Kitchen and Craft Adventures

6-Minute Beef Cheeseball

2012-02-12T12:00:00.002-05:00

You’ll have to excuse the fact I only have 1 photo for this post. At some point in the future when I make this again, I’ll snap additional photos. This time around I just took a quick photo before I served it as an appetizer for a dinner party we were hosting for some of my hubster’s coworkers.

This is one of my favorite cheeseball recipes. I grew up with both my mom & grandmother making this cheeseball—and I have no clue what the original source of this recipe is. I do know that it is quick & easy, surprisingly flavorful given the limited ingredients, travels well & can be made a day or 2 ahead of when you need it. The flavor is actually better if you do make it a day ahead… Serve with crackers, & you are done. I like to form cheese balls in the container I will be serving them out of to make for a prettier presentation. This recipe is easily doubled & is the perfect solution when you need to take an appetizer to 2 different parties within a short period of time.

6-minute Beef Cheeseball
Prep time: 6 minutes, Serves: Many

Ingredients

1 package cream cheese (8 oz), softened
small bunch of chives, chopped finely (can substitute the green parts of 1-2 green onions, sliced finely)
1 T. Worcestershire sauce (+1 t. extra if desired)
1/2 package Buddig beef deli meat or equivalent store brand (approx 3 oz)
Approximately 3 oz. dried beef* (found in the deli meat section, or in the canned meat section of the grocery store. This is the salty, dried beef used for chipped beef gravy, or that could survive a nuclear apocalypse. If you can’t find it, or don’t want to use it, use the rest of the package of Buddig beef)

Directions
1. Let cream cheese soften on the counter in its packaging for at least 30 minutes before assembling. Finely chop the Buddig beef & put in a small bowl. Finely chop the dried beef & place in a separate bowl.

2. Scrape the cream cheese into a small mixing bowl. Add the chives, Worcestershire sauce, all of the Buddig beef & half of the dried beef on top of the cream cheese. Fold ingredients together with a rubber spatula until well mixed.

3. Line the bowl you want to serve the cheese ball out of with a large piece of plastic wrap. Sprinkle the inside of the plastic wrap-lined bowl with some of the remaining dried beef. Scrape the cheeseball into the bowl & cover with the remaining dried beef. Twist the cheeseball up tightly in the plastic wrap, shape it to the desired shape & refrigerate.

My favorite hummus recipe

2012-02-11T17:13:00.000-05:00

I’m not a big fan of beans & peas. I’ll eat them when I HAVE to, but the textures typically make me gaggy. Chickpeas in homemade hummus form are now the exception (I still can’t eat chickpeas whole, creepy texture). Hummus was one of those things I really didn’t like until a couple of years ago…basically until I started making it on my own & could control the thickness/consistency of the final product.

This is one of my favorite go-to appetizers when hosting a party or dinner. It’s easy to make, cheap, & you can make it in advance & just garnish it before serving. Dress it up with some cut up vegetables & homemade pita chips…and you’re done. Making your own hummus is typically cheaper than buying it premade, plus you can control the quality of your ingredients. Many store-bought hummuses (hummi?) are made with oil blends, which makes them especially icky for me since I have a canola oil intolerance. Plus, I mentioned it’s cheaper right? I buy cans of chickpeas for less than $1 at the international grocery and this uses like maybe $0.10 worth of tahini since I buy it in a big jar. I always have lemon juice, garlic, olive oil & salt on hand…so you figure it takes $1.10 of “specialty” ingredients, and it yields over 2 cups of hummus. Unless you are buying your containers of hummus for less than $0.55…you are being robbed.

My favorite recipe for hummus comes off of the back of a Ziyad brand can of chickpeas. In fact, I’m glad I’m posting this recipe, because if Ziyad ever changed its label I’d be hosed. I made a slight variation regarding garlic/lemon…but it’s fine “as is” if you want too. Enjoy!

Basic Hummus
Prep time- 5 min, “Cook” time= 5 min, Serves- many

Ingredients

Ingredient Lineup...I always have these ingredients in my
fridge/pantry so that I can make this in a snap whenever it sounds good.

1 can chickpeas (15-16oz) drained
1/3 cup Tahini*
2 T lemon juice + 1 t. lemon juice
2 cloves garlic (or 1 if you like less-garlic)
dash of salt
3 T. extra virgin olive oil + extra for garnish
Sumac or Smoked Paprika for garnish** [optional]

Directions
1. In a blender or food processor, add the cloves of garlic & the salt. Pulse until finely minced.

The salt helps to mince the garlic.

2. Add the chickpeas, tahini, 2 T lemon juice & 3 T. of olive oil & pulse to desired consistency. Add more olive oil for smoother hummus. Add more salt if needed.

Blend/puree this until it reaches your chosen consistency

3. Move hummus to a small bowl. If serving immediately, drizzle top of hummus with olive oil & sprinkle with sumac & smoked paprika. If storing, cover tightly & store in the refrigerator.

Top with a drizzle of olive oil & spices if desired, & enjoy!

*Tahini is made of ground sesame seeds and it is peanut-butter’ish in consistency. It can be found at international grocery stores, Whole Foods, or in the organic condiments or condiment aisle of your grocery store. Tahini is also a great addition to salad dressings or marinades, & has a pretty good shelf-life. However it is not a good substitute for peanut butter for removing dog hair from your throat (long story, ask my husband, he has a experience in this).

**Sumac is a Middle Eastern spice that has sort of an acidic & flowery flavor. It is purplish in color & is a beautiful spice for garnishing dishes. I buy mine from The Spice House. I recommend a gentle sprinkling of smoked paprika for garnishing as well, due to its rich, beautiful color & subtle smoky flavor when used in small amounts.

Pistachio Cake with Chocolate Ganache- AKA "MaMa's Green Cake"

2012-02-10T22:04:00.000-05:00

A few years ago my mom randomly surfaced a cake recipe that my grandmother used to make…except my mom decided to top said cake with chocolate ganache [naturally].. She served it for a family holiday dinner and our entire family fell in love with this cake. My brother & I wanted to know why it had not been served for holidays for the past 20 years. This is now the “go to” standard for birthday cakes & holiday meals in our family and it might be the first dessert that we all agree on, request and enjoy. Normally my brother & I will race each other to the pool of ganache that collects in the middle of the cake [he frequently wins]. This cake has lovingly been relabeled “MaMa’s Signature Green Cake” for our holiday feasts. MaMa is what my niece calls my mom.

The best things about this cake is that it is EASY to make, holds over well to serve the day after you make it, is pretty, & is delicious. It has a very vibrant green color from the pistachio pudding that is used in the cake.

Delicious

MaMa’s Green Cake (Moist Pistachio Pudding Cake with Chocolate Ganache)
Prep time- 6 min, Cook time- 50-60min, Cooling time- 1-2 hours, Serves 10+

Ingredients

Ingredient Lineup

1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup warm water
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1 box yellow cake mix (Betty Crocker preferred)
3- 3.5 oz boxes of Jell-O brand instant Pistachio pudding
chocolate syrup (approx 3T)
[optional] Chocolate ganache, recipe below

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 325.

2. Grease & flour a Bundt shaped pan.

I always do this the old-fashioned way with butter & flour,
Never with those ready-made sprays.

3. In a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, beat the oil, water & eggs until combined. Add the cake mix & pudding to the egg mixture. Beat slowly at first to gently mix ingredients & then mix for 2 minutes on medium speed (the slowly part is important—or you will get a green powder cloud that escapes the bowl & coats your counters). The batter will be thick.

I forgot to pre-beat my eggs this time...it really
didn't make a difference.

Mix the eggs, water & oil well.

Add the cake mix & 3 boxes of pudding

Mix per directed

4. Pour half of batter into the Bundt pan. Drizzle chocolate syrup on top of batter. Layer in remaining batter & add an additional drizzle of syrup.

Add batter

Layer on a swirl of syrup

Put in the rest of the batter & then add another swirl of syrup

5. Bake for 50-60 minutes. Let the cake cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes, & then invert onto a serving plate. Let the cake cool for 1-2 hours on the countertop, then top with chocolate ganache [optional]. When the cake is cool, store covered on the counter overnight. Once the cake has been cut, or if you are planning on storing it longer, store it covered in the refrigerator.

What the cake looks like without the ganache topping

Topped with shiny, delicious ganache

Here is a picture to illustrate the "inside color"
of the cake...this was basically all that was left
after sending leftovers home with people...and
I was left without a "pretty slice" shot of the cake.
Use your imagination. :-)

Basic Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients

Ingredient Lineup

1 cup heavy whipping cream
5-6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, chopped (milk chocolate or your “degree of chocolate” of choice can be substituted. I use Baker’s chocolate squares for this typically…but I have also used chocolate chips out of my pantry…)

Directions
1. In a small, non-stick saucepan or in a double boiler, slowly warm cream over low heat until the cream is warm to the touch. Stir/scrape frequently with a rubber spatula.

2. Add the chocolate pieces & continually stir/scrape frequently with a rubber spatula until chocolate melts.

I forgot to chop my chocolate :-/...but it still worked.

3. Continue stirring/scraping the mixture until sauce thickens & gets glossy appearance (do not allow the ganache to get boiling hot or let it burn to the pan- you will either get a ganache with a white coating or one with a funky taste if you let this happen).

See how this is grainy & runny-looking?...It's not ready

Slowly getting there (those aren't bubbles from boiling, those
are from stirring...do not let it boil/simmer!)

Ah, yea...that's the stuff. Remove it from heat & continually
stir until it cools down a bit.

4. Remove pan from heat & continue stirring/scraping the mixture for 3-4 minutes to lower the temperature of the ganache.

5. While ganache is still warm to the touch, drizzle over the top of the cake until desired chocolate glaze level is reached. Let the ganache cool on the cake, then store as directed above. Store leftover ganache in the refrigerator.

Yum.

Leftover ganache is delicious on graham crackers, in macaroons, on ice cream, or eaten directly from the bowl as a midnight snack. To soften it up after storing in the fridge, microwave in 5 second increments until desired thickness & temperature.

Warm ganache is a yummy ice cream topping

Roasted Broccoli with Bacon

2012-02-09T21:13:00.000-05:00

Last night when making dinner, I found myself staring down a head of broccoli, saying “I think I’d rather eat the bag you are in, then eat you steamed again.”* We’ve been doing a lot of steamed broccoli as sides lately, mainly because on a typical day it’s one of my favorite foods and it’s healthy. I had this lonely, smallish head of broccoli that I needed to use…so I had the random brainchild “why not add bacon?”

I like other roasted cruciferous veggies (Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kohlrabi, etc)…but since I typically love steamed broccoli, I’d never tried roasting it.

The verdict?-Yum. Plus you can’t go wrong when adding bacon, right? (well…except maybe as far as your arteries are concerned…but I digress). This was quick, easy, & was a perfect way to perk up some broccoli that I would have rather thrown out than eaten steamed last night. The recipe below is based off of 1 head of broccoli and is meant to serve 2. Multiply to your needs. I used thin “freezer bacon” (similar to the Oscar Meyer precooked bacon)…if using thicker bacon you probably want to render/precook that mostly in a skillet so that the bacon will be crispy by the time the broccoli is done.

Roasted Broccoli with Bacon

Prep time- 5 min, cook time- 15-25 min, Serves 2

Ingredients

Bad picture of the ingredient lineup...

1 head of broccoli, rinsed, drained, and cut into large florets
2-3 strips thin bacon, cut into thin strips
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 T. extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
dash of lemon juice [optional]

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees (this dish can be cooked anywhere from 350-425 degrees if you are cooking something else that needs a specific temperature, just adjust your cooking times lower if going hotter than this)

2. Add 1 T. olive oil to a baking dish, add the garlic and heat in the oven for 5 min.

3. Remove the baking dish from the oven. Layer in the broccoli & bacon & stir together. Sprinkle salt & pepper over it. Sprinkle with additional oil if desired.

4. Return baking dish to oven & bake for 10 minutes. Stirring once.

5. Remove the baking dish from the oven. [Optional] Add a few dashes of lemon juice (lightly) over the top of the broccoli. Stir again and return to the oven. Bake for an additional 5-10 minutes until broccoli is to desired doneness. A fork should be able to easily pierce the stem-end of a large floret.

6. Serve and enjoy!

I served this with baked chicken breasts
that had been brined in an apple cider brine,
& classic Stovetop Stuffing (quick & easy dinner)

*Yes—I occasionally talk to food when I make it, this particularly applies to whole poultry [hides head in shame]

We ran away again...

2012-02-09T20:38:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the week off of blogging—but I’m not off track for my resolution, I have 5, yes 5 posts lined up on the runway, waiting for picture uploads & takeoff. Totally keeping up with my proposed resolution of an average of 1 post/week so far…

Speaking of runways & plane metaphors, my husband & I ran away again…on a plane. How about that transition? While the Super Bowl was gearing up in our fine city, we decided to avoid the crowds & what-not and would head to the crowds & what-not of Vegas.

[If you don’t want to read a long rehashing of our trip, stop reading now. This post is long, you have been warned. My next post will be a recipe.]

A few days after returning from our trip last October, I got an email from Southwest announcing $59 flights to/from Vegas. I noticed that the applicable dates of travel lined up with the Super Bowl being in Indy and since we left “sights unseen” the last time we were there, I pitched my idea about “running away” to my hubster (because it’s not like I was going to be able to commute to work downtown during the festivities anyway?)…and he agreed that running away sounded like an excellent idea.

