30 x 30 Recipes

As part of our ongoing 30 x 30 project, here are the new recipes we've tried so far this year!

1. Parmesan Sage Pork Chops
2. Cornbread Stuffed Pork Chops (from Betty Crocker)
3. Fried Mac & Cheese Balls
4. Szechuan Chicken with Cashews (from Creme de Colorado)
5. Chocolate Cupcakes (from Hey Cupcake)
6. Breakfast Pizza
7. Broccoli Brown Rice Strata with Cashews (from Creme de Colorado)
8. Wild Rice Sausage Casserole (from MSUS Church Cookbook)
9. Gooey Chocolate Chip Sandwich Bars
10. Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
11. Vegetable Lasagna
12. Green Velvet Cheesecake Bars
13. Key Lime Cheesecake
14. Apple and Pear Crisp
15. Thai Peanut Noodles
16. Brown Rice & Lentil Casserole
17. Graham Gems (from Becky's mom's cookbook)
18. Banana Muffins
19. Banana Oatmeal Bread
20. Cheese Grits (recipe from the back of the Trader Joe's package)
21. Potato Waffles
22. Strawberry Cream Cheese Muffins
23. Black Bean Burgers (from How to Cook Everything)
24. Lentils and Potatoes with Curry (from How to Cook Everything)
25. Quinoa Mac & Cheese
26. Potato and Feta Gyros
27. Poached Eggs (What, that's not a recipe? Well it's still the first time I made them.)

Badger State

My apologies again for the lack of blogging recently.  We keep resolving to do better, but the follow through has been lax.

Last week we spent the holiday weekend jetsetting our way to visit Becky's family in Wisconsin.  I am told that Wisconsin is not everyone's dream weekend getaway, but for us it's always fun to go to the Midwest.  Sunday was Becky's dad's final Sunday as choir director at his church, after many many years in the position.  Becky's mom threw a party for him and invited several surprise guests - including us!  If our traveling had gone as planned we would have arrived at Becky's parents' home just after 10pm.  However, due to "weather" (definitely not holiday traffic or airline or air traffic control error!) our plane didn't even take off from New York until around 11:30pm.  We surprised a very sleepy pajama-clad Becky's dad at 2am.

But we are not ones to let a short vacation go to waste!  Despite our exhaustion we hauled ourselves out of bed early Saturday morning in order to drive to Madison.  Motivation: fresh local cheese curds!   The only place we've found in the tristate area to get cheese curds is Trader Joe's, and while decent, they cannot compare to the fresh local variety.  Madison has the largest farmer's market I have ever seen, which covers the entire block around the state capital building.  Like any farmer's market there are fresh local vegetables and organic crafts.  There is also an over representation of delicious baked goods.  Unique to Wisconsin though are the dozens of cheese shops, most with plentiful sampling options. 

On the way in we stopped at Michelangelo's Coffee House.  I got fair trade coffee; Becky ogled baked goods (but chose to save space for the market).  Yay for cute little independent coffee shops!  My friends and I used to frequent several of these in the Twin Cities back in high school and breaks home from college, but I haven't found (admittedly nor have I looked very hard) around here to love. 

Bad photo of me in front of the capital

We ate and bought an excessive amount of cheese curds and toasting cheese.  Becky's coworkers have fallen for them, so now whenever she (or her fellow Wisconsinite coworker) goes home cheese curds must be brought to work.  By the time we made it around to Stella's we were already quite full.  The crowd/line around the stand was enormous, and we debated skipping the spicy cheese bread.  But the power of the crowd overcame me and I declared that whatever that many people were willing to wait for must be good.  Miraculously, soon after we joined the crowd, a truck full of fresh steaming spicy cheese bread arrived.  This bread is magical.  It is like challah and cheese curds all rolled together in one doughy amazing ball.  I declared it the best thing I have ever eaten, and I think I might stand by that.  

Doughy insides of mostly consumed hot & spicy cheese bread.

Madison still felt alive with the memory of the recent protests.  There were signs plastered in the windows of the capital, people passing out leaflets, "union thug" organic onesies for sale, and a People's Brat Fest in opposition to the usual Brat Fest sponsored by Johnsonville (a supporter of Scott Walker).  I think it renewed Becky's sadness that she wasn't able to be in Madison for the protests, but it was fun to see the spirit is still alive.  Hopefully this will translate into some political change.

On the way back to Becky's parents' home we stopped at a favorite non-farmer's market bakery, Greenbush, to pick up chocolate sour cream donuts.  Yum.  We were too full to eat them immediately, but they were as heavenly as ever when we got to them. 

After our whirlwind trip to Madison we headed back to Becky's family.  We helped a bit with the party preparation and lounged around with her family.  Saturday night we ate at an Italian restaurant and were able to order Chicago style pizza - another of the very few foods we have found to be unavailable in New York. 

