Melyssa-with-a-Y

or, University Blvd in Urbana is not the same as University Blvd in Champaign ! ARGH! It's a good thing my co-worker brought the directions also, because I looked up how to get to the hotel address, but it was on the wrong side of town! After driving around for 20 minutes *knowing* I wasn't quite in the right place, Luke figured out that my directions were different from his, and we finally made it to the hotel. Part 2 of "I was soooo tired": When the nice lady at AVIS returned my drivers license, I managed to slide it into the wrong pocket in my wallet. So when the nice lady at the front desk asked for my ID, it wasn't there! Oh no! I lost my DL! Panic! Call AVIS, they don't have it. Go through my pockets, my purse, everywhere I can think of... not there. Go back out to the car ( nb: it's 22 degrees with wind chill here ) and look, it's not there. Go back to the airport, just in case the AVIS lady didn't see it (using a more direct route)... and,...

I don't think I've ever written about Israel on the blog before: how much it pains me when I read about Israeli soldiers and civilians dying, how connected I feel to a place I've only visited once (20+ years ago), and how important it is that Israel continues to be a strong force for democracy in the Middle East. On the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, much is being written on these topics. After Rosh Hashanah last year, I signed up for "10 minutes of Torah," a daily email from the Union of Reform Judaism. Sometimes the emails are a quick read (the definition of a Hebrew word, in today's context) and some of them are gripping. This week's emails have been the latter. Wednesday's post, by Rabbi Robert Orkand, was entitled "Why Israel Matters to Me." While I didn't grow up in the 50's and 60's, my attitude toward Israel (3rd paragraph, below) is identical. In those days before email and relatively easy air t...

A QP meal at McD's in the Houston airport: $3.59. Club salad with grilled chicken and lo-fat balsamic dressing: $5.95, and fruit & yogurt snack: $2.19. Knowing that you chose the healthier option, even when faced with french fries: priceless. :)

Translation: Pisco is a potent drink! Saturday night was the March Supper Club. We decided on South American cuisine. We had pupusas, seafood stew, a shredded beef dish (the Venezuelan version of ropa vieja), and dulce de leche crepes (a little bit of poetic license for the crepes, but they were TASTY!) for dessert. My two contributions were Pastel de Choclo , which I had once in Santiago, Chile, and Pisco sours to drink. There are MANY versions of the Pastel recipe. (I skipped the olives. blech.) Technically, you're supposed to cook it in four small clay pots, but it worked fine in a large pan -- and I needed nine servings anyway. I also sliced the hardboiled eggs and laid them down as a layer, rather than shoving egg-halves into the beef mixture. I've been cooking up a storm recently, now that I think about it. Rebeka and Paul came over on Thursday for healthy dinner night, and we had spicy crusted grilled salmon (a WW recipe that I haven't used in years) with steamed ...

Curses! Apparently my favorite Food Network chef, Robert Irvine of Dinner:Impossible , has LIED about his credentials ! He hasn't cooked for Presidents, or for the Royals at Buckingham... he just made that up. That's so sad. He's so much fun to watch, ordering people around, and making incredible dishes out of the most ridiculous ingredients, in no time at all. It doesn't hurt that he's built like a Mack truck (though I never like that sort of thing in person) , and I'm probably a bit partial to the British accent. Damn. Paula Deen is going to be heartbroken. The two of them formed a cute (and sometimes, dare I say, raunchy) little friendship there for a while. Ah well. I'll have to make do with Duff and the crew at Charm City Cakes. :)