When departing the Las Vegas airport, our cabbie asked us why we were in town. When we said we were from Indy & were escaping the Super Bowl crowds…he started laughing, a lot. He then went on to explain that Super Bowl weekend is one of the busiest weekends in Vegas each year. I don’t know why these little facts didn’t make a connection in our brains when we were planning our trip…“one of the biggest sporting events of the year” + “copious amounts of legal gambling on sporting events” = an incredibly busy Las Vegas. But it wasn’t unbearable. Vegas was meant for crowds.

We did a Friday-Monday trip, and stayed at Vdara at City Center. We had stayed at Aria on our previous trip, but thought we would give Vdara a shot this time. Overall, I prefer the activities & amenities at Aria, but the view of the Bellagio fountains & the strip from our hotel room at Vdara couldn’t be more perfect. Plus I had gotten a pretty good deal at our hotel through mlife (the “players club” for MGM Grand properties…which yields cheaper hotel deals than hotels.com or other sites for MGM hotel rooms, even if you don’t gamble).

We did have a little issue with our first night at Vdara. Apparently the “signature scent” diffuser for the air system of the building was malfunctioning and our room smelled like a citrus-fig perfume factory the first night…it was ridiculously strong…strong enough that my asthma (which is fairly quiescent) was flaring a bit. A complaint to the front desk & the next day the issue was resolved. [most Vegas hotels have “signature scents” to cover up the smell of booze & cigarettes that permeate the buildings from the casinos—I’m not quite sure why the gambling-free, smoke-free Vdara has a “signature scent” though, except for the novelty of it].

View from our hotel room at Vdara...with the Bellagio fountains off

View from our hotel room at Vdara...with the Bellagio fountains on.

Friday night I took my hubby to see the show Absinthe at Caesar’s Palace. I had seen a few reviews on this show that made me REALLY want to see it. One review said “it’s a combination of Borat & Cirque de Soliel.” Another review said “It’s will be the most amazing, and most offending show you ever see.” We LOVED the show. Yes, the humor was a bit awkward, politically incorrect & uncomfortable at times, but I still don’t think I have laughed that hard in 1 night in a long time. The acrobats were amazing. The best thing about this show is that instead of being a bazillion feet away from the action like you are at most Cirque-type shows in Vegas, Absinthe is a 300 seat venue that is shaped like an old sideshow tent, where in the very farthest seat you are still 5-6 rows away from the action. We were 3 rows away, and at one point there was a guy flying over our head close enough you could feel the swoosh of air as he swung by. It’s a tiny venue & the show is awesome. The only thing that distracted from the experience were the 7feet tall European students in front of us that kept holding their cameras above their heads to take pictures. Annoying. But overall, the show was totally worth the price I paid for discount tickets. Absinthe is General Admission (minus a few VIP seats), so you can easily get a front row spot if you show up early. But be warned, the “hosts” of the show force crowd participation, whether you want to be involved or not. 3 rows back is advisable if you don’t want to be involved in the antics, but would rather sit back & laugh at those poor souls (watching complete strangers “motorboat” each other = awkward, yet hilarious).

Saturday night my hubby took me to Phantom at the Venetian. We made a stop by Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery for a mocha & his famous macaroons before the show. I now know why so many chefs refer to the macaroons from Bouchon as the best. They were the most amazing macaroons I had ever tasted. The flavoring & textures were nothing short of perfection. I’ve been tempted to try making macaroons since I got my stand mixer last October…but now that I’ve had the ones from Bouchon Bakery, I don’t know if I can make my own. I feel like I will forever be disappointed in the outcome. We had 3 before the show & had the other 3 the next morning for breakfast.

Mmm...a perfect Mocha & perfect Macaroons

Phantom was stellar. Jas scored some amazing seats for us. I have seen the traveling Broadway version of Phantom before…but I was pretty impressed with this version, even though I missed a lot of the material/scenes that were cut out compared to the Broadway version. I can forgive the extra scenes/dialogue being cut out though when considering the pyrotechnics & special effects that the Vegas version of Phantom contains. It’s amazing to think that the entire venue was specifically designed for that 1 production. It’s also sad to think that Phantom will close down for good in September. I’m glad we had a chance to see it before it goes dark. If you’re in Vegas before September 2012, I Highly Suggest checking out Phantom.

Allegedly you can’t go to Vegas without going to a buffet. So Sunday night while the rest of the world (& Vegas) was watching the 2nd half of the Super Bowl, we went to the buffet at the Bellagio. We had gone there on our prior trip, & when considering the ridiculously high cost of food in Vegas in general…we decided it was worth a repeat visit. I’m pretty sure I ate the cost of my meal in king crab legs. Seriously, minus some roasted asparagus & a piece of prime rib…all I ate for dinner was king crab legs.

After we stumbled out onto the strip in a food coma…we decided that since it was going to be our last night in Vegas for most likely the next few years, we decided to go see all of the free “Vegas Kitsch” we didn’t see on our last trip. We had already seen the “Old Strip/Downtown Fremont Street” during our last visit [never, ever again], so we could cross that off the list. The MGM Lions are MIA while the MGM Grand is under renovation, so we’ll have to visit those at some point in the future. So that basically left the Mirage Volcano show & the Treasure Island Siren show to cross off of the list. First stop, the Mirage Volcano. Overall, I enjoyed this more than I was anticipating. It was not nearly as hokey & foolish than I thought it was…and was an interesting melding of a light show, water show & pyrotechnic show.

Jas watching the Mirage Volcano

Next stop…the TI Siren show. This can be added to the “never, ever again” column. I guess I went to the show being jaded due to all of the negative reviews, but those reviews were truly justified in this case. Considering this is considered to be one of the big “family friendly” things of Vegas, I was majorly disappointed. Overall it was the worse example of lip-synched, cheesy “entertainment” ever, that was way too over-sexed to be considered family friendly. I think one particular special effect regarding a ship, plus the pyrotechnics at the end were my favorite part (and perhaps only because they signaled that the atrocity was ending?). My gut feelings that I would never take a child to view this show were confirmed when we were walking down the strip, and we saw a young boy who was about 7 years old, singing one of the incredibly inappropriate, oversexed songs from the show while shaking his butt and shimmying his chest. Granted, Absinthe was way more oversexed & “vulgar” by conventional standards than the TI Siren Show, however the difference is that Absinthe was an 18-and-over show, that we researched and paid to see…and it didn’t occur on the side of the street to the general public as a “family event.” Ok…stepping off of my soapbox.

After catching a couple more up-close Bellagio fountain shows (my favorite)…we headed off to bed.

On both Saturday morning & Monday morning of our trip, Jas and I made the ‘pilgrimage’ to In-n-Out Burger of Las Vegas for lunch. Seriously…they need little markers to designate the pathway for the 1.5 mile each way journey off-strip. It was so worth the 3 mile round-trip walk + playing a live-game of Frogger to get to though. We love In-n-Out Burger & dream of the day that they replace McDonald’s nationwide. We both order off of the not-so-secret “secret menu.” Jas gets a 2x4 animal style (2 beef patties, 4 slices of cheese, onions grilled in mustard, lettuce, tomato & spread). I get a 2x4 no tomato, onions grilled, light spread, extra toast (2 beef patties, 4 slices of cheese, no tomato, grilled onions, smaller amount of spread, with the bun extra toasted/crunchy). We both get our fries “well done” (their same awesome fries, except cooked longer to be super crunchy). Deliciousness. It’s the only fast food worth walking 3 miles roundtrip for…

Ah-mazing

After we ventured back to the strip from In-n-Out Burger on Monday, we hopped on the bus & went to Fashion Show Mall to browse around for an hour or so. It was there that my husband learned just how low-maintenance of a girl I really am. In browsing through the purses of Neiman Marcus & their house wares section (where Jas made the mistake of looking at the price tag for a mink bed throw)…I like to think that he fully gained appreciation for my budget-friendly decorating style & my hatred of clothes/accessory shopping. I also think he was thankful I didn’t fall in love with any of the $500-$1000+ bags we saw. In other news…Fashion Show Mall has a Bloomingdale’s Home Store…which Indianapolis REALLY needs. It’s like the Macy’s house ware section, except it’s the size of a Macy’s, & had great sales going on...

Finally, before picking up our luggage & departing for the airport we made a stop by Jean Philippe Patisserie at Aria for a decadent treat. Jason had the Chocolate Cheesecake (chocolate shortbread cookie, topped with mascarpone cheese mousse, folded with 2 types of chocolate mousse, covered in a thin flexible shell of white chocolate, with a chocolate truffle on top). I had the Triple Chocolate, which was dark chocolate, milk chocolate & white chocolate mousses swirled on top of a flaky shortbread cookie, covered in dark chocolate ganache and cocoa, and topped with a miniature pistachio & chocolate ganache macaroon. They both were delicious. We also picked up a couple of truffles (Jason a coconut rum one, me a raspberry mascarpone one) & a chunk of chocolate pistachio nougat to take home as our souvenir.

We were so excited about our treats from JP...that we didn't even take the
time to take a good picture of them.

Overall it was an excellent trip. It will probably be our list trip to Vegas for awhile, as we have other people/places on our to-visit list for our future vacations. Plus, the slot machines were not nearly as friendly this trip, & the free drinks were virtually non-existent with how busy Vegas was for Super Bowl weekend…making the trip a little less exciting.

I’m incredibly thankful for my wonderful parents who were our airport transport (since taxis were so much more expensive due to Super Bowl) & who watched our dogs for us. I love that our dogs were basically indifferent that we came home…because they love spending time with my parents THAT much.

Boozy Bourbon Ice Cream

2012-01-23T21:41:00.000-05:00

One of my fabulous Christmas presents that my husband got me this year was the ice cream maker attachment for my Kitchenaid Stand Mixer. This is probably the most awesome thing ever…but was probably the most dangerous thing we could have brought into our household. In the first 5 days of 2012, we made 4 batches of frosty treats. Yea...

Yay ice cream maker!

We have now kicked this habit back to 1 batch of deliciousness a week. The recipe for this week was a special request from my husband. The past few months we have seen several boutique ice creams that use either bourbon or whisky as a flavor element. His special request was for “bourbon ice cream.” I modified a recipe that I found online…

A note on adding alcohol to ice cream. Ice cream “batter” tastes super sweet, but the sweetness calms down when it is frozen. I thought maybe the same thing was true about alcohol…but it’s not. If you add more booze, it’s going to taste boozier. So stick to the ratio of alcohol listed below, don’t let your husband talk you into adding 2-3 more tablespoons of Makers Mark. [true story] I want to try this recipe again using Amaretto…yum. We served this when it was "half-set" with warm, soft snickerdoodle cookies.

Enjoy!

Bourbon Ice Cream (modified from David Lebovitz on Finecooking.com)

Ingredients

2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup granulated sugar
5 large egg yolks* [see note below]
3-4 tablespoons bourbon
3 teaspoons vanilla extract

Ingredient Lineup

Directions

1. Prepare an ice bath by filling a large bowl with several inches of ice water. Set a smaller metal bowl (1.5 quarts or larger) in the ice water. Pour in 1 cup of cream in the inner bowl. Set a mesh strainer on top.

Cream in the ice bath

2. Whisk the egg yolks in a medium bowl.

3. In a medium saucepan, warm 1 cup of cream, the milk, & sugar over medium-high heat until tiny bubbles begin to form around the edge of the pan (1-2 min). In a steady stream, pour half of the warm cream mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly to prevent the eggs from curdling. Pour the egg mixture back into the saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom with a heatproof rubber spatula until the custard thickens. Don’t let the sauce overheat or boil, or it will curdle.

Slowly streaming the hot cream mixture into the beaten eggs.
Stir constantly, or you will end up with runny scrambled eggs.

Custard that is not ready yet...

Custard that is ready to cool down. Do you
see the difference?

4. Immediately strain the custard into the cold cream in the ice bath.

Strain the custard to remove any curds or lumps.

5. Cool the custard to below 70 degrees Fahrenheit by stirring it over the ice bath. Stir in the bourbon and the vanilla into the cooled custard.

Swirling in vanilla and [too much] bourbon

6. Refrigerate the custard until completely chilled, at least 4 hours. Then freeze the custard in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer the just-churned ice cream to an air-tight container and freeze for at least 4 hours or up to 2 weeks.

Ice cream whirling away

Semi-set ice cream...pop it in the freezer for a few hours

Warm snickerdoodles with semi-set ice cream

My husband's bowl of bourbon ice cream...

He decided to round it off with some caramel sauce. I've been
challenged to make bourbon caramel next...

*A note on what to do with the egg whites generated from this recipe: make meringue cookies, make a meringue pie, add one whole egg & make an omelet for two (to make it super fluffy, use a mixer to infuse air into the eggs), egg whites will also freeze for future use-just mark the bag with the date you are freezing them and how many egg whites are in the bag.

My recommendation for seperating egg yolks is this method.

Line up 3 bowls-- 1 to store egg whites, 1 to crack eggs into, & 1 to put the egg yolks in. The bowl for the middle is to catch each individual egg white. That way, if you accidentally break a yolk, you are not ruining you bowl of egg whites or egg yolks. Crack an egg on the counter & strain it through your fingers, keeping the yolk from slipping into the bowl. Gently roll the egg yolk around your fingers until it gets slightly sticky, indicating that the majority of the egg whites are removed.

Whites on the left, newly cracked white in the middle, clean yolks on
the right. Then I put the shells in a grocery sack for disposal
or adding to compost bin.

Gross, but is the way to get the "cleanest"
egg yolks in my opinion.

Snicker-doodle-do!

