The Show Must Go On!

This weekend I am heading into my last weekend of a show I am in called "The Seven Year Itch" at the Maverick Theater in Fullerton, CA.

I was very happy to be cast in this show. It's a really funny show and we have a really great group of people in the cast!

There have been a couple of mishaps though, as with anything, it hasn't been a perfectly smooth run.

For example, on our opening night one of the guys in our show cracked his head on a low ceiling near some stairs. We heard him bump his head but we thought he had just bumped his head. We were concerned, but not overly so. Or rather, most of us were not concerned. His fiancee who is also in the show was VERY concerned. He kept assuring us he was fine but would not turn around to face us and kept his hand over his head. His fiancee grabbed him and insisted he show her his face and then gasped loudly in shock. He turned around and there was blood just dripping down his face! It was really scary and we were all concerned about him! This was mere minutes from when he had to appear on stage. So, he and his fiancee rushed into the bathroom to wash off the blood from his face and hair. Someone called over the director and producer and they also helped to get him cleaned up. There was talk of him needing stitches, because it was a rather nasty gash on his head. In the meantime, there was a show going on. So, they managed to mostly stop the bleeding and then he put on a hat and headed onstage. Talk about a trooper! Who says actors are all wimps! Most stage actors are pretty tough! The show must go on!

So, he went on and did just fine and by his next scene he was able to go on sans hat. He ended up not needing stitches and he healed just fine, but man.... what a scary sight to see someone with blood dripping down their face!

That whole opening night was a comedy of errors and yet, we pulled off the show pretty well I think! Not bad at all considering that we had never done a full and complete run through of the show before that night! ;-)

Since then, in the 6 weeks we've been running we've had some good and some rough shows but mostly good and nobody else has had any serious injuries. But, I do have some hilarious stories from this show! I was talking about some of the stuff that goes on back stage with a writer last night and he was grabbing lines and writing them down for future use as I was talking! There are some funny people in my show!And all of our reviews have been very favorable. Especially towards us actors. And that is quite a nice feeling indeed!

For me, I am just glad that I got to be a part of a show and on stage again. I hadn't auditioned for a show in about 8 years when I auditioned for this one and I wasn't thinking I would be cast. It was a really exciting great feeling to be able to do what I love again. To get on stage and act! I can't wait to do more shows!

This is a repost from "Rene's Revolution" but I feel it's more appropriate here on "Lil Vixen Stirs Things Up". Hope you like it!

We went to the Orange County Fair last night. It was Curtis, me and two of our good friends. I'll call them Blondie and Fun Guy. Fun Guy hadn't been to a Fair in forever. Blondie hadn't been in a while. Curtis and I go quite a bit because my family goes so often every year.

As you might be aware, the food at the Fair is, well, interesting. When you walk in all you smell is BBQ and sugar in the air. Everything you want can be found deep fried and on a stick! They have deep fried Twinkies, deep fried oreos, deep fried pepsi, and even chocolate covered bacon! It's basically a good place to go if you need to gain some weight or are wanting a heart attack. But even so, boy are the Fair's fun!


I have a theory about all the fried foods though. I think that they are way over-rated and I think they are almost never as enjoyable as you are thinking they are going to be. I'm all for splurging at festivals like this, but, I also don't like feeling sick for two days after eating all that deep fried stuff. But I digress, more on that later....

So, to start off, Blondie and I went straight for the Margarita stand. Yum. Then we all headed to see an exhibit called "Weird Al's Brain". It has all kinds of fun facts about Brains and also has a 3-D movie about brains. It's fun and educational. We all enjoyed it.

Then we set out for food. I had been hankering for the grilled corn on the cob. But right next to the corn on the cob were grilled veggie kabobs. So I got one of those instead. Mistake. It wasn't all that great and it was more expensive than the corn. Oh well. Now I know. Fun Guy headed for one of the "heart attack" stands and got a krispy creme donut fried chicken sandwich. Fried chicken breast in between a cut in half krispy creme donut. He said it wasn't that great. I could've told him that, but it's important to let people figure these things out on their own. Curtis got a corn on the cob and that made me a little jealous. He let me have a bite though. Cause he's nice like that. Blondie had a chicken kabob. She gave me a piece. It was okay, not the best chicken I ever had though. Curtis was the only one really happy with his first choice. Damn me for not listening to my instincts and getting corn! Fun Guy went off to get fried mushrooms and then came back with a ham, swiss and bacon sandwich instead! He thoroughly enjoyed that. I was kinda bummed he didn't get the mushrooms though, I would have liked to have tried them.

So then we stopped to get a few drinks then walked around. We walked a bit and looked at all the over priced, and frankly, dangerous looking rides. We laughed at the games. We took pictures with statues of giant cows and the like....Curtis and Fun Guy had some chocolate covered bacon.


They said it tasted like chocolate covered pretzels. Fun Guy decided he needed a hand dipped corn dog. So, we found him one. It was monstrous in size. He enjoyed that quite a bit.
This is me with yet wnother cow thing to take a picture with. Cows are a big part of the Fair.



