SNOB ALERT!!!

OK, so to briefly opine about the Wynn. As I mentioned, we got a good deal there, so we decided to stay. It's a beautiful place, the service and rooms and food (and everything!) are great, and it actually smells good for a casino, but it's just so ridiculous, we've decided.

Vegas can be very expensive (especially ANY of the huge casinos). But, the Wynn takes the cake. It costs $14/day to use the wireless internet in your room and $30/day if you were to use the fitness center (I ran around the strip for exercise, thank you very much.). The food, drinks, everything is too expensive. Now, this does keep a lot of the riff-raff away, which can be a good thing at times, I think. However, it certainly does attract that very famous species, the snob.

Now, don't get me wrong--there are many very nice people there. However, there are a ton of straight-up, rude snobs. No discrimination here--they are American, European, Asian, and everything in between. They can often be heard loudly complaining about little things, wearing ridiculous clothes, complaining about the (already amazing) service, aimlessly wandering right in front of you and inconsiderately stopping right in your way, not opening the door for you, and giving you disdainful looks (I think, because it's the cool thing to do).

Anyways, this led to high entertainment for Tally and myself. When we were getting ready to check out, we noticed the door and the end of our hallway was open. Inside this door was an extension of our hallway, but the carpet wasn't gaudy (see earlier post), the walls were painted a different color, and this hallway had its own elevators. We were shocked and curious. So, we did what anyone in our position would do: we decided to go over there and take there elevator down to see where it led to.

The whole thing was hilarious. We stuff ourselves into the elevator, overloaded with our cheap luggage. The other people we picked up on the way down included two Asian guys, dressed very expensively, a European guy who was very busy looking cool listening to music on his iPhone and couldn't be bothered, and a couple who got on at the spa floor, looking like they had just been pampered to death. We quietly rode down and got off. Well, this set of room had its own separate lobby with secret rooms and EXTRA-snobby people sitting all around. We coolly kept walking through, until we found the casino and made our way to the parking ramp. I'm sure they knew we were outsiders, since I don't think anyone in that group would be caught dead carrying their own luggage. It was hilarious and fascinating.

Next post: Napa Vally and San Francisco

Vegas (again)!

So, we headed back to Las Vegas for 1/7's Birthday Ball. The Marines always celebrate their "birthday" on the anniversary of their formation (which happened on November 10, 1775). Ours happened to be on the 19th, since all the different groups of Marines on any given base need to somewhat stagger theirs or no one would be around on the 10th. Since we're in the middle of nowhere at Twentynine Palms, my battalion generally goes to Las Vegas.

We decided to stay at the Wynn. Now, that place could be a whole other post on its own. Anyhoo, it all started last year when we used Hotwire! to get a hotel. We happened to land at the Wynn after we reserved a "mystery" hotel for a good price (those of you who use Hotwire! know all about how it works). Anyway, once we were guests there one time, we apparently got on their mailing list, so we got a good offer on a room rate this time, too. I don't think it hurt that we stayed there in the middle of the week, when rates are lower.

Notice this ridiculous carpet. This is in the hallway up on the 58th floor, where our room was. Now, I understand why the casino owners put hideous carpet in the casinos themselves--it is said that it's because they don't want your eyes on the floor, but up, looking around, so you'll notice all of the gambling options and spend more money. That may or may not be true. However, I don't know why you would need to put hideous carpet that looks like little mitochondria way up in the hallways where the rooms are. Furthermore, where do they buy this stuff? I told Tally there must be a "Casino Carpet Warehouse" or catalog separate from what any of us would ever get to peruse. Really, who designs this stuff?

Here's a picture of me risking my life savings on one of the high-limit slot machines. Oh, who am I kidding? We were playing nickel or penny slots or something, hoping to make $5 last as long as we could and get a free drink or something. No jackpot here.

Also, it was Tally's birthday (I won't say which one, except that it rhymes with "shirty") on the 18th, so we tried to celebrate a little. We both like Bobby Flay (from the Food Network), so we went to his restaurant, Mesa Grill, on Tuesday night, and had appetizers (which we delicious, by the way). Here is Tally modeling them for us:

Then, as we decided the two of us didn't need to split a whole cake of some type, here she is with her birthday cupcake (she had already chomped a piece out of the "Happy Birthday" chocolate disc):

Here are two pictures from the Ball itself, one of the two of us, and one of Tally with one of the centerpieces from the table. (No idea why she grabbed that to get a picture, but it is kind of funny.)

...I'm way behind

Sorry for taking so long to put more up here. The weekend before Veteran's Day, we decided to drive up Highway 395, which runs along the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevadas (mostly, in a beautiful series of valleys) in California and Nevada. There is a job opening at the Mountain Training Center for the Marines north of Bridgeport, CA (just north of Yosemite), so we went up to check the area out.

It's extremely beautiful up there and very different. We stayed in South Lake Tahoe, and we both thought that was beautiful. It's a very "outdoors" type area, with hiking, rock climbing, skiing, fly fishing, etc. We'll see what happens, but we both agreed we would enjoy it up there. Stay tuned and sorry I don't have many good pictures.

Soup! There it is!

OK, so it was soup time last night. It's getting a little cooler here (even for the desert), which means it was time to pull the trigger on a bowl of goodness. We decided to try Potato and Leek soup, which turned out pretty good.

Ingredients

1 pound leeks, cleaned and dark green sections removed, approximately 4 to 5 medium
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
Heavy pinch kosher salt, plus additional for seasoning
14 ounces, approximately 3 small, Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and diced small
1 quart vegetable broth
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1 tablespoon snipped chives

Directions

Chop the leeks into small pieces. In a 6-quart saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the leeks and a heavy pinch of salt and sweat for 5 minutes. Decrease the heat to medium-low and cook until the leeks are tender, approximately 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the potatoes and the vegetable broth, increase the heat to medium-high, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and gently simmer until the potatoes are soft, approximately 45 minutes.

Turn off the heat and puree the mixture with an immersion blender until smooth. Stir in the heavy cream, buttermilk, and white pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning if desired. Sprinkle with chives and serve immediately, or chill and serve cold.

This was very good, but we changed a couple of things:

1) Cook down some bacon in the pot at the beginning, and use that fat to cook the leeks, instead of butter (you can still use some extra butter if there isn't enough bacon fat). Then, crumble up the baconand save it at the end to put on top of the soup.

2) Instead of using 1 cup cream and 1 cup buttermilk, we reduced the cream and buttermilk to 1/2 cup each and used 1 cup 2% milk to make up the balance. You could use all milk, if you wanted. It just depends on how thick/rich you want the soup to be.

3) Since we don't have an immersion blender, I had to just blend up the soup in two batches, then return it to the pan. After you do this, you'll have to re-heat the soup, even though it doesn't say so in the recipe.