Last night at the Home and Garden show we spotted a Wine Crate Dog Bowl. Being the discerning dog that Clifford is we knew he would LOVE this bowl. since we loved it, we thought he would too 
I love the looks of it! Very stylish.
While Clifford was checking out and then proceeding to run away from his bowl I made a quick lunch of Muir Glen Organic Chicken Noodle Soup, a sandwich and an Oikos with Caramel. Quick and easy lunch 
I ended the meal with a sample of the cashews I got in my swag bag from the meetup this morning. The cashews were glazed with pomegranate and vanilla. A good combo of salty and sweet. Yum!
The lovely Jen of Prior Fat Girl hosted a Prior Fat Girl Get Together this morning at The Beat coffee house in Minneapolis. There were 40 amazing Minneapolis area bloggers and readers. It was so much fun getting to know all of these women!
We mingled and got to know each other while enjoying Coffee and Tea. I had a Hawaiian loose leaf tea with THE coolest tea press I had ever seen. You let the tea steep for a few minutes and set on top of the glass and it pours out the bottom. So cool!
The event kicked off with Jen talking about her journey with similar stories given by others.
Each table mingled and we were tasked with writing a fear on a note card and dropping it into the pile. One by one the tables came up, we introduced ourselves and gave our blog name. We then talked about the healthy recipe we brought and grabbed anonymous note card and read the fear. What really struck me was how similar the fears were. A few of the common themes were:
- Fear of failure
- Loss of motivation
- The inability to loose the last five, ten, etc.
- Not being healthy enough
I felt very emotional during the reading of all these fears, most women are so much strong than they think they are. It makes me so sad that so many people doubt themselves and their determination. To every person (especially women) on their health and fitness journey: YOU CAN DO IT! We ended with writing a letter to ourselves that Jen will be mailing in 6 months, it was meant to a reminder of our motivation and that we are strong!
I felt very emotional during the reading of all these fears, most women are so much strong than they think they are. It makes me so sad that so many people doubt themselves and their determination. To every person (especially women) on their health and fitness journey: YOU CAN DO IT! A nice perk of the event was all the swag, thank you to all the sponsors (Smartfood, Barney Butter, Funky Monkey, Mom’s Best Naturals, Protein Cereal, Lightlife, FiberOne, Popsicle, Salba and Orgain). I dug through the bag when I got home and even Clifford wanted to see what I got!
Last night we went to the Minneapolis Home and Garden Show at the Convention Center and checked out some gardening, decorating and outdoor living ideas for the new house. We got a couple of good contacts for patios/decks, outdoor furniture, a future wine cellar and some closet organizing ideas as well. I had won the tickets on a radio station I listen to and I am glad I had won them since they were $12 a ticket. We were there for two hours and pretty much walked the whole show, hunger was present by the time we were done. I pulled out a Groupon for Moto-I, the first Sake Brew Pub outside of Japan! The groupon I had purchased was $50 dollars of food for $20 dollars. A pretty good deal! We had heard great things about Moto-I but it didn’t live up to the hype. I opted for the Namatini which had almond, vanilla and honey flavors with the Sake. I didn’t love it, it almost reminded me of couch syrup.
Since they are a Sake Brew pub they didn’t have a large selection of non sake beverages but they did support local Minnesota breweries. Mike tried a Farm Girl which was a cloudy, wheat beer.
There were a few positives about the meal, we ordered a Pork Belly and Pulled Chicken Steamed Bun. I had the pulled chicken which was VERY spicy but pretty good. Mike enjoyed the pork belly, which had good flavor.
We tried the Ginger Pork Dumplings which were my favorite part of the meal, you could tell everything had been handmade and the dipping sauce was amazing.
On to the low points… the main dish we ordered was The Drunken Noodle, which was chicken, red pepper, Thai Chili, Kaffir Lime, Onion, Thai Basil and Rice Noodles. There wasn’t much flavor to this dish which is surprising given the ingredients. The most disappointing aspect of our meal was the service, point blank it was horrible. We were there for 2 hours and only had 3 plates of food that we shared. Ouch!
