Salsa Festival

Last Saturday Andy and I went to Salsa Festival with our friends. Unlike Culinary Festival there was no beer garden, vodka tent or Bacardi tent; however, there was beer, margaritas and a ton of salsa to taste. It only cost $10 to enter and you got to walk around and taste test different salsas at many different stations. I am not sure how many were there, but it seemed like a lot. This festival also held the salsa competition. Each stand was in competition for the best salsa. When I heard about the festival I was pretty excited to go since I LOVE salsa and was looking forward to trying all kinds of different salsa. Fifteen minutes into the festival Andy ruined my excitement for the taste testing. Once we got in I just dove right in and started tasting. After my fifth booth I said to Andy “Don’t you want to try any salsa?” since I was into five booths and he wouldn’t even stop at one. His response “Do you know how many hands probably touched those tortilla chips and how many hands were in the salsa?” Ok, so typical Andy! I didn’t even think about it, but he was right. Some of the booths provided you with your cup of salsa and a couple chips already in the cup and other booths only gave you the cup and you then had to reach into the chip bowl to grab a tortilla chip. Some people were man-handling the chips as they reached in. I thought for a second and realized he was right about how many people probably reached into that bowl and you don’t know where their hands have been. Then he proceeded to tell me how he saw some guy walk out of the port-o-potty and walk right up to a booth and dive right into the chips. GROSS! SUPER GROSS! This completely ruined my excitement for the salsa tasting. I was pretty bummed that I couldn’t even eat one more chip.

After the salsa disappointment we headed over to the main stage to watch our favorite local band, The Chadwick’s. This is also where we were meeting a group of our friends. Within the next half an hour Andy and I found ourselves surrounded by strollers and lots of babies. Not a big deal, but we kind of felt a little left out of the party. I guess we needed to bring a stroller to fit in with our friends now. I guess that is what happens when you get older…you fit in with the latest stroller and not the latest designer jeans! That’s ok though because we enjoyed the company of our good friends and we didn’t feel left out enough to bring a stroller filled with a screaming baby anytime soon. We did, however, have to stay back from the main stage while we watched the band. This is different for me as I like to be right up front, but I had to think of all the little guys surrounding us as we don’t want them to go deaf.

I am not sure I would go back again next year due to the sanitary issues of the salsa, which was the main reason why I wanted to go. Andy wasn’t a big fan of the festival because it was a giant cluster of people that got on his nerves. That on top of no salsa tasting…Andy voted a big fat NO for next year. We will see what next year brings for this festival.

Summer Is Approaching

It was in the mid-90’s all weekend and therefore it was sweltering hot and the Arizona summer is just around the corner. We spent Saturday with swass at the Scottsdale Culinary Festival. This is an annual event we do with our friends every year and this year definitely was no different from last year’s post. It was filled with good friends, good times, a vodka tent and drama. I won’t go into details since I wrote about it last year, but let’s just say everyone had a good time sweating their butts off until the sun went down. One difference from last year is that our friends, the Reitz’s, did not make it again for the second year in a row and Ross did not make it out from Wisconsin this year. Apparently the Reitz’s had a wedding to attend to…mmmmmm…sounds kind of fishy to me. Here is a picture of us with the Campbell’s and Mike and AJ in the vodka tent before it got crazy!

Then Sunday we spent the day lounging around the house in the heat because Andy didn’t think it was necessary to turn the air conditioner on when it was 96 degrees out. After much whining I got my way and he caved. Mainly I think he didn’t want to turn the AC on because he wanted to wait until we got the new one installed today. I think this will be the best purchase ever! I came home from work today and I noticed the difference in the house already. It is super quiet, energy efficient and will save us more than $200 a month on our energy bill this summer. By summer I mean from April through October. Being a home owner you get excited over things like a new air conditioning unit. I never thought that day for me would come, but today is the day. This new unit is just in time for the Arizona heat as it was in the mid-90’s again today. Bring on the 100 degree heat!!!