Sunday we had a lovely time hanging out with Becky's family and family friends, celebrating the final choir Sunday.  Becky joined the choir, as she usually does on Christmas Eve (I guess this is a benefit to being related to the choir director!).  After church Becky's mom hosted a potluck party for the choir and all of the special surprise guests.  That night Becky and one of her sisters and I played ping pong, which gave me a splendid opportunity to show off my spectacular lack of coordination.  Monday we packed up, said our goodbyes, and jetted ourselves back to life in the big city. 

Pan de Mallorca

I wandered into Starbucks the other morning in search of a pastry for breakfast. Normally they probably wouldn't be my first stop for breakfast (as a non-coffee drinker), but I remembered that I had a couple dollars left on a gift card and that therefore my pastry would be free! I was intrigued by a roll they called "Mallorca Sweet Bread" and decided to give it a go. It was soft and chewy and covered with powdered sugar. In short, it was delicious. Unfortunately, like most mass-produced baked goods, it had a hint of chemical aftertaste, so I set off to do better.

A quick search led me to this post from The Noshery (unrelated sidenote: the homepage currently includes a recipe for "Runny Egg on Creamy Bacon Polenta", which is now added to my must-try list.) What I learned from her post and my other internet research is that mallorcas (or pan de Mallorca) are a popular Puerto Rican sweet roll based on ensaïmada, a traditional bread from the island of Majorca.

I debated halving the recipe, but Carrie talked me into making the whole thing with the reasoning that we would likely eat more than one at a time (we both have an intense sweet tooth). I'm glad that we have plenty of leftovers, but if I'm making these just for the two of us again, I'll definitely go with a half batch--these rolls are big! We also may or may not have eaten quite a bit of the deliciously sweet dough in the process, but we still had plenty for twelve large rolls. The dough is definitely on the stickier side and was a little difficult to shape because of that. Carrie also wants to make sure that I give her full credit: she was quite helpful and skilled at shaping the rolls. (She was also quite helpful at eating the excess dough in the bowl. :))

Unfortunately, I didn't start on this project until close to 8:00 last night, which meant they weren't going in the oven until nearly midnight. I got a little impatient and put both pans in the oven at the same time. As a result, the ones in the pan near the bottom of the oven got a little overcooked on the bottom, but they're still tasty!

We sprinkled a couple with copious amounts of powdered sugar and ate them immediately.

This morning we filled two with cheese, heated them up in the oven, and powdered sugared them. Delicious! Unfortunately we didn't have any ham, so we couldn't try them with ham and cheese as is apparently traditional, but I have a feeling we'll be making these again. If nothing else, it gives Carrie a good reason to play with her beloved powdered sugar shaker!

Exhaustion: Better with Cookies!

Yet again, it's been one of THOSE weeks. You know, the kind that leave you completely, totally exhausted. And then you're too exhausted to even make yourself go to bed, so the next day you're even more exhausted and you're completely ineffective at work and you come home and all you can do is stare at the computer but then you still don't go to bed and it's a big swirling vortext of tired.

Or maybe that only happens to me? Maybe the rest of you are smart enough to just put down the computer and go to bed already? I hope so because I think it's probably a much happier way to live your life. I keep meaning to try it.

Fortunately, the weekend is coming soon. Oh, sweet weekend. I am trying to ignore the pile of dishes that we didn't wash tonight after dinner and therefore will still be around tomorrow when that weekend begins.

But because I love you, dear readers, instead of pictures of my exhausted life, I will leave you with lovely pictures of a recent baking escapade. I made snickerdoodles a couple weeks ago. Who'd have thought that a cookie scoop and the perfectly even cookies it produces could bring me such joy?

Before

After

Just to clarify, I am not so neurotic that I lined up the cookie balls intentionally like that. I didn't even realize they were all in a nice line until I looked at the pictures tonight.

Delicious Adventures

Last weekend was another relatively low-key weekend at home and/or enjoying the lovely city we happen to live quite near.

On Friday evening the weather was lovely, and thus (the quickly approaching expiration date had nothing to do with it...nope...nothing at all) Becky decided to talk a meandering walk to the Lower East Side to spend a Livingsocial coupon we had purchased nearly a year ago. For the unfamiliar, Livingsocial is a lot like Groupon, where they have one really good deal a day. You pay the coupon site, and I assume they pay the company that offered the product. And then eventually (if you remember, and have the energy to, say, walk to the Lower East Side) you take the coupon to the store and redeem it for your merchandise. So our coupon was for a dozen mini cannolis from Stuffed Artisan Cannolis. Yum. Birthday cake was the most delicious to me, but Becky said it was too sweet. Cinnabun tasted like a giant stick of Big Red gum. Most predictable of all, Becky loved peanut butter cup.