Blondie decided that she would like to try the deep fried cheesecake. She bought a piece for us all to share while I was purchasing a salad. Yes, I bought a salad at the Fair. To be fair (no pun intended) it was smothered in shredded mozzarella cheese. And I got some ranch on the side. Like everything else at the Fair, it was monstrous in size. Curtis, Blondie and I all had some and still there was a lot left that we could not finish.

Then we tried some deep fried cheesecake. It was tasty but my goodness, VERY rich. So, as I mentioned, I have a theory about all the crazy deep fried Fair foods... I think that when it comes to foods that are already very sweet or rich (cheesecake, twinkies, oreos, etc...) there is a taste saturation point where you can't do more to make it taste better. So, when you batter it and deep fry it it's really just adding fat and calories for no real reason. Because, while the deep fried cheesecake was good, I really preferred un-battered cheesecakes. And things like "Giant Onion Rings" SOUND good but in reality, they rarely are. I prefer regular, normal sized onion rings thanks. Sometimes bigger isn't better. Now, I love me some fried foods. Artichokes, zucchini, mushrooms, onion rings, french fries.... however, too much of them makes me feel sick and if they are TOO greasy it's just gross to me. I tend to be a "blotter". I'm the girl dabbing her paper towel on her pizza, onion rings, etc...to mop up the grease. So, perhaps the typical Fair food is wasted on me? Oh well.

Fun Guy tried an ice cream sundae with fried oreos and fried snickers bars. Again, he said it was good, but not as awesome as he was expecting.

After that we wandered around some more. I decided I needed a hand rolled pretzel. I had no idea how big the damn thing would be! It was family sized. Curtis, Fun Guy and I all worked on it but could not finish it. Then we looked at products for sale and one guy who was selling these really neat air tight container lids told us about a great sushi place at the Fair. Yup. Sushi. At the Fair. Sounds dodgy doesn't it? But apparently this guy said it was AWESOME. We made a note of it. Curtis had his heart set on a giant smoked sausage though, so, we went in search for that first. It was about a foot and a half long! Fun Guy got an Orange Julius to drink.


We then looked at baby pigs, sheep, goats and cows. We took pictures with sunflowers and then we wandered back towards the sushi place.



Blondie got a Tuna handroll. She said it was delicious. The staff was really friendly, the 3 sushi chefs had over 60 years of experience between them and the stand they had was AWESOME. Even though I don't really love sushi I loved the atmosphere of this place and I will go back with Curtis on a future visit.

By Now Fun Guy looked like he was going to explode. He also had a weird food coma thing going on. We were seriously concerned for him, yet, he seemed to still be having a good time. So, Curtis, Blondie and I went to the Wine Tasting while Fun Guy napped a bit of his food coma off in a nearby chair. The wine was good and we got three tastes and a wine glass to take home for $7! Not bad for Fair prices!

By now we were exhausted. And stuffed. We had planned on getting funnel cake (Curtis's favorite) but we just couldn't do it. Nobody felt up for it. The Fair was winding down. Curtis and I took our obligatory Fair photo booth photos (which turned out super cute!) and Fun Guy made one last purchase of an awesome Giraffe painting for his yet to be born but already adorable daughter's nursery. He's gonna be a good dad.


Curtis and I have passes for the Fair for the entire run. So, we'll be back. We'll get some funnel cake one day, a giant cinnamon roll another time, and then maybe even the crazy good but huge caramel and chocolate covered apples! Mmmm...

Well, I wanted this blog to be about my adventures in cooking and eating out. But I was laid off at the end of January and so, I haven't eaten out much and though I have cooked, it hasn't really been anything worth blogging about. Except maybe my French Toast. Curtis really liked my French Toast.

But I digress. The point is that I have decided that I am posting too much personal and non-revolutionary posts on my other blog Rene's Revolution. Soooo... this blog is going to be my more personal blog about my life as a struggling actress and producer as well as the adventures, journeys and fun stuff that Curtis and I do.

Considering how broke we are, we get to do a LOT of really cool stuff. We've got an eclectic and wonderfully diverse group of friends which means we get invited to lots of stuff that we ordinarily would not have access to either due to not having enough money or not having the right connections. Luckily for us, in most respects, we do have some awesome connections thanks to our wonderful and generous friends.

So, I hope you like this blog! Thanks for reading!
Rene

Coffee creamers. The good, the bad and the super yummy!

I love coffee! Let me rephrase that, I ADORE coffee. And more than that, I NEED coffee. Seriously. About a month ago I went on a 1 week vegan cleanse. I was also supposed to cut out coffee and all caffeine. I tried. And I got the WORST headache ever! It would not go away. So, the second day, because I needed to be productive, I let myself have half a cup of straight black coffee. That kept the headaches at bay and I got through the week.

Anyhoo, so, yeah, I love coffee and I have to drink at least one cup everyday before 2 pm or the demons take over my head.