2012-01-23T21:12:00.001-05:00

[Please forgive the formatting issues on this post] My favorite cookie will eternally be the soft, semi-baked blissfulness of a chocolate chip cookie straight from the oven. That cookie’s too soft to remove from the cookie sheet, you say? That’s ok, I’ll stand here in my kitchen & eat one with a spoon straight off of the cookie sheet until they set up a bit [true story].

However, the cookie that ties for #2 in my heart is a perfectly made snickerdoodle.* I think my affinity for the snickerdoodle comes from the fact that I rarely had it as a kid, mainly as a result of my love of chocolate-chippers per previously discussed. Snickerdoodles were something I only had at school, since you didn’t get a choice of cookie flavor, or on the rare lunch outing at Shapiro’s where my parents would let me pick out a cookie from the bakery after our meal.

But in my previous attempts at baking snickerdoodles, I have been unhappy with the results. They were too crunchy, too blah, or just didn’t live up to my standards of snickerdoodle’dom. Last week in a recipe e-newsletter that I receive, it listed a user-submitted recipe for “Soft Snickerdoodles.” I was intrigued. Maybe it was for my craving for sugar at that time, or maybe it was the back of my brain still feeling dejected from my prior snickerdoodle failures…but I pinned the recipe in my “recipes to try” board & sat on it for a few days.**

Enter the weekend—I had some time to kill while a batch of bourbon ice cream I was making for my husband was spinning…so I randomly decided that warm snickerdoodles could be a good dipping vessel for bourbon ice cream. Plus, I had all of the ingredients.

I made the recipe per instructed, minus the step about chilling the cookie sheet. I didn’t do that step for a couple of reasons 1) I don’t have room in my fridge to randomly set a cookie sheet in it. I cook—I have ingredients & leftovers, it’s full. 2) It’s January & my kitchen island is made of stainless steel. I could store meat on that thing & it would stay at a safe temperature. The other small variation I had is that my cooking time ended up being about 2-3 minutes longer than the recipe instructs. My first attempt to “immediately remove from the baking sheet” per the instructions, resulted in a cookie falling straight through the cooling rack with a loud ‘plop.’*** But that could also be due to our cruddy, uneven heating oven. If you were using a convection oven, or one that could consistently maintain a temperature, this might be a non-issue for you.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the recipe. A few suggestions:

Next time, I would make a half batch. This recipe says it only makes 24 cookies, but my total estimated number would have been closer to 3-4 dozen w/ 1 inch balls of dough (had I made them all…I ended up reserving part of the dough to cook later, & then forgot to cook it the next day :-/).
I would also vary the spice level a bit. I used my “sweeter” cinnamon, instead of my “hotter” cinnamon, and I think in future attempts I would either use a combination of the two or solely the “hotter” cinnamon. I am also tempted to toss in a little dash of ground ginger & allspice in the next attempt.
Next time I would use my stand mixer to make this dough. My stand mixer was occupied with spinning down the ice cream, so I attempted to mix with a spoonula. The dough is pretty stiff, & I finally had to use my hands to incorporate it all. I don’t like getting my hands messy if I can help it…

Soft Snickerdoodles (submitted by Food.com user JuJu Bee)

Servings: “24” [see note above]

Prep time: 10 min. Wait time: 10 min. Cook time: 10-14 min [see note above]

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened (2 sticks)
2 eggs
1 ½ cups sugar
2 ¾ cups flour
2 t. cream of tartar
1 t. baking soda
¼ t. salt
3 T sugar
3 t. cinnamon

Ingredient Lineup

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. In a large bowl mix the butter, eggs & sugar together. In a medium bowl, mix the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda & salt together.

Flour mix on the left, butter mix on the right.

3. Gradually mix the flour mixture into the butter mixture (I do it in thirds)

I had to get my hands dirty :-/...next time I'm using the stand mixer

4. Chill dough & chill an ungreased cookie sheet in the fridge for 10-15 minutes.

5. In a small bowl, mix 3 T of sugar & cinnamon.

6. Scoop small balls of dough & roll them in the cinnamon mixture to evenly coat the whole ball (I use a melon-ball scoop for uniformity).

A melon ball scoop = uniform cookies

Next time, I'm making a half batch. Too much dough!

7. Place on chilled baking sheet & cook for 10 minutes (10-14 minutes)

8. Move from pan to cooling rack immediately.

Soft & Delicious

We had them with some half-set Bourbon Ice Cream

*My other tie for #2 favorite cookie will be made & discussed for a future blog entry…2 batches of cookies at 1 time in our house = bad idea.

**Hello Pinterest. I now understand why the logical, responsible side of my brain resisted you for so long. You are ‘e-crack’ of an extreme magnitude…and I love you & don’t know how I lived without you for so long.

***Dear Santa & Birthday Elves—I need these cooling racks for my birthday next year. Our wide-wire ones don’t cut it. You can check out my “kitchen stuff I want board”* for additional ideas.

When you're "old"- you spend weekends doing this...

2012-01-16T22:12:00.001-05:00

When you're "old & married," you find yourself doing fun things on the weekend like wandering around home improvement stores for 2 hours, discussing & dreaming of future home improvement projects. Such an exciting life... :-)

One home improvement project we have been debating since we moved into the house nearly 2 years ago is the subject of "kitchen cabinet hardware." The prior homeowners had updated the cabinets in the kitchen with new painted wood doors & drawer fronts. They look nice, however there weren't any handles or knobs on them, which is really frustrating when your fingers are grubby from cooking & you need something out of the cabinet. We initially delayed purchasing & installing hardware because the status of a kitchen island was still in limbo. I didn't want to get hardware for the cabinets, not knowing if we would be buying a prefab island with hardware that would be hard to match.

When my parents bought us an amazing custom island last summer we could have installed hardware on all of our cabinets, but then it became an issue of finding hardware we liked.

When we were at IKEA in December, we finally settled on the hardware. It's similar to a style we liked in a hardware store, except the hardware was half the price per piece at IKEA. The hilarious thing is that we had forgotten the tally of how many knobs & pulls we needed at home...so we spent a good 20 minutes in IKEA diagramming our kitchen, referencing photos on our phones, etc to verify our count. Fun times.

We purchased the hardware in early December and then it sat in the bag until this past weekend. It wasn't that we didn't have time to install it before now, it's because with any project like this, I have to sit on it for several weeks before I commit to having holes drilled in our possessions. Sometimes I have a fear of change...

Luckily I have a husband who is very detail oriented when it comes to projects like this. Because of his awesome "measure 3 times, drill once" skills, we now have a more user-friendly & polished looking kitchen.

Now for some pictures & tips...

Overhead Cabinet Example- Before

Overhead Cabinet Example- After

Base Cabinet Example- Before

Base Cabinet Example- After (I'm still not 100% sold on this
style of pull on our funky little drawers [which shouldn't have the
decorative trim]...but whatever, the holes are now there :-) )

Island- Before

Island- After

My rock star hubster

Masking tape on the cabinet doors gives an easy place to
mark where to drill & helps contain the sawdust & helps
keep the wood from splintering.

Buy a cabinet template to help you make sure all of your
knobs & pulls are mounted in the same place.

Since we had to pull everything out of the island drawers,
I took that opportunity to alphabetically organize my spice
drawer. OCD Love.

Household Hint- improve your duvet cover

2012-01-08T19:55:00.001-05:00

To me there is nothing better than sleeping under a cozy down comforter during cold winter nights. But it is also frustrating to reach for your comforter in the middle of the night & find out that your comforter is all bunched down in the bottom of the duvet cover. This easy solution also makes it easier to put your cover on your comforter. Also, this is a perfect way to modify an old printed comforter/bedspread to use it in a duvet cover for giving a bedroom a cheap redesign or upgrade.

All you need is a spool of thread, two or four 6" pieces of ribbon, and a needle.

I used white because our new duvet cover is white. But if
you have a darker cover, the color of the supplies doesn't matter.

First step, turn your duvet cover wrong-side-out & spread it out flat on your bed (or a table) Fold 1 piece of the ribbon in half. Using the needle & thread, sew the folded ribbon into the bottom corner of the duvet. Be careful to only put stitches on the edge of the hem (you don't want the stitches to show when the cover is right-side-out).

Easy as pie. Just make sure to stitch it along the hem.

Repeat the step above with the opposite corner. Then, if the comforter you are using doesn't already have loops or ties on the corners, repeat this step with the bottom corners on the comforter. Our down comforter already had loops. So next, spread the comforter flat on top of the duvet cover.

Then tie the ribbon to the loops on the comforter. Then, all you have to do to wrestle your comforter into the cover, is to reach inside of the cover, grab a corner & pull. Repeat for the other side & shake your comforter into place within the cover.

See the sewn-in loops on the comforter (left side)

Little bow & you are done.

This is so easy, that I can't comprehend why the manufacturers don't do this from the start? But 3 of the last 4 duvet covers I've owned have been missing this feature. The reason I love to make sure the comforter is secured with ties is because it is super easy to straighten the comforter within the cover, leading to a less lumpy bed covering :-). In other news, here are 2 bad photos of our new bedding. It brightened up the room room a lot from the dark brown duvet cover that we had & it also gives us more options for sheets when we can no longer find our color of green sheets (that happen to match the curtains & lampshades...)

Back! For real...my resolutions demand it.

2012-01-06T21:31:00.002-05:00

Wow...was it really September the last time I blogged?!? One of my resolutions this year was to start back on blogging, and to average 1 post a week. Not many people read this thing, but I personally enjoyed writing the blogs & taking the photos. Life just started getting a little more chaotic towards the end of last year, and my blog was back-burner'ed (or fell behind the stove & started gathering dust bunnies & grime). I was also losing a technology war. I was taking most of the photos with my iPhone & would have to email them to myself, download them to my laptop, & then write the blogs in my free time. It was a recipe for a pile of photos to accumulate & numerous blogs to go unwritten. Now I have my photos backing up to iCloud (thanks iOS 5.0!), which makes them accessible on my laptop, & my brand new iPad. Throw in a blogging app...and maybe this will be the secret to more consistent blogging? We'll see... For now, here's a quick glimpse into the past 4 months... In October we saw the Grand Canyon...

It's amazing. I couldn't grasp how HUGE it was until I saw it.

and we saw the fountains of the Bellagio in Vegas (in my next life I want to be a fountain programmer...)...

I wasn't prepared for how loud the water was.

In Vegas we enjoyed some amazingly delicious treats from Jean Philipe Patisserie...

Raspberry Rose Tort

November rolled by...I hosted Thanksgiving, and smothered our turkey in bacon...

Definitely not Kosher...

This is my dog standing guard over the bacon turkey while it cooked...

Poor thing didn't even get a bite...

Finished turkey, half of it already sliced & served...

It seemed to be a hit...

Christmas came to our household. Per tradition, we dressed our dogs up in silly outfits. Here they are by one of our trees...

Look at their cute little butts!

My husband got an AirSwimmer shark for Christmas. Here it is circling over Bethlehem like the Goodyear Blimp (ignore the messy couch pillows)

That about catches us up :-). I will have a new recipe up soon!

Baking a Chicken…in a slow cooker (Lemony Greek Chicken in a Slow Cooker)

2011-09-14T23:11:00.000-04:00

I’m still fairly new to crockpot cooking. I bought my current crockpot on a clearance sale at Meijer 2 years ago for $7 and didn’t actually begin using it until a year ago (when our oven died & it was a couple days for the part to come in). I still do not rely on it heavily for cooking, but I do enjoy using a slow cooker on nights when I know that I’m going to have limited prep time for dinner.

When I first bought my slow cooker, I was a little surprised when the instructions told me not to cook a whole chicken in it. To me, that didn’t make sense. I also saw other information online that suggested not to bake a whole chicken in a slow cooker. Again…I couldn’t comprehend why.

So, one time when whole chickens were on a super price, I decided to experiment. It was a success.

With cooking a whole chicken in the crockpot, you have to put aside the expectation that the chicken is going to stay whole. The chicken will naturally split into pieces due to the softening of the cartilage that holds it together. But you can lift the chicken out of the crockpot by pieces, line them up on a cookie sheet, throw them under the broiler for a bit…and you are left with super juicy, super tender, & crispy skinned chicken. It will taste like slow-baked, rotisserie chicken…without the effort.

You are also left with richly flavored chicken broth, & great chicken pieces from along the back to recycle for other meals like chicken & dumplings. Just check the “scraps” in the slow cooker for bones. I will be posting a recipe soon that uses the leftover broth & chicken from this meal.

You might be asking—“Um, there is no liquid added in this recipe?” No—I don’t add any liquid when I cook whole chickens in the crockpot. Most chickens are injected with water/broth, and when you combine that with a skin layer on the bottom that begins rendering early…you end up with PLENTY of liquid in the crock pot.

Ok…enough rambling. Here’s a recipe for a Greek-inspired baked chicken that you can prep in the crockpot. You can use whatever seasoning for baked-type chicken that you want to use (feel free to check out my prior poultry listings for ideas).

Lemony Greek Chicken in a Slow Cooker

Prep time: 15 min. Cooktime: 6-9 hours. Servings: Vary

Ingredients

Ingredient Lineup

1 whole roaster or fryer chicken
2 t. dried thyme
2 t. dried oregano
2 t. garlic powder
0.5 t. dried minced garlic (or fresh equivalent)
2 T. lemon juice
1 T. olive oil (+ extra for greasing slow cooker)
0.5 t. salt
0.5 t. ground pepper

Directions

1. Add thyme, oregano, garlic, minced garlic, salt, & pepper to a small bowl. Stir ingredients. Add the 1 T. of olive oil and 2 T. lemon juice. Stir until ingredients are paste-like & well mixed. Set aside.

