TV Binge Watching

Tonight we continue to try to be good with dinner given our cheat day on Tuesday. Cheesy Chicken Spaghetti Squash Boats.

sketchy grilled chicken -- we find it much quicker to grill meat! A lot less dishes too. =)

spaghetti squash boats.

We've been on a ridiculous TV obsession lately. It all started President's Day weekend when we picked up House of Cards and ended up watching basically all two seasons in a total of 2 days. After completing HOCs we felt we needed something to fill the void so we started watching Scandal. This was already halfway through it's third season, so we knew we had some good work to do to catch up. Thanks to a couple snow days we're almost through 30 episodes and very near caught up!

Nalini's History of TV

One Tree Hill -- loved the drama and having to know what would happen next. all the twists and turns and ooc-ness was great.
Bones -- mainly because of Booth.
The Closer -- i think i actually liked these cases
House -- mainly because of house
Burn Notice -- mainly because of Michael
SVU -- these cases seem repetitive. the episodes i like the most are those which show the main character's backgrounds
Criminal Minds -- same as SVU analysis.

The aspect of the show I was interested in was a character's development throughout the season -- not the cases or how interesting those were. Basically i should have been watching sequential dramas all this time! Glad i'm discovering them now though. This makes sense given the fact that One Tree Hill was my favorite show of most of the shows listed above. 

Date Night 1, 2014

First, last night's new dinner item. I've been putting bits and pieces of sweet potatoes in our meals -- i think i'm beginning to like it, which is good because it's good for us in life. Tonight we did a mexican style baked sweet potato. I wasn't the biggest fan but it was good. Sketchy really liked it.

Now, going to keep track of how many date nights we have a year because i swear it's less than 5! we always have good intentions of trying to a monthly or every other month date night but then life gets in the way.

Anyways, tonight was Bracket Room (to use an expiring groupon I purchased a while ago) and Magic v Wizards game.

Pretty on the outside.

and the inside...I love the hanging shelves above the bar with all the liquor bottles.

sketchy hungry.

shrimp potstickers

crazy 'mantots' -- they were realllyyy good

this place has a bunch of sauces on their menu so we decided to try some. I like the aiolis and sauces i make with the immersion blender more but they were still good.

all the bar food.

all the bar food.

pizza was good. 

this picture looks like it's way further away than it was.

date night selfie!

Noura & Kristen's Springfield Stay

This weekend was pretty fun. I feel a little lame for having not felt too good all weekend causing me to be not so fun while we were out.

We did all the things we set out to do though! Friday was fun at Clarendon Grill. Noura liked the song selection and i'm glad because i built it up quite a bit. Halfway through their second set some genius pulled the fire alarm. The band had to stop playing until the fire dept arrived and gave them the go ahead that everything was okay. despite the minor interruption the night was successful.

when we got home noura and i stayed up watching an episode or two of scandal til we fell asleep on the couch.

Saturday we woke up to a text informing us that Kristen's flight had been cancelled! This was 100% unexpected given that weather conditions were not bad!! Anyways, she ended up catching the next flight up but this flight was landing in Baltimore instead of DC. Not a huge problem though since we were heading up to almost-baltimore to Scott and Miriam's place for Hailey 1st Bday party anyways. We grabbed kristen a little later than expected and headed straight to the party.

birthday princess.

and her princessy cake.

lolz.

she was so dainty about eating her cake. no mess. no fun! That's very much her personality though -- she's very quiet and proper for a baby lol.

after hanging out for a bit, eating all the things (pizza, delicious crockpot turkey meatballs and cake) and a short "Kristen's First Snow photo session" we headed back to springfield to set up for beer olympics! Beer olympics went well and managed to be done in a perfect amount of time.

Kristen's first snow photo session can be seen here, along with other pictures from the entire weekend!

There were three competitions. Each team had to compete the same challenge and were timed so that it was a more accurate way to rank the best team. The winner of Gold was legitimately the BEST team at the challenge.