Sunday we decided to play NYC tourists. We met up with our friend Stephanie and her adorable 2-year-old daughter for lunch at Ollie's Noodle Shop. Watching a little person slurp udon noodles is pretty freaking adorable. After Chinese food we strolled down 9th Avenue and ended up at Chelsea Market. It's an awesome urbany warehouse space that used to be a big industrial bakery and then some industrial railroad thing and has now been reborn as an upscale collection of bakeries, restaurants, and a few stores. A few delicious bakeries, including Sarabeth's and Amy's Bread, have both storefronts and giant glass-enclosed kitchens where pastry chefs are held captive like zoo animals.

After enjoying ice cream and the children's section of a book store (at which our 2-year-old friend "read" stories to us...aww...) we left our friends at a subway stop and continued the wander down 9th Ave. We picked up ground coffee from an awesome old-school coffee shop that is crazy expensive but we don't care because we buy so little coffee and it's just so damn cool, bought camera lens cleaner from Orthodox Jews, and ended up over at the High Line. Verdict for old elevated rail platform turned urban garden: pretty cool. I think we'll have to return when it's not so frigid out, as it was by this time of the evening.

Bad picture of me, and bad picture of us, but I wouldn't want you to forget our smiling faces. Or worse yet, disbelieve our adventures!

All in all it did not turn out to be as epic as we had hoped, but much fun was had. I would definitely still classify it as an adventure!

On eggs and crusts

As I type I am waiting on our lovely Kitchen Aid mixer to do its work on perhaps, in my opinion, the most exciting part of the weekend. I am making a French Silk Pie. It contains four eggs, each of which must individually beat into the filling for a full five minutes. Eggs are pretty much the most fun food to cook with, because they are in so many delicious foods, and they behave so differently than you might expect. I really love beating egg whites. In fact, I like it almost as much as I like petting whipped cream. I'm realizing I have some cooking quirks. But anyways, you can imagine that adding chocolate, sugar, and butter to the egg mix could only improve it, right?

This was my first attempt at making pie crust, and I have to admit it did not go quite as well as I hoped. But it will suffice.
As my family loves to remind me, Becky is usually the baker in our relationship. I am the primary beneficiary in this arrangement and do not wish to take this role away from her. However, I have also realized that I don't want to become completely incompetent at baked goods (nor do I want our future children to ever perceive me that way!). My mom baked and cooked pretty much everything from scratch, and although she bemoans the fact that neither my sister nor I have followed in her kitchen footsteps, some of her baked good values certainly did rub off. I don't want future pie crusts to come pre-made from the baking aisle at Pathmark, or to only spring from Grandma's kitchen or Uncle Sean's kitchen, or even to be Becky's speciality alone.

And so I resolved to learn how to make a pie crust. I think today's will be delicious despite its lumps and that slight crack down the middle. But I also foresee the necessity for many pies in our future so that I can perfect this art. Good thing the first one is so drool-worthy that Becky just asked if I would kill her if she took a spoon to it while it cools! I answered yes, so you'll have to check back to see whether Becky survives the two hour cooling wait. UPDATE: She lived! And it's delicious!
Also, in case anyone is wondering, I obsessed about the Greek hotel to the point that Becky gave me the go ahead to book it. Santorini here we come! Now to find some plane tickets and get that vacation request in...

Sniffle

I think there should be some natural law that dictates that no more than one person in a household can be ill at any given time. I know, I know, you're going to tell me that that is, in fact, the exact opposite of how your average virus works. And then you will probably try to tell me that it only gets worse when you have kids, etc.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I really shouldn't even be whining because admittedly, neither of us is THAT sick. Carrie's been feeling pretty crappy the last couple days, and this afternoon at work I started to develop that lovely "oh no, here comes a doozy of a cold" feeling, coupled with a little good old-fashioned nausea and feverish feeling. But admittedly, that last bit could just be because the thermostat was acting up at work--happens pretty regularly.

So really, in the grand scheme of things, we're not doing so badly--no one's dying of the flu or norovirus or any of those fun bugs. (Please join me in taking a moment to knock on some wood?) But both of us feeling like crap means that no one has the energy to do things like make dinner, wash the dishes, etc. And the fact that I didn't get home from work until 7:45 tonight doesn't really help matters. But really, isn't it only fair that there be someone else to take care of us?

Fortunately, at least for dinner, the local Chinese restaurant was on standby to help out. Tonight, for the first time, I was that girl who orders Chinese on the bus on the way home. And it was pretty magical. The delivery guy showed up at our door with dinner about 5 minutes after I got home. Carrie was feeling pretty crummy, and I have lovely ideals of taking care of my wife by making homemade chicken soup and all of that. But tonight, when I was exhausted and feeling sick too, love looked a little less like grandma's secret chicken soup recipe and a little more like pork fried rice.