Spice Palette

Spice Paste--not pretty looking, but smells AMAZING

2. Remove chicken from wrapper. Remove neck, giblets, gravy packet, or any other goop that is in the cavity of the bird (NOTE—always do a cavity search on poultry—gross stuff hides in there…stuff that tastes especially gross if you cook it inside the bird…like plastic gravy packets.) Rinse bird under cool water, & pat dry with paper towels. Prop up & let it drain for a bit.

Birdy draining on a plate, ready to catch a tan...this one had
leprosy or some other skin disorder on its breast...

3. Cover the top of your bird with the seasoning paste. Feel free to slip some of the herb paste under the skin so that it more intensely flavors the meat (especially if you are going to remove the skin prior to consuming).

Slipping seasonings under poultry skin = intense flavor

4. Lightly grease the sides & bottom of a large slow cooker with olive oil. Place your seasoned bird, breast side up into the slow cooker. Cover & cook on low for 6-9 hours until tender & juices run clear.

What it looked like when I left for work...

What it looked like when I got home from work...

5. Using kitchen tongs gently remove the pieces of the bird & place skin-side-up on a large cookie sheet. Place cookie sheet under a low broiler until skin crisps. Serve & Enjoy!

Chicken pieces on the cookie sheet pre-crisping. I should
have arranged these more artfully...it was a long day. :-P

Crispy, lemony, herby & delicious

What is left in the crockpot. Remove the bones. Save the meat.
Save the broth...

Strained broth. Put a lid on it & put it in the fridge
overnight. Skim the hardened fat off of the top &
use it as chicken broth in a recipe like chicken &
dumplings.

Guinness Pot Roast

2011-08-29T23:37:00.000-04:00

Confession—growing up I hated pot roast. My mom makes EXCELLENT pot roast, so I know it was not her cooking. I’ve just never been too keen on things all cooked in one container (still fighting issues with food touching…). Over the past couple of years, I have begun to LOVE pot roast. Occasionally, I begin craving pot roast. I had such a craving this past week.

I like making pot roast in my crockpot. It’s low-maintenance and the results are usually tender & delicious. This is currently my favorite prep method. I love the depth of flavor this recipe has. I experimented with this a lot before settling on the ingredient list/amounts. When making pot roast in the slow cooker, I will slow cook the meat with a few of the vegetables all day. When I get home from work, I blend or mash the vegetables that are in the crockpot (super mushy by that point) to get a good gravy base to develop. I then add the vegetables I will be serving, so that they still have texture when it comes to dinner time.

If anything is not clear in this recipe, please let me know. It’s 11pm when I’m typing this…and there are bound to be “huh?” moments (like the double bullet points--no clue what's going on, I'll check out the HTML tomorrow)…Also, please forgive the lack of “finished product” photos. I actually made this for dinner when my mother-in-law was visiting last weekend, and I totally forgot to take a “it’s done” photo.

Guinness Pot Roast

Prep time: 15 min. Cook time: 7-9 hours. Servings Vary

Ingredients

Ingredient Lineup. Biggest Roast I've cooked...ever.

1 beef roast (cut of choice, enough meat to serve the # of people)
· 2-3 T. vegetable oil
· 2-4 T. flour
· 1 t. ground black pepper
· 1 bottle of Guinness (resist urge to drink)
· 1 package of Lipton Beefy Onion soup mix (or 2 cans of beef broth reduced in half by simmering on the stovetop)
· 2 cups pearl onions or 2 medium, wedged onions (add an extra cup of onion if not using soup mix)
· 2 stalks celery, coarsely chopped
· 2 bay leaves
· 2-3 cloves minced fresh garlic (or dried equivalent)
· Potatoes (based on # of people serving)
· Baby Carrots (based on # of people serving)
· [optional] 0.5 t. dried thyme
· [optional] Salt, as needed
· [optional] Corn starch slurry or potato buds to thicken gravy

Directions

1. Heat oil in a large skillet. Coat roast in flour & black pepper. Brown roast on all sides in the oil. Remove roast from pan & place in the bottom of a large slow cooker. Surround the roast with some of the vegetables. I typically peel & cut up 1 potato. I then add a handful of baby carrots, 1-2 cups of pearl onions, the garlic & the celery. Sprinkle the onion soup mix over the vegetables & roast. Pour the Guinness over the contents in the pan. Add the bay leaves & thyme. Cover & refrigerate overnight, or immediately begin cooking the roast.

Brown roast in pan

Layer in some veg.

Add some more veg & the powdered soup mix.

Pour in beer, add herbs & prep for deliciousness

2. Cook roast in the slow cooker on low for 5-7 hours.

3. [Optional] Remove roast & bay leaves from the broth. Transfer the broth & vegetables to a blender, or using an immersion blender, blend the vegetables & broth until smooth.

Roast after 5 hours.

Using one of my favorite kitchen weapons...

Roast back in the broth, ready to get a heaping mound of onions,
potatoes & carrots added to it...and finished off for a delicious dinner.
Imagine that there are more photos... :-/

4. Return roast to the broth & add remaining vegetables. Cook on low for an additional 1-2 hours.

5. Remove roast & vegetables from the slow cooker. Serve gravy, or use a corn starch slurry or potato buds to thicken gravy to desired consistency.

Back...For Real!

2011-08-29T23:01:00.001-04:00

Ok--I'm back...for real.

I let the blog slip by without a post for this past month...but no worries, I have a HUGE backlog of recipes & photos to post over the next couple of weeks.

Brief explanation of a few things that have been going on this month (there's more, these are just the major points):

1. We had our first garage sale. My mom joined us for the adventure. It was 3 fun-filled days of sitting in our garage on lawn chairs, eating takeout & people-watching while people rummaged through our old treasures. Overall we made pretty decent money, although we still have a few large items we need to Craigslist so we can make room to actually park cars in our garage this winter. I did think it was highly comical the number of people who were shopping through garage sales simply looking for gold & silver. My favorite is how sneaky they were trying to be. But when you break out a magnifying glass…not so sneaky.

My favorite part of the garage sale was our squirrel shopper. We have a TON of squirrels around our house. In the late morning, while the garage sale was quiet & patron-free, a skinny little squirrel came to browse. I have a sneaking suspicion that he plays on our driveway during the day while we are at work. He casually walked around our driveway, looked over at us sitting in our lawn chairs, and then went back to his browsing. He then saw his reflection in the glass of an entertainment center & his tail puffed up. After a few seconds of challenging himself in the glass, he walked behind the entertainment center to look for the other squirrel, and then ran off on his merry way. I’m still disappointed that he didn’t buy anything…

Little Squirrel--Big Tail

2. I bought a new car! I have investigated different cars for the past 5 years. I knew I wanted something new/newer, but I just couldn’t find a vehicle that I was willing to commit to the car payments. I knew I wanted something in the small SUV/crossover class of vehicles, because it was similar to what I was used to driving. I thought I had investigated about everything in that class, but when I was in Florida, I saw a commercial for the Mazda CX-7. I thought, “That’s Cute,” and I liked the financing offers that they were advertising. When we were driving back from Florida, I was passed by a Mazda CX-7 on the interstate, and I thought “Wow, That’s Really Cute and Fast!” When I got back from Florida, I started investigating the CX-7. I liked the features & options…and absolutely loved the styling of the vehicle. July turned to August, and the revised financing deal on the CX-7 became even more enticing. One test drive and I was sold. I LOVE my new car. The funny thing is that until a month ago I had never considered getting a Mazda. For some reason I thought they only made sporty small cars, sedans, & a minivan… Apparently I was wrong.

I still have to name my car though…any suggestions?

My new baby. I love her.

3. I sold my old car… It’s bittersweet. I got my Jeep Cherokee as a graduation gift from my parents my senior year of high school. I had a lot of fun in that car. It carried my piles of stuff to and from college each year. It carried me on adventures with my friends, like spring breaks, college road trips, and midnight shopping trips. It was around for my first dates, first loves & first heartbreaks. It was an excellent vehicle. However, I had grown to loathe the poor gas mileage & other inconveniences…which was becoming more loathsome with each 30-minute-each-way daily commute. So after getting my new vehicle, we cleaned up my car & posted it on Craigslist. Within 7 hours, we had over 28 emails/phonecalls about the Jeep. We actually ended up selling it that night to the first person who looked at it, and I sold it for only $200 less than my asking price, which was more than the Kelly Blue Book Value for the car. Not too Shabby…although selling a vehicle on Craigslist is an interesting experience. We had some “interesting” phone calls & voicemails about the vehicle…my favorite was the male chauvinistic jerk who asked me “Don’t you have a husband I can talk to…” Fun times, in retrospect, I really should have given that guy a verbal lesson about the year 2011…

I'll miss you my friend...thanks for the memories.

It was sad scraping my sorority sticker & college parking permits off of the windows though. It was like ripping off the final Band-Aid of my youth.

My ChiO sticker had seen better days...oh, the symbolism.

I’m now officially an adult.

To help me feel a little younger...

We went to a private party at the zoo...it was a blast.

I dressed my mini schnauzer up like Elliot from ET. Schnauzer Pride = Wounded

Sorry for the Hiatus...I ran away again

2011-07-31T21:41:00.000-04:00

I just got back from a great road trip with my mom to Florida. When I was in college we used to drive to Florida every year for a Mother-Daughter week, but we haven't been able to make a trip in recent years. We had a great week, I got a bit of a tan on my pale self, & we had a blast. I'm excited to be back at home with my Hubs & our dogs.

I didn't have a steady internet connection on vacation, so I fell behind on blogging. I have several posts in mind that should go up later this week.

I'll finish this super-short post with a picture of a gorgeous Florida sunset...

Our New Island Oasis

2011-07-19T22:06:00.000-04:00

When we bought our house a little over a year ago, I fell in love with the tri-level floor plan. I also fell in love with the amount of space the kitchen had, considering the house was built in 1979. It also has a good amount of counter space--but not that much of the counter space is located by the stove. The prior owners had a pub height table in the middle of the kitchen, so I knew that there would be room enough for a small island to go in that spot one day.

The day we moved into our house, my mom went out to the store and bought us a card table & folding chairs to put in the kitchen as a space holder. The main reason for this was that there are lights at the PERFECT height for my forehead in the middle of the area--meaning I had already slammed my forehead into the glass lights 3-4 times within the first 2 hours of owning the house. Ouch.

That card table has been the platform to serve several holiday meals (i.e. Mother's Day & Thanksgiving) & to hold the food for our parties and gatherings. But due to the short height & the flimsy structure, it was difficult to do much food prep on.

We lived with the card table for over a year while we were researching various options for the island (prefab, build with recycled cabinets, have it built, etc). A few months ago my parents offered a very generous gift--to let us design & build a custom island for our kitchen for our first anniversary. While we felt guilty accepting such a huge gift, we were really excited.

What we were doing before...

To help us mock out the footprint of our island, my dad gave us a TV box to put on top of the table that was roughly the size of the surface of the island we were thinking would work well in the space, along with being the similar combined height of a counter. The TV box stayed on the card table in our kitchen for 1-2 months...it was always fun to explain to people why we had a cardboard box in our kitchen.

"Is that a..?" "Why Yes...it is a cardboard
box in our kitchen."

The design process was really fun. We ended up going with one large cabinet section with a shelf on the bottom & 2 huge drawers on top that have "soft close" mechanisms on them (impossible to slam them shut, they close slowly). The cabinet is painted the same shade of white that the rest of our cabinets are painted, and it is trimmed with the same style of bead board that is used in our family room & guest bathroom. We had it topped with restaurant grade stainless steel. We bought these stools from Crate & Barrel to finish off the look.

We. Love. Our. Island. We had the option of about any type of counter top material we wanted...but I wanted to go with stainless. A) Heat Resistant B) Stain Resistant C) Break Resistant D) Super Sanitary. It is also a great work surface to do things like candy/chocolate making or bread kneading. The only con is that it scratches easily...but once it gets a little more wear on it, that won't be noticeable at all.

I am so grateful for this wonderful gift...and the years of enjoyment we are going to get out of the island. Thank you Mom & Dad!!

New Island: View 1

New Island: View 2

New Island: View 3

Bottom Cabinet--Yay for pot & pan storage close to the stove!!

Closeup of the pan side of the cabinet.
As a side note, the pan stacker/organizer
from Rubbermaid (bottom left) is awesome,
and I highly suggest you get one.

Drawer 1: Yay for my spices being away from the heat of
the stove! I can't wait to finish organizing this drawer.
Eventually all of the spices will be in the same type of bottles,
and in alphabetical order.

Drawer #2...organization still a work in progress.

Demonstration of the "soft close" drawers

Sugar Cookies that Keep their Shape--and are fun to decorate!

2011-07-18T20:29:00.000-04:00

Sometimes it is incredibly fun to kick back on a Friday night & do the things you liked to do as a kid...like decorate cookies.

We've been running the family reunion gauntlet these past couple weeks. For our dessert contribution both weeks, we have taken sugar cookies that we decorated, giving us the excuse to decorate cookies two weeks in a row. Fun times!

A couple weeks ago at Ikea we picked up a fun set of cookie cutters that I couldn't wait to use. It's not everyday that you come across hedgehog, squirrel & snail cookie cutters.

For making the cookies I could have taken the easy way out & bought a roll of Pillsbury pre-made dough...but in my experience, that dough spreads WAY too much when baking the the cookies lose their fun shapes. So I did a little Google searching and came across this cookie recipe from KittenCal. I combined these cookies with a standard royal icing recipe...and overall I think we were pretty successful in our cookie making skills.

