Archives for January 2011

Mystery Meet #7- Hell Night at East Coast Grill

January 12, 2011

Oh Hell Night, you rocked my world.

Last night I had the pleasure of attending my first Mystery Meet event. This was the 7th event that Mystery Meet organized, and it happened to be at East Coast Grill. If you are not familiar with East Coast Grill, then I should explain that this restaurant hosts an event 2 times a year called Hell Night. What is Hell Night? It’s an excuse for you to burn your mouth, lips, fingers, etc while your man up to a plate of super spicy food.

Mystery Meet provides 5 clues about the restaurant where the event will be occurring so you have a hint of the location when you purchase your tickets, but the big reveal occurs the day before the event. After the first clue “If you can’t take the heat, get your ass outta the kitchen.” I was 90% positive that it was going to be East Coast Grill since it is known for Hell Night and that is the hottest place in the Boston area. It was even featured on Man vs. Food during it’s first season. Hell Night is a major event so it is nearly impossible to get a reservation since they sell out within hours, and this was my big chance to go! In fact, Price and I were driving back form Montreal when the tickets for Mystery Meet were released, which resulted in ridiculous amounts of swearing at the VT mountains that were messing up my 3G connection. Thankfully, AT&T pulled through, and we got tickets.:-)

Prior to attending the event, Price and I met Jacki from Just Add Cheese, her friend Darius, and Amanda from Kitchen Misfit at the neighboring bar, Bukowski Tavern. We shared stories and suggestions of beer, hot sauces, chicken and waffles, pancake places, brunch spots, etc.

The Hell Night menu for the Mystery Meet event did not disappoint. The menu offered several shared appetizers, 2 entrée choices, and dessert. There were bomb ratings after each item warning us of what pain we were going to experience. One thing you can’t prepare for is the Meatball Roulette, the first appetizer. This really is a game of chance, one in which I lost. That spicy meatball provided a deep slow burn that hit the back of my tongue and seemed to last forever. Immediately, my body did not like this sudden jolt and responded with hiccups. Yes, weird.

Next up were the Smokin’ Hot Pork Spare Ribs. These were rated 3 bombs… lie! Our table agreed that this was the hottest thing of the night. However, we did not know this was really miss rated, and were then extremely fearful of the 8 bomb rating that was going to be coming shortly. It was also that this point that we all agreed that no one would wimp out and get milk.

Just when things couldn’t get worse, the Wings of Mass Destruction arrived on our table. Happily, they not 8 bomb hot, even though they had ghost chili oil on them. I managed to eat 3 of them, however the real champ at our table was Frank who ate 5. Frank eat everything quickly and quietly suffered through the pain while the 5 of us made it really clear how much it was killing us. Frank was the champ.

The last shared appetizer was the Korean Fried Chicken Thighs. These were “caliente, not picante” as explained by Darius. I think that I enjoyed these the most because the heat was in the gochujang dipping sauce. Also, the apple kim chee helped cool things off with the contrasting cool crisp fruit.

Price and I got each entrée so we could sample them both. The Latin Spice Grilled Mahi Mahi (2 bombs) was cooked perfectly and provided enough heat without being troublesome. Price’s Jamaican Jerk Grilled Pork Chop (6 bombs) was also manageable because the heat was from a dipping sauce. However, the mashed sweet potatoes still had some kick with some curry so Price had little relief there. There was so much extra of our entrées that he got to relive the heat again today for lunch.

The Mango Berry Crisp dessert was fantastic, but put us over the top on food consumption. Thankfully, the ice cream did help cool things down.

Both Mystery Meet and East Coast Grill did a fantastic time organizing and hosting this event. I really look forward to attending another event, which occurs the second Tuesday of the month.

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Birthday 24 LO- Studio Calico 11/28 Sunday Sketch

January 11, 2011

Sketch4

I really struggled with this sketch. Part of the reason that I am just getting to it now, while it was posted at the end of November, errr. I was not sure what to use for photos. I don’t really like to use mini photos, but I have been trying really hard to this past year. So when i recently was unloading my camera I noticed I had photos that would work small and I had enough of them for a LO.

