Long Awaited Update

The last few weeks have been really busy -- 3 weddings in the last 5 weeks, and 4 of the last 5 weekends have been spent traveling or out of town. The one week we were in town, we had a friend visiting us, so while it was really fun, we got no work done.

I'm really looking forward to having a weekend at home where I can relax, blog, catch up on TV, and work on business school applications.

So a fun story from one of the weddings: it was in New York, so the husband and I got dinner with one of my best friends from college. We went to this fancy Indian-Latin restaurant called Vermilion. The husband and I love Food Network, and the chef at Vermilion (Maneet Chaudry) was on The Next Iron Chef and is now a judge on Chopped. So I was really excited to go to her restaurant and made a reservation right after I booked plane tickets.

Friday morning in NYC, we're in the cab going from Penn Station to the hotel, and the husband is distracted by hunger and the traffic, so I'm trying to keep myself amused. I check Groupon for New York, just to see if there's anything interesting, and lo and behold, there is a Groupon for Vermilion. I get really excited, but I call both the restaurant and Groupon to make sure I can redeem it the same day I purchase it. The restaurant says sure, but Groupon says I can't officially use it until the deal closes. Basically, if the groupon shows up in my inbox, the restaurant will honor it. I take a chance and buy it.

We get to the restaurant and I check my email. No Groupon yet. We're sitting waiting for our appetizers, looking around, when suddenly I see Maneet Chaudry walk over to the kitchen and start working on the register. The husband and my friend suggest that I go over and I say hi. After feeling awkward for like 2 seconds, I run over there to introduce myself and tell her what I huge fan of hers I am, etc, etc. I come back to my table to see if the Groupon came, and no luck.

Anyway, dinner was really good. My friend ordered these amazing mushrooms and I had some spicy tamarind eggplant that was tasty and very unique. The food was definitely Indian but some spices were tweaked so there was definitely something very different - but tasty - about it. And of course, the chef was nice enough to give us free mango flan (I'm not a fan of flan so I thought it was sort of gross). The other dessert we got -- flourless chocolate cake with spiced orange and blueberry sorbet was amazing, as evidenced by the picture below.

And then the check comes, and I decide to check my phone one last time for the Groupon. There it was! It was like fate wanted me to save money at the restaurant :)

Anyway, that's my fun story from New York. More stories to come!

And here was my outfit from dinner. Sort of LA with the white dress, but class-ed up a bit with the metallic belt and a gray cardigan (not shown). I think I wore black flats. I apologize for the horrendous lighting in the hotel room.