Long time, no talk my friends! Sorry about that.  Is it okay if I make it up to you with an awesome giveaway?

Cool, I thought so.

In September – I was invited to attend a blogger dinner, sponsored by Nescafe Dolce Gusto, at The Greenhouse Tavern.

We started with delicious food and drinks (mmmm frites!), and then headed down to watch a live demo by Chef Sawyer on how they make their beef tartare.

It was amazing. Holy, serious, amazing.

Then we headed back upstairs and watched another live demo, this time by the lovely Dolce Gusto girls, and saw how wonderful the coffee robots can be.

As if we already weren’t grateful enough for the delicious food and demos – we each got to go home with a Dolce Gusto machine to test out!

Fact: I love it.

It’s adorable (and not clunky at all on my already small countertop!) – and it makes a ton of different drinks!

Dear Coffee Robot,

I love you. Don’t ever leave me.

Here’s the best part – you can have your very own coffee robot to love forever and always!!!

You can enter to win the above Titanium model by simply:

1. Posting a comment telling me your favorite coffee drink.

2. Tweet the following message: I want to win a Dolce Gusto machine from @greendogwine & @DolceGustoUS #DolceGustoFTW http://bit.ly/rWc7b1

(Be sure to post a comment letting me know you tweeted.)

You can post one comment and one tweet per day. I will randomly select a winner on Wednesday, December 14, 2011. Winners will be notified and need to provide me with their mailing address to receive the machine.

*Disclaimer: I was invited to attend the Foodie Feed-Up event to learn more about Nescafe Dolce Gusto. While there, we were treated to food and a cooking demo from The Greenhouse Tavern, and coffee tastings from Dolce Gusto. Additionally, every blogger was surprised with their own Dolce Gusto machine. As always – the thoughts and opinions in this post are very much my own.

The past few months I’ve been struggling with the lack of goals in my life. I’m a very driven person – so naturally – I love goals because it gives me something to work/push towards.

So when I heard about the Fall Classic Half Marathon – I thought – MIKE AND I SHOULD SIGN UP FOR THAT!

Great idea/goal – right?

Wrong.

The problem for both of us is it’s something we’ve done before. We knew we wouldn’t have enough time to add speed work in to our training to try to PR – so – slowly and steadily we just sort of threw caution to the wind.

My longest training run was 7 miles, Mike’s was 6 – and those both happened over 2 weeks ago.  Mike actually only ran three times: 3 miles, 6 miles, and 6 miles.  I think I managed to log a total of 35 – way too few for me.

So we deemed this our fly-by-night half marathon. We knew we hadn’t put in the training so we figured we’d just go out and run – and see what happened.

I had high hopes because the weather today was unseasonably warm – but got a bad feeling when I saw I had an ODD numbered bib (don’t you know?!?! Odd numbers are bad!)

(yes, I’m crazy, I know. Ain’t no thang.)

We got to the starting line (CLE people – the race was in the Metroparks) with time to spare, so we hopped in line for the port-o-potties…

…which caused us to cross the starting line 6+ minutes after the gun had gone off.

Normally it wouldn’t be a very big deal, but this race was low budget so there were no chips to track our time (and no clocks on the mile markers which made it hard to pace yourself if you weren’t wearing a Garmin – which I wasn’t!) .  Therefore – any delay in your start wasn’t subtracted from your finish time.

This is the finish line – can’t you tell?

While this really is the finish line – I’m just teasin’. To be fair – the race fee was only $40 so I thought they did a great job. It was just a very bare-bones race compared to some of the bigger ones out there. It was a nice change of pace!

So yeah we finished.

Mike’s time: 2:09:47 (PR during his marathon – 2:08)

My time: 2:37:41 (PR – 2:26)

And while we didn’t PR – we are both perfectly happy with it.

Sometimes you have the most fun just wingin’ it.  

Goals are great but you have to be flexible to succeed – right?

Wow am I behind! This month has been crazy and I’ve been in a blogging funk, so I’ve got lots to catch you up on!

The first anniversary we need to talk about – Green Dog Wine turned 3 – and I didn’t even remember until a month later. (cue sad trombone noise) – how sad is that?! So – happy belated 3rd birthday lovely little blog of mine!

