Activity #6 - Cheerleading!

October 18, 2010

Oakton, VA
Cost: approx $45 a person included session & lite fare afterwards

http://foxybodyfitness.com

Once a Cheerleader, Always a Cheerleader….

Some of us were thinking that we all might have a similar learning curve on this activity since it had been 15-20 years since the former cheerleaders in the club actually cheered. This was NOT the case. Some members excelled….. so, RAH RAH RAH Kristin & Summer!!!!

To others (okay – maybe just OTHER) the only spirit they were able to capture was the spirit of Club TAOS… by stepping out of their comfort zone to TRY ANYTHING ONCE.

This activity was our first at-home activity and we had Christie from FoxyBodyFitness come to Shana’s house to instruct us. Christie’s company specializes in at-home personal training but Christie was kind enough to customize an hour session for us which focused on cheering. Christie was perfect –she had even created a TAOS cheer for us to learn!

In addition to learning 2 cheers, we learned how to stand and speak terms unfamiliar to some of us such as “just call it.”

We really had a blast – Ashli claimed to never have cheered but was soon teaching the “Victory” move to the hopeless member. Kristin was nominated TAOS Captain because she seemed to bounce right back into her highschool cheerleading days– complete with ponytails… and Summer deserves a big cheer herself for returning to her first post-baby activity with such spirit.

If our enthusiasm is not obvious to you in the video below, please know that we had it in our hearts…

After Christie left, we sat around Shana's kitchen table for some light dinner, drinks, and discussion. We LOVED our cheerleading session and hope to work with Christie again someday!!

Activity #5 - Cupcakes, Actually!

July 28, 2010
Cupcake Tasting ~ Cupcakes, Actually!
Fairfax, VA
Cost: approx $13 per person for cupcakes and bottled water, plus drinks & dinner at Coastal Flats
http://cupcakesactually.com/

We switched things up a bit this time... meeting first at Coastal Flats for drinks and dinner and debriefing of the "much ado about nothing" experience at Judy Harris' Cooking School (see Activity #4). We quickly moved onto other topics and simply catching up with one another and revisting summer vacations, etc. While three out of four TAOS members were getting their drink on - and someone was spilling her food and John Daly's on the table - our mama-to-be member "allowed" her sistas to indulge in Labor and Delivery talk. Just what every new mom needs/wants to hear 10 days before she's about to give birth, right?!?! This discussion only lasted so long, as we all realized that we'd digressed WAY too far from our original purpose of meeting (TAOS Activity #5)... and more food and drinks were (perhaps?) spilled and our too young and too full of himself waiter had one too many "cute"anecdotes... SO, we paid our bill and headed down the lane of Fairfax Corner to Cupcakes Actually, where our activity was tasting and evaluating a variety of cupcakes. After a rocking, yet somewhat amusing, start to our evening, we thought this sounded pretty fun and delicious!

The Cupcakery's website boasts:

"We are Cupcake Snobs."

"We are not bashful about our feelings for our cupcake beauties. They are made by our chefs … right in our shop kitchen in bustling Fairfax Corner. These gems aren’t your mom’s cupcakes (no offense to your mom)."

"Our weekly cupcake lineup features an exquisite variety of gourmet flavors. Our three exclusive signature cupcakes are dipped – lavishly bathed in top-coats of chocolate and caramel. Using personally-crafted recipes using local and premium ingredients, our cupcakes are made fresh from scratch daily."

This sounded like our kind of place! Indulging in the best of the best - a personal motto for many of us! Also, we had done our pre-activity homework which included: At Cupcakes Actually, we will each select two (yes, two) of their signature cupcakes priced at $3.05-$3.50 each. We will have a set of criteria by which we will conduct our own "tasting" of the cupcakes. Yes, you have to share. Upon selecting your cupcakes, you will need to consider the following:

1) The first selection should be your no-brainer, go-to cupcake -- something that you would pick without thinking twice. The one cupcake that your tummy must have. (Three words for me: Cuckoo for Coconut!)

