Two Weeks in Wisconsin

I recently had the pleasure of traveling for two weeks. Technically I was gone for 11 days, but it felt like 20. My new company has an office in Wisconsin and was bringing all of the sales reps out for training. Since I'm new to the company and still learning as well, I joined the group for the whole training session. 

Um - Good to Know Guns Must be Kept in Your Car

My Two Weeks in Training

I had the opportunity to fly back home to San Diego over the weekend between the two weeks of training, but decided to stay in Wisconsin for the weekend instead to visit my family in Madison which was a 90 minute drive away. I hadn't been to Wisconsin since I was 4 years old back when my cousin David got married. Its been about *cough* 20 years or so since then and my cousin has grown children of his own, two of whom are married themselves now. I was looking forward to the opportunity to see family that I hadn't seen in years, and also meet family members I've only gotten to know on facebook. See? Facebook is actually good for something.

Picture of My Dad & Uncle on the Family Photo Wall

Little Monika - I Look Unimpressed

On Saturday my family took me to the farmer's market in downtown Madison. I was told that this farmer's market is known as one of the oldest and largest in the country. I was amused by the difference in vendors at this farmer's market in comparison to the ones I've seen in California. The farmer's markets here are almost entirely filled with produce since we have the luxury of year-round favorable weather. At this farmer's market, occurring at the very end of winter, the vendors were mostly cheese, meat, cheese, plants, and cheese. Did I mention they had cheese? 

Freezing at the Farmer's Market

I saw cheese curds in person for the first time but as a life-long cheese hater I had no desire to try them out. Advertised to "squeak" as you eat them? Um, even less appealing.

Squeaky Fresh Cheese Curds

After the farmer's market my cousin Sarah took me, my other cousin, and her daughter on a little Wisconsin sight-seeing trip. We went to visit one of the most famous landmarks in the state - the House on the Rock! She had tried to explain what this attraction was before we got there, but upon starting the tour I realized why the explanation was so unclear. The House on the Rock was um .... a weird house with a museum of random "collections" of everything you could imagine. Complete with a carousel, automated musical instrument scenes, and various bizarre knickknacks. 

Collection of Strange Guns

One of Many Pipe Organs That Played

Horse Drawn Carriage

Collection of Model Trains and Railroad Certificates

Walking through the tour of the whole house and the museum almost took two hours! Darn, should've worn my Garmin so I could log the miles. :o) jk  The tour was bizarre but interesting, and if you're ever in the area I recommend checking it out.

Collection of Toy Cars

Collection of Burma Shave Signs

A Car Completely Covered in Ceramic Tiles ... Why??

Collection of Crown Jewels Replicas

That night we had a 15 person family dinner at my aunt's house. It was quite an impressive feast! I had happened to visit the family on the weekend of my aunt's birthday so not only did we have a family dinner at her house that night, the next day we had a birthday lunch at my cousin's house as well.

Panoramic Family Photo Attempt

Complete with "Twin" Babies

Serving Bowl My Dad Gave My Aunt/Uncle as a Wedding Gift 50ish Years Ago!

Happy Birthday Aunt Barbara!

After a fun weekend with the family it was back to West Allis and back to training. Checking back into the hotel for the second week was much sadder than it was for the first week. Being greeted with a warm chocolate chip cookie (signature of the Doubletree brand) wasn't even that exciting the second time around. The next few days went pretty quickly and I even had the chance to see an old friend while I was in town. 

A former coworker of mine who I worked with in San Jose at my first job right out of college had relocated back to Wisconsin years ago. We had kept in touch via facebook (thanks again facebook!) but hadn't seen each other in 12 years! Talk about time flying. I had been complaining on facebook about the lack of fresh vegetables I had been able to eat for the past week aside from the meals my family had prepared and Pete was nice enough to scour the Internet for a more appealing option for me. I've been trying to eat vegan for the past few months and let me just tell you this - eating vegan on the road, especially while in Wisconsin is near impossible. Even options that are vegetarian aren't something I can eat since the restaurants usually replace meat with tons of cheese ... which I hate. 

Engineer Reunion Dinner

Fortunately there was a vegan restaurant only about 10 minutes away from my hotel. Fresh vegetables, noodles, and green juice? I was in heaven!

Noodles, Tempeh, and Veggies - Oh My!

My 11 days in Wisconsin soon came to an end and I was able to escape the freezing cold weather and snow (yep, it snowed while I was there!) to head back to San Diego. I actually left training a day and a half early because I had to be back in town for one of my bi-monthly scheduled blood tests. Thanks cancer!