Dinosaur Bar-B-Que

On the far western side of Manhattan, far north of where many white New Yorkers ever venture, there is a little enclave of deliciousness. Its name is Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. You may remember it for its extremely long wait times. I'm happy to report that if you arrive before your movie, rather than after it, the wait is much more bearable. Yes, last Friday night we decided to make a second attempt. Because we like to declare dinners out for a reason we declared that it was in honor of the Valentine's we didn't really celebrate and the anniversary that is not our anniversary anymore. It would probably be just as accurate to say that we really wanted BBQ ribs and cornbread. Dinosaur has also been on our infamous NYC to-do list for several years and we are perpetually [talking about] making efforts to accomplish these things.

For appetizers we ordered the sampler (spicy shrimp, chicken wings, fried green tomatoes, and deviled eggs) and a brisket slider. When the sampler arrived Becky stared at it for a good long time. Because the shrimp had legs. Can I just say...ew? It turned out that she wasn't actually as disturbed by this as I was, but she wasn't quite sure what to do with them. She muscled through and reports that they were tasty. The bodies, not the legs.
For dinner we shared the Sweetheart Deal for Two, which consisted of a full rack of ribs and four sides. We went with French fries, cole slaw, macaroni and cheese, and salted potatoes. It was all delicious, both at dinner and at home as leftovers the next day. If you're in New York and not a vegetarian I highly recommend taking the trip uptown. (And for the record, there's actually a lot of Manhattan past 125th street!) If you are a vegetarian...well, maybe you should stay downtown.

Eating Sum Dim Sum

I am happy to report that Hop Shing Restaurant, or as it is affectionately known on Yelp, 9 Chatham Square, is in fact not closed. I know this because we enjoyed dim sum* there this Saturday. The restaurant came highly recommended from Becky's coworker, who billed it as the best pork buns in Chinatown. With that kind of praise it is no wonder that we went quickly; I have been in love with the pork bun since the day I found out what dim sum was.
After triple checking that it was not Chinese New Year (we had a bad experience with a several hour wait at dim sum on Chinese New Year a few years ago) we headed out. Along for the ride was our friend Kara, of Superbowl live blogging fame. We were seated within minutes of arrival. Kara started in with stories of her recent shenanigans while Becky watched the carts emerging from the kitchen like a hawk. Apparently she had been warned that pork buns often go quickly and may sell out in early afternoon. We loaded up on all sorts of dumplings with an assortment of delicious doughy outsides. A few even had the pillowy soft dough of the much sought after pork buns, but still no pork buns came. Fear filled us. Finally we realized that several delicious items seemed to be emerging from a bakery counter at the front of the restaurant, while Becky's eyes were peeled on the kitchen. Although we were already stuffed to the brim we inquired and learned that yes, our heart's desire was in fact available by request from the bakery. Aah, pure delicious holy grail of dim sum.
You're probably wondering why it took us so long to ask. Partially that would be because we are all polite and introverted and therefore assume that it would be best to just wait. But partially that would be because this apparently is a relatively authentic dim sum experience, and therefore few of the patrons or staff spoke much English. In fact, when we finally took the leap and asked, we had to be passed through several wait staff before someone understood our inquiry well enough to get us pork buns. Throughout the meal we were stared at by our fellow diners, most prominently an elderly Chinese woman. For lack of a better explanation we assumed this was due to our white American-ness. Until we got the camera out that is. All further staring we attributed to our strange habit of photographing our food.

The most interesting food that we purchased (and photographed) was what seemed to be a dim sum breakfast sandwich. The outside was the aforementioned pillowy soft dough, and the inside was some combination of eggs and sausage. Good try, but not really my cup of tea.
The best part though? Somehow the mountains of food that we ate came out to only $15. No, not per person, total. I have a feeling that this may be due to a miscalculation of the bill. But since the prices are a Chinese mystery we figured that we had caused enough trouble, paid our bill, and went on our merry way. Yum!

*Becky reminded me that some readers may not be famililar with dim sum. For reference, the kind people at about.com offer a wordy but informative summary.

A low key weekend in the Jerz

We went into this weekend with basically nothing planned, which was a welcome change.

Last Thursday night Becky mentioned off hand that she turned down an invitation to a coworker's boyfriend's birthday party on Friday night. It wasn't starting until late and the location was not the most convenient for us. One of the unfortunate things about living in New Jersey is that it's really annoying to come home and then go back in to the city again. Which means that we almost always opt to stay in and wait if there's something else we want to do. After some joking back and forth about being old ladies and coming home to our cats we decided that Becky should rescind our refusal and accept the invitation.