2) The second cupcake will be a selection of something you *think* you would like, but might be a tad out of your comfort zone.

3) We must all select different cupcakes so there will be discussion. Be prepared to fight for and defend your selection.

4) You will have a "tasting sheet" for us to conduct our own cupcake tasting. Additionally, we will discuss why we chose the cupcakes we did, any emotions it evokes or fond memories that arise from the flavor, appearance and cupcake name.

So we walked up to Cupcakes Actually hoping to taste the top 2 cupcakes on our respective lists... there was a line out the door which we took as a good sign! Upon arriving at Cupcakes Actually, we had limited choices of what cupcakes we could purchase - no fighting or defending of choices here! None of the cupcakes featured on their website were available on this night... so with our mission in mind, we purchased a dozen cupcakes - at least one of each kind offered in the bakery and doubled up on a couple flavors in order to complete our dozen. We sat outside on this steamy July night and began to taste and rate our cupcakes - two different cupcakes a piece - and then we passed our cupcakes around the table so that we actually tasted 8 different cupcakes! (Sidebar: the other 4 out of the dozen were saved for our husbands - aren't we thoughtful?) We shared our reviews and rating sheet for each one we "taste tested." The clear consensus was that most of the cupcakes were dry... most of the icing was too sweet... and most of us wouldn't spend $3.50 on this kind of dessert again if we had to choose between Cupcakes Actually and Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream right around the corner. There was ONE cupcake that got rave reviews from all the sistas - the flourless chocolate cupcake with decadent chocolate icing was delish!

All in all, it was a fun, low-key event filled with laughter-induced sugar highs! Wonder what will be next for Activity #6? Stay tuned...

Activity # 4 – Herbs & Edible Flowers Cooking Class

Tuesday, June 8
Judy Harris Cooking School
Alexandria, VA
Cost: $65 per person, included dinner on premises
http://www.judyharris.com/

New TAOS rule: While on premises of an activity, please refrain from mentioning that there is a blog.

From the Judy Harris Cooking School website: "Everyone raves about our herb classes. Spring is the perfect time to explore growing, cooking and decorating with fresh herbs from your garden, pots, or market! Students visit our garden and pick a variety of fragrant herbs and colorful edible flowers. We will prepare and serve a light spring dinner. Explore how to start or enhance your herb garden, selecting the best varieties, discover top local herb markets, fun cooking techniques, pretty presentations and much more. Take home five popular herbs and a practical herb-growing guide."

Those of us who had never been to a cooking class might have expected a large kitchen and were a bit surprised when we pulled up to the modest home of Judy Harris. However, Judy greeted us with a warm welcome (as did Inge, the lovely assistant) and directed us to wash our hands and take a seat so that we could get started. A look around the kitchen let us know that Judy wasn’t one for fancy or flashy modern cooking appliances - except, of course, for the prized Vitamix 5000.

The class began with some explanation about herbs and then a stroll through Judy’s herb garden, carefully cultivated over the past few decades. We spent a lot of time in this garden learning how to smell herbs, grow them and use them. Hmmm…did we see another kind of “herb” in the very back of her garden? We would not have been surprised given Judy’s “retro” (polite way of saying stuck in 1970)
lifestyle.

The first recipe to make and enjoy was the banana mint daiquiris. How deliciously different… and the class certainly got a bit louder from this point on. We divided into groups to make the rest of the recipes and made the wise decision of including our new friend Ruth so that we didn’t have to work quite as hard. Ruth was fun and knew everybody that was anybody in the DC metropolitan area.

Our group had the apple muffins and the sage butter. The other group had the lovage soup. You might think that is a typo – it’s not – it is lovage and if you have never tried it, you probably never will. We prepared our recipes in the food processor and did not get to use the prized Vitamix 5000 - that was for the lovage soup group.