There was timed chugging, timed flip cup and how many shots (turns/throws -- not like liquor shots lol) it takes to hit 6 cups in beer pong.

There was Bronze, Silver and Gold for each event. Gold got assigned 3 points, silver 2 points, bronze 1 point. The team with the most points at the end of the competition won.

Chinese Tapei (Sketchy and Jacob) for the win.

Afterwards we cleaned up and then got ready to head out by 7-8pm and headed out to H street around 10pm!

We went to Church and State, the Arcade bar downstairs, Little Miss Whiskey, and ended at Dangerously Delicious Pies. Church and State was really neat. Will need to go back there with a smaller group another time.

Sunday we woke up and headed out to georgetown to see if the new El Centro location on Wisconsin would have open tables. We were in luck with only a 10 minute wait. I thought the GT location was much prettier than the U street location. I don't know if the GT location has an outdoor area but the upstairs was really neat and had tons of sky lights!

We did the all you can eat and drink brunch. Was pretty good -- the food is definitely better quality for dinner when they're not mass producing to feed the masses, but it was still good and exceptionally filling.

Afterwards, we walked down to the waterfront, around the georgetown waterfront where i discovered a new restaurant on the water -- want to go when the weather gets better and have apps and drinks on their patio! We made a pit stop at Baked and Wired for Kristen and Noura to grab a cupcake or in Noura's case, 6 lol.

Then we walked all the way back up Wisconsin to the car. It was a perfect stroll after over-eating at El Centro.

We then ended our time in Georgetown with a trip to the cliff since Kristen had never been -- took some pictures. These are also in that album I linked to earlier in the post.

We finally headed over to Vapianos in ballston to have dinner with Lindsay, Robbie and AJ. Kristen really wanted to see them again before she left since they weren't able to go out with us Saturday night. Vapianos is always a good idea, once again didn't disappoint.

When we got home everyone helped put our guestbook puzzle together and then noura and i decided we wanted all the chocloate things so we made a late night run to the grocery store...which was closed. so really we made a late night run to CVS. reminded me of good times on campus.

I haven't had such a DC, pretty weathered, fun yet super relaxing sunday like that in a long time. it was refreshing and renewed my love of the georgetown area!

Can.not.wait.for.spring!

Monday morning I dropped those two off at DCA and felt surprising really sad about it. And now life has resumed normalcy. Going to make something fun and new for dinner to fight the monotony of weekday living.

Food Frenzy

Today i had crazy cravings for all the bad things. Weekends have been consist cheat days for us. We've planked on our weight, if we stopped cheating on weekends i bet we'd lose a little more but i'm okay with this pace for right now! =)

I'll do a crazy post on all the foods I've been making and eating at a later date.

Next stop, DCA to grab noura and off to Clarendon (a new adventure for Noura despite having lived in the DC area for 4 years).

Clarendon nights at Whitlow's or Clarendon Grill are always the best. =)

Incoming Company

Yesterday was another successful HH at Legal Seafood -- The food was still good and while i did not get any drinks, catherine and kelsey said there's were really good. We also scored a really nice booth at the back of the bar area. Sketchy went to RFDs with AJ while we happy houred down the block.

Afterwards we dropped by Costco to stock up on some snacks for this weekend.

Tomorrow Noura gets into town, followed by Kristen early Saturday morning. We have some fun stuff lined up including Gonzo's Nose at Clarendon Grill (always a good performance) Friday night, Beer Olympics and H street nighttime activities on Saturday and brunch somewhere in the city followed by hanging out in georgetown on Sunday.

Today = cleaning the house and grocery shopping to make us look like real people with real things in the house. 

Weekend of Obsessions

This weekend was filled with activity. Friday, traffic and parking in the city was more miserable than we thought. We circled georgetown for a while, missed happy hour at El Centro and just ended up meeting Lindsay and Diana at Pinstripes. We decided to have dinner there while we waited for a lane. It was pretty busy so there was a solid 2 hour wait for a lane if you wanted to play more than one game.

