Adventures of Grocery Shopping

When El-ahrairah hasn't had ice cream for a while, he gets a little crazy. We go to LoLo's grocery store for the student discount on Thursdays, and a few weeks ago El really needed some ice cream. (Really. Needed.) We picked up a tub of Sprinkled Animal Cookie flavor. Like this:

Source: http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55819710e4b0f153d10a6de0/55898abce4b0bafb124d6037/55899695e4b09503829b3c7d/1437690295862/?format=300w

Oh, and we got some healthy food too! :D

Farm-fresh produce!

I don't know if farmer's market food is healthier for you, I have no idea if supporting local businesses is good for the economy, but visiting the farmer's market is sure fun (and the samples are dang good too! I love the salsa one). I love the autumn-y feel of the vendors' booths, seeing all the newly harvested goods and the homemade wares for sale. It's definitely a symbol of the season.

-Owlet

Sick

No, not the good kind of sick.

El-ahrairah was feeling a little under the weather earlier this month. He had the sniffles, mostly, so it was your basic common cold. When I found out, I made sure to make him as comfortable as possible and help out where I could—and then my next thought was I really, really don't want to get sick. Let's see, I'll just wash my hands often, and not touch my face, and we'll wipe down all the doorknobs and clean all the things ...

And then I remembered that he and I make out on a regular basis.

Dang it.

-Owlet

Date: Exploring Center Street

If you have't noticed, exploring is the of El's and my favorite things! I was having a bad day one Thursday, so El-ahraiah said "Hey, wanna check out that cool-looking bookstore downtown?" He was talking about Pioneer Book! I'm so glad that I have a husband that so often knows exactly what I need. So I, being me, excitedly agreed and we spent the rest of the evening walking down Center Street in Provo.

Center Street is a pretty happening place. For one thing, that's where the Tempernacle is being built (temple + tabernacle; we're trying to make that one catch on). And there's a bunch of random art too.

Finally we ended up at Demae, a Japanese restaurant. Apparently, Tuesday and Thursday nights are their "Sushi Special" nights when they offer discounts on sushi. So we got a tempura shrimp + spicy mayo roll and a roll with salmon, cucumber, and crab. Yummy!

We liked the tempura shrimp roll the best. Only $3.95 or something like that.

All in all, it was a great way to spend our third month-aversary! Here's to many much more exploring in the months and years to come.

-Owlet

Special Plate!

I found about the special plate tradition when my former roommate received a special plate at her bridal shower. The idea is that you have a special plate (obvious, I know) that you bring out when a family member is having a special day, or when you have a special guest visiting. For example, it could be used for a child's birthday dinner, or for the last day of finals, or when your sister visits for a sleepover. I don't know, lots of things I'm sure. Anyway, the "traditional" special plate sold at stores like Target and Kohl's or wherever is red and says "You are Special Today."

Image source: http://www.redplatestore.com/you-are-special-today-red-plate.aspx?gclid=CjwKEAjw3uWuBRD_s-3a8-_h6j0SJAC-qgtHH3jRsdv6-K6D9bXl_LqEh0hlZ6LnQBK6FP6yiYicIBoChLbw_wcB

Which is kind of cute except I'm not a huge fan of the color red nor of the saying "You are Special Today" -- I'm not sure why. (Plus, these babies run for about $30 each. Ouch.)

However, I super love the idea of celebrating the little things in cute but simple ways, so of course when El-ahrairah and I stopped at a ceramics-painting shop on our honeymoon, I knew we needed to make a "special plate" of our own. Something that would be unique for our family, so it could be a tradition all our own.

So we set about designing and painting our very own special plate. We got the plate from the "discount" basket (I guess there were some kind of abnormalities about it; we couldn't tell, though), so it was only like $10.

It took us forever to decide on a design, and quite a while to paint it, but it was totally worth it. We decided to go with the quote "You are the special" from one of our favorite movies, The Lego Movie. Mostly because we couldn't think of anything I liked better.

The finished product is super cute and matches the colors of our kitchen decor (red definitely wouldn't have). I'm super excited to pull it out for our future children and celebrate the successes in their lives! No picture because it has our last name on it :/

Oh, and I got to use the special plate the other day! El-ahrairah was setting the table and put the plate out for me because I drove stick shift on some real roads with real other cars on the road! I thought it was kind of a little thing to go through the trouble of using the special plate, but I was excited to try it out and be all special and stuff.

Come to find out, the only reason he brought out the special plate was because all our other plates were dirty. Geez, El. Special plates are supposed to be special.

We're going to work on that. (El-ahrairah insists that we used it because I AM SPECIAL. To which I say ... everyone is special, dear, but having all our dishes dirty does not exactly make that day special. Ha.)