These cookies were a hit with children & adult alike at both family reunions. More pictures are at the end of this post.

The verdict--This is a pretty good sugar cookie recipe and the cookies mostly retain their shape while baking. I anticipate playing with the flavoring & sugar ratios in the future, and can't wait to make a batch that has small-flake unsweetened coconut added to the cookie dough. Yum.

Additional Suggested Tools: plastic bags, food dyes, icing tips [optional], synthetic bristle paintbrushes [optional], toothpicks [optional]

Buttery Cutout Sugar Cookies by KittenCal
Recipe source: food.com, Prep time: 8 min, refrigeration: 1-2 hours, Cook time: 4-6 min/batch

Ingredients

Ingredient Lineup

1 cup butter, softened (2 sticks, no substitutions)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 t. vanilla
1/2 t. almond extract
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder & salt. Set aside.

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and almond extract. Mix with electric mixer on medium speed until light & fluffy.

Dry ingredients on the left, butter/egg ingredients on the right.

Fluffy butter/egg/sugar mixture post mixing.

3. Using a rubber spatula, fold the flour mixture into the butter mixture in small increments, until all ingredients are combined. Press the dough down into the bowl & cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 1-2 hours to let the dough cool back down & set.

Assembled dough. Cover it up & pop it in the fridge to cool
back down & let the butter fat re-solidify

4. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

5. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

6. Lightly flour your work surface & rub a rolling pin with flour. Move the cookie dough to your work surface & roll out until approximately 1/4 inch thick. Cut cookies with cookie cutters. Place cookies approximately 1-2 inches apart on the cookie sheets.

Roll it out Don't forget to put flour on your rolling pin.

Stamp out the cookies.

7. Bake 4-6 minutes until done & edges get slightly golden brown. Remove cookies from oven & move to cooling racks. When cool, ice cookies with the frosting of your choice.

Tanning cookies

Cooked cookies...Move to a rack & let them cool.

Royal Icing
Prep time: 3 min

Ingredients

3 T. meringue powder or powdered egg whites*
4 cups confectioners' sugar
6 T. water
Lemon juice

Directions

1. In a large mixing bowl, mix the egg whites, sugar & water on medium speed until icing gets thick and glossy (approximately 3-5 minutes). Add lemon juice until icing reaches desired consistency (I add lemon juice until the icing is still thick, but has a little bit of fluid movement to it).

Powdered sugar, powdered egg whites & water

Glossy royal icing (with half of it already moved to bags
before I thought of taking a picture)

2. Using a large rubber spatula, move spoonfuls of icing to individual plastic bags (with or without icing tips). Color with food dye and ice cookies. Be very careful to not expose the icing to too much air, as it dries very quickly. Ice & set cookies aside to dry. When dry, cookies can be stacked on a platter. Keep covered with plastic wrap. (*You can use the equivalent of fresh egg whites, however powdered egg whites have been pasteurized so you are not running a salmonella/e.coli risk.)

Add an icing tip to a plastic zip top bag, or cut the corner off
of the bag. It works both ways (I personally prefer the ease of
control with icing tips)

Spoon 1-2 spoonfuls of icing into each bag

Add food dye & squeeze to mix

Our icing lineup

Blue bear (Hubs creation)

Hipster waffle-shell snail (my creation)

Harry Potter Snail (Hubs Creation)

Roadkill Fox (Hubs Creation-- this guy got smushed while cooking)

Tie-dye Hedgehog (Hubs creation)

Happy Snail

Polar bear cookie & a hedgehog with sunglasses

Hipster hedgehog

Tripped out snail

Toothpicks and paintbrushes help a lot

Moose in leg casts (Hubs creation--the poor creature's legs broke off)

Lippy Snail (Hubs creation)

Purple Squirrel (Hubs creation)

Happy Hedgehog

Wacky State Fair Foods are On Their Way [and I get nauseated just looking at the photos]

2011-07-15T18:13:00.000-04:00

Reading the local news at Indystar.com this morning, I came across the news article that is written every year at around this time…an article I LOVE to Loathe.

It’s the article that begins the announcement of the “wacky & weird” State Fair foods for this year. This article reaches the paper mid-July each year, without fail, and will be the 1st in a series of 3-4 articles on this topic. They are the articles that anticipate the booths that will have the forever-ly long lines, serving up crazy concoctions that look & sound like something some stoned college student with severe munchies cooked up after a night of partying. “Hey, I know what sounds like a good idea, lets fry Eggos in Captain Crunch & throw a fried chicken breast on it, man!”

Now I’ve been to the Indiana State Fair almost every year since I moved to Indiana when I was 5 years old. My dad & I usually make a father-daughter date out of it & have a grand old time (one of my favorite traditions). We walk around & look at the different animals, scope out the old tractors, play a price-guessing game on the new, HUGE farm equipment, watch the Percheron & Clydesdale cart competitions…things like that. And yes, we have our meals at the State Fair while we are there. For our meals we do things like grab a pork chop sandwich at the Pork Producer’s Tent, or maybe get a rib eye Sandwich from the Beef Producer’s Tent. We’re known to grab a simple meal early in the day of a Swiss cheese on rye grilled cheese sandwich & a COLD glass of milk from the Dairy Bar concession stand. And, self-admittedly, the state fair is one of the few times each year that I cave & have a genuine, mystery-meat, nitrate-loaded hot dog, but I take it a step farther and get one that has been dipped in corn batter & fried to golden deliciousness. Mmmm…corn dogs.

Photo courtesy of the Indiana State Fair

But rarely in my 20-something odd years of going to the State Fair have I tried the “state fair foods of the year.” To me, they frequently sound either a) disgusting, b) like a heart attack on a paper plate, or c) too gimmicky to possibly be Any Good. Combine that with long lines & ridiculous costs…you can count me out. (Also—see my vent on Taste of Chicago…depending on the day at the state fair, the “perfect storm of misery” can occur there too).

I can say that 2 years ago, my husband convinced me to try one of the Gimmicky Fair Foods—chocolate covered bacon. I love chocolate, I love bacon…it wasn’t that difficult of a stretch to get me to try it. It was “ok”…but I could have made it better at home by using crispy bacon & using a higher-quality chocolate as a base for the dip as opposed to the limp bacon & waxy bland chocolate used by the food vendor. I definitely don’t think it was worth the $3-5 dollars we probably paid for it. If you want a delicious bacon chocolate option, get a Mo’s dark chocolate bacon bar (oddly, the only place I have found them locally is Whole Foods.). Want to talk about the best PMS food ever?—forget chocolate covered pretzels…go with the dark chocolate bacon bar.

So in my usual status of skepticism/sarcasm about these types of wacky fair foods…Grab your gall bladder and join me as I break down the first 5 announced “2011 Indiana State Fair Foods.” All 5 items were created by concessionaires Dennis & Cheryl Reas of Corydon, IN, who are the same people who brought the Krispy Cream Doughnut Burger to the Indiana State Fair last year.

The first 5 announced “2011 Indiana State Fair Foods”

(Feel free to express or defend your position in the comments below…I’m open to wavering on my opinion about a couple of these)

1. The Deep-Fried Klondike Bar

Photo courtesy of IndyStar.com

Indystar.com description: “The chocolate-coated vanilla ice cream is dipped in batter, then added to hot oil. Sprinkle on some powdered sugar, just in case it’s not sweet enough.”

So deep-fried Snickers, Oreos, Reese’s cups, Twinkies, & cookie dough…those weren’t enough? We now have deep-fried Klondike bars? Great. The only positive I can see about this one, is that it might be the ultimate solution for avoiding little pieces of chocolate from flying off of a Klondike bar while you are eating it. You know the plaques of chocolate that chip off, fall on your clothes & instantly melt, or fall on your off-white carpet & immediately mate with the carpet fibers? Other than that, to me it sounds like a “Tempura Ice cream fiasco.” You are going to get a super-melty slab of ice cream, coated in chocolate that is potentially runny/molten (because its meant to be consumed cold), covered in a doughy, most likely undercooked layer of batter that can’t reach a crispy, golden status without totally obliterating the ice cream slab underneath. To top it off, it looks like it comes on a stick. No thanks, I’ll pass.

2. The Chicken Eggo Sandwich

Photo courtesy of IndyStar.com

Indystar.com description: “It’s a chicken breast with a Cap’n Crunch cereal breading between two Eggo waffles.”

Ok…I get what they are going for here. Chicken & Waffles are kind of a popular topic/dish in the part-time-foodie underworld right now. I’m sure if you go to Chowhound.com you can find several posts from across the country debating the merits of various Chicken & Waffle joints. This dish is potentially riding on the coattails of that trend before it fizzles out completely (if it hasn’t already?). This dish also appeals to the kids through 35-year-olds that were raised on the ready-made, out of the box breakfast delights of Eggo & Cap’n Crunch. Of the 5 dishes, this is 1 of the 2 I could potentially debate would maybe be worth trying. From the picture, it looks like they pulverize the Cap’n Crunch into a mostly fine dust for the breading, & potentially add some herbs & seasonings. While Cap’n Crunch breading has definitely been done numerous times before (anyone else remember the chicken tenders at the Indianapolis Planet Hollywood when it existed?), if done correctly & blended with other flour/breadcrumbs to knock down the sweetness…it can be good. What kind of worries me in this photo is the way the Eggos look. Are those fried? I never had Eggos out of the box growing up that looked like that. Dubious…

3. French Toast Hamburger

Photo courtesy of IndyStar.com

Indy star description: “Toast gets the usual egg wash, plus a Cap’n Crunch breading, with a burger between slices. Add bacon, lettuce, tomato, pickle, onion and other toppings for added taste.”

This is the 2^nd of the 5 announced foods that I can see a little bit of merit. Really, this sandwich has been done. It’s a basically a Monte Cristo made with hamburger instead of ham. The only difference is that they use the Cap’n Crunch batter (most likely out of the same pot as for #2 above) to give it a little crunch. I’m guessing though, that instead of a griddle cooking, this toast gets tossed the deep fryer for a greasy finish too. But overall, this one isn’t as scary to me…

4. Deep Fried Kool-Aid

Photo courtesy of IndyStar.com

Indy star description: “Deep-fried Kool-Aid looks like red hush puppies, but tastes like the cherry-flavored drink mix.”

Ok…this is just craziness. Just call it a cherry Kool-Aid flavored doughnut or do what the supermarket does & call it a cherry doughnut. If you want to call something “deep fried kool-aid,” institute molecular gastronomy & find a way to encapsulate it and give it a crispy breading. It reminds me of the “deep fried butter” craze of last year (which I’m sure all of the local cardiologists loved). I personally did not have deep fried butter, but by all reports it was just a fried doughnut with a super greasy doughy center. That irritated me—if you are going to proclaim it as “deep fried butter”…find a way to make it hold up as the center. Maybe freeze-dry, powder & pellet-ize it?

Want something fun to do with Kool-Aid that you could feed a dozen people with for approximately the same cost of what one serving of this fair food might cost? Mix a packet of kool-aid-- cherry, grape, whatever you want-- into home-made milkshakes. Delicious…and you get calcium. Win-Win.

5. Ice Cream Burger

Photo courtesy of IndyStar.com

Indystar description: “From top to bottom, it’s a hamburger bun, Mexican ice cream coated with corn flakes and cinnamon, the sandwich toppings, a cheese-covered beef patty with the same coating, and another bun.”

And I thought the doughnut burger of last year was bad. Back to the hypothetical college stoner conversation above, I’m pretty sure this conversation would go like this: “Mmmm…you know what I bet is good? Ice cream on a burger! Cheese is kind of like cream?—but lets put cheese on it too! Oooh…and let’s fry it! Dude—I think you’re on to something!”

Seriously. When I first read “ice cream burger” before getting to the description & photograph, I thought—Aww, a playful twist on an ice cream sandwich that is reminiscent of a hamburger in structure & appearance. Um no…they freaking put a scoop of ice cream on a fried cheese burger. Blech.

Really…I don’t think I have to say anything for this one…it kind of speaks for it’s self. I’m picturing an overly messy, overly greasy, muddled temperature, sickingly sweet burger that instantly makes you want to crawl under a rock somewhere & hide out of shame for eating it.

What are your thoughts for these “culinary” offerings at the state fair this year? I’d love to hear others’ opinions…

I bought a huge chunk of beef (Pan Seared Garlic Rosemary Beef Tips)

2011-07-14T22:54:00.001-04:00

Nothing makes you feel more gluttonous than buying a $52 piece of meat. But when that chunk of meat is normally $115 dollars...and it will make roughly 10 meals worth of protein for 2 people...and when that chunk of meat is beef tenderloin (aka filet)...it was worth it (I did sit there staring at it for about 10 minutes in the store before finally committing & putting it in the cart).

Last week Kroger had whole beef tenderloins on sale for over half off their normal price. Beef tenderloin is super lean, super tender, & super flavorful...and is normally super expensive. So I splurged & bought one. I came home & cut it into 12 good sized filet steaks & 3 meals worth of beef tips off of the tapered ends of the tenderloin. Most of it was individually packaged & was placed in the deep freeze for later use.

This is what I did with some of the tenderloin tips for dinner last night, I served it with sauteed vegetables fresh from our garden.