Thank You Gift Basket My Company Sent David

Consolation Prize for My Absence

I couldn't leave the state without purchasing some cheese head gear though. Although I can't stand cheese, I'm slightly enamored with cheese heads. They're so cute!! I spent about 15 minutes in the gift shop trying to decide if I should buy my dad a cheese baseball cap, cheese head beer coozie, or a cheese necktie. In the end I decided to be practical and took a picture of the items I shouldn't buy because they'll just end up in a closet somewhere, and bought little cheese magnets. You'll get yours next month Dad!

Foam Cheese - What's Not To Love?

Being away from home for 11 days for work was no fun, but getting to see my family was a really great experience. Thank you Carlson family for the hospitality!

Fun at Work - Iron Chef Time!

Have I mentioned recently that I love my job? Not only is working in Marketing totally fun, but I also work in a fun industry and have fun coworkers. Now for the best part - a couple times a year we get together for our sales meeting and the team-building events we do are REALLY fun! Back in July our team-building event was a photo scavenger hunt. (More on my blog Fun at Work.) We split up into teams and ran all around Seaport Village down by the San Diego Harbor while taking pictures of things related to a list of clues. This time we did something different, we had an Iron Chef-like cooking challenge!

The Four Cooking Stations

Dining Area in the Back

The cooking challenge was held at the San Diego Wine & Culinary Center. My boss and I had heard some complaints from the women on our sales force that our activities were usually too physical. In some of our past sales meetings we've bowled, golfed, and had the scavenger hunt. The ladies wanted to do something laid back like go wine tasting. We thought about doing just going wine tasting but wanted to do something that was more team oriented, and preferably had a challenge involved. This Iron Chef competition was perfect!

Fresh Ingredients for the Team

We were split up into four teams, given a recipe, had access to a huge table of ingredients, and had a master chef watching over us and answer questions and providing assistance. There were two dishes that we would be making - Sauteed Shrimp with Sweet Peas, and Chicken, Seafood and Chorizo Paella. 

The Recipes

As soon as it was go-time, our team split up to get the ingredients for the two dishes. We were going to make the shrimp dish first (since it was labeled First Course) but the chef advised us to make the paella first (Second Course) since it took longer to cook. One of my favorite dishes as Cafe Sevilla (my favorite restaurant in San Diego) is their black paella. Yummy!

The Competition - Teams 1, 2, 3

 

We started out the paella by sauteing a long list of ingredients in the saucepan. After everything was nicely browned we added some wine and vegetable stock and let that simmer for a while. Once some of the liquid cooked off a bit we added a few more ingredients on the recipe list until it looked like the pan couldn't possibly hold one more thing! The paella then went into the oven for its final cooking. 

Our Paella Cooking

The Bread Crusting in the Pan

Once the paella was in the oven we got to work on the shrimp. We were allowed to take some creative license with the recipe so we added extra sausage, garlic, and wine. My teammates were extremely liberal with the wine! It cooks off though right? As a final touch we browned some bread with garlic to have on the side.

My Team Hard at Work

 

My Team Cooking the BEST Paella

After each team finished their two dishes they had to plate a small serving for the chef to taste. I think we did a pretty good job with the food itself, but I think our plating was the best on the table! The chef tasted each of the dishes and then announced the awards. I can't remember which award we won, but there were four different awards given out ... and gee each team won one. That was kind of disappointing! I wanted to know if ours really was the best! 

My Team's Shrimp Dish

 My Team's Paella

The Aftermath of our Cooking

Once the judging was over it was time for us to all enjoy our hard work. Everyone was encouraged to go around and try all of the other team's dishes, but I was too full and too lazy to go around and sample anything else. Ours was the best anyways, why face disappointment?

Paella Plated for Judging

 

Shrimp Dish Plated for Judging

After dinner a group of us went to a bar down the street to play pool. To my boss' delight they also had karaoke! I personally hate karaoke. I can't sing to save my life and the idea of revealing my warbling, off-key voice to the public is the last thing in the world I'd ever want to do. I was forced to sing karaoke at a sales meeting two jobs ago and in the process of being forced up onto the stage I honestly thought about quitting. That is how much I don't want to sing in public. 

 Playing Pool in the Gaslamp

Well, thanks to peer pressure yet again, I got dragged up to the stage with my group to sing "We Are the Champions" by Queen. To my delight, with our large group and the blaring speakers by the stage, you couldn't even hear yourself! That made it a lot easier. We made it through the song and it ended up not being the worst thing in the world I'd ever done, and somehow as the night progressed we went up for a number of other songs. To the patrons of the bar that night: I apologize to you and your ears.