-Owlet

Date: Green Panda Cafe, x2

A few weeks ago we went to Green Panda Cafe for our date night. Here's El-ahrairah's description: "We split a beef noodle soup, wontons, and a mango lychee boba smoothie. For probably everyone reading this, boba are little tapioca balls they put in the bottom of your smoothie. Then they give you a really wide straw and you can chew them (or blow them at each other). I think they're fun, but [Owlet] thought they were weird."

I never seem to remember to take pictures of our awesome meals until we're already halfway through them. I kind of think that's the way life is supposed to be, anyway. I guess you can trust that these dishes are really delicious since we couldn't even spare a few moments before digging in!

Yeah, I did think they were weird, but hooray for cultural experience! We actually went there again for another date a week or two later.

Again, El's description: "We went on a lunch date to Green Panda and got yummy beef noodles; a combo plate with Mongolian chicken, two wontons, and a spring roll; and a coconut peach boba smoothie." Yep, that pretty much sums it up! Soooo good.

I really wanted to go back and get more of a taste for those boba things. I think it's definitely an acquired thing. I didn't hate them as much this time! I loved all the food we had at Green Panda. I really don't know what is my favorite except maybe the the potstickers (which El calls wontons [which I don't understand]) because they remind me of my childhood. But seriously everything we have had there has been so flavorful and hot and amazing and authentic, too. I think we'll be frequent eaters there this year!

-Owlet

Visit from Mom- and Dad-ahrairah! And sibs! And friends!

Last week we were honored to host El's parents and littlest sister in our home! They came to drop of El's younger brother and other younger sister at BYU for the school year. We also went and had a picnic at Bridal Veil falls!

On Thursday we went to the Food Truck Roundup! I was so excited -- this has been on my bucket list for a while. Basically, a bunch of food trucks offering various cuisines all gather at a certain spot in Provo every Thursday evening. I'm a fan of trying new and interesting foods, especially ones from other cultures, so I was all over this.

I thought there would be like 5-6 trucks there, but there were more like 10-15! We definitely spent way more time trying to choose which food to get than we did eating the food. I knew I didn't want any of the "American"-styled food, like the Mad Mac macaroni & cheese truck or the Mouse Trap grilled cheese truck or the Corn Dog Commander; I was torn between the European pitas and the tacos/tamales.

So. Many. Trucks. Kind of hard to see here, but yeah.

We ended up splitting a pork tamale and a couple beef (asada) tacos from Tacos Nayarit, with some Japanese sweet pork buns from Genki to finish it off. The tacos were my favorite -- highly recommended.

Not pictured: sweet pork buns. They were delicious! And yeah, everything was overpriced. We don't do this every week, you know. Great cultural experience, though!

On Saturday we met my good friend from high school and her boyfriend in a park in Orem. They came down to Utah to buy a puppy!

Puppy! He's a 10-week old Saint Bernard, currently nameless. As you can see below, he refused to look at me whenever I was trying to take a picture.

On Sunday we had El's BYU-siblings (my brother- and sister-in-law, I guess! and also my brother-in-law's girlfriend) over for dinner. El-ahrairah made Honey Sriracha Chicken, and I made some apple crisp.

Honey Sriracha Chicken! Spicy, sweet, amazing. The apple crisp I made took way too long. The recipe is here, if you want it, and it was delicious, but I'm going to look for something simpler next time.

Looking forward to more family dinners/visits in the future!

-Owlet

Date: Bowling

Last month we went bowling for one of our dates!

It was a bit of a long week for me, so I was super excited to have this time to reconnect with El-ahrairah and make a fool out of myself bowling. I used to hate bowling because everyone watches you and, well, I'm not exactly a pro, but I'm over it now and I think it's fun!

Before we bowled, we had some delicious food at the Wall. You know, for being kind of a trying-really-hard-to-be-cool-but-not-quite-pulling-it-off kind of little place on campus, the Wall actually has some great burgers and fries. I especially like their Hawaiian burger!

Then, after driving back home to get some socks for me because I forgot and was wearing sandals, we headed over to the Game Center for the bowling!

Even though my wrist injury has been flaring up again, it was still pretty cool. I had to switch to my left hand eventually because my right wrist hurt too much ... the sad thing is, you can't even tell based on my scores at what point I switched. Ah, well.

Oh, um, I was Lover. And El-ahrairah was Redbeard.

El-ahrairah did awesome though! He was trying to break 100 points ...

At least 39 is my favorite number, so it's kind of cool I ended up with that ... right?

And he did! I'm so proud of him. He says that's a new personal best.

I'll try not to hate him for being so good at everything.

-Owlet