Pan Seared Garlic-Rosemary Beef Tips
Prep time: 5 min, Cook time: 5-8 minutes, Serves 2

Ingredients

Ingredient Lineup

10-12 ounces of lean beef, cut into 2" cubes (i.e. tenderloin or sirloin)
1/2 t. fresh rosemary, minced finely
1 t. olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced finely
salt & ground pepper to taste

Directions

1. Toss meat in olive oil, rosemary & garlic.

2. Rub a cast iron skillet or stainless steel skillet with a light coating of olive oil & heat over high heat.

Searing away...

3. Put meat in the skillet, sear on each side for approximately 1.5 minutes or until desired doneness. Remove from skillet & let rest for 5 minutes. Garnish with salt & pepper, and serve.

Garlic-rosemary beef tips & sauteed vegetables.

Garden Saute--fresh from our garden

2011-07-13T21:27:00.001-04:00

Our garden is beginning to kick out a lot of produce...and I'm really excited by that! Not only do super fresh veggies taste better, they help to save a ton of money off of my grocery bill. It's looking like we are going to have a bumper crop of squash, zucchini & green beans. I have a feeling I will be doing a lot of flash-freezing of veggies in the next few weeks.

This was tonight's harvest. Nothing like something being on the vine & then in my skillet 5 minutes later...

Fresh picked goodness

This is a recipe I came up with a few years ago when I was getting squash for super cheap at Meijer. Now that we have our own squash source, it will be on the menu frequently this summer. I make this both with & without mushrooms...depending on what I have in my fridge.This recipe is gluten free & can be vegetarian if you omit the parmesan cheese.

Garden Saute
Prep time= 5 min, Cook time= 8-10 minutes, Serves 4-6

Ingredients

Ingredient lineup...minus the basil

2 T. olive oil (can reduce to 1 T.)
1-3 small summer squash
1-3 small zucchini squash
1 cup green beans
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 medium yellow onion
Handful of button or baby bella mushrooms, halved [optional]
1 T. red wine vinegar
1 t. oregano, dried
1/2 t. ground white pepper
3-4 leaves fresh basil, thinly sliced (approximately 2 t.)
2 T. shredded parmesan [optional]
salt [optional]

Directions

1. Rinse & coarsely chop the squash, zucchini, & onion.

I like to cut the zucchini in half & then slice it...it doesn't
roll around on the plate that way...

Slice the onion into large wedges

2. Preheat olive oil over medium-high heat in a wok or large skillet.

3. Add the garlic & onions, and cook for 1-2 minutes.

Onion & garlic cooking in the wok...

4. Add the squash, zucchini, green beans & mushrooms. Top with the red wine vinegar, oregano, white pepper, & basil. Cook, stirring frequently, for 6-8 minutes, or until vegetables reach desired doneness.

Cook & stir...

until tender & it starts to caramelize...

5. Move vegetables to a serving dish & sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Sprinkle with salt if desired. Serve & enjoy.

Delicious

I served the garden saute with pan seared
garlic rosemary beef tenderloin tips.

Korean BBQ Stir Fry (Bulgogi style)

2011-07-12T21:33:00.000-04:00

This recipe was given to my mom over 2 decades ago by a neighbor we had in Minnesota. I randomly got it from my mom via email the other day & thought it was a sign to make it. :-)

I used this marinade for a spicy beef stir fry that we had for dinner tonight--but you could also use this sauce as the basis for BBQ ribs/beef cooking methods described in this recipe. I paired it with Asian slaw, but this beef would also be delicious with broccoli & rice.

Bulgogi- Korean Style BBQ
Prep time= 8 min, Marination= 2-24 hours, Cook time= 5-10 min, 4 Servings

Photo's a little washed out...but it was tasty.

Ingredients

Ingredient Lineup (minus the chili oil & sesame seeds. I'm out
of sesame seeds & forgot to put the chili oil in the photo)

There's my chili oil...

1 pound lean beef (i.e. sirloin, roast)
2 T brown sugar
4 T soy sauce
2 T sesame oil (can substitute vegetable oil or use half vegetable oil)
1 t. sesame seeds [optional]
1 medium green onion, chopped
3/4 t. garlic powder
1/2 t. ground black pepper
1/2 t. hot chili oil [optional]

Directions

1. Cut beef against the grain into thin strips. Place strips in a large zip top bag. Place other ingredients in the bag. Seal the bag & toss to evenly coat all of the strips. Open the bag & squeeze out the excess air. Place the bag in a bowl or on a plate in the fridge for 2-24 hours (longer = better).

Cut into thin strips...

All the ingredients in the bag...

Toss, remove excess air, & seal...

2. Remove bag from the fridge & place on counter. Let it warm up for 10-15 minutes.

Post approximately 18 hours of marinating...

3. Preheat a skillet over medium-high heat. Pour the meat & marinade into the skillet. Stirfry over high heat until meat reaches desired doneness. Either a) remove the beef from the skillet or b) move it to one side of the skillet, & boil the sauce until it thickens. Toss the meat in the sauce & serve.

Rapidly reduce the sauce...

Serve & Enjoy

Sauteed Asparagus and Blender Hollandaise Sauce

2011-07-11T21:40:00.000-04:00

I love asparagus. I can't wait until we can get our own asparagus bed started so we can grow our own (on the charts for a future lawn project). While Hollandaise isn't a healthy sauce to pair with asparagus...they do taste fabulous together.

This version of Hollandaise is Quick & Easy. Using a small food processor or a blender, this sauce comes together in 5 minutes. I never make Hollandaise from the packets anymore, because it tastes lame next to this version, is highly processed & is more expensive per serving.

Quick, Embarrassing Confession-- Up until 2 years ago, I didn't realize that those little holes on the lids of blenders were for streaming ingredients into the blender while it is working. Is that weird? For some reason I always thought they were vents for the stuff you were blending. So in case you are in the same boat as I was--you can stream stuff into the blender from those little holes in the lid (available on most blenders). "Now you know."

If you are worried about the eggs in this recipe (particularly if you are pregnant, have immune system issues, or young children), you can move this sauce to a double boiler to heat to a higher temperature. Just watch it carefully to watch for sticking, scalding, or lumps forming. You could also microwave it for 5-10 seconds at a time, stirring between "nukes" until desired temperature (just watch out for lumps forming).

Sauteed Asparagus
Prep time 5 min, Cook time 5-8 min, Serves 2-3

Ingredients

Sauteed Asparagus Ingredient Lineup

1 pound fresh asparagus, rinsed & ends trimmed
1 T. extra virgin olive oil
ground pepper, to taste
Kosher salt, to taste
1 dash of lemon juice

Directions

1. Preheat oil over medium-high heat in a medium skillet. Add asparagus to the oil & toss to coat. Sprinkle with salt & pepper.

Tongs work great for tossing the asparagus around the pan

2. Saute for 2-3 minutes, turning asparagus frequently, drizzle with lemon juice, & then saute until desired tenderness.

3. Remove from pan, serve.

Blender Hollandaise Sauce

Modified from a recipe found at Allrecipes.com. Makes 3/4-1 cups Hollandaise

Ingredients

I use my Cuisinart mini prep...perfect for this task

3 egg yolks
1 dash hot sauce (I use Louisiana)
1 T. lemon juice
1/2 cup butter

Directions

1. In a blender or food processor, pulse the egg yolks, hot sauce & lemon juice until well blended.

Ingredients in the processor, ready to rumble

What the blended egg yolks, lemon juice &
hot sauce looks like...

2. Using a glass measuring cup, melt the butter in the microwave until boiling hot. Stream the butter into the blender/food processor. Sauce will thicken & look lemony in color.

Stream butter in while blending...

Stream hot butter in while blending...

3. Serve immediately, or move to a double broiler to hold warm until serving.

Delicious.

Chicago...Day 3

2011-07-11T20:36:00.002-04:00

[Continued from Day 1 & Day 2...]

Warning--Super Long Post with No Photos (a post that contains a vent about bizarre parenting strategies & a horrid experience at "Taste of Chicago.")

Sunday morning we slept in a bit, got ready, packed up our stuff & headed out for breakfast. Since we were on a slight time-crunch to meet the check out deadline at our hotel, we decided to just walk around the corner to Einstein Bros Bagels for breakfast. It had been >5 years since I had had Einstein’s for breakfast, & the Hubs had never had one of their breakfast sandwiches. Mission= successful.

After breakfast we walked back to the hotel, checked-out, & meandered back to the Millennium Park Garage to drop our suitcases off at the car. Then we caught a bus down to the Museum of Science and Industry…because we had a date with some dead people.

The Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago is my favorite museum, ever. You know how when you were a little kid & you would dream about getting locked in a zoo, museum, theme park, etc overnight so you could play with everything & not wait in line? MSI was my “lock in” dream, and I still dream about getting to do that at MSI. Honestly I think they should have “kid free” evening hours, so the adults get more chances to play with all of the things in there (“what do you mean I should give priority for this exhibit to kids?” whatever). It is seriously awesome. They had 2 new large exhibits there that were new since the last time we had visited 3 years ago. The first one—“Science Storms,” was Amazing. It was all about different storms & natural disasters, the science behind them, with some of the best hands-on demonstration exhibits I have EVER seen in a museum. Plus there was a 3 story tall “tornado” in the middle of the exhibit. Incredibly fun—and educational. Everyone wins! The other new exhibit was the “You! The Experience” exhibit, which was all about the human body, our perceptions, our “neat human tricks” & other things along those lines. It also featured several plasticized human body parts & systems, like what you can see in the Body Worlds exhibit (read below). This is the exhibit I REALLY wished we could have kicked the kids out of so we could have played with everything…

The actual reason we went to MSI this trip was for the Body Worlds exhibit. The Hubs & I had already been to one of the Body Worlds exhibits when it traveled through St. Louis a few years back. We loved it. While it is a really heavy thing to understand that what you are looking at are the physical bodies of people that once walked this Earth…it is still an amazing view into the complexity & artful-being of the human body. These are highly fascinating exhibits that I think most adults should see.

Notice I said “Adults” above…while I think there is a hefty percentage of pre-teens & teens that could handle viewing a Body Worlds Exhibit (& potentially some well-educated upper grade school kids), many younger children are not equipped emotionally/educationally to deal with the heaviness of these exhibits.

Parents, please do not take your kids that are <8 years old into a Body Worlds exhibit, unless you are 100% sure about their abilities to view, understand, & cope with what they are seeing.

Parents, please do not take your minors that are >8 years old into a Body Worlds exhibit, unless you are 100% sure about their abilities to view, understand & cope with what they are seeing, and if you are 100% sure about your abilities to answer any questions or engage in the conversations that may result from their viewing of the exhibit. For example, there were 2 parents (presumably doctors by how they were talking & their knowledge base) that took their approximately 7 & 10 year old sons through the exhibit while we were there. It was obvious by how the kids were talking that the parents had talked about the exhibit with them in advance (& potentially investigated the website first). It was also obvious that the 2 boys had a very strong understanding of the human body, diseases, & the “facts of life” walking into the exhibit, judging by the questions they were asking, & their speed of identifying organs/organ systems. Those 2 kids were fine…but…

Parents, if you have a 3 year old in the Body Worlds exhibit with you who is hyper-ventilating, sobbing “no Mommy, no Daddy, no, no”, & trying to hide his face in your legs…take him out of the exhibit. How did these parents respond instead?--they physically forced the child to turn around & look at the plasticized dead people, picking him up so that he was eye level with the sculptures. Seriously…true story. It was heartbreaking how upset that poor little kid was…and I would argue that those actions are on par with child abuse.

Parents, if you have a 12 year old with you who is isolating herself in the corner saying/screaming “No Dad, I don’t want to know what that is. You can’t make me look at that. No, I don’t want to know what that is! Let’s go” and looking seriously troubled/traumatized, as you are trying to point out cross sections of a human brain or the male genitalia to her…well…you sir are a horrible parent. She will probably remember that event as she’s making the choice between a high-class or low-budget nursing home for you in the future… Just saying.

But what if you want to view the Body Worlds exhibit…and you happen to have a kid along with you? In both situations above, there were 2 parents in the exhibit with the upset children. What is wrong with 1 parent viewing the exhibit, while the other parent takes the kid(s) to view an exhibit appropriate for their age? Then handoff the kid(s), so the other parent could see the exhibit? Plus—you would save a good chunk of money that way too…

People amaze me sometimes…but at least their kids will be supporting the field of psychiatry for another generation?...

After we headed out of MSI, we wandered back up to Grant Park to see Buckingham Fountain. I have been to Chicago several times in the spring/summer…but I haven’t seen the fountain while it was running (renovations, off-timing, etc). So we thought we would do a quick dash by the fountain on the way back to the car…Wrong. We found out that “Taste of Chicago” was still going on…Since we needed lunch, & because I know a few people that enjoy journeying up to Chicago to partake in “Taste of Chicago”…we thought that could be a fun thing to do for lunch since we were already at the park...

WRONG. I’m pretty sure I can chalk “Taste of Chicago” to the top of my “Worst Experiences in Chicago” list (above any amount of time that I’ve spent on the Magnificent Mile). It. Was. Miserable. Granted, it was (1) HOT, (2) A Holiday weekend, & (3) The last day of the festival…and I’m pretty sure that those 3 factors align to create the perfect storm of misery for any outdoors festival/fair. However, Taste of Chicago was a particularly miserable experience for me.