Judy’s somewhat small kitchen got much smaller and louder during the cooking time. The groups were trying to quickly prepare their recipes with little instruction on empty stomachs after a daiquiri. This part of the class reminded us of 7th grade Home Economics - Judy would not let anyone talk while she was talking, and told us we were measuring the flour wrong because we did not “fluff” it first. It quickly got much later and was pitch dark by the time the lemon-thyme chicken was thrown onto the grill. Some students appeared a bit cranky – maybe even one or two members of TAOS - but eventually we all sat down to a delicious meal in Judy’s 1970s decorated dining room. When we say delicious, we mean it! Dessert was rosemary sorbet made in an interesting antique ice cream machine…definitely a 1972 original model!

It seemed as though we had all been through a lot to prepare this meal together and it showed. We spent dinner time getting to know each other even more and at some point we spilled the beans on the blog. Judy (& Ruth) quickly wanted all of the club & website information “this is going to be on the internet!!!??" Uh oh. We tried to remain politely tightlipped and said our goodbyes. This was a great activity – a wonderful adventure & certainly a night we will never forget.

Activity # 3 - Bottling Beer

March 11, 2010

Shenandoah Brewing Company

Alexandria, VA
Cost: $32 per person, included dinner on premises
http://www.shenandoahbrewing.com/ From their website: You will make an appointment for bottling at the time you brew. When you come to bottle, your beer will be carbonated and ready to drink. You will put lables on your bottles, wash bottles in your bottle washer and fill the bottles with beer in our automatic fillers. You can sample your own beer while you are bottling. Bottling will take you about 2 hours.

Alright, let’s re-write this for them. First, a sentence needs to be added about NOT changing the scheduled beer bottling date. (We had a few things come up including a broken limb.) This place is closed MOST days of the week - making it quite difficult to cancel in advance. Second, we did not get to label our beers on this night because of the condensation. We did get to see how they cute they turned out - misspellings and all! Third, we feel that the term “automatic filler” is perhaps a bit misleading!!! And 2 hours? Ha!

Since this is was second trip to Shenandoah Brewing Company (See Activity #2 – Making, Mixing & Brewing Beer), we strolled in like we knew everything, instantly recognizing the lovely beer smell and familiar cafeteria-like lighting! This time we were assigned to Joe. As soon as he opened his mouth we realized he was a bit irritated that we had to reschedule our bottling date… (twice, but who is counting?) However, once he chatted with us a few minutes and noticed Summer’s cast, he kindly waived our no-show fee and became our friend. I guess people have been rescheduling and over-using the broken limb excuse.

After some brief instruction, we were hard at work – quickly realizing that this bottling process was not going to be as “fun” as brewing the beer. We had 5 cases of beer to sanitize… luckily, there was a user-friendly machine for this and Summer was able to help us push the button. After our bottles were clean, we listened to more instruction from Joe on how to fill and cap our bottles. He described what would happen if we failed to WIPE the bottom (butt) of our beer bottles “it will smell like ___” or how if we didn’t correctly line up the neck of the beer in the filling machine we would be “fighting a losing battle.”

The next few hours were work! We had to individually fill each bottle of beer, and then cap (not easy, clearly a “capping elbow” hazard) and then wipe the butt of the beer. We sampled our beer (thanks Kristin!) while rotating stations (since there were four of us) and soon it seemed completely appropriate for Ashli to turn to Shana and ask loudly “Did you wipe?” after Shana handed her a beer. What? Just hours before we were so lady-like, weren’t we? Here the four of us stood with sticky hands in the back of a terribly lit beer factory asking each other about wiping butts… This must be what this club is all about!

Joe explained that our beer needed to stay in the bottle for 2 weeks before we drank it so that the carbonation would settle and the full flavor would come through. Our expert opinion was that our beer tasted delicious, but was missing that “nutty” taste… oh, right, it needs to “NUT UP!”
After a tired recap - “I liked this activity” - over microwaved chili & sandwiches, we headed home with our 28-29 bottles of beer each to enjoy – and label - at our convenience.
We really did enjoy this activity - and most of us have been enjoying the beer too! One of us will need to wait until mid-August...

