Las Vegas: Cupcakes and Guacamole

This is my friend Stephanie. We go way back - like to when we were 6 years old. She has been living in Las Vegas for the past year, but now she and her boyfriend are moving to Chile to teach English and I have no idea when I will see her again (ok, except for in 10 days or so when they drive through here and again when Jonathan and I go to visit... but besides that). We decided it was only right to have one last girl's weekend in Vegas, so that's where I was this weekend.

First things first - we made it a priority to stop at the cupcake shop that we didn't make it to last time I went to visit. Retro Bakery is a bakery specializing in all kinds of delicious cupcake flavors - I tried the Salted Caramel Crunch (a chocolate cupcake with caramel buttercream, drizzled with caramel sauce, sprinkled with sea salt, and topped with a chocolate covered pretzel) and I couldn't help myself so I also got the Cherry Cheesecake (a white cupcake with cherries mixed in topped with cream cheese frosting and sprinkled with graham cracker crumbs) to have for breakfast the next day. I can't decide if the best part was the chocolate covered pretzel or the cherry cupcake - I think I'll go with the cherry cake since the bakery didn't really have anything to do with the whole pretzel part.

We also celebrated many things - both Stephanie and Allison's birthdays as well as our last weekend together for the foreseeable future with a dinner at Dos Caminos, a fancier Mexican restaurant in the Palazzo. I know Mexican food isn't usually associated with fine dining, but check out this quesadilla I got! Pretty fancy looking if I do say so.

Besides my quesadilla we also had some delicious guacamole (you know it's delicious because they charge you $13 for it) which we thought they were going to make in front of us at the table but ended up just being brought out. It still tasted pretty amazing though, so we can let it slide.

Oh! And you know the most amazing thing? The Yard House now has an entire section of the menu devoted to Gardein products (faux meat) - do you know the last time I ordered chicken strips in a restaurant? Me either, that's how long ago it was. I was super excited to be able to eat at a brewery and eat "typical" brewery type food! To tell you the truth though, I guess I'm sort of glad they don't offer that stuff everywhere because man are chicken strips greasy!! Didn't get a picture of this one to share -I was too excited to taste it, oops!

-C

P.S. If you're interested (and I don't know why you wouldn't be) you can read about Stephanie's travel adventures at her new blog here:  http://www.adventuresofstephanie.com/