The place was pretty badass. The food was good, drink selection was good and it was 1/2 wine bottles... on a FRIDAY. 

Water, beer, champagne and wine. had a little of everything. 

This might be Lindsay's meal? Not sure, but looks good.

sketchy's gumbo thing? Looked good.

this was SO good. some creamy goat cheese pasta!

The bowling area had leather couches instead of bowling alley seating. Everything was brand new and shiny including the bowling shoes. 

Since it was Valentine's day, they were running a special where every two people got a complimentary (amazingly delicious) chocolate heart shaped cake and two glasses of champagne. We were also given these bracelets that would get us a free glass of wine everytime we return! 

I foresee hanging out there again for sure. 

After dinner, Robbie, AJ, Melanie and Misha joined us at our lane. We played a couple games and then headed off to bottomline for a bit. 

pink and red folks

brand spanking new bowling shoes!

Pinstripes was also handing out these crazy roses to girls when they walked in the door. had to make Diana and Lindsay do this lol.

Saturday Sketchy, Diana and I went to the DC Brau Brewery followed by Three Star Brewing Company (also in DC). Both were awesome. Look out for the brewery page to be updated with pictures and more details on the brewery tours. For the most part they were both cool. DC Brau was a little longer and more in depth tour than we had experienced at the other breweries we had visited. Three stars was really neat because the owner gave the tour himself. 

Dc Brau:

There were two sections with taps. It was a little crowded and small but still had the warehouse look and feel. 

There were tons of these crazy murals everywhere. I think I took a picture of these people just chilling out? Looks like they came to stay for the entire day. lol

more murals.

DC Brau's offices. Basically just two desks next to one another. 

desk number 2

classic pic we have to take with a vat.

tour

tour guide.

tour. canning! This was actually going on while we were there which was cool!

canning that was happening while we were there!

DC/US flag.

racks on racks on racks.

these pallets had some crazy number of cans on it. Forgot how many. But never seen pallets stacked so high!

the barely/hops they use for brewing.

3 Stars Brewing:

taps for tasting here and also in a room where they sold all sorts of brewing kit items. The owner was very into helping others get started. You could tell he loved what he does and was very proud of the recipes him and his partner had come up with!

I really really liked this. Had all the local places their beers are served! Yes, it's organized by areas in DC. 

Some of their brewing vats are smaller than most breweries we had seen.

All their hops and barley ingredients for sale to the public!

This was really neat too -- a bottling machine. They only bottled their seasonals or special beers. Isn't it crazy to think that if you buy a 6pk bottle of 3 star brewing beer you know that someone was legitimately bottling one beer at a time? 

Decorations.

BARRREELLSS.

i always like how there are seating areas in breweries. always inviting to sit around and taste all the beers.

This was cool too -- this is their only form of delivery of their beers. You saw that list of how many places they are sold. 

selfie in front of the brewery door.

classic pic with the owner/tour guide at brewery.

Saturday night we had people over and watched the the whole of season 1 House of Cards.

Sunday we went to the parentals, hung out with them and aunt and uncle and cooked dinner.

I busted out the mini deep fryer to try frying the paneer for the chili paneer!

it's so compact. =)

this was a neat booklet that came with it. actually has a lot of recipes.

chili paneer ingredients

ingredients for the jalapeno poppers

made these goat cheese and (homemade) picked red onions on mediterranean pita chips. 

fried plantains and smashed them to make these caribbean snack. Made some chutney to go with it.

these did NOT come out how they should lol. They look crazy and tasted a little off. lol

Indian Dinner for the parentals and aunt/uncle.

Monday morning we headed back to DC to watch HOC at Lindsay and Robbie's place. What was originally supposed to be one or two episode viewing turned into watching 5 episodes. 

Today life went back to normal, we're watching a couple of episodes tonight and then will watch the next two tomorrow! Almost done with Season 2. Not sure what we're going to do when it's over!