Sorry about the hiatus!

Dude, I am a bad blogger- you really do have to make it a habit. To be fair though, I really haven't been cooking much lately; however, I do have a few recipes to catch you up on in the next few weeks). Joe and I had a great Valentine's Day weekend, complete with a couple of excellent meals- on the homecooking side, it was all him. He made me blueberry pancakes and maple sausage links- yummo!

We went out to eat on Saturday night at Urban Element in downtown Indy- what a treat! We will definitely go there again. They had a special V-day menu choice, so we got a bottle of champagne, a shrimp and crab bake appetizer (it was like a dip that we spread on some wonderful sourdough garlic toast), salads (fresh field greens with blue cheese dressing!), surf and turf (a small but excellently seasoned and- medium rare- cooked filet, a lobster tail with butter, steamed zucchini, and redskin mashed potatoes), AND 2 chocolate covered strawberries for under $75 total- amazing! We can't wait to go back and try some other menu item- they have a blue cheese pasta that sounds amazing and I have a $25 gift certificate from Restaurants.com (that I got for $2!) to use there (they wouldn't accept it for the V-day special, which is fine). It's a very cute, artsy place with great service- the owner stopped and chatted with us- and they often feature local musicians and artwork- there was a folk singer there while we were eating and some grat art, but everything we liked had "sold" signs on it!
On Sunday, we went to Scotty's Brewhouse downtown to take advantage of their "Martinis and Manis" promo- buy a martini (I got the Carmel Appletini below) and spend $25, get a gift card for a manicure at DL Lowry (a very nice salon in Nora).

I had been wanting to go there for awhile, so this seemed like a good time. We HAD to get the dill chips and they were everything I thought they'd be and more; however, we preferred them with ketchup rather than ranch. We have a ketchup addiction. Joe then had a burger with cheese, ketchup, mustard, tomato, and... peanut butter! IT WAS AMAZING! I am going to get it next time I go, I liked my taste so much. Not to say my dinner wasn't good, because it was- I got the Mo' Fo' buffalo chicken wrap and mac and cheese with blue cheese- yummers! It was a great meal and we had an excellent server, Anna, who insisted on bringing me club soda when I got Mo' Fo' sauce on my white jacket.
Being teachers, we had President's Day off today- we've been pretty lazy (even though I should be grading speeches- eeek!)- but we did venture out into the snow to the bookstore and Target. I got a few things to make dinner tonight... see if you can guess what my next entry will be about making.