Don't You Ever Eat At Home?? #I have an electric stove

My uncle Ken recently commented to me on facebook, "Don't you ever eat at home?". Once we got to Denver, we ate at home about the first whole week, then we got curious.....Pho, kitchen sink burritos, tongue tacos, Greek Saganaki....we were eating machines.... but also, at the same time I GOT CABLE!!! We lived without cable for 5 years.... now I have ALL THE CHANNELS PLUS DVR!! So, I have DVR'd about 13 cooking shows.... $10 Dinners, Barefoot Contessa, Guida.... I just can't get enough of pretty kitchens and instructional videos! The problem comes when I realized over 90% of the homes out here have ELECTRIC STOVES! I couldn't even find an apartment that had a gas stove....One night it actually took 45 minutes to boil a pot of water.....then throw in the altitude and everything gets messed up. It's about as intuitive as cooking on the international space station. Banana Bread? More like.....banana cake. Brownies - your choice rock hard or fluffy as a cloud. Nothing is really coming out right! I did get a high altitude cook book and high altitude flour, not sure if that will help. Tonight's project is Raspberry Bars with specifically state "High Altitude: No adjustment necessary". In the meantime, send me your tips on this electric stove business.......


Feel free to buy me this book:

Don't you know Pho?

The first thing we did when we moved here was buy furniture. We ended up talking to our sales man to ask about where we should get lunch. Anthony brought up "Pho", which we had never heard of.....but had been seeing it EVERYWHERE in Denver. The salesman suggested ONE and ONLY ONE place to get pho..... Pho 79. They are all named numerically, for some unknown reason. But he told us this was THE place in Denver. "Don't eat all day, then go and order a large and you will be good for the whole day!". He described it as "delicious" and "a noodle dish". Well..... the first snowy day we thought some warm Pho would be just the ticket. The place was PACKED, almost no tables available so we though "this has got to be as good as he said". We ordered eggrolls to start and they were the best I've ever had. Then.... the Pho came.... and LARGE was no understandment. It was only $7 so I wondered how "large" it could be? I bet it was close to 3/4 of a gallon....this bowl was enormous. I looked around to see if anyone else had got a large, like was suggested to us. A couple people, but they seemed like Pho Pros. Not me..... after about 1/3 of the bowl I thought I was going to puke everywhere. I should've got chicken or vegetarian by the way, but almost everything included beef..... this was "beef" if you know what I mean.


I'm Pho'd out. For now at least....

2 cats and 2,000+ miles

I guess when I visualized moving to Denver, I never included what I would do with my two cats. When I actually got a job out here, and started making plans to move, I had to get down to logistics. I figure there were really only two options: fly them out or drive them. Option one would involve driving to Denver with Anthony then flying BACK to Boston to then fly BACK to Denver with the two cats. Total cost would be about $250 for round trip tickets. I thought it would be much more inconvenient for me to have to do this than to drive 30 hours with them in the cargo area of my Prius. Ha.

Our first stop? The vet - she wanted to do a complete physical before even talking about our transportation needs. As she put Binx on the scale she tsk tsk'd and noted he was "quite a big boy" at 13 lbs. She hadn't laid eyes on Thelonious Monk yet, toppin the scales at 18.5 lbs. She counseled us on the dangers of diabetes and heart disease and came up with the weight loss plan (seriously?? can we get to the part about drugging these cats for the car ride yet??). Then she recommended I get "the biggest dog crate that you can afford and that you can fit in your car"..... possibly the worst advice I ever got.

About the dog crate: This is one of those things that you don't want to buy online. This might seem obvious to most of you but....I thought I could save some money! Petco.com had an XL dog crate with free shipping for $75! How could this go wrong? The day it was delivered I was sleeping after a 12 hour night shift and heard a huge THUMP in the front hall, I vaguely remember waking thinking "Must be the dog crate or someone fell down the stairs" and then fell back asleep. I took one look at this thing and realized I might not even fit it in my car in order to return it, because it definately wasn't fitting in the car fully assembled. I decided I would return it on my way to meet my sister for dinner in Braintree. You know, the Petco at exit 17 on Rt 3 South......you know.... next to the old Borders....oh shit....thats PETSMART. Ever try to return a 35 lbs dogcrate to the wrong store??? At this point, I was still slightly humored, so I used Siri to help me find the nearest Petco.....only 3.2 miles away! Perfect, I can return it and still be in time for dinner. Of course, the Quincy Petco only has street parking, no lot, so I lug this gargantuan monstrosity down the street and into the store. It was about 8pm on like a Tuesday so the store was dead. I plopped it down at "Customer Service" and stated I needed to return it. "Well, did you buy it here?" Of course! I am at the right store now..."Well, do you have a reciept?" Yep, got that too....and I proudly presented my "receipt" to the gangly early 20's sallow toned cashier. "This isn't a receipt" Well....that's what came with it in the box when it got shipped to me: it has my payment method, a list of what I bought, etc etc. "This is a packing list, not a receipt. You have to have a receipt". Well, actually, I am moving across the country in about 3 days, so I don't have a computer or a printer or anyway to give you a receipt except to show it to you on my phone. "ummm.... on your PHONE? I have never heard of that, what store does that". Nordstrom, for one, you idiot. The guy kept insisting that I have a paper receipt, despite the fact that I obviously had no way to produce one at this point. My mind was reeling.... I would have to go to the LIBRARY TO PRINT A RECEIPT, then drive all the way back to this dump to return it when I had about 100 other things to do. I almost burst into tears in the store but I would NOT LET HIM SEE ME CRY. I saved that for when I stormed out stating " I can't believe you are going to make me carry this stupid thing back to my car!!!!". Through my tears, I have the sensibility to call 1-800 Petco. Don't those corporate offices always want you to be 100% satisfied. Well, it worked out okay....they ended up calling the store and "authorizing" my return. Future note: don't buy dog crates online.