Karaoke Stars Singing "Islands in the Stream"

The night was long but a lot of fun. If you are interested in trying out the two recipes, here they are.

Sauteed Shrimp with Sweet Peas

Ingredients

• 20 ea. shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1 tbs garlic, minced
• 1/2 ea onion, diced
• 10 oz olive oil
• 1 cup tomato, diced
• 1 cup sweet peas
• 1/4 cup mint, fresh and chopped
• 1 cup pea shoots
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/2 cup vegetable stock
• 1/4 cup butter, unsalted
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions
In a hot skillet, pour the olive oil in the pan and sear the sausage to render the fat, stirring it frequently until the sausage is slightly browned. Add the onion and garlic and saute until the onions are just turning transparent. Add the shrimp to the skillet and stir frequently until lightly colored on both sides. Add the tomatoes and peas, toss quickly. Deglaze with the wine, then add vegetable stock, simmer for about 1 minute. Reduce heat and add butter to incorporate. Finish with fresh mint and pea shoots and season to taste.

Option
Serve with warm or grilled crusty bread.

Chicken, Seafood and Chorizo Paella

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 6 ounces chorizo, cut into 1/2 inch slices on the diagonal
• 1 pound manila clams, clean
• 1 pound black mussels, clean
• 1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika
• 2 cups Arborio rice
• 1 pinch saffron threads
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 cups chicken stock
• 1 pound roast chicken (meat from 3-pound chicken skinned, deboned, and torn into chunks)
• 1/2 cup peas
• 1 tomato, chopped
• Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Directions
Heat oven to 400F. Heat oil in a large casserole or paella pan over high heat. Add chorizo and cook until browned and fragrant, about 1 minute. Add onion, red bell pepper, and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are tender, about 3 minutes.

Add rice, paprika, saffron, and bay leaves. Stir to combine and coat the rice, about 1 minute. Add chicken stock and bring to a boil. Add roast chicken, seafood, peas, and tomato; stir to combine.

Transfer skillet to oven. Cook uncovered until rice is tender and no liquid remains, about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven. Fluff with a fork and serve immediately.

If you try out either of these recipes let me know how it goes!

Fun at Work

As you've probably heard me say before, my job is fun! I think Marketing in general is a fun career, my job itself is fun for me because its challenging and rewarding, I love that I get to be analytical AND creative, and working with sales people always leads to fun activities now and then. Most recently, the fun that I had was this past week during our semi-annual sales meeting.

Sales meetings usually involve "team building" events where Sales, Marketing, and a few others get together to do a fun activity. At my company's last sales meeting this past week,our team building event was a  phto scavenger hunt around Seaport Village put on by Best Team Building. We broke up into four teams of five, and had two hours to take 40 photos from a list of 100 choices. The photo challenges varied in point value from 50 to 400 points, and each team had to strategically decide which photos they could take in the allotted time. Here are some of my favorite photos from the event and their corresponding clues.

Taking candy from a baby … you brutes!

Let’s see your whole team “walking on water”

Catch the whole team up in the air.

Pose your team WITH and IN the same post as “Morning Sculpture”

Relive your childhood, everyone climb their own tree.

Go to the Silver Crossing and recreate a vampire moment.

Drum up new friends. Get a stranger to be the bongos you play. 

Festoon the air – all of thee – with spitting water!

Hold your team in the palm of your hand.
C’mon all it takes is some perspective.

Convince a UPS or FedEx delivery person to transport one of you.

Everyone shows us your “I-Just-Ate-the-hottest-hot-sauce-there-ever-was” face.
Pose outside the appropriate store.

Pose your team “headless” in front of The Cerveza Store

How about your best roller coaster scream face?

Pretending to climb the Hyatt Hotel.
(Emphasis on the word pretending!)

This team actually climbed the Hyatt!

Convince a stranger to join your team in a game of leapfrog

 The Beatles were stars too. Pose Abbey Road style!

2  teammates doing headstands in any store

 

 

 What are the chances that all three of us chose the same store for the headstand photo?? Too funny. 

At the end of the two hours my team only managed to take 32 of the 40 allowed pictures. I think we wasted a lot of time trying to take the photos literally as the clue required. (Example: a photo of us spitting water into the fountain versus posing next to it.) We ended up coming in 3rd place out of the four teams. Oh well, there's always next time!