Looking at my menu plans from the past few weeks, it’s evident that I am subconsciously making up for lost time with soup.  Soups of all kinds are taking over the menu, in some cases three times a week.  The weirdly warm start to the winter totally threw me off and many of my standby cold weather favorites were cast aside while I waited for chillier days worthy of their greatness.  Lately I go to bed with multiple layers of pajamas and two comforters, I’d say the time has come.

As much as I love all the classic soups (French onion, tomato basil, broccoli cheddar, etc.), I’m always on the lookout for something a bit out of the ordinary.  This Mexican corn and poblano soup was a great way to jazz up our ever-growing soup repertoire.  Just reading through the recipe, I knew this was sure to be a success, and it was.  The poblanos add a slight kick but the sweetness of the corn provides a nice counterbalance.  But even better?  The whole thing can be made in a large cast iron skillet!  (No worries if you don’t have one, a large stockpot works just fine.)  We didn’t try it this time, but I think this would be killer with a pepper jack grilled cheese on the side.

Turtle desserts of all kinds hold a special place in my heart.  I’ve talked about the reason quite in depth before in this post.  But today, let’s not focus on the sad stuff.  Instead, let’s just all take a moment to appreciate something good about the past week.  My week has had lots of good.  Plenty of productive studying, a few challenging hours on my yoga mat, making progress with some knitting projects, and of course, lots and lots of wonderful moments with my amazing kids.

As a major sweet tooth with a special love for chocolate and caramel, the cupcakes were another highlight of the week.  Chocolate, caramel and pecans is a winning combination to be sure.  But the cupcake itself was not so much the highlight as was splitting one with my little buddy.  He is at such a fantastic age right now – so smart, inquisitive and playful.  And he wants to hang out with me 24/7.  I know that won’t last forever so I’m just savoring these moments while I can.  Since sharing turtle sundaes with my mom is an incredibly vivid memory for me, I can’t help but wonder which moments he will recall someday.  Who knows?  Maybe it will be this one.

(A quick rundown of the cupcake:  I used my favorite chocolate cupcake as the base.  I didn’t feel like bothering with filling them, plus I wanted the “filling” to be visible.  I topped them with a caramel cream cheese frosting and then made little wells in the frosting to hold the caramel pecan mixture.  Worked like a charm and I loved the way they looked.  Messy, gooey and fabulous.)

Growing up in Indiana, grits were something I ate exactly zero times before the age of 18.  25-ish, actually.  The first time I ever tried grits, I made the mistake of using a recipe online that called for instant grits.  That seemed convenient in theory, since it was the only type of grits my grocery store carried, but one bite was all I needed to learn that they had no texture and were suspiciously similar to cream of wheat (something I have detested since I was a child).  I backed off for a while, figuring grits were just not my thing.  However, I finally had an opportunity to try real, honest to goodness shrimp and grits in Charleston.  Those grits were fab and I realized quickly, the texture of stone ground grits made all the difference.  And then I experienced (to me) the best shrimp and grits yet while visiting Richmond.  They were extra spicy and made even more awesome with the addition of poached eggs on top.  AYKM?!

Anyway, it may have taken me twenty-some years to fully appreciate the greatness of shrimp and grits, but I’m all caught up now.  Good quality grits are key!  Ben was previously uninitiated, but one time was all he needed and he was sold.  In fact, I believe he said something like, “Why haven’t we been eating this every day?”

Well, this post is a bit late but better late than never, I suppose.  At the beginning of November, I traveled to Las Vegas to present a poster at a medical conference.  Ben was able to take a couple of days off from work and come along with me, so we turned it into a mini vacation.  Now, let me say up front that Vegas is someplace I never thought I would visit.  Though I like to have a good time, I’m not a huge party girl and I have exactly zero interest in gambling.  I figured that this trip would be spent mostly in my conference with the remainder of the time spent sleeping in the blessed kid-free quiet of our hotel room.  However, a few of my coworkers who had been there before reminded me that though a lot of typical Vegas is not my scene, there is one thing there that I do love: food.  Yes!  I started researching, including asking for recommendations from all of you on my Facebook page, and suddenly I was overwhelmed trying to narrow down the massive number of offerings into a select few for our brief trip.  I didn’t take my real camera, but here’s a glimpse of our trip through my iPhone.

