The wonder of it all.

Yes, I am definitely becoming a weekend blogger.

Because I told Adam I would, I'm posting a picture of last Sunday's chicken chasseur, courtesy of ATK's Family Cookbook. I was planning on making it so that Adam would be able to eat it with us, but he wanted to leave earlier than it would have been ready. He missed out! The meal was very good, but we had so much leftover. That's one of the beefs that I have with the America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Illustrated/Cook's Country recipes - they make giant portions. Plus, they invariably call for a teensy bit of some random ingredient that I'm never going to use again but that's wildly expensive and hard to find. And the recipes take (me) a lot longer to prepare than the guideline. For example, I was planning on making this classic yellow cake from scratch today, recipe courtesy of the same Family Cookbook as last week's chicken dish. It didn't call for anything crazy (just LOTS of butter and eggs) and claimed to take only 15 minute to prepare. But by the time I got myself out to the store, did my grocery shopping, and then came home, I decided that I wouldn't really have a whole lot of time to make the cake - 15 minutes of their prep time means at least 45 minutes for me. So no cake. Instead, we have an assortment of Middle Eastern desserts for treats during the Super Bowl... lots of honey, lots of pistachios, lots of yumminess (or at least we're hoping - we've never tried the homemade sweets from Cedar's Market in Norwood, but they sure do look good). I'm also making homemade hummus and pasta with this olive sauce. We'll have plenty of eats, so who cares about the cake.

Since I decided not to work this weekend (not really a conscious choice... more of a mental necessity at this point), Doug and I traveled with Marieke for a quick trip to the Mashantucket Pequot Museum at Foxwoods in CT. I've posted some photos below of the trip, which make the trip seem great. And it was, but I think everyone was a little disappointed in the museum. The museum had a lot of potential, and I believe some exhibits were done well, like the Pequot village with the audio tour. The staff was really not friendly, though - our first impression of the museum was this surly, middle-aged woman working the ticket desk giving Marieke a hard time for trying to get into the museum for free (which she did, because she's a New England museum employee or something like that). Anyway, then when Doug and I tried to buy our tickets she told us that the observation tower would close at 3:30pm, the exhibits at 4, and because it was 1:30pm did we even want to bother going? Now, I suppose maybe she was trying to save us the $30 (yes!) admission to the museum, but still, I didn't think her attitude was very inviting. Despite this treatment, we had a good time. The observation tower gave us nice panoramic views of the nothingness of southeastern CT (all you can see for miles is trees and... Foxwoods!), and the museum taught us that Natives of southern New England liked to plant corn, beans, and squash. Wow. After the museum we did go to Foxwoods, so that was a bonus - we checked out the new MGM Grand and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe, but all that really did was convince us that we didn't really want to be there any longer. We soon after left for home and were happy to wave bye-bye to the casino and southeastern Connecticut.

Today, back safely in Massachusetts, we decided to finally get serious about finding a new vacuum cleaner. Our old Kenmore canister vacuum finally died for good a few weeks ago, and our house has been in desperate need of a vacuum. Doug set to doing some online research and then we headed out to Sears, Lowe's, Home Depot, and BJ's to do some comparison shopping. There was this Kenmore canister vacuum at Sears that was our top option, but then we stopped at Home Depot. There, in a corner where we almost didn't see them, was a small display of Dyson DC17s, the animal vacuum. We have heard very good things about this vacuum, but it was way out of our price point at other stores (as well as online). But for whatever reason, there were three of these babies at Home Depot at a wickedly cheap price - and plus, we had a couple of Home Depot gift cards from Christmas that we could use towards its purchase. Now we're the proud owners of a new, super-sucking machine! Doug is especially excited about this purchase, as he claims to like to vacuum. He's vacuuming right now, actually. Here are a couple of photos of Doug with his new toy.

So, that's the news for now. All we have to have is a Steelers victory tonight and this weekend will be complete.