Our work party was a lot of fun! And for the third year in a row I won funniest costume! Now my costume was not elaborate, but it totally fit me – I went as Julia Child! Bon Appetit! I was going to do a cooking demonstration, but everyone was hungry and started eating.
I made mummy hot dogs (no picture – they went fast!) and mummy cupcakes. I don’t have piping tips or pastry bag, so this is done putting the frosting into a ziploc bag – they may look like crap, but they tasted good!
There was so much food! I did pretty well – I didn’t take a picture of my plate, but I had 1/2 Italian beef sandwich, 1/2 cup mac n cheese, fruit salad and this delicious green salad that had strawberries and nuts.
And I have to show this picture for Mara! My friend W’s baby M! He looks like a doll in this picture!
I called Tony and asked him what he wanted for dinner. Any regular readers will know that I make pizza just about every Friday night. Tony gets sick of pizza though, but to my surprise he said “I could go for pizza!” I made his side a meat lovers – meatballs, bacon, sausage and mushrooms. My side was broccoli, yellow pepper, red pepper, sausage, shrimp, banana peppers, goat cheese and mozzarella cheese. While making the pizza dough, I enjoyed this beverage:
I don’t normally like drinks like this, but I got it in the .99 bin – it was just slightly sweet and I loved it! Perfect drink for a cold October night! 😀
The toppings ready to go:
I loved the addition of goat cheese for a nice sour kick mixed with the spicy banana pepper – YUM!
So excited! Tony and I are going downtown tonight!!! It’s so funny – we are only about 55 miles NW of Chicago, yet we hardly ever go downtown anymore. That’s about the only thing I miss about downtown is going to restaurants for lunch like Topolopampo for the best Mexican food, Heaven on Seven for their amazing jalapeno cornbread and bazillion hot sauces!, Wolfgang Puck bistro (not sure if it’s still there!) for their wood burning oven pizzas.
One of our favorite restaurants in the city is Smith & Wollensky. We usually would eat in the more casual lower level, but have amazing steaks – and it was years ago at this restaurant where I found out I like asparagus – it was still a touch crunchy – until then I had only had soggy asparagus! But Chef Hans no longer works there, so we are following him to Trader Vic’s for dinner tonight! Trader Vic’s has been a Chicago icon, located in the Palmer House Hilton Hotel. But now its about 1.5 miles away from the hotel on State Street. Check out the menu – what would you get?
You’ll have to come back tomorrow for our Chicago recap! Hope everyone enjoys their Halloween! When I lived in Oak Park I used to have 300+ trick or treaters – it was such a disappointment the first year we were in our house and I only had six trick or treaters! But I bought for 300+! The last girl to come to the door had a pillowcase, and I told her to open it up, and I probably dumped about 5 bags of candy into her sack! She went down our stairs and said “that lady just gave me all her candy!”
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
love your costume 🙂 its perfect!
eeeeh, i love the costume, you’re so cute…and creative! what a fun party! the food looks incredible!
I love your blog. You seem like a lovely, family-oriented lady who is trying to improve her health and still enjoy her life. I wish you nothing but success.
I may be able to help you. Type 2 diabetes runs in my family and I have seen first-hand how difficult it can be to manage. My wife, a nurse, has seen up close the horror this disease levels on hospital patients – their systems do not work to heal them! I myself have also struggled with weight loss in the past and from your posts I see you are in the same fight. It saddens me to see that you are necessarily so mindful of portion control – I admire your willpower and resolve but this is a battle you are unfortunately doomed to lose. However, there is help.
What you really want is your body to signal when it is properly full. Highly processed foods such as bread and pasta and refined corn products do not do this. In fact, they make you crave more. These foods are so common that now everyone thinks they are normal and we just need to exercise a lot and eat smaller portions to be fit. This is not so. We just need to eat the right stuff to achieve proper fullness and achieve proper insulin sensitivity. How to achieve proper insulin sensitivity? Two words: caveman diet. I have enjoyed very strong results by simply eliminating processed foods in favor of natural foods. Believe me, I have no willpower for portion control.
