAT and this is the best-tasting ice cream I’ve EVER had! If you make homemade ice cream, you NEED to check out the recipe and try it! SO so delicious.
Thursday 8/25 | All Things Chocolate
Ha ha, three food topics in a row!
As part of Todd’s fundraising efforts for the American Cancer Society’s Bark For Life, he bought 12 different kinds of dark chocolate, unpackaged and broke them up, and held a charity tasting at his work.
The list of chocolates:
* Hershey’s Special Dark
* Lindt Excellence Smooth Dark
* Chuao Origins Extra Dark
* Eclipse Chocolat Gingerbread
* World Market Natural Dark
* Valrhona Noir Amer
* Cadbury Royal Dark
* Newman’s Own Organic Dark
* Rapunzel Swiss Dark
* Dove Dark
* Scharffen Berger Nibby Dark
* Ghirardelli Intense Dark
Participants gave $10 each to blind-taste the chocolates, and tried to match each chocolate to their brand. Todd raised ~$100 for the American Cancer Society with his chocolate tasting event!
Not only that, he also made Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies to give away to our Bark For Life teammates and other participants. The recipe comes from America’s Test Kitchen (free email registration required), and there’s a reason why these are called “perfect”! We’ve made them three times and every single person who has tasted this cookie has not had a better tasting chocolate chip cookie. Everyone loves it!
Saturday 8/27 | Bark For Life
$15,654.00 was raised for American Cancer Society during Bark For Life. More money trickled in after the event, kicking the amount over $16,000. You can see my photo collage here, and Todd’s blog post about it here.
Saturday 8/27 | Running at Lake Miramar
As if spending all day out in the sun at Bark For Life wasn’t enough, we went running at Lake Miramar at dusk, before dinner. The view was fantastic, as was taquitos at Chile Peppers afterwards.
Sunday 8/28 | Lunch at Rubios with AJ & Meera and the Kids + Soup Club Exchange
We had lunch at Rubios with our great friends AJ & Meera and their kids, before heading to Soup Club Exchange (Todd and Meera are both members). So fun to spend time with our favorite friends!
After lunch, it was just a jaunt across the parking lot to the 4th meeting of the Soup Club Exchange. Dejah has dropped out so now it’s only five people. Still lots of soups being exchanged though! Todd’s soup was the Sopa de Albondigas (see above).
Tuesday 8/30 | Todd Headed to San Francisco for Dreamforce
Todd left Tuesday morning for San Francisco for the Dreamforce conference. Dreamforce is the annual conference for Salesforce.com. Todd is a Salesforce.com Certified Advanced Developer. He made his conference badge himself, which he was so proud of! (His first time using Photoshop to “scrapbook”!)
But when he arrived they printed his badge from last year. Boo!
Todd was in San Francisco until Friday night. Some photos from his conference.
We tried video chatting on Google Hangout, but the connection was slow and pretty bad. The regular phone worked better.
You can read Todd blog post about Dreamforce here.
Thursday 9/1 | Santouka Ramen with Sally
While Todd was gone, I met up with my friend Sally for dinner at Santouka Ramen, inside the Mitsuwa Market. I’ve had authentic Japanese ramen there once this year, but Sally had never had it before. She really liked it!
I had the shio (salt) ramen and she had the miso ramen. I had the miso last time, they’re both really good. I love a good bowl of real Japanese ramen noodle soup!
Saturday 9/3 | Kickoff of College Football
One of our favorite days of the year is the first Saturday of college football in the fall. When this day comes, we feel like we’ve waited forever for the Buckeyes to start playing again. I don’t love fall much (not really a fall season in San Diego), but I do love Buckeye football! Waking up and watching ESPN’s College Gameday in bed is one of our favorite traditions. This year we were a little sad that Jim Tressel is no longer the head coach of the Buckeyes. But that meant those sweater-vest tshirts went on sale, so Todd got me one to match his! Todd also enjoyed his first college footbal Saturday double-batch of popcorn for breakfast. This was Noodle’s first Buckeye game ever, and he lounged in his bed and watched intently. Well, maybe not so intently. But he’ll learn. Because he is GRAY, after all. The Buckeyes played Akron and got a pretty solid lead early in the game.
After the third quarter, we paused the game on our DVR and headed to the newly opened Chick-Fil-A by our house. This was the first weekend of their opening and the Cow was there! Good food and fun times! The Buckeyes ended up beating Akron 42-0. In the evening we headed to the coast to run a few miles before dinner at Bongiornos. The coast was cloudy, but it had a different kind of beauty to it.
Phew, that was a big catch-up post! If you made it all the way down to here, thank you! And if you live in the US, happy Labor Day tomorrow! I have lots of scrapbooking and crafting to do yet! :D
We almost went to Chick-fil-A yesterday. Dalyla would go everyday if we let her.
ReplyDeleteLove the taste test idea to raise money for the charity. :)
I was mentally leaving you a comment about a tutorial for the Lightroom photo collage trick when I read the next sentence announcing you were planning that when you get time :)
ReplyDeleteLove the taste test that Todd did.
and I didn't comment on that post, but am excited about your design plans!
We had Todd's soup yesterday for dinner and it was amazing!
ReplyDelete