Picture this scenario…it’s hot. You are standing in the middle of a 4 lane road that has been closed down, corralled by tents lining the perimeter, the smell of grease & stale booze, and an endless swarm of sweaty, rude people. People that are walking in large groups, 8 people wide, embodying the philosophy of a well-tuned NFL Defensive line--“We Shall Not Let You Pass.” Strollers ripping into your ankles & calves, you struggle to walk. You are a person who is not usually a fan of crowds, but you can tolerate them…until you catch the 4^th elbow to your gut. You are like a fish swimming against the current, but everywhere you turn is against the current. Someone gets a free sample of cranberry juice, & then throws the half full glass at your feet instead of in the trashcan 5 feet away…making for sticky Tevas for the rest of your stay in Hades....

Do you get the picture of why I was not a fan of Taste of Chicago?

For $16.00, the Hubs & I had: 2 slices of sausage patty deep dish pizza from Lou Malnati’s, a taste portion of chicken & vegetable pot stickers from a Vietnamese food vendor, a taste portion of a Chicago-style dog from Vienna Beef, and a taste portion of beignets from a Cajun food vendor. We also had several free samples of Sierra Mist, Pepsi Max, & Ocean Spray cranberry beverages to wash it all down with…

Oddly—we didn’t get that close to Buckingham Fountain during our “Taste of Chicago” experience (fountain = right next to festival). By the time we finished the last bite of beignet—I was d-o-n-e with Taste of Chicago. With the mental reserve of a star NFL running back, I broke the defensive lines of the sweaty mob (utilizing my crowd-parting skills I picked up in the Broad Ripple bars during college)…and high-tailed it back to the car. Never. Ever. Again. I’m glad to say I’ve been…but I won’t be back to Taste of Chicago.

We then headed out of downtown & towards Bolingbrook, IL. Why?---IKEA.

The IKEA in Bolingbrook is the 2^nd closest IKEA to Indianapolis, after the one in West Chester, OH, by Cincinnati (IKEA—please build a store in Indy or offer online shopping?). Unfortunately we only had an hour to browse IKEA this trip, which anyone reading this that has been to IKEA knows this is a pretty tight timeframe for shopping. Luckily I had done a careful combing of the website to know what I wanted to look at and their approximate locations in the store. The other good thing about IKEA right before closing time?—it is Empty. No swarms of people, no waiting in line…Total Bliss after Taste of Chicago…

I walked out of IKEA $100 poorer…but had cookie cutters, pastry cutters, coasters, pots/pans, a lid, a double broiler, a wok, a sugar shaker, sleek condiment bowls, dishtowels, treats for the office & other fun stuff. (Anyone want some moose & hedgehog shaped cookies? :-P)

After IKEA we began the trek back to Indy. The weekend before the 4^th of July is a fun day for interstate travel…there were fireworks going up about every mile at night on the way home. It was a perfect ending to an overall great weekend.

Thanks for reading!

Chicago...Day 2

2011-07-07T21:00:00.000-04:00

[Continued from day 1]

Amazingly, considering we didn’t get to sleep until about 3:00am…we were “up & at em” by 9:00am on Saturday morning. After getting ready, we took the Red Line up to Belmont Street to Ann Sather’s for breakfast. Yum. Ann Sather’s is a Swedish restaurant that has THE BEST Cinnamon Rolls in my opinion. The rest of their food is fabulous as well. The great thing is that you don’t have to choose whether you are going to have cinnamon rolls or breakfast food…cinnamon rolls come as a side with most breakfast meals. Normally, we hit up Ann Sather’s on the last morning of a Chicago trip, so we can take our cinnamon rolls to go (& order more for our offices)…but that wasn’t going to work out this trip. So for the first time ever, we ate them with our meal…Totally overly indulgent, yet fabulous. The Hubs chose Steak & Eggs Benedict ($9.95) for his meal…which was 2 English muffins, topped with several slices of grilled beef tenderloin, topped with poached eggs & served with a side of Hollandaise sauce. He also chose the hash browns as his 2^nd side. For my breakfast I had the Swedish breakfast sampler ($9.95), which is 1 egg, 1 Swedish pancake with lingonberry sauce, 1 Swedish meatball, & 1 Swedish potato sausage. For my sides I chose hash browns & cinnamon rolls. Ann Sather’s also has delicious potato pancakes. They also make a version of French toast that involves stuffing 2 cinnamon rolls with a mascarpone cheese mixture, & battering & frying them like French toast (this dish was featured on one of Rachael Ray’s shows). One of these times I WILL try that for breakfast…because it looks delicious.

Gooey, delicious cinnamon rolls...

The place mat menu with their cute logo.

Our table packed with our breakfast fare.

After we had thoroughly stuffed ourselves at breakfast, we ventured over to the Lincoln Park Zoo to go hang out with the animals for the afternoon. It-was-hot…but we had a fun time hanging out with the gorillas & chimps (something the Indy zoo lacks), laughing at the mountain lion that thinks it’s a giant house cat, & just overall enjoying the zoo. Lincoln Park Zoo is by far one of my favorite zoos…and it absolutely amazes me that it’s free. It also surprised me that it wasn’t PACKED with people since it was Saturday. The heat must have kept a lot of people away.

After the zoo we headed back across town to Goose Island-Clybourn. The Hubs is a homebrewer and frequently has a keg of some delicious beer in our basement. Normally when we are road tripping, we try to hit up a brewpub for a tour/tasting. We have wanted to go to Goose Island for awhile, since we love several of their beers, but it hasn’t worked out in our previous Chicago trips. This time I made it a priority when planning our weekend.

The tastings during the tour at Goose Island-Clybourn

After a tour & tasting ($10.00 & you get a souvenir glass), we settled into their brewpub for dinner. During our time at Goose Island we tried a few of their beers that we can’t get on tap in Indy & tried a few of their small plate food items as well.

Beers we tried:
312- American Style Wheat Ale- 4.2% alcohol. Goose Island Description: Hazy straw color, light orange hop aroma, fruity ale flavor, creamy body. Ok…so maybe I can get 312 on tap in Indy. But it was HOT outside and we had been outside all morning…I knew I loved 312 & that it would be a good “cool down” beer (along with the 2 glasses of water I consumed before drinking it). 312 was my beer of choice to drink during the tour. It’s crisp, refreshing & delicious.

Smoked Helles- German Style Helles- 5.4% alcohol. Goose Island Description: Golden color, light lemon aroma, slightly acidic fruit flavor, dry body. This was the Hub’s choice of beer for drinking during the tour. It was the first time I had ever tasted a smoked beer, and overall I was a fan. I thought it would be a fun beer to pair food with because of its smoky undertones. However, it’s not something I could ever picture myself drinking more than 1 glass of, because the smoke flavor really builds in the back of your throat while drinking it.

Sofie- Oak Aged Belgian Style Farmhouse Ale- 6.5% alcohol. Goose Island Description: Champagne color, white pepper aroma, citrus and vanilla flavor, sparkling body. This was my “dinner beer.” I love Goose Island’s Matilda…but I know I can get that both on tap & bottled around the Indy area. I decided to try Sofie because it sounded like an oak-aged version of Matilda, and was served in a chalice. What can I say…drinking beer out of a wine glass is fun. I loved the flavor of the Sofie Ale. It had the same sparkling, fruity notes that I love in the Matilda, but it also had a deeper, more complex underlying flavor. It’s kind of like Sofie is Matilda’s twin sister that likes to debate complex ideas & go out and have fun on the weekends…as opposed to her white glove wearing, prim & proper sister… [photo below]

Fleur- Belgian Style Pale Ale- 5.2% Alcohol. Goose Island Description: Rose color, strawberry and hibiscus aroma, sweet and tart berry flavor, crisp body. This was the Hub’s 2^nd choice for his dinner beer (his first choice, the Maduro- English Style brown ale, blew/ran-out). This one was also served in a chalice, because real men can drink rose beer out of a girly glass and still be secure in their masculinity. J Overall, I didn’t see the “rose” color that the description implied, but it was a crisp bodied beer with delightfully complex fruity undertones. I enjoyed stealing a few sips during dinner. [photo below]

Honest Stout- English Style Foreign Stout- 6.2% Alcohol. Goose Island Description: Rich mahogany color, dark chocolate aroma, honey, oats and roast malt flavor, medium body. The Honest Stout was my “dessert beer.” We got a taste of it during the tour, and I knew I wanted a glass of it that evening. I love a good stout…and this was a good stout. It wasn’t overly in your face, & it didn’t sit overly heavy in my stomach. It had a decent creaminess to it, without being overly bearing. Not to sweet, not too bitter…just good. The one disappointing thing about this beer, is that I expect stouts to make great “beer animals” on the edge of the glass. This one’s head didn’t cling as well as other stouts, making the “beer animals” less fun.

Goose Island Honest Stout

Patriot Red Wheat- Red Wheat Ale- 5.5% alcohol. Goose Island Description: Auburn color, banana aromatics, peach flavor. The Patriot Red Wheat was Jason’s “dessert beer.” This is another ale that we got to dry during the tour/tasting…and it was really good. I was debating ordering it as my dessert beer, but was afraid the “banana aromatics” would strengthen while drinking it (which frequently can happen). So the hubs ordered it instead, & we switched beer glasses back & forth. It worked out well. Overall, it was an excellent beer. A little thicker of body than your standard red ale, yet still crisp & refreshing & not heavy. Surprisingly…this beer made great beer animals.

Patriot Red Wheat

Food we tried:
Malted Sea Wort Bread- $6.00- honey butter, bacon jam. Yes…you read that correctly, bacon jam. Let’s begin with the word “wort”…for those of you that don’t live with a homebrewer, wort is the grain, malt slurry that later gets yeast added to it to ferment & become beer. Apparently this can be used to make bread…which is now on my kitchen to-do list the next time the hubs brews beer. According to our waitress, the “malted sea wort bread” at the brewpub is ever-evolving, based off what they are currently brewing. The bread arrived warm, and it was tender, delicately-crusted & flavorful. It was served with 2 condiment cups. The first one contained a honey butter that was subtlety sweet, & tasted like it was made with freshly churned butter. Super creamy. The other condiment cup contained the “bacon jam.” I don’t know if I would have used the word “jam” to describe this topping, but I do know that the word “delicious” applies. This description is not going to do the bacon jam justice…but it is a spreadable topping made of finely shredded bacon that has strong undertones of smoky & sweet. Yummy.

Sea Salt Wort Bread, Honey Butter & Bacon Jam...
shown with a glass of Sofie.

Spicy Siracha Wings-$9.00- wasabi aioli, scallion. The order came with 8 chicken wings coated with a spicy-sweet Siracha sauce. Overall, this dish was pretty good. I am curious to experiment with how they might have made their wing sauce…because I think I can replicate it at home. The wasabi aioli was also very good, and an interesting pairing with the wings. Normally you expect a wing dipping sauce to cool down the heat of the wing, not add to the heat & the complexity of flavors.

The wings...a couple were missing by the point the photo
was taken...

Sweet Potato Fries with Curry Catsup- $5.00. We got these to pair with the chicken wings…overall, they were decent sweet potato fries. Nothing special, but they did taste like they were fresh-cut, not frozen. The curry catsup was ok, not the best I’ve had, but not bad.

Sweet potato fries & curry catsup,
shown with a glass of Fleur.

We had intended on trying a couple more small plates because they sounded delicious…but given the huge breakfast, the heat, & the beer…we were done after the wings & fries. Bummer…I guess that just gives us a reason to go back. :-P

After dinner we wandered down the block to the Crate & Barrel Outlet store to check it out & walk off part of our dinner…we found a couple of good small finds. Then we headed back downtown. We decided to stop by the shopping district on Michigan Avenue. I always forget how much I LOATHE the “Magnificent Mile.” To me it’s magnificent if I can get out of there without strangling someone. Over-commercialization & large masses of annoying people…not my idea of a fun time. That being said, we browsed in a couple of stores in Water Tower Place, & stopped by Wow Bao for a couple of dessert Baos. We tried the coconut custard bao, the chocolate-ginger bao, & their homemade ginger ale. The bao were pretty tasty, and the ginger ale was tasty as well but very spicy/gingery. It’s not something I could drink very much of unless I was severely nauseated (and I love ginger). I honestly think they should sell it in 4 oz glasses it’s THAT powerful.

We had the opportunity to go to fireworks Saturday night in Chicago, but decided to forgo the crowds, grab a bottle of wine, & head back to the hotel room just to relax. I think we made a good decision, especially after the Magnificent Mile consumerism headache.

[To be continued...]

A Review: Hotel Monaco, Chicago, IL

2011-07-06T21:57:00.001-04:00

This is an unsolicited, unprovoked, uncompensated review of a hotel we recently visited. If someone wants to solicit, provoke, or compensate me for reviewing their product or facility…that can be arranged. :-)

The hubs & I like to run away to Chicago a few times a year. Sometimes we just run up for a daytrip, sometimes for 1 night, & sometimes for an extended weekend. Each time we have gone, we have stayed at a different hotel. It wasn’t that we disliked previous hotels, they just didn’t have enticing reasons to return for subsequent visits. That situation has changed…

When I started researching where we were going to stay for this trip (4 months ago…because I’m a spaz with a planning-problem), I ran across information for Hotel Monaco on one of the hotel booking sites. I was drawn in by the pictures on the site, and the appealing price given the 4-star rating. I knew I wanted to know more…

Hotel Monaco is owned and operated by the Kimpton Hotel chain. According to their website Kimpton specializes in boutique hotels that are “carefully selected to show off the unique energy and personality of each destination.” They also are pet-friendly & eco-friendly…which are major positives in my opinion (even though our furry kids didn’t make this trip with us). And while most hotel chains & hotel booking sites have member reward programs, I thought the Kimpton InTouch program was especially fun. After every 7 visits or 20 nights (whichever comes first) that are booked through the Kimpton site, you earn a free nights stay. That’s pretty standard. But I love their options to set your preferences in advance, i.e. what type of pillows you want on your bed, if you want turndown service, etc & their reward program gives you free access to wireless internet during your stay (which still surprises me that ALL hotels do not offer this as a baseline? 2011, what?). Also, the first time you stay in a Kimpton hotel as an InTouch member, you get a $10 coupon to raid the mini bar. Those $5 M&Ms that look so darn tasty at 2:00am could be yours!! Gratis! Not too shabby for a free reward system…

I also think it’s fun that Kimpton hotels give you the option to have a goldfish buddy delivered to your room for the course of your stay…as in an actual, swimming goldfish. If you were traveling with kids that could be incredibly fun. You can also get a yoga kit delivered to your room for use during your stay.