And so, on Friday night, we had date night and then joined her coworker at a bar. For date night we first went to a movie on opening night. Oooh, exciting, right? What movie? Gnomeo and Juliet. Yep, for realz. We apparently have a strange thing for children's movies, judging by our date night and our DVD shelves. My verdict on Gnomeo and Juliet is that it would have made a really funny and cute Pixar short, but there was not nearly enough material for a feature length film. We then attempted to walk in to Dinosaur BBQ at 8pm on a Friday night. Bad idea. The wait was an hour and forty five minutes. Having nothing to do in that two hours and not wanting to be ridiculously late to the birthday party that inspired this madness, we left. Instead we traveled downtown and dined at another famous New York City restaurant, the 2nd Avenue Deli. It was decent, but not nearly as good as Dinosaur smelled. We're plotting a BBQ return in the near future, this time earlier and with more time to kill. We then meandered our way to the birthday party where we enjoyed not yet being old ladies! For one night anyways. The rest of the weekend was back to our usual ways.

Which means, we relaxed at home, watched some movies (Juno, which we own and I love! and Sex and the City 2, from Netflix, which was ridiculous and well, ridiculous.) , did laundry and dishes and cleaning, and did errands. We have been avoiding moving the car much since the snow is taking up several of the parking spots on our street, but we finally decided we needed to just go for it. Unfortunately we made this decision on Sunday, which meant that we had to go to a Target that we don't like as much. Yes, we've staked out all of the Targets within driving distance and have clear favorites. Our favorite Target is located in a county near us that has declared that stores in the entire county shall be forbidden to open on Sunday.

And now Becky is in the process of baking some bread pudding with brown sugar sauce for an end-of-weekend dessert. I bet you're jealous.

Chocolate Makes Life Better

In reviewing our last few posts, I fear that any new readers may have gotten the wrong idea. I mean, I think it's clear from our posts that we are not particularly knowledgeable about football, but you might get the idea that we are rabid fans. Or just bizarrely obsessed. Well, okay, I may be bizarrely obsessed with the Packers. But the season is over, so you can pretty much bet that will disappear until sometime next fall when they happen to be playing someone in the northeast and therefore the game is televised here. Sports fans, we are not. So if you were about to write off our blog because we post too many nonsensical football liveblogs, please don't leave!

Believe it or not, we did other stuff this weekend that didn't involve the Super Bowl. Weekend recap girl seems to have worn herself out with liveblogging, so I'm here to report on Saturday's events. We spent part of the afternoon at our friend's house in Queens, hanging out with her and her two-year-old daughter. Saturday afternoon festivities involved gorging ourselves on chips and guacamole, and making homemade valentines out of construction paper and paper doilies. Carrie tried to pretend like hers was for Cricket, but then she caved and gave it to me after all.

For the sake of upbeatness, I will try to not dwell on the fact that getting to Queens took us almost two hours (should have taken one) and that much of that time was spent standing in miserable, cold, windy rain. I will also not dwell on the part where I cried in public (apparently complete and total exhaustion + cold and wet + just missing a train = Becky has a meltdown.)

Fortunately, the day did look up, we had lots of fun with them, and then we headed back to Manhattan to hit up the Hot Chocolate Festival at City Bakery. They have the most delicious hot chocolate I've ever tasted--it's like a melted candy bar with a little bit of cream thrown in for good measure. And they have homemade marshmallows. Saturday's flavor of the day was caramel, and we had to get some. I think maybe Saturday was a little too busy for them to keep up or something--the chocolate was tasty but not very caramelly and not all that warm. Fortunately, they redeemed themselves. I went back today (the place is only a couple blocks from my office--it's dangerous!) for Darkest Dark hot chocolate, and it was both delicious and hot. On an impulse, I also bought a package of a dozen marshmallows, which Carrie gave me a little crap for but then admitted they are delicious. Okay, they were still insanely overpriced...but delicious. And now we will have them to put in our own fancy hot chocolate at home this weekend!

Hot chocolate, marshmallows, delicious chocolatey cookie, and a pretzel croissant. Yum, yum, yum.

Carrie demonstrates the proper method for consuming hot chocolate

And now that I've told you about last weekend, it's nearly the weekend again! Hurrah!

Super Bowl - Now With Photos!

We were definitely not organized enough yesterday to compose blog entries that had both words AND pictures (translation: we were too lazy to download pictures off the camera), so here's a photo wrap-up of yesterday's events.

Carrie's lunchtime snakebite. Note the cooling black bottom cupcakes and vegetable chopping in the background. We were busy!

Making the shells for Broccoli Croustades. And yes, as a matter of fact, these are the same fashionable pajama pants I was sporting for my Zumba efforts.

Cupcakes: better with frosting.

Coffee table decor (note the easily accessible computer, for your liveblogging pleasure)

Cricket watches pre-game commentary from the safety of an inflatable helmet.

Kara keeping the deviled eggs safe.

The spread (featuring cupcakes, cheese/sausage, nachos, deviled eggs, and broccoli croustades--as green and yellow as we could get!)

The entire guestlist at our party (minus the cats)

And finally, a photo of the Empire State Building, all lit up in green and yellow tonight!

 

I hope all of you had an enjoyable weekend, whether or not you watched the Super Bowl!

