Light in the Darkroom

In my family we have a tradition of preparing the birthday, anniversary, father's or mother's day meal of that particular persons choosing. Sooo when I asked my father what he would like to eat for Father's Day his unsurprising answer - a T-bone! I then became faced with options, where exactly was I going to by this T-bone? He started talking about the T-bones he saw at Costco they were 3 for $30, but I didn't want to go to Costco to get a steak. No offense to Costco, but I wanted a prime cut of beef as this was his only request and I wanted to find the best steak I could, I am a daddy's girl after all...so we needed QUALITY!! He then started talking about the Giant and how they may have some, but have any of you seen the steak selection at Giant? The meat is sooo then and the price is sooo high I knew I wasn't going there either. So I guess you're wondering where did I end up...well I went to my favorite store - Whole Foods Market! I chose Whole Foods for a number of reasons...

1. I know they have a butcher in the store


2. They have a huge selection of meats


3. I could get prime quality beef


4. I ♥ Whole Foods

When I arrived at the meat counter, they were 2 options of T-bones. They had Prime T-bones and the had Dry-aged Prime T-bones. Unclear of what exactly dry-aged meant I had to ask the guy to explain the difference and in his opinion which would yield a better taste. When I think dry-aged I'm thinking like drying the meat as in making beef jerky which is apparently the wrong impression. I ended up getting the dry-aged T-bone which was actually a porterhouse because there was more meat on the little side than what a T-bone cut would allow. That steak was $31...yes one steak $31...it was $19.99 a pound, but it's Father's Day so what the hay and as the worker at Whole Foods said..."Nothing says love like a good piece of beef!" For the rest of us, I prepared shrimp, scallops and broccoli over linguine with alfredo sauce. I took a stab at searing scallops and I think for the first try they turned out well, but I ended up just sauteing the rest of them.

Here's the proof!

These are the results of my attempt to sear scallops

I would like to express my condolences and prayers for the the families that lost loved ones in the metro train accident yesterday. Words cannot and will never replace them in your hearts. I also would like to express well wishes for those that were injured in the incident as well.

Here is a link to the Washington Post

(no commercial today.)

Hopefully you dad's out there are kicked back and relaxed!

My weekend is not as full as the past two weeks (horray!!!) have been so I'm feeling stress free! Today is my early day so I am off at 11a and then it's to the grocery store. I am making 2 cakes for a friend of mine. She is trying to talk me into the baking business, but I really have to think about that some more. I don't mind baking, but being under a time constraint and actually having to bake more the occasional cake here and there is a big undertaking. I'm trying to decide before the holidays come around if that really something I want to do. Saturday I'm visiting my friend I haven't seen in at least a year, that will be fun and exciting we have soooo much to catch up on. I also am thinking about finishing my museum tour of the American History museum, but that depends on the timing of my morning. Sunday is Father's Day! I haven't planned a thing for my daddy. I know shame on me, but he was supposed to be having surgery and so technically I didn't have to do anything too extravagant, however is was postponed and so now I need to come up with something. I feel like I'm a bad daughter...I keep making plans for Sunday and forgetting that it's Father's Day. Hmmm what to do?!? I also need to get my dirty and I mean DIRTY car washed and finish filling out some paperwork. I can't believe half the year is gone already...I feel like I haven't accomplished much...I suppose it's time to kick it into gear!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Yesterday morning was one of those morning's that I wish I had stayed in the bed. Unfortunately hitting the snooze button for 30 minutes did not deter my determination for joining the work world, I got on up and got ready for my venture into work. Boy do I wish I stayed home, one of these days I'm actually going to listen to myself, lol. Anyhow, I get to work insanely early, 5:30a, and it's usually just me tinkering around for about 15 minutes alone. I walked into the side door looking at the floor and I noticed that the carpet was wet...soaked actually, in front of the copy machine...I'm thinking since the piece of junk hasn't worked in a couple of weeks anyway and that something else happened to it. Ha was I wrong...I looked up and there was this stream of water flowing from the ceiling onto the machine. The first thing I thought, this is not happening...and I continued to my desk. The whole I told you so, you should have still been sleep started playing in my head. If you don't know how hard it is to find help before 6a let me tell you...VERY DIFFICULT! Needless to say my headache began shortly after and continued to grow as the day went on. Apparently the nitwits who renovated the building did not seal the sprinkler pipes with the correct materials, hence any of them at any time could spring a leak. With that knowledge...tomorrow I will be taking most of my personal things on my desk home with me! I would hate to come in and see a river at my desk and everything on it ruined. Needless to say the copy machine should be finished, low and behold the stupid thing still comes on. It's bittersweet though...we got it less than a year ago, but it never functioned correctly anyway so about 50% of our hopes of a new machine may still be possible.

Anyhow last night we took a friend out to dinner for their birthday in Annapolis. I haven't been to Annapolis in at least 10 years or more, sad I know, but I actually forgot about the things out there. It looks really nice around there now and although it seems like it took for ever to get down rte 50, but the highlight....the new Whole Foods Market. I think that is the best one I have been in yet. Definitely will be going back, but I have to take Chef Squirt so she can start cooking for us. I need to see if she really learned something in Rhode Island last year!

Well back to work...Happy Thursday!

Although the, ahh hmm, Lakers (yuck)won the NBA Championship, I'll allow Kobe to grace my blog this one time because the commercial is funny...

Oh this story tugged at my heart a tad. The little youngster had great intentions, but he just didn't know how to quite go about them.