Through the Hotel Monaco website, I got a stellar deal on a “Mediterranean Suite” ($199.00/night on a holiday weekend, advance purchase special rate). Sure, the suite was a splurge…but it had a jacuzzi tub. Since we moved a year ago, I haven’t had a proper, long-soaking bath (small bathtub + finished improperly/peeling enamel= not a relaxing bath experience…hopefully that will be amended during a future home update). I was due. It was worth the extra $40/night.

In the days leading up to the trip, I was nervous. It’s always nerve-wrecking trusting online reviews & photos when it comes to hotel rooms. In this age of bedbug-mania, traveling is especially scary.

When we arrived at Hotel Monaco, we were greeted at the front desk by the concierge. He was slightly aloof, but not unpleasantly/annoyingly so…he was efficient about checking us in, asking if we had questions, supplying our $10 minibar coupon, & directing us to somewhere we could grab a decent & quick late-lunch, and even provided us with an appetizer coupon for lunch. It was slightly comical because he stated something along the lines of “I’m also the concierge, so if you need anything during your stay let me know. But you might let me know soon, because it’s going to be really busy around here this weekend.” No worries Mr. Concierge, you were talking to an OCD, vacation-itinerary-planning fool…I’m sure I could have taught him a few things…

The second we opened the door to the room, I was instantly happy with my selection of hotels & rooms. It. was. gorgeous. Apparently, the hotel had been recently decorated, and the room was a fun, eclectic array of colors, prints, fabrics & decorations. Even though it was so eclectic, it somehow all meshed together. The Mediterranean Suite featured a small sitting room that had a pull-out couch, a window seat, a working desk & a large flat screen TV. It then flowed into the bedroom, which was HUGE with very tall ceilings (maybe 14 feet?!). The bedroom featured a king-sized bed in crisp white linens (4 foam pillows, per my request), a fun mirrored headboard, a bench, a chase-lounge style sofa, mirrors, artwork, and AWESOMELY huge window seats. The bathroom in the suite was decently sized, with a walk-in shower stall, and a huge-normous Jacuzzi tub. Seriously…it was lap-swimming quality.

Funny story—I didn’t remember requesting turn-down service (maybe I did?) We got back to the hotel LATE Friday night after a concert, and discovered that someone had been in our room (temporarily freaked us out). We were pleasantly surprised to find the bathrobes laid out on the bed, chocolates on our pillows, the TV turned to a soothing music/nature channel (unfortunately showing a creepy squirrel at the moment we walked in, adding to our confusion), the curtains drawn & the lights dimmed in our room. It was a relaxing, peaceful, & Zen-like way to end our evening.

Quick overview of our likes & dislikes about the Hotel Monaco:

Pros:

HUGE, spacious rooms with tall ceilings.
Friendly staff
Gorgeously appointed, large window seats. Perfect for sipping a glass of wine & watching the city go by at night.
Very comfortable beds, various firmnesses of foam pillows, with crisp linens.
Aveda bath products. As someone who basically only uses Aveda products…this made me Very Happy.
The huge Jacuzzi tub with the large footwell at the bottom. It took a long time to fill (& I kindof felt bad about using that much water)…but it was sooo worth it. They also have fizzy bath balls you can use for $7/pop (see con below).
Easy access to the State & State/Lake rail stations. Easy access to the numerous bus stops along State & Michigan (easy access to most places in the city).
We couldn’t hear noise from other guests. We know the hotel was quite booked…but we didn’t hear another guest during our entire stay. This has been a problem with other hotels in this Chicago area. Our bedroom was pretty isolated though, due to the suite layout.
Fun, animal-print bathrobes to use during our stay.

Cons:

Bathroom towels—only slightly better than interstate-side Holiday Inn grade towels. Smallish & rough. At this sort of hotel, I expect plusher, softer towels. The perk to this—extra exfoliation…
The bathroom shower stall was pretty small. Thankfully I didn’t have to shave my legs during the course of my stay. Also, the grout in the shower needed a little bleaching & some caulk needed replacing.
Regarding the $7 fizzy bath balls…I moved the container to a shelf in the bathroom so I wouldn’t risk getting them wet…and was charged $21 for 3 bath balls upon checkout. This was quickly removed from the bill upon explanation at the front desk (& informing that I had photo evidence that they were still intact upstairs).
Parking = $46.00/night. This is on par with most hotels downtown Chicago…and we were charged for 2 nights of parking on our check-out bill. However, we didn’t park at the hotel…problem. Again, with an explanation at checkout, this was quickly removed from our bill.
There is some train noise. We were on the 9^th floor, but we could still hear the squeaky breaks & wheels of the trains as they circumnavigated the Loop. This didn’t bother us…but if you were a super-light sleeper, this may annoy the heck out of you.

There is a restaurant, South Water Kitchen, associated with the hotel…but we didn’t have a chance to eat there during our stay. So I can’t comment on that establishment…

Overall, we loved our stay in the Mediterranean Suite at Hotel Monaco, and we hope to return for a trip in the near future. You should check in & check it out on your next trip through Chicago!

On to the photos:

View 1 of sitting room

View 2 of sitting room. One of the window seats in the back.

View of the bed & another window seat.

View of the sitting area in the bedroom.

The biggest of the window seats. Amazing
place to sit & watch the city go by...

Really fun mirror in the room... ignore my
purse & bag thrown on the bed.

The hubs checking out the view from one of the window seats.

View 1 of the bathroom.

View 2 of bathroom. Kindof a tight squeeze between
the shower door & the bathroom door.

Aveda bath products! Love it!!

View 3 of the bathroom. HUGE bathtub!

Look how deep this is!!

The dubious fizzy bath balls...

One giggle from the hotel. Sometimes the only
options in life AREN'T "up & down."

Sorry for the Hiatus…we ran away to Chicago.

2011-07-06T21:08:00.002-04:00

Chicago- Day 1

A few months ago, one of our favorite musicians, Ben Harper, announced that he was going to be doing a couple shows at the Vic Theatre in Chicago. I immediately bought pre-sale tickets for the Friday 7/1 show. We decided to go ahead & make a long weekend out of it, and spent Friday-Sunday in Chicago…a city that I L-O-V-E, love.

Friday morning we departed at around 8:30a (45 minutes behind schedule). The weather did not cooperate for driving…we drove through some pretty heavy storms with vertical lightening. We kept hoping that we would get to see lightening strike one of the windmills on the wind-farm north of Indy, but it didn’t happen. Around the time we got to the Merrillville, IN area, it was POURING. Luckily we had already predetermined that we were going to make a stop at the Albanese Candy Company to pick up some of the “World’s best Gummi’s.”

When they picked this as their slogan…they weren’t lying. The hubs & I have already been to the Albanese Candy factory before, along with placing orders from their online store. They have THE BEST gummies in America in my opinion (& I consider myself to be somewhat of a gummy expert). Their gummy bears are particularly excellent. They are soft, chewy & explode with flavor. My favorites are the pineapple, mango, strawberry & the concord grape flavors (yes…concord grape!!). Walking into the Albanese Candy factory store is like walking into a non-creepy version of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory…sans Umpa-Lumpas. They have incredibly friendly workers, an endless supply of goodies in acrylic cases (things they manufacture & other popular confections), and a HUGENORMOUS chocolate waterfall that comes from the ceiling. The other awesome thing about this location is that they have glass windows at the back of the store so you can see the manufacturing floor where they make the gummies. There is also an audio tour you can take that explains what you are seeing. As someone who 1) Loves gummies AND 2) Has a weird fascination with manufacturing processes (Science Channel “How It’s Made” junkie)…I could stand there & watch forever. While we were there, there was a cascade of green apple gummy bears flying off of the conveyor belt. Overall, this was an excellent choice of location to ride out the storm.

This is a floor mat...it was too rainy to get a good shot of the
outside sign.

The candy factory. The rain had cleared up some by the time
we had left. I love that it looks like they built a factory onto
the back of an old farmhouse.

Blurry...but you can get a general feel for the place. The glass
windows in the back are where you can watch the manufacturing
of the gummies.

12 amazing flavors of gummi bears. Except
watermelon...personally not a fan of watermelon.

Huge chocolate waterfall (cascades down the
outside of a pipe)

Once we were back on the road, we attempted to book-it to Hot Doug’s in Chicago. I have seen Hot Doug’s featured on several different travel/food shows & articles…and REALLY wanted to try some of their dogs & duck-fat French fries (served Friday & Saturday). Alas…between our delayed start, the storm delay, & horrendous Chicago traffic, my dream did not become a reality this Chicago trip. By the time we reached Hot Doug’s, there was a line stretching over a block long. Since we still had to park the car, check into the hotel, eat some sort of lunch/dinner & make it to the Vic Theatre in time to get a good spot in line…we decided that we didn’t have time to wait. Bummer L. Hey Doug, expand your store!!

So from there we ventured into downtown Chicago, parked our car in the Millennium Park Garage, and walked to our awesome hotel, Hotel Monaco (review coming in different post). After checking into the hotel, we took the recommendation of the concierge (who also gave us a coupon for a free appetizer) & headed across the street to the Emerald Loop for a really late lunch (around 3:00pm). For our free appetizer we ordered their Spinach Artichoke Dip ($8.95). It wasn’t the best I’d ever had, but it was creamy, cheesy, piping hot & had huge chunks of artichoke in it. It was served with warm pita & tortilla chips. It hit the spot for our hunger, after the let-down of “no Hot Doug’s” and the sugar-high we were coming off of from the Albanese Confectionary. For my meal, I ordered the corned beef sandwich ($9.95), which according to their menu was a specialty of the restaurant & made with home-made corned beef. Overall, I was pretty disappointed with my lunch. Normally, a place claiming to be an “Irish Pub” has at least semi-decent corned beef. Not so for the Emerald Loop. The beef was tough & cut way too thick considering the toughness. The flavor of the beef was lacking any sort of potency of seasoning or distinguishing flavors. The corned beef was served with thin sliced, mundane Swiss cheese (Kraft perhaps?), & between dark rye bread that tasted exactly like Pepperidge Farm bread. It was served with fries that were hot, but tasted like a frozen Sysco product. The Hubs had a better lunch than me. He ordered one of their specialty burgers called the “Crazy Twist Emerald Burger” It was a thick-cut, charbroiled burger topped with grape goat cheese, pancetta, pickled onion & mushroom aoli, served with lettuce, onion, tomato & French fries ($11.75). He gave me a bite of the burger & toppings…it was quite tasty.

From lunch we meandered our way up to the Vic Theatre. We arrived Super Early (5:00pm), considering that the gates didn’t open until 6:30p. We were #8 & #9 in line for admission. All but 2 people in front of us in line had been to the prior night’s show in Chicago. We could hear Ben Harper singing/soundchecking while we were standing outside, so that was cool. But what was REALLY awesome, is that on his way out to dinner before the show, he had his van pull over so he could tell the dozen or so of us standing there how awesome we were for coming that early, how much he appreciated it, & thanked us for coming to his concert. Then he blew us kisses. It. was. awesome. We wanted to arrive early for the general admission show so we could get 1st row in the balcony for the concert (seats—compared to standing on the floor). We COULD have had front row spots standing by the stage if we wanted to. I think we made a great choice though…because our legs & backs would have been KILLING us by the end of the concert. We’re getting old. The Vic Theatre turned out to be an awesome concert venue. It was small (for Indy people, think about half the size of Vogue), & the acoustics were GREAT. I would love to go to another concert there.

The concert. was. amazing. The Orbans opened the show with a great set. They are a band I had never heard of before that night, but I downloaded their album off of iTunes when we got back to the hotel. They are a fun group out of Texas that has a rock/alternative sound that [to me] sounds like an interesting meld of Oasis, Stereophonics, with some underlying Texas country sound. Highly intriguing & enjoyable. Personally, my favorite songs of theirs right now are “Darlin My Dreams,” “Alibi,” & “Songs We Sang.” I highly suggest buying their album…love it.

After a short stage re-working, Ben Harper came on stage. The concert was AMAZING. I’m pretty sure they played until their fingers bled…because I think the concert length for their set was >3 hours by the time the final encore ended. He played a lot of my favorite songs, and ended the night with an acoustic version of “Not Fire, Not Ice”…which is my FAVORITE, and is especially meaningful to the Hubs & I since we used it in our wedding. Overall, it was one of the best concerts I have ever been to…simply amazing. That night I wanted to drop everything & become a Ben Harper groupie.

Oh Ben Harper...

Singing a capella, without a microphone...powerful & amazing.

Although technically this should fall under Day 2 events (since it was well after midnight), after the concert we walked down Belmont Street to see what was still open for food. We decided to just go the “quick, easy, cheap & familiar” route & split a sub from Subway. After that we hopped on the Red Line back to our hotel, to rest & relax until we began Day 2.

[To Be Continued...]