Superbowl Preparation Liveblog

Welcome to Superbowl Sunday at our house! I asked Becky if she would liveblog this event for us, as we've all come to expect such high quality comentary throughout this football season. She declined, and informed me that she cares too much about the game to liveblog it. And thus I was appointed family liveblogger of the day. Forgive me, for this is my first attempt! Not to appear overeager in my first attempt, but I decided that I would try to one up Becky and bit and not only liveblog the event itself but also the madness leading up to it. An event as momentous as the Superbowl deserves no less.

10:04am IM conversation with my sister:
Jen: who's coming to your party?
me: kara
Jen: wait. just kara?
me: yes
Jen: funny
me: yes
Jen: she sorted the M&Ms and made decorated cupcakes and stuff just for you and kara?
me: yes
Jen: ok

10:26am
Becky: I just realized your mom’s recipe for the broccoli and cheese things makes four dozen. I wish I would have thought of that when we were buying the ingredients.

10:29am
Becky asks me to make her some breakfast, because she just took Exederin migraine. Quote, “unless you want to see me go real crazy.”

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A long break in which I make some quick breakfast and we both cook and clean and generally pick up. This basically means I spent an hour sorting advertisements and credit card offers into the recycling bin. And Becky swears a lot at the people who wrote the cupcake recipe and neglected to list “water” in the ingredient list, which she eventually learned by googling. Much stress, but delicious looking cupcakes appear. And an oversized bag of recycling.
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1:21pm
I realize, mid-sandwich-making, that I stopped vacuuming in the middle of the rug to make lunch. I then forget my sandwich mid-sandwich in order to change the laundry. I decide that this is a hilarious clear sign that it’s time to have a Snakebite (Strongbow hard cider with Ribena).

1:46pm
I inquired whether I was allowed to eat potato chips for lunch or if they were reserved for the party. Becky informed me she was not a food nazi and then said:
Becky: “I think we may have an excessive amount of food at this party.”
Carrie: “I think you’re the first person to notice that.”
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Cooking continues. Also, I nominate myself to be on the decorating committee and put out the coffee table decorations. This includes yellow napkins, two different sizes of green and yellow confetti stars, football confetti, and a candy tray (wedding present alert!) filled with the famous green and yellow m&ms (peanutbutter and plain) and Milky Ways.
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3:16pm
Becky: Oh no, I have extra frosting! Extra frosting alert!
Carrie: Ooh, I can help with that!

3:19pm
Becky: Well, even if the others [cupcakes] completely fail, these look AWESOME.

4:32pm
Carrie and Kara text back and forth regarding Kara's anticipated early arrival, as she is apparently coming straight from brunch.
Me: Better make space fast cuz we've got food. :)
Kara: Haha I know don't worry. Am tipsy already though
Me: Nice. We've got beer and mimosas.
Kara: Haha mimosa number 5.

This is shaping up to be a good party people. I'm going to take a break from the day-of liveblog and catch you on the flip side!

I'm burned out, but my baked goods aren't!

Sadly, it seems that Despair, Inc's designs are not covered by the good ol' Creative Commons license, but I'd ask you all to take a moment to check out this de-motivational poster for a sense of where I'm at today.

Funny stuff, eh?

To be fair, I'm not quite to that point yet, but I am feeling pretty exhausted. One of the women in my office will be going on maternity leave soon, and I'll be covering many of her duties while she's gone. Fortunately, someone else in my office will then be covering many of my duties, so I shouldn't be stuck entirely in the situation of trying to do two jobs at once. It's a really great opportunity for me, and in many ways I'm really excited for it. I'll get a chance to work in some areas that I'm not currently involved in and fill in some gaps that I feel are missing on my resume right now. But with any new challenge comes new stresses, and the weight of all of those new challenges is suddenly hitting me. I'm also in the midst of training for that position, organizing training materials and training the person who will be covering much of my work, and trying to do all of my regular work at the same time. Yesterday I sat down and plotted out all of my meetings and training times on my calendar, and I discovered that I have about 4 hours free in the next week--to do 35+ hours of work. Yikes.

It certainly doesn't help matters that I'm a bit of a workaholic. Even without all of this crazy added stress, I'm usually at work much later than I need to be. And to some degree, this is pretty common in my field, but I absorb much more work stress than is healthy. I need to find a way to A. be more efficient while I'm at work and B. learn to tell my supervisors when I've reached my limits (instead of smiling and saying "No problem, I'm not sure when I'll have time for this, but I'll make it happen.")

All of this stress has led to a near explosion of baked goods in my kitchen. Some people stress eat. I am one of them. But in particular, I get cravings for baked goods, and homemade is always better than store-bought. So apparently I also stress bake. In the past two weeks, I've made two pans of brownies (one was tonight, so they should last a bit yet), peanut butter chip cookies (those went to work, so we were saved from ourselves), and a batch of butterscotch/chocolate chip cookies. We are suddenly remarkably low on chocolate chips, butter, eggs, and flour. I'm not sure how that happened...

