It's 4:00 somewhere OR Yelp Drinks

7:00 am on a Monday.  Is it too early to be thinking about happy hour?  Since it's Yelp Drinks week, I think not.


What's a "yelp" you ask?  Yelp is my favorite user submitted review site for everything from doctors to night clubs.  As someone who tries to avoid chain restaurants like the plague, Yelp has allowed me to explore some neat places while traveling on business or even in my hometown.  I could go on forever about the awesomeness of Yelp, but there's a more important task at hand.  Letting you know about Yelp Drinks, a week long celebration of extra long happy hours and drink specials!

April 4-8 has been deemed Yelp Drink week, with bars around town offering half off drink specials from 4:00-9:00 pm.  Such a deal!  And we're not talking your weak well drinks here, folks!  There are fancy beers, shots, martinis and drinks on special all week at some vegetarian friendly places like Lago, Reddstone, Touch Supper Club, and more!  It would take me far too long to list out the smorgasbord of specials being offered, but you can check out all of the specials on the Yelp Drinks event page.  There's even a friendly competition to earn a Yelp t-shirt.  If you're able to make it to three of the restaurants/bars participating in Yelp Drinks week, you could get yourself some great Yelp swag - being given away this Friday at the Yelp Drinks Finale at Touch Supper Club.

Enjoy this great spring weather and support local businesses while getting your happy hour on.  Just remember to drink responsibly!

Friday afternoon...and the livin's easy

Ah...the last few hours of work on a Friday afternoon. I just got back from having some delicious mushroom soup and a caprese sandwich at Appetite. It was good to have a decent meal. I haven't been able to work out for the past few says due to evening commitments, so I've been pretty restricted in my eating. Which is sad. After I run off 500 calories tonight, hopefully I can enjoy a great meal. With the week I've had, I could use a good martini or margarita. I had a pretty good $5 cosmo at Champps Americana. See my Yelp review for more info.

Speaking of running, I've been using USTAF's handy route map to track my distance lately. It's a pretty neat way to track how far I've run or how far I want to run. Last year I used my Nike+ insert, but since I switched over to Asics, I've been to lazy to go buy a pouch to put my sensor in. I should probably do that, though, since I'm attempting to train for quite a few races this year.

I have a pretty busy weekend ahead of me, but I hope to have a chance to try to make Hungry Girl's My Lava Chocolate Cake. I'm normally not a fan of using sugar free and highly processed items, but I'm curious to see how this dessert tastes. If I make it, I'll try to remember to post a picture...

Yelp!

In an attempt to spread the word about vegetarian dining options in Cleveland, I joined Yelp yesterday. I've written 3 reviews already. And one has been tagged as useful! Woo!

In other non-review news, I've been attempting to cook the past few days. Using the oven. Frightening, I know. It started out as a quest to make a vegetarian Ruben, which I quickly gave up on due to the number of ingredients required, and evolved into making vegetables that I normally wouldn't eat and/or make from scratch.

On Monday night I made roasted garlic cauliflower. Normally I think cauliflower is pretty "meh" but this simple recipe made the cauliflower pretty flavorful. When I first bit into it, the cauliflower tasted "meh" but then my mouth was hit with a nice garlic-y flavor. I sprinkled on only a tiny bit of cheese which wasn't even needed.

Tuesday was St. Patrick's Day, so there was absolutely no cooking going on. Microwaving, yes, cooking, no. While downtown celebrating my heritage, I did have some of Teresa's pizza. I was pretty disappointed. It looked so cheesy and delicious but tasted bland and oily. Yuck-o. I've had their pizza before and thought it was good, but after this slice, I hope to never have it again.

Last night I made rosemary red potatoes. It's not rocket science to roast diced potatoes, but I think I used too little oil. (I'd made these potatoes following the recipe and they were dripping in oil. Like that slice of Teresa's pizza I had on Tuesday.) Although the potatoes ended up being a little dry, they had a nice rosemary-garlic-onion flavor. I'll keep experimenting with the recipe.

Tonight I'm headed to the Cleveland Wine School for a CSU Alumni event. I wouldn't normally put a wine tasting together with a finance lecture...but we'll see what happens.