The second anniversary we need to talk about – Mike and I celebrated our 4th anniversary this October 27th. We’ve been married for 4  years. That’s just crazy town.

To celebrate – Mike surprised me with a trip to Chicago!

I’d never been there and ALWAYS wanted to go – so I was super excited about it!

Very first on our list? Hit up Hot Doug’s – The Sausage Superstore and Encased Meat Emporium!

This place is apparently “the place” famous chefs & foodies go when they are in town – and I knew we were in for some delicious food when I saw the line wrapped around the building.

The inside was tiny, but they have the whole process down to a very efficient science!

We each got two dogs – one from the standard menu, and one from the “weekly specials” menu.

(Sorry the picture isn’t better – we were starving – I snapped it and then we started shoveling! )

Regular

• Mine: The Brigitte Bardot – Hot Andouille Sausage (which was good, just not as hot as they lead me to believe! )
• Mike’s: The Sal Tessio – Italian Sausage

Special

• Mine: Rosemary and Garlic Smoked Chicken Sausage with Chipotle Dijonnaise and Carrigaline Smoked Farmhouse Cheese. (I’ve been having dreams about it – that is how amazing it was!)
• Mike’s: Wild Boar with special cheese and some sort of special port wine soaked dried cranberries (it’s not on the special list anymore hence the sub par description – it’s all from memory!)

I urge you – if you are ever in Chicago – GO TO HOT DOUG’S! I don’t care how long the line is – it’s totally worth the wait.

Afterwards – we checked in to our hotel and then set off to explore the city. We were super close to Navy Pier, so we headed over to check that out (and ride the ferris wheel!)

The ferris wheel was fun (and the view was amazing) – but Navy Pier itself wasn’t that impressive for me. Lots of kid stuff – but I’m glad we got to check it out anyway!

Once dinner time rolled around – I knew just where I wanted to go. I wanted to try C-House (and C-View) based on recommendations, and the fact it was right down the street from our hotel!

I wanted a “fun” drink (i.e.: not wine) – so I opted for the “Lively and Floral” – St. Germain Elderflower, Vodka, Lavender Syrup and Verjus Blanc, which was ABSOULTELY delicious!

My meal was the Hay Roasted Half Chicken, with sweet potato, kale, and fall root vegetables – and it was really disappointing. The chicken was very average, and the root vegetables were gross, I ended up eating only about 1/4th of my meal.

We went up to C-View (the rooftop bar) afterwards for a drink and that was phenomenal! I wish we should have just eaten up there! Oh well – lesson learned!

The rest of our night out on the town consisted of Grape Street Piano Bar and Murasaki Lounge.

Grape Street Piano Bar was an awesome gem of a place we stumbled on because it was right next door to our hotel. They had live piano playing – just the right amount of people so it was fun-but-not-packed, and a martini list of over 100 martinis! Yeah – that’s my kind of place!

Murasaki was right across the street from our hotel & Grape Street – and had an AMAZING selection of sake – including sake flights (!!!!) which we totally took advantage of!

All in all – Friday we got to see a ton of the city and had a very fun/successful first night out on the town.

Maybe a little too much fun out on the town – because Saturday morning – I. WAS. HURTING! Friday night – I drank like I was 21 again, Saturday morning – I remembered very quickly that I’m almost 30. Ouch.

Saturday was devoted to more site seeing and deep-dish comparison testing!

We were outside the doors of Gino’s East at 11:00, waiting for them to open – and placed our order as soon as we sat down. One small Gino’s East Supreme (pepperoni, onions, peppers, and mushrooms)

Verdict: Meh. Not very good at all. The flavor was very bland – big disappointment.

Late lunch/dinner was spent just a few blocks down the street at Giordano’s:

Where we opted for one small Tropical Delight Stuffed Pizza (Canadian bacon, and pineapple):

Verdict: WAY better than Gino’s! This pizza was cheesy deliciousness at it’s best!

Obligatory Chicago-visit-Bean-pic:

It was a whirlwind 48 hours – but it was so much fun to just get away for a weekend with Mike! We had fun on the ride up and back, and really did get to see a lot in the short time we were there!

I will say though (I know a lot of people aren’t going to like this) – Chicago’s got nothing on Cleveland.  It was a nice city – but way over-hyped.  I’d pick my beloved CLE over CHI any day.   (feel free to discuss!)