Before I get into all the food, a note about our hotel.  After a lot of research (I am a major travel over-researcher), we ended up staying at Vdara in City Center.  I chose Vdara primarily based on the fact that it is a non-gaming hotel, but is still an easy walk from pretty much everything we wanted to see and do on the strip.  I’m picky about hotels but thankfully Vdara was the perfect place for us in Vegas.  The room was very nice, the service was always friendly and attentive, and the hotel overall was extremely pleasant.  Of all the details we loved about Vdara, our absolute favorite was that everything smelled amazing.  They pipe in some sort of refreshing, spa-like fragrance that was such a welcome change every time we entered the building after walking through smoky parts of other hotels.

Our first night there, we checked in to the hotel, relaxed for a few minutes, and then headed out to meet up with some of our friends for dinner.  Based on the recommendations of so many of my readers from Facebook, we chose to dine at The Tao.  The dramatic entryway was gorgeous, and really set the tone for the elegant but hip restaurant inside.  We all enjoyed our meal and the nice atmosphere there.  I had the Tao Tini as my beverage.  Then we split a Kobe beef spring roll for an appetizer.  I went with sushi for dinner and chose the lobster roll and spicy tuna roll.  The sushi was good, but not anything ground-breaking, and I’m pretty sure it gave me a mild case of food poisoning so…kind of a mixed review overall.  I’d definitely eat there again but next time I would probably try one of the actual entrees rather than sushi.

After that, we walked back down the strip with our friends and we all decided to stop at the Carnaval Court Bar for drinks and dancing.  None of us were really interested in the more legit(?) club scene of Vegas, so this was the perfect place for us to just hang out and have fun.  They had a really fun cover band playing and we danced for hours.  They also had several insanely talented bartenders doing crazy things like juggling bottles on fire, balancing some huge number of bottles on their heads, and all sorts of other amazing feats.  It was great entertainment!

The dancing and the time difference finally got the better of me (hence the bleary eyes), so we headed back to our hotel.  But, since we walked through Bellagio to get to Vdara, we couldn’t resist stopping at Jean Philippe Patisserie for some gelato.  This place was pretty flippin’ fantastic and as you’ll see, we took full advantage of our numerous walks past it.  That night I tried the tiramisu gelato.  Divine.

Now let me just say that of all the places we planned to dine at in Vegas, I was most excited to eat at Bouchon.  I’m sure it is wonderful for dinner as well but since so many readers recommended it for brunch, we headed there first thing in the morning.  What followed is rather hard to describe, other than saying that everything about the meal was utterly perfect.  That day I enjoyed the crab cake omelette with a peach bellini.  Ben had biscuits and gravy benedict – insane!  Of all that wonderful food though, my favorite part was the incredible French bread and sour cherry jam.  I could eat that every day forever, really.  And so, I fell in love with Bouchon and that sealed the deal – we ended up eating there every single day for breakfast.  Why bother going anywhere else?

We were up a bit early because our time zones were still a little out of sync, so I had just enough time for a manicure at the Vdara Spa before I had to be at the conference.  Since it was fall, they had a special going on with a pumpkin spice manicure.  It involved a pumpkin spice mud masque and caramel milk lotion, so yes, it was awesome.  I took a brief cat nap afterward and as you can see, the luxury of a manicure + nap is not one this momma gets often.  I was just so, so happy to have a moment to rest.

That afternoon we had a small break in the conference, and a bunch of us decided to pop over to Madame Tussaud’s wax museum.  I’ve seen pictures from Madame Tussaud’s many locations for years and have always wanted to go.  It was a really fun way to spend 20-30 minutes.  Most of the wax statues were incredibly realistic, and they had a wide variety of figures – movie stars, musicians, sports stars, historical figures, and movie characters.  Daniel Craig/007 was my favorite ;)

I’ll spare you the details of the conference itself and skip right ahead to dinner that evening.  Another great reader recommendation, we tried Olives at Bellagio.  Based on their menu I figured it would be good, but it far surpassed my expectations.  In fact, this was my favorite dinner of the entire trip.  All I have to remember it is this blurry pic of my cocktail but that’s okay because I took notes.  Speaking of the cocktail, it was stellar – a passion fruit sling back.  I need to find out how to recreate it because really, I loved it!  We all shared a shrimp chorizo flatbread with garlic crema as a starter.  For my entree I had the veal fontina fazzoletti which was some sort of comfort food bliss.  I’m at a total loss for how to do it justice with words!

