Tacky Valentines Day

We fully embraced V-day this year by way of a tacky get together with friends.  It turns out that this is much cheaper and equally as fun as a date night.  Lacey Shaffer invited several of our friends over for appetizers and Red Roosters.  Red Roosters are very good but beware..  We then hit the town and went to hear The Last Waltz (coverband for The Band).  They were great and it was a night to remember.

Green beans

Brittany and I have a mutual love for green beans.  We could truly eat them for every meal and be more than content.  We came across a great recipe in our Southern Living cookbook - Green Bean, Walnut, and Feta salad.  We did a little tweaking to the recipe, all of which I recommend.

Ingredients:

- 2 pounds of fresh green beans (our favorite are the Italian cut)

- 4 oz of crumbled feta cheese

- 1/2 cup of chopped pecans (or walnuts)

- 3/4 cup olive oil

- 1/4 cup white wine vinegar

- 1 tbsp of chopped fresh dill

- 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic

- 1/4 teaspoon salt

- 1/4 teaspoon pepper

Directions:

Boil green beans until tender.  Run green beans under cool water and drain.  Mix in a bowl with the feta and pecans

Whisk together olive oil, vinegar, dill, garlic, salt and pepper.  Pour contents over green beans.  Place in frig until chilled. 

Here's the link to the original recipe - http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=258147

The original calls for an onion.  Brittany doesn't like onions so I only put them in my portion of the salad.  It was much better without the onion.  It was just too contrasting and sharp of a taste relative to the rest of the dish.

After reviewing this post, I have come to the conclusion that I must get a job.

'Dega

Nascar is self admittedly not my style.  I've heard all the factoids about it being the largest spectator sport and the amount of money it brings in but I just don't get it.  I can understand the interest in the speed but I just truly do not see the sport in it.  Go fast, turn left.  How can someone be consistently better than others at this?  It's beyond my capacity to understand.  

I have come to realize that a great many of my "normal" friends enjoy Nascar - specifically Talladega.  This fact makes me more receptive to Nascar, but I will likely never go to an actual race - I take a little bit of pride in saying that I've never been..  Although, as of this past weekend, I have been to the actual track.  

This thing is massive.  The track is huge, ~2.6 mi.  The grandstands are the largest seating structure I've ever seen.  And the redneck per capita is second to none (please see the Mullet documented above).

Now the reason we were there: One of our friends, John Howell, got a Christmas present from his girlfriend, Lacey Shaffer (she's in the third picture).  This present was pretty cool (even by my standards/lack of understanding).  John was able to take 6 laps around the track in an actual race car.  He gets to drive and has an instructor ride along with him.  They can get up to about 180 mph.  Unfortunately, there was some moisture on the track and so they wouldn't let the cars run.  It was a bummer but still a very neat experience.