If you're looking for a good brownie recipe, I would highly recommend these Extreme Chocolate Brownies, which I made tonight. The first step is a little putzy, but not hard, I promise. (Okay, third step I guess. If preheating the oven and greasing the pan are too difficult for you, please put down the recipe and go buy some brownies in the bakery at your local grocery store.)

How do you deal with work stress? Any tips to share? Or any recipes for chocolate baked goods?

Smith & Wollensky

As I hinted at yesterday, Becky and I both took the day off work today. Call it a one day "staycation." We did this in honor of New York's Restaurant Week, which has become a bit of a tradition for us. During Restaurant Week a large selection of participating restaurants offer three course meals, with lunch for $24.07 and dinner for $35.00. They offer a limited menu and if possible pack the tables a little closer together. But at the nicer restaurants that price is a steal for that much food. So, you might think that our tradition would be to try out a selection of different restaurants that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. That was actually our original intention. But then the first time we tried it (in 2008) we abandoned thoughts of going elsewhere. Our restaurant? Smith and Wollensky.

For appetizers, Becky enjoyed fried calamari (which she proclaimed to be the best she's ever had) and I ate split pea soup (not exactly my favorite, but theirs is good and I didn't love the other options). Mostly though, during this course we enjoy the bread basket. It is piled high with four different types of bread, plus some crispy chip-like deliciousness. I'm a sucker for a good bread basket. As best I can describe, the options are pretzel bread, sourdough bread, crunchy delicious oatmeal bread, and strange fruity bread.

For main dishes, we pick the obvious. Do I even need to tell you that it is the 10 oz. filet mignon? Well, I probably do because I haven't actually linked you to the menu yet. But nonetheless, obvious. Since becoming my significant other, and being influenced by the uncooked steak love that runs rampant in my family, Becky has been on a slippery slope towards ordering rare steak. Today she took the plunge and, for the first time, ordered a rare steak in a restaurant. When she did this the waiter questioned, "would you like a warm center or a cool center?" It turns out there is a super secret "extra rare" option, which of course Becky passed on (she's still on the slippery slope after all) and I of course gleefully accepted. Steak verdict? Delicious. We also enjoyed adding some hash browned potatoes and some white wine on the side.

For dessert we again selected the same option. Chocolate mousse cake. Rich, creamy, chocolaty deliciousness for the win.

One of the things I like about this restaurant (and other similar restaurants) is that all of their stuff is personalized with the restaurant name. As in, the plates say "Smith and Wollensky" and the silver is engraved with "Smith and Wollensky" and the napkins have a woven likeness of the restaurant facade and even the mints have "Smith and Wollensky" candied right in.
To justify the price (even with the deal this is a lot more than we would usually pay for a lunch, once you consider wine and side dishes and taxes and tips!) we called it a late joint birthday celebration, despite the fact that they were both about a month ago. A very happy birthday to us! Long live the Smith & Wollensky tradition!

Snow Day!

Apparently this January has been the snowiest January on record in New York City. I honestly never imagined we'd see this much snow here. It is the snow of our childhoods in the Midwest, which even they haven't had for many years. I'm definitely one of the first ones to jump on making fun of New York for considering itself a cold place, or a place capable of handling snow. But, especially considering they have no where to put the snow here, this is pretty crazy.

We woke up this morning to Becky's phone ringing with an automated message letting her/us/the neighborhood know that her work was closed. This noise was followed by the siren alerting us that local schools were closed. Now seriously people, the siren? That is supposed to go off when meteorologists have spotted a giant spinning funnel cloud. It tells you loud and clear to grab your battery powered radio in one hand and your cat in the other hand and run to your basement. It does not tell you to go out and play in the snow! I don't even know how to describe the siren or the noise without describing it as a tornado siren. In the absence of much tornado risk, I wouldn't have even guessed that northeastern cities would have them. But our town does, and apparently they use it to announce school closings. I knew my work would be open, so I didn't even bother getting up, despite the fact that my annoyance kept me from falling back asleep.

But then, at the normal time, I did get up, and found that our busses were not running. Which of course makes it less than easy for me to get to my annoyingly open work. After much conferring with the appropriate powers-that-be I determined that I could in fact use some leave time and reschedule my appointments. And hence, a snow day was born.

That's each of us with snow piled up over our heads! Unfortunately, my poor car is also piled up well over its head.

Yep, there's a car under there. And it belongs to me/us. If we ever find it again that is. I joked about it before, but I'm now a little bit concerned that we might actually not be able to move it again for a while. Especially because we're supposed to get more snow this weekend!