Eating an essentially primitive diet, I dropped 31 pounds in 4 months – now holding steady. My cholesterol dropped 63 points, and my blood pressure went back to normal. I have a ton of energy, and I sleep like the dead. The best part is that this way of eating does not feel like a sacrifice. I just eat meat, fish, fruits, veggies, and nuts – all I want until I am full – no moderation required. This approach is better known as the ‘caveman diet’ – based on emulating the diet our bodies were designed to eat (by nature over eons of time) so I guess it makes sense that it works so well. Much has been written about paleolithic nutrition and I would encourage anyone who is serious about dropping weight and feeling good to read more.
Further reading:
note: I have no commercial interest in any of these books, I just think they are very good and they helped me –
check out
The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain
Neanderthin by Ray Audette
and my favorite –
Cave Dan by Thomas Adam Troy
– this one is actually a novel! – and a hilarious one at that. I downloaded the e-book from http://www.lulu.com (search: Cave Dan) for $4.99. It looks to me like the author wanted to elevate awareness of this cool diet that worked for him, and he chose a short novel as the vehicle. Clever stuff. I am a picky reader and this guy writes very well – Kurt Vonnegut meets Dave Barry. Anyway, the hero in Cave Dan is this sort of Everyman slob with a lot of health problems until he is forced to change his lifestyle and diet. There’s lots of great information immersed in 216 pages of ripping satire. I have paid over twenty dollars for diet books and many bad novels that did me no good. For five bucks, I’d recommend this novel to anyone.
Best of luck to you – I hope this helps.
AtomicHammock
Hey, Im looking for a guest post for national diabetes month.
and preferably someone with personal experiences theyd wanna share.
think about it?
Miz/Carla
Your side of the pizza looks much better to me! Love banana peppers on pizza….mmmmmm
Congrats on the costume win and & cupcakes look too cute. 🙂
That was an awesome costume!
Clever costume idea. Love the cupcakes. I wish I had made some this year, but then I would be stuck eating them all. And your pizza looks great as usual.
mmm that pizza looks delish. I could totally go for that right now 🙂 And your costume is AMAZING…looove it 🙂
We usually get 200+ trick or treaters but this year probably due to the h1n1 scare around here we didn“t get as many. I fouind myself shoving fistfuls of candy into everyones bag or else we would be left with TONS of candy 😛
happy halloween!
Haha, you look like a perfectly lovable and huggable Julia, Biz! I’ll bet you are just as well-loved as her, too! 🙂
And hope you and Tony have the best fun ever! And may it be as sweet as Halloween candy and a first date!
love the costume!! 🙂 happy halloween 🙂
Happy Halloween. Hope it is fun filled and spooky.
GREAT costume! I love the idea of putting meatballs on a pizza – SO smart – my husband would love that! That baby is a doll.
Your costume is perfect! Glad you won…what else have you been?
Yum to the Trader Vics menu – I would get the wasabi filet, but then I would like a lot on their menu. Hope you and Tony have a great time!
Oh and the first year I moved here I figured we’d get tons of trick or treaters b/c we live in such a close little family neighborhood. But everybody must have known to skip our house b/c J was usually not home from work in time for the curfew. So, we bought enough candy to fill a 5 gallon bucket and I think 3 kids came. I did the same thing – gave them each handfuls and handfuls. It’s taken me three years (this will be the 4th) but I’ve finally built it up where we get a lot of kids due to decorations, lights on, and knowing our house passes out tons of candy! Yippee! It’s a bummer when there’s not a lot!
Cute costume! Mine’s up on my blog today, too! 🙂 So appropriate for you! 🙂 Good job on the prize and I don’t think the cupcakes look like crap, they’re cute!! Teehehe to the video!
We rarely go into the city too – parking is just too annoying and expensive! I’ve never been to Trader Vic’s, but looking at their menu I’d order the seafood lo mein! I always order lo mein, it’s my favorite, so seafood thrown in wouldn’t be a bad touch!
And I looove meatballs on pizza!
Love the costume! It totally fits you!
Have fun tonight, make sure to take lots of pictures!
AAAHHH!!! He just gets cuter every time I see pictures of him!! I’m sending you a pic of M with Q 🙂
Have a blast today!
Cute costume!
Have fun in Chicago~ We don’t get ANY trick or treaters at my house!