Activity #2 – Making, Mixing & Brewing Beer

January 16, 2010
Shenandoah Brewing Company
Alexandria, VA

Cost: $50 pp, plus flight of beers and lunch on premises

http://www.shenandoahbrewing.com/

Shenandoah Brewing Company is the DC area's one and only brew-on-premise -- a Do-It-Yourself brewery. And it totally rocks. We definitely kicked things up from the somber-December-volunteering event with this gig. With steam kettles, wort chillers, temperature-controlled fermentation and aging rooms, automatic bottle washers and fillers, Club TAOS was totally set to chef up a mean batch (aka 5 cases) of our very own brew: Nutty TAOS Ale (a light nut brown ale… not too girly, not too lame, and tasty enough to impress our husbands – we hope).

While we did all the brewing, Andrew was there to help. And help, he did. It was 10 AM on a sunny, frigid Saturday and we were sipping samples of beer as soon as we got in the door. Helpful. He helped us with the recipe, ingredients, and guidance. But, he left us quite alone a bit too so we had plenty of guidance and knowledge-sharing from the older gentlemen who have been brewing together for nearly 10 years at Shenandoah. The ingredients we used were the same ingredients used by our commercial brewing operation - fresh grains, pellet hops, and yeast appropriate to the beer style.

Brewing is definitely a social activity. We made a few friends during the 3+ hours it took to brew. They helped us understand that we needed to scrape the bubbles off the sides of the boilers, stir slowly, watch the heat temp and repeat. While this activity was a bit labor intensive, super scientific and a bit stinky at moments, there were several periods of idle time too, making it easy for us to sip, brew, eat, sip, brew, stir, eat… Waiting time can be filled with darts (we did not), foosball (we did not), and checking out the old school beer can collection that lines the bathroom walls (we did – many times). Let’s not forget the time we spent creating our custom labels for our bottles, our little Nutty TAOS Ale.

Enter Chemistry 101: We made alcohol!

Recipe for a successful Nut Brown Ale

Sing along: "Roll out the barrell..." (yes, there is a reason this song exists -- we had to kick our beer down the alley, rolling it to 'stir' it all up!)

Activity #1 - Giving Back - It's not all about us!

Club TAOS officially kicked-off with a feel-good activity scheduled two weeks before Christmas. We gathered at Reston Interfaith www.restoninterfaith.org to sort holiday gifts for the Adopt-a-Family gift drive. Each year, Reston Interfaith works with community members to make the holiday season fulfilling and memorable for our neighbors in need. The Adopt-a-Family gift drive in December ensures that families are well-fed and children receive personalized gifts.

The 2009 drive signed up record numbers of families in need, and also received the most donations to date in the history of Reston Interfaith's drives. We wanted to be a part of this community service project and our help was surely needed! There were more than 1,800 gifts to be sorted and distributed to children and their families and senior citizens in the area.

Upon arriving, we were giving a fairly lengthy set of instructions (a little annoying - who knew gift sorting was so complicated?) and placed in a room crowded with trash bags full of presents. We were a little overwhelmed - there was obviously a lot to be done... and we quickly realized that our two hours of volunteer time would not even put a dent in this project! Nonetheless, we jumped right in working mostly independently in an attempt to cover more territory. Our tasks involved tearing off wrapping paper, analyzing gifts for age and gender appropriateness, estimating the value of each gift, cross-referencing the gifts to the list of "adopted" children and families, highlighting spreadsheets, re-bagging gifts in new trash bags, labeling them with the adopted family's assigned number, and finally depositing "our work" in the designated spot within Reston Interfaith's office space.

If it sounds like a lot to do... it was... and after a little more than two hours, we felt pretty good about what we had accomplished "something", but were somewhat deflated that we hadn't done "enough" and didn't leave with the "feel good" in our hearts that we anticipated. Let's face it... it really was work and it wasn't exactly fun. While we tried to imagine how these children would look when they received the gifts we had "inspected" for them, we didn't get to see that child's face light up with joy - and THAT would have been much more satisfying. Still, we reflected on the experience while eating lunch at a bakery down the street and patted ourselves on the back for doing something for others during this "busy time." We said our good-byes as we headed off in separate directions - no doubt running errands and tending to our own mundane list of "to dos" and "to buys"... 'tis the season!