This layout is from my friend Emily’s 24th Birthday from early December. We had a fantastic dinner out at Post 390. We could not decide on what to order to we ordered a lot of little things to share. Dinners out like that are fantastic since we laugh the whole night while enjoying drinks and making amazing plans for our next adventures.

While I struggled with this layout I enjoyed the completed LO because I got so many photos in one layout. I was able to capture everything that we enjoyed for Emily’s birthday. Plus, I really added dimension to my layout with the ribbon and the star pins (from Studio Calico kit) that hold the rolled portion in place.

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Montreal Day 3 {Our Anniversary}

January 9, 2011

Sunday 1.2.11

Day 3 of our Montreal vacation marked our 6th year anniversary.

While we were enjoying the Polar Spheres on New Years Eve, I saw a restaurant called Eggspectations. I thought it would be a great place for us to brunch on our anniversary since it would be nicer than standing in the street eating bagels, see Day 2 post. Plus I can’t resist a place that has several kinds of eggs benedict.

We then hit up the Underground City, La Ville Souterraine, to check it out and work off breakfast. It was less excitng than we thought it was going to be, since it was just a mall and tunnels.

However, we got lost, a lot. Obviously, we understand how to read plans, but the maps we had were simple and when your in the space it is not intuitive because you can’t just cross the space to get into another tunnel, but you had to go up or down a level to do so. Either way we walked miles. I played around with google’s pedometer and figured out were were up in the 12+ mile range for the day.

After miles of tunnels we emerged to check out Old Montreal for the last time. We got to see Borsecour Market, which contained a few restaurants and several gallery like stores. We loved Montreal Poutine so much that we went back for our last poutine and real meal in Montreal.

After walking so many miles, we decided that taking a cab back to the hotel was necessary. Such a great decision. We were both so tired that we just relaxed and watched the news in French. I still have no idea what we were watching but it didn’t it matter. We started to get hungry for dinner around 8 so I called down for some room service but the ktichen was closed… why?… “because of the holiday”. What holiday!?! New Years was the day before! The front desk said we could come down to look at some delivery menus, but I didn’t even have the energy for that so we had a bag of all dressed potato chips for dinner instead.

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Montreal Day 2 {New Years Day}

January 7, 2011

Saturday 1.1.11

I don’t suggest people to go to Montreal to celebrate New Years if you don’t plan on nursing a hangover on New Years Day. Why? We discovered this laid back city took the day off. There were a lot of things closed from museums, shops, and restaurants all over the city. It was nice to have such a laid back day but Price and I are used to conquering a city and walking all over. We still walked all over but without any real place to go. So I’d suggest going to visit Montreal another time because this city has a lot to see and do, you definitely don’t want it closed.

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we planned on getting bagels for breakfast so after sleeping in and having some coffee we headed out to get bagels. Since I did not sign up for an international plan for the weekend, we only had wi-fi at the hotel which ment we had to relay on the maps in the guide books to get there. That would not have been so bad had I not gotten us off the wrong subway stop and made things confusing.

But the extra walk to Fairmont Bagels was really worth it since they were fantastic bagels. I got everything bagels, which they called “All Dressed” and Price got poppy.

We walked back to the subway to head towards the underground mall. while asking for directions we were informed it was closed because it is new years day. WTF? sersiously??? At this point I don’t know if that was true, but we listened to her anyway and went back to Old Town Montreal to wander around. It was then that we learned how Montreal deals with snow… they don’t. They just let it be and block your way from using snow covered stairs.

We wandered over to Bonsecours Market, but it was closed. I really could not understand how so many shops were closed on a day where there were so many people walking around.

So we continued on to the St. Lawrence River to see across to the Biosphere and to see the ice skaters on the Bonsecours Basin skating rink.

It started to drizzle again and it was mid afternoon so we headed over to Chez Suzette for lunch of fondue. Skip the bloody mary’s there, too watered down.

