Foodstuffs

I know most of you don't know my good friend Carrie, but is anyone curious how she fared in the Julie & Julia cooking contest I mentioned? She won! Well, she won second place, which is still awesome, of course (she got to take home an excellent set of brand-new cookware), but honestly, I was so shocked she did not win the grand prize that I almost forgot to clap when they announced her name as the runner-up. No, seriously. Whoops. It's times like that when I fear I would be a terrible parent. Or an excellent one, I suppose, depending on your perspective.

I am fairly certain it was the first place winner's sparkling Rachel Ray smile and gaggle of small, seemingly adorable children and not her any-more-stellar-than-Carrie's chicken salad that secured her the grand prize. Which, incidentally, trust me: if the judges had been sitting directly in front of those children, they would not have been deemed so precious. Little treasures, I am sure, but they could not get their high-pitched squeals and their grabby little hands away from me quickly enough. But that is neither here nor there. I wish the winner and her enormous family all the best, and I shall move on before I say anything else that would put me squarely back in that "terrible parent" camp.

After the contest, I got to accompany Carrie to an advance screening of Julie & Julia, which you really must see as soon as you are able, because it is beautiful and charming and might make even the likes of ME think it's a good idea to try my hand at French cooking. (Definitely not aspics or some crazy pastry-wrapped deboned duck, but perhaps a beef stew or pear tart. Maybe.) Meryl Streep is radiant, of course, and Amy Adams is adorable as always, and I almost don't even want to paste in the link for this movie that I just went to find, because I cannot believe Rotten Tomatoes currently deems it worthy of only a 20% rating. 20% means it is "Rotten," and that I simply do not understand. Granted, only five reviews have been counted thus far, but did those five reviewers see the same movie I did?? I'm perplexed.

In other food news, I have a post up at Allie's Answers today. That shouldn't be food news, since my assigned beat on that site is environmentally friendly cleaning products, but rules were meant to be broken and beats were meant to be veered from. Or so I decided after I got a tour and a free meal at a nearby Chipotle recently and felt compelled to write about it. Yes, my guest post is about Chipotle. I should warn you that if you click over, you may be unable to avoid taking yourself to Chipotle for lunch. Don't blame me; blame the accompanying photo Courtney found. Seriously, I need to close that Firefox tab immediately because if I look at that delicious burrito one more time there is no way I'm getting to bed without a snack. Yum.

And finally, this has nothing to do with food, but I found out today that I will be working on a short-term project with a former co-worker for the next two weeks. This project involves pretending I know how to use a tool I last saw three years and probably two software versions ago, but I am a professional! I can DO this, right? Wish me luck. This also means that instead of pulling on a pair of jeans and driving across the suburbs to my very far away office tomorrow morning, I shall be putting on a dress and going downtown! Just like a real grown-up. Actually, this means that my commute will be an awesome 4.1 miles instead of the usual 25, but given that it's 4.1 miles of stop lights and downtown rush hour traffic, I'm unsure whether the time savings will be at all notable. I shall see.

And with that, I should get myself to bed, so that I can actually be a responsible and professional grown-up in the bright and early morning hours. Is it me, or does it feel like Monday was somehow simultaneously just a moment ago and also a hundred years ago right now? This week has been a blur, and I don't even have alcohol or an unusual flurry of activity to blame. Go figure. Happy weekend, all.