Happy Birthday Andy!

When it comes to celebrating birthdays Andy and I couldn’t be more opposite. I, on one hand, like to go big, celebrate big and be around lots of loved ones. Andy prefers to have his birthday be just another day. No surprise parties, no attention brought to him and no get togethers. I do not understand this behavior and I certainly have a hard time abiding by Andy’s wishes every year for his birthday. Yesterday was Andy’s birthday and I wanted to have friends over for drinks, food and cornhole, but he did not want to be on the spotlight so there was no party and no friends…just us! I guess as much as I don’t understand Andy’s lack of wanting a celebration he doesn’t understand my need to make a big deal out of a birthday.

So, with that said, this is how we spent Andy’s 29th birthday yesterday. We had breakfast together and then I gave him his present which is a new wireless blu-ray dvd player. It was something he asked for Christmas and since he did not get it I filed that away in my memory to get that for him for his birthday. After his gift he spent the next couple hours getting it all set up and getting our Netflix account synched with it. That is the best feature of the blu-ray player…the fact that we can download movies right from our Netflix account. I knew nothing about blu-ray players and in fact I didn’t understand why Andy wanted a new one, but since he wanted one I went into Best Buy to get educated on them. My salesman, who was about 16 years old, was extremely helpful in letting me know the difference between all of the brands. He also made me feel like kind of an idiot (I don’t think that was his intention) because he is half my age and knew everything about electronics.

So, after the opening of the gift Andy spent his day doing random things until I took us out to our favorite restaurant, Eddie V’s. We absolutely love that restaurant and since it was my only surprise for him I didn’t tell him until we were about ready to leave. He was pretty excited since Eddie V’s is not a restaurant we get to go to on a regular basis. Following dinner Andy was not interested in going out for drinks as he was more interested in getting a new blu-ray dvd to watch on the new player. So, the Audi took us to Target so we could fulfill Andy’s birthday wish. We picked out The Blind Side and it was such an amazing movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, you must! I won’t say anything else about the movie so I don’t spoil it for anyone.

So, even though there was no party yesterday for Andy I still got to spoil him as he turned 29. I was happy just to be able to spend the day with him. I hope he had a great birthday and I look forward to more birthdays with him.

Happy Belated Easter!

Ok, so I am a little late on my Easter wishes, but I have been a little busy and/or lazy lately. Andy and I didn’t do anything on Easter due to having no family in Arizona, but we were ok with that. On Saturday we went to our friend’s house that has an annual Easter get together. I wanted to take food that was festive so I thought of deviled eggs. I have never made them before, but figured they couldn’t be hard to make. I looked up the recipe online and found that it didn’t cause for many ingredients so it was right up my alley. I didn’t factor in how hard it would be to dig out the yoke and then put the yolk mixture back into every egg. Even though it was harder than I thought my eggs turned out pretty good. I was so impressed with myself that I took a picture of them. Yes, there is one egg missing because one out of 24 didn’t turn out right.

So we head to our friends annual Easter festivity, but the only catch is the get together is based on shots. Due to my IBS I do not take shots so I was planning on drinking red wine all night and leaving the shot taking to Andy as he was thrilled for shot night. He brought lemon drops for shots while I brought my deviled eggs. Our friends had all kinds of shots flowing that night and I was prepared to just say no. Unfortunately my plan of a laid back evening of sipping red wine didn’t turn out exactly as planned. I am a sucker who gave into peer pressure when it came to the shots and I definitely paid the price the following day. Sunday was definitely a friendly reminder of why I don’t party hard and why I always say no to shots. As I am getting older I am finding it harder to bounce back from a fun night. I guess a person just needs to be reminded every once in a while. Even though Andy had plenty of shots on Saturday night I was the one laying in bed all day recuperating while it didn’t affect him at all. Well, lesson was learned and that was the last night of shots for me. Easter 2011 will be a shot-less holiday for this lady!