Cake Balls

I first heard about cake balls a few months ago. They are basically just cake that is mashed up and mixed in with icing, which you then form in balls and coat with chocolate or bark. Sounds like they'd be delicious! When The Pioneer Woman posted about them for Halloween I decided it was time to see what all the fuss was about. Last week, my cousin Holli and I tried them out and here are the results:

We used red velvet cake mix from a box. It helped me solidify the opinion that when it comes to red velvet, if it isn't from scratch, it just isn't worth it. But we were spoiled because our grandma made THE BEST red velvet cake. She was famous for it...at least at church, which counts in my book.

Again, we cheated by using canned cream cheese frosting and again, I think it would have been so much better if we'd made it ourselves or just gone with a different flavor combination. I didn't read the ingredient list, but I'm pretty sure there is neither cream cheese, nor cream cheese flavor in the icing we used.

Forming the balls is messy business. It was getting late and Holli was hopped up on Vicodin for a lung infection she is recovering from. We found a joke about being "caught red-handed" entirely too funny.

I neglected to take any pictures of the coating process - mostly because my hands were covered in vanilla bark and it's a time sensitive business.

Final verdict? They were pretty good. As I've said, I think they would have been better in a different flavor combination or if we'd had the time and desire to make them from scratch. If an occasion arises again where cake balls are appropriate, I am willing to give them another try. If nothing else, it's fun to spend an evening getting messy and consuming sugar.

Better than sex...TexMex

Sorry Mom, but I didn't make it up; that is actually how the restaurant advertises itself.

Around 11:30 I got an email inviting me to a birthday lunch for my boss at Vivo. It's where we always go for special occasions at work and I just couldn't pass up such a good (free) lunch. I'd say this is a very "Austin" restaurant, although the owner is from San Antonio, as evidenced by their signature puffy tacos.


In case you don't know, puffy tacos are a San Antonio tradition - Bobby Flay even did a thrown down over them once. They are basically tacos served on corn tortillas that have been somehow inflated and then fried. When I was little we went to San Antonio Missions games all the time. Throughout the game they had crowd participation events, like the bat races. I always wished I'd be chosen for one of the kid games, specifically the puffy taco race.

You see, one lucky kid got to chase Henry Puffy Taco around the bases and try to tackle him and if you won (which the kid always did, of course) you got a gift certificate for Henry's Puffy Tacos. Oh how I coveted that opportunity. Finally one game I was picked to participate in an event! I was so excited until I got down to the field and found out that I would not be chasing Henry around. Instead two other kids and I were going to be playing tug of war against Hercules. We won, but all I got was a gift certificate to Hercules Leaves and Petals. Who really thought a kid would enjoy money to spend at a florist? I think I ended up getting flowers for my grandma.

But I digress. The point is that I got to go to Vivo for lunch today. It's a really cool place. They have all of these brightly colored paintings all over the walls and huge vases full of the most beautiful roses. And they are super vegetarian friendly. I got a tofu puffy taco and delicious cheese enchilada and we had flan, since it was a celebration. The best part is when they bring the check, every woman at the table gets a rose to take home.

In conclusion, all it really takes to make me happy is TexMex and a flower.

Do You Want Fen-Phen With That?

Right now I am in New York for Alivia's first birthday (well, that is really just my excuse to take a couple of days off work and visit the family and one of my favorite cities). Aside from the party on Sunday, the only definite plans were for a sisters' trip to see Legally Blonde the Musical. Erin had already seen it once, but it's closing soon and she wanted another go and I was eager to see this adaptation.

The show was very good. All of the charm of the original movie with a lot of the same funny lines, but plenty of new twists and changes thrown in. Bailey Hanks stars as Elle and I have to say that I was very impressed with her. She is a total newcomer, having been discovered through an MTV reality show/competition to cast the role. She reminds me of a young Kristin Chenoweth in her mannerisms and voice.

After the show, we stopped for a slice of pizza and I had a horrible confrontation with a new law in New York City. You see, the powers that be recently decided that people are not trustworthy enough to be responsible for minding their own caloric intake. It is now required that restaurants don't just provide the calorie count for any dish if it is requested by a patron, they have to display it on the menu! Honestly, I'm not usually somebody who feels passionately about the government staying as small and unobtrusive as possible, but this is over the line, in my opinion.

Obviously I know that a piece of pizza is not a healthy choice, I do not care to see that it is going to cost me 700 calories a slice. Seriously! But, by far the biggest shock was the Fettuccine Alfredo with Grilled Chicken. Now, I did not see the size of a portion and I'm assuming it was quite large, but according to their own calculations, one serving of this dish contains a whopping 3070 calories. That is more than 150% of the daily suggested caloric intake for an adult. I'm am appalled and disgusted and dismayed. How is anybody supposed to ever enjoy a meal with this information staring them down?

Ladies Night

I'm a bit of a homebody. I love going out and doing lots of different things, but most of the time I am perfectly happy to spend evenings at home making dinner, working on some kind of project or just curling up on the couch with a book or the remote. However, there are those times when I am just dying to get together with my girls and break up my routine a bit.

On Friday, I was beginning to feel that urge, so I sent out a group email and we made plans to have dinner last night. I've heard Katie sing the praises of North by Northwest regularly for a good year-and-a-half or so now and figured it was high time to finally try this place out. In a word: yum! I knew it was a good choice when I saw that five out of nine choices of sides are potato dishes.

They are a restaurant and brewery, so it was only right that I try one of their original beers. I got the Bavarian Hefeweizen and found it quite refreshing (even if they cut the lemon slice in a way that is hard to squeeze out any juice). We ordered a plate of garlic fries for the table and I was simply amazed that I had never had such an obvious and delicious combination before. I wouldn't say my pasta entree was revolutionary by any means, but it was very satisfying. We decided to split 3 desserts among the 4 of us - creme brulee, chocolate torte and apple crisp a la mode. The apple crisp alone was plenty dessert for all of us and, needless to say, I left absolutely stuffed. Of course the best part of the evening was getting to spend time with 4 friends (an extra showed up as we were eating our sweets) who I don't see nearly enough.

Good food, good company, what more could I ask for?