And then a dessert crepe and some after dinner coffee drinks that were 10% coffee and 90% alcohol. Holy hell that was a lot of sambuca.

After lunch we walked back to the hotel where Price napped and I watched a Sister Wives marathon. Oh the madness! I was addicted. Price practically had to drag me away to get to have $10 filet mignon at Brochette, a 24-hour grill place that is attached to a shut down body shop down the road. I enjoyed a filet kabob and Price had a grilled chicken pita. Pretty good for a $10.80 filet dinner 🙂 I should have taken a photo but it was a kinda place where you just don’t do that.

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Montreal Day 1 {New Years Eve}

January 6, 2011

Friday 12.31.10

Price and I were up at 4.30am and were done with out trip to Dunkin’s by 5.30 to get on the road quickly. It was beautiful to see the sun rising over the Mts in New Hampshire.

We made a stop for breakfast at King Arthur Baker’s Shop and Cafe (previously posted)

We continued our trip on ward and upward through VT into Canada reaching Montreal around 11.30

We were told that ‘typically people check in at 3pm’ by the man at the hotel desk when we came in to see about early check in (no) and where to go next. So we walked down to Vieux-Montréal (Old Montreal) for some lunch and to check out the city.

We stopped off at Montreal Poutine, who I had been tweeting with before our trip, for some lunch. Besides the great meal there, we had beer called Unibroue. I had the Ephemere Blackcurrant and I really have to find that down in Boston now.

After lunch we headed back to the hotel, on the way I noticed a dress that lday gaga would love.. diaper dress!

Price and I got settled in our hotel room, took a nap, and then headed back out for dinner and to celebrate the New Year. On our way to dinner we saw a cool outdoor exhibit, called Polar Spheres, outside the Palace Des Arts.

We went to Basilic in Montreal’s China town. I got Bun, as usual.

As the New Year approached we headed down to the Port area to see the fireworks, but mother nature had other plans for us. It eneded up raining and we decided to bail on the fireworks. A quick walk out of Old Town and a cab ride later, we were back in the hotel drying off and watching the ball drop on TV. Still, a fantastic end to 2010.

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Pat’s or Geno’s? LO- Studio Calico 12/19 Sunday Sketch

January 5, 2011

April_sketch

Whenever I feel bad about how far behind I am with scrapbooking the latest and greatest events I remind myself that I have done more scrapbooking in the time I have been out of school than all the years (6) that I was in school. So I will do the Studio Calico Sunday Sketches whenever I have the time, I can’t beat myself up that I am like 3 weeks behind. But, damn it, I will catch up one day! ha

This layout is about my first Philly cheese steak in Philly while I was visiting my friend Dawn. I used the orangy patterned paper because it matched the tile on the wall and the french fry container. Then I used some Sassafras stickers and some washi tape to embellish the page.

Baker’s Dream: King Arthur’s Store And Cafe

January 3, 2011

I knew we had to make a stop at the King Arthur Baker’s Store and Cafe once I realized that we were going to pass it on our way to Montreal. This is a baker’s dream. I had been hoping to take a class there this year but I didn’t get my act together, but this has gotten me even more committed at this point. I talked Price into making a stop here be telling him we would get breakfast there.

The store itself is gorgeous with intricate wood structure that comes together at a spiral stair in the center. But the best part is that it is packed full fantastic flours, measuring cups, aprons, bowls, mixes, and much, much more. King Arthur Flour has a variety of flours and mixes, including Gluten Free mixes, that make great savory and sweet products.

I really could have spent so much time and money here. I ended up getting a package of Raspberry Jammy Bits, English Muffin Mix, English Muffin Rings, and Eggnog Cookie Mix. I’m really looking forward to making english muffins soon.

The other part of the place is a cafe that has breakfast and lunch items. There were a lot of options for turnovers, cinnamon buns, croissants, and muffins for breakfast. Some of the lunch items included sandwiches on their freshly made bread. You can even finish off your lunch with a cupcake.