Six Months at Aurora!!

Today is June 16th, which marks the six month anniversary of my working at Aurora! All my past full-time jobs were co-ops which were never longer than six months. Since I like celebrations and it's not every day you have something to celebrate, I decided it was a good night for a nice dinner and slightly more expensive wine than usual. After a good day of being a data collecting monkey at work, I pedaled over to BevMo! with Tim to look for a wine Jordan's wife had given me to try called Fione. We couldn't find it anywhere but in the process of searching I happened upon a shelf with a small assortment of mead. When Tim and I had gone wine tasting with the honors program (and Dean!) last year before we left on our bike journey, one of the wineries had a meadery next door. We had tried some of the mead, and I had liked it quite a bit. I decided I wanted some mead...and then next to the mead was this raspberry drink that also looked yummy. So I wanted that, too. Then I saw some really good looking dessert wines, and I wanted those too. It was the Classic Perry Dilemma: so many options...what do I do? Normally I blindly attempt a decision, but today is a celebration, so I tried to make Tim decide. He wasn't having any of it, though, so I decided on a Classic Perry Solution (the celebration version), which consisted of buying it all. I made Tim pick a dessert wine, I picked a mead, grabbed the raspberry drink, closed my eyes, bee-lined to the cashier, and made sure I didn't see anything else to grab on my way out.

We went to the grocery store to pick up a few ingredients for our special dinner where I encountered another problem of mine called the Hey-Look-its-on-Sale! Dilemma. We saw tortilla chips on sale for reaaaaally cheap, so we bought two huge bags. Then the expensive lime flavored tortilla chips were also really cheap, so we had to get two of those, too. We had to get six avocados rather than two, because four were in a bag and were cheap. We couldn't just settle for those four, though, because they weren't ripe, and I wanted some guacamole RIGHT NOW. I finally managed to escape the grocery store and pedaled home from the grocery store like a guilty three year old child that has begged her momma for every bit of junk food on the shelves. At least we have enough chips to last us for a while now with all the guacamole we'll be making.

For a while now I've had my eye on a chicken recipe I found on epicurious for Chicken with Haricorts Verts and Lemon Butter. I've never used shallots before, and have always been curious what they are like. Instead of using haricorts verts, I just used green beans. Tim likes his vegetables really crisp (never mushy!) so I figured green beans were less likely to wilt...I also couldn't find haricorts verts. It was really easy to make, pretty healthy, and tasted wonderful, so I will definitely be making it again.