After dinner we went to a Cirque de Soleil show which was…just not my thing.  It started out really strong and then got kind of weird and boring.  I’m sure there are some great ones there but I just was not a fan of the one we saw.  But, afterward we made our way back to Jean Philippe for gelato – this time pistachio.  Oh, did I mention their awesome chocolate fountain?  It was kind of mesmerizing.

The next morning was Bouchon again before I had to be at the conference.  That day I tried the chicken and waffles.  Oh yeah, Thomas Keller has a version of chicken and waffles.  Even better than you could ever imagine.  It was accompanied by a mimosa and more of the incredible bread and jam.  Oh, that jam.

I spent the morning in the conference and then a group of us went to lunch with our attendings and a few other conference attendees.  The job of choosing a restaurant for lunch was sprung on me at the last moment, and lunch options were one thing I had not researched very much.  After flipping through Yelp and Urbanspoon we went to Milos, a Greek restaurant at The Cosmopolitan.  The food was really great and they had a lot of nice lighter lunch options, which was a welcome change after so much indulgence!  I had the meze platter as a starter, and the shrimp with tomato feta sauce with couscous for my lunch.  Loved it all!

That evening we dined at one of the most reader-recommended restaurants, Mon Ami Gabi at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower.  We came early in hopes of getting outside seating so we could watch the Bellagio fountains, but eventually we accumulated enough of a party that they didn’t have a table large enough to seat us outside.  No matter though, we sat inside and had a grand time.  I tried the Paris Romance cocktail and Ben and I split a cheese trio starter.  For my entree I had the lobster tartine, which I loved and was another nice, lighter meal after so many heavy ones.

Much later that night, we met up with a few former colleagues who were also attending the conference and went to a bar in Cosmopolitan.  Man, I just have to say – that hotel is a sight to behold.  These strands of crystals were draped aaaalllllllll over the ceilings, pretty much everywhere.  It was very glam and chic.  I don’t remember what cocktail I tried there.  It must have been decent but not memorable in any way.  Of course by that point, I was barely holding my eyes open after such a jam-packed trip.  I was tired and ready to see my babies.

The last morning, I attended my final session of the conference and we headed over for a last meal at Bouchon.  That day was a Monday and much to my dismay, the sour cherry jam is only a weekend offering.  The mango jam they gave instead was lovely, but still, no sour cherry jam.  This was more around lunchtime so I had the moules frites.  Awesome, as expected.

By the way, Bouchon is located in The Venetian which is a gorgeous place to behold.  So striking!

We had a final hour to kill before our shuttle picked us up for the airport so of course, it meant one last gelato.  This one was creme brûlée, and it was definitely my favorite flavor that we tried.

So overall, Vegas was way more fun than Ben and I expected it to be!  Though much of what goes on there is not our thing, we still found plenty of fun things to do and lots of great food to enjoy.  I’m not sure I’ll go back unless I have a reason, but at least if I do, now we have lots of places we know we love and more we would like to try.

Disclaimer:  This is not a sponsored post of any kind, just me sharing the details of my trip with you in case they are of use in your own future travel plans.  I have no affiliation with any of these businesses, and am writing about them just because I want to :)

Well, that right there?  That’s about all you need to know.  I rest my case.

Haha, just kidding…sort of.  Seeing a title and picture of these cookies was all I needed to know they should be in my life.  Chocolate chip cookies may just be my favorite dessert of all.  They are so classic, comforting…they are the thing I crave.  For me after the kids are finally in bed, my happy place is on the couch with a cookie, small glass of milk and a good book.  Normally this is a classic that, in my opinion, needs no improving.  But…it’s just so hard to argue against brown butter, Nutella and a sprinkling of sea salt.  I mean, really.

I used a technique suggested by a reader for the filling of the pumpkin cream cheese muffins, freezing the little dollops of Nutella so that the cookies would be easier to assemble.  This was definitely a good way to go (I love the technique for the muffins too!)  Enjoy them this weekend in your happy place!