But, I'm trying to be healthier. I'm trying to drink less dairy because I feel like my body functions better on slightly less dairy. That means trying to cut out milk in things that don't really need it. Or using soy milk. I love soy milk in my cereal but not so much in my coffee. It separates and looks gross and doesn't quite taste right. So, I recently purchased a soy milk hazelnut flavored coffee creamer. I figured that it wouldn't taste like normal creamer or even like some common non dairy creamer brands. But, I expected it to taste pretty good. At the very least reminiscent of my favorite International Delight Hazelnut coffee creamer. It did not. Not even a little bit. Is it drinkable? Sure. It didn't make me gag. But it didn't make me smile and sigh happy little sighs of contented yumminess either. So, try it at your own risk.

I also tried another soy based creamer that was plain and not flavored. That was fine as well. Good enough I suppose. I think I prefer the unflavored over the flavored when it comes to soy milk creamers.

You may be asking why I don't just buy the International Delights creamer since it is non dairy? Good question. Because International Delights only seems to come in jumbo size bottles. They take up too much room and the lid gets an icky build up of dried creamer around it and it's just gross. I do like coffeemate non dairy creamers too and they come in smaller sizes, but they have partially hydrogenated oils in them. Those big boys are a bad scene, really, really bad for you, so, now I don't drink them.

I am wondering if Costco or Smart & Final or one of those places might sell those boxes of little individual sized International Delights creamers that you see at 7-11 and in offices and such? If I could get my hands on THOSE I'd be a happy lady! They're the perfect amount of creamer and they don't have to stay in the fridge.

Otherwise, I may have to stick to plain milk in my coffee. There are worse things in life. I suppose I'll survive.

Taking Flight

Well, Hello! This is my first post here on "Lil Vixen Stirs Things Up". I made this blog to discuss food, wine, restaurants and other fun and fabulous things!

Today I would like to tell you about a new restaurant that my boyfriend and I checked out last Saturday night. It is called Flight Restaurant and Social Lounge located in Huntington Beach, California. It's a swanky type of fusion restaurant open for dinner until 10 pm at which point it turns into a club/lounge. Fusion cuisine is pretty common in Southern Cal restaurants. This particular restaurant was described as classic American Cuisine fused with Italian and Asian, and it lived p to that. The food was excellent, the portions were not too big and not too small and the decor was quite lovely. Serene and yet somewhat edgy in my opinion. Curtis said it reminded him of a cross between the restaurants found in Miami and New York. Since I have not been to either of those cities as an adult, I couldn't tell you if I agree from actual experience, but based on pictures I have seen from restaurants in both of those cities I can kind of see what he meant by that.

Here's how our night went:

We arrived at the restaurant at 7 pm hungry and ready to use the gift certificate we had received months ago. We walked in and were quickly greeted by the friendly hostess. She took us to a very nice table and we realized while walking across the room that we were literally the only people in the restaurant. It was kind of eerie. I mean, this was a beautiful restaurant on a Saturday night in a very social area of town. Where the hell was everybody? I realize there is a pretty big recession going on and that people are cutting back on things, but this was ridiculous. I have literally never been in such an empty restaurant in my life! It was like being in an episode of "The Twilight Zone." It's a good thing we aren't one of those couples that needs to people watch in order to have something to say, otherwise, it could've been awkward.


See? It's gorgeous! But it was soooo empty! It was as if we had rented out the entire restaurant for ourselves. Since it was a "date night" for us, this was nice, but still, a little creepy. The staff was very nice and I feel like they handled us as the only patrons very well. They were attentive and yet not too hovering or over attentive. This can be tricky. So, I give them kudos for that.

We ordered and then we asked the waitress if it was always like this. We figured that it had to be a bit of a fluke because the restaurant has been there for a while and was still in business. She said that dinner could be "hit or miss" but that it generally got busy at night after 10 when it turned into a club and lounge. I could kind of see that being the case, so, I guess that's how it must go.

The food was quite tasty! We both gave it two thumbs up! I started with a compressed salad of greens, figs, apples, cheese and nuts. It reminded me of the compressed salad at Catal which is one of my favorite tings ever so, I was quite pleased. The main difference was that Flight's salad has figs and Catal's has dates. I think I really prefer the dates.


Curtis started with a tuna appetizer that was also quite good if you like sushi. It came garnished with avocado and a spicy dipping sauce and it looked like this:


Our entrees were also fantastic! I had a poorly named, but quite delicious "Airline Chicken". It came with sauteed bell pepper and garlic mashed potatoes. Curtis had the filet mignon which came with bacon wrapped asparagus and sauteed mushrooms. The mushrooms were delicious. I didn't try the bacon asparagus or the steak because I don't eat red meat or pork, but Curtis said it was really great! Unfortunately I also didn't get pictures of those! Sorry!

Dessert was amazing. We got a dessert "flight" that included a mini chocolate lava cake (one of my most favorite foods ever!), a tiny scoop of ice cream, and a baby passion fruit panna cotta. I'm not normally a huge fan of panna cotta but this panna cotta was REALLY good. Curtis had a few bites. I finished off the rest.



Aside from the kind of weird, kind of cool feeling of being the only people in the restaurant, it was a very lovely night with good service, good food and good atmosphere. I would heartily recommend it to anyone who lives nearby or visits Huntington Beach. I'd love to go back some other night and check it out later to see how it is as a lounge.