Club TAOS is --

Ashli, Shana, Kristin, Summer (and some guy on TV)

Each month one of the founding members- Ashli, Shana, Kristin, Summer - suggests and plans an activity for the group, which is then documented on this blog. The activity is analyzed based on a set of criteria that was developed by the Dilettantes -- and tweaked to fit Club TAOS requirements.

Selection criteria for activities:

• All activities are one-time events that run for a period of no more than four hours

• All activities have a registration fee of $50 or less per person

• All activities must be active so that participants learn something new

• All activities must end with a recap over drinks and food

Club TAOS Creed, respectfully stolen from the Dilettante Creed:

• I will try anything once

• I will remain open-minded when trying a new activity

• I will be respectful of the activity, the activity leader and other participants

• I will approach every activity as the learning opportunity that it is

• I will not shy away from any activity no matter how potentially humiliating or painful.

Kristin spent most of her youth with her nose in a book at home, playing piano, or performing in the dance studio.  She was a precocious child who interacted better with adults than with children her own age - she was a "born leader" and natural caregiver from an early age.  She also added band, color guard, yearbook staff, and "academic" clubs to her repertoire in high school and college.  As an adult, Kristin has become more care-free, but still independent-minded.  She is a military wife who has moved 6 times in 14 years.  Kristin also worked as a retail manager for over 10 years and had little time for "hobbies."  After her second child was born in 2004, Kristin left the Lipstick Jungle of retail and has been a stay-at-home Mom.  Hobbies have remained out of reach until now.... she resides in Burke, VA, with her husband, Mark, and two daughters, Morgan (8 1/2) and Allyson (5).

Ashli has always wanted to be a ‘star’ but her shyness and lack-of-commitment demeanor has held her back.  Appropriately nicknamed “Bulldozer” as a toddler, she spent her early years singing in church, dancing tap, jazz and ballet, taking piano lessons, always try to be as good as her sister in the arts.  Her singing seemed to suit her best and her hobby “record” stands at 10 years in various school choral groups.  In high school she joined the color guard and proudly doubled as a chorus and band geek for three years.  Her sports qualities made her a fearless skier from the age of six, taking on Utah and Austria as an adult. Her passion for travel could have been her career but since she never got paid to travel, Ashli remains proud to have visited 14 countries to date.  Then came running… three marathons, numerous 10-milers countless bagels, a marriage proposal at one finish line and the birth of her children forced her to retire from this hobby in 2007.  After living in seven homes in the DC area and vowing never to live in NoVA for the rest of her life, Ashli now resides in Oakton, VA with her husband, Tom (aka TG) and children, Thomas (almost 3) and Reagan (10 mos).  (Brevity is not Ashli’s strong suit hence she has the longest bio)

Shana’s childhood allergies to trees and grass kept her short-lived hobbies and interests mostly indoors: piano, ballet, tap, jazz, children’s theatre, tennis, choir, sailing, crafting (to name a few)   As an “adult” she has used a variety of excuses NOT to try new things but recently had a life-changing experience that has caused her to change her tune. She enjoys both relaxing on her couch in her pajamas and dressing up for a fun night out.  The things that are most important to her are her family and friends, and their health & happiness.  Shana resides in Oakton,VA with her husband Paul and their son Jack (almost 3) and loves birthday and tea parties.

Summer's dilettante past includes sports and activities such as sailing, basketball, soccer, lacrosse, track, yoga, kickboxing, cheerleading, cotillion, piano, ballet, children's theatre and choir.  Her career history features highlights such as lifeguarding, hostessing, accounting, marketing & teaching high school.  She has also dabbled in sign language and spent a few Christmas breaks handing out hams for Honeybaked.  Summer enjoys the gym, movies and good TV shows, and dining out – or in - with husband, friends & wine.  Summer recently moved back to the Oakton area from Laguna Beach with her husband, Jason. She loves the beach and the Christmas season.  Her favorite things are her friends and family and her Portuguese Water Dog, Otis.