We decided we needed some delicious snow day dinner. So, we pulled out the awesome cookbook that we received as a wedding shower gift and selected a Cheddar Ham Soup. The cookbook was a project headed up by my sister (and Matron of Honor). She sent out blank recipe cards to all of the women who were invited to the wedding and asked them to submit a recipe (and a memory too, if they chose) to include in a cookbook for us. So at the shower we received a cookbook full of the favorite recipes of a whole bunch of our friends and family members! We thought it was a really neat way to include all of our long distance friends and family who weren't able to attend the shower, and now it's a fun keepsake. I can happily report that Becky's aunt's soup is delicious! So we'll be eating soup and enjoying this lovely view out of the windows, possibly for months to come.

Groceries

As a follow-up to Carrie's weekend post, our groceries from Fresh Direct arrived last night. It was pretty sweet that someone else packed them and hauled them up the stairs for us, but it's a little strange to get groceries in boxes. The service is great, the food looks fresh, but they don't sell many of our staple items (and only have name-brand options of many products) and their regular prices really aren't competitive with what we usually pay for the same foods.

Plus I just really LIKE grocery shopping. I used to be obsessed with reading grocery store sale flyers, looking for the best deals, but my lust for that has dulled with time. Admittedly, our usual grocery-shopping routine probably sounds a little crazy to some. We do a big shopping trip every 3 weeks or so. We plan out meals for the upcoming few weeks before we go, and make our grocery list based on that. The Target store near us has a pretty large selection of groceries and some of the best prices around, so we start there for a lot of our staples. We then head to the Trader Joe's that's about half a mile past Target and stock up on produce and most of the other items that Target doesn't sell. This does tend to leave a couple of specific products that aren't at either store (we're picky about tortillas--go figure), so one or the other of us will walk to the grocery store that's a couple blocks away to fill in any remaining gaps. The whole project takes a couple hours, but we get most of our food at the best prices we can find, we get good quality meat and produce, and by planning our meals ahead of time, we don't end up wasting much food. Having a plan also makes us less likely to come home from work and say "I'm tired, let's just order take-out, eat mac & cheese, etc." It works for us.

But since I view the Saturday grocery shopping every few weeks as a sacred activity, I'm even less likely to be sold on Fresh Direct's services. But thank you for the $50 coupons--we do appreciate them!

piccadilly-cat sez "ur soda runned away"

O hai, NFC Championship

In case you haven't heard yet, THE PACKERS ARE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!!!

Alright, I admit that I am no die-hard fan and that I only watch the games that happen to be televised here, but the Pack will ALWAYS be my team. Fortunately, one of my co-workers is also from Wisconsin and IS a die-hard fan, so I get to hear all about what I missed and what's new in the world of the Packers. Said co-worker is also a regular at Kettle of Fish, the best Packer bar in NYC. I'd been saying for years that I was going to go watch a game with her, and somehow this game, against Da Bears, no less, seemed like the perfect candidate. But there's something you need to understand about the patrons of this bar, and Packer fans in general--we're crazy.

On Sunday, the game started at 3:00 p.m. The bar was opening at 1:00. This naturally meant that in order to be guaranteed a seat to watch the game, we needed to get there and line up early...just after 10:00 a.m. In case standing outside a bar in the West Village for three hours on a Sunday morning doesn't sound crazy enough to you, keep in mind that it was only 20 degrees outside. But I put on all the warmest clothes I had, packed my thermos of hot chocolate (after nearly scalding myself checking to see if it leaked. It did. I responded by wrapping it in a plastic bag and keeping it upright. It worked.) and trekked into the city while Carrie stayed in our warm, cozy apartment.

Fortunately, the wait passed relatively quickly, and just as I began to fear that I may never feel my toes again, a kind stranger appeared with extra hand/foot warmers. Hallelujah! To give you an idea of the scope of the line (and the craziness of those in it), here's a picture I took shortly before the doors opened.

I knew I was in the right place when I saw cheeseheads.

Once inside, there were drinks, plates of summer sausage and cheese, and Usinger's bratwursts to help us warm up. I was sadly lacking in Packers garb (a situation my mom is remedying as I type this), but fortunately my co-worker brought me a spare jersey, and another kind stranger was passing out green and gold beads (and cheese curds--yum!)

Anyway, I would describe both that game and the bar as somewhat ugly but awesome. The bar was seriously a little trippy--with the wood paneling, ceiling tiles, and several people in very un-ironic plaid, I could have sworn I was in someone's basement in Wisconsin rather than in the West Village. But it was also refreshing to just be able to give the name of a town in response to "Where you from?" And I think the last time I was surrounded by such enthusiastic sports fans must have been in the student section at a UW-Madison football game. The air in this place was electric.

Oh yeah, and did I mention SUPER BOWL?!?! I am already scheming plans for green and gold foods to make for that day. Suggestions are welcome. And so far the list of attendees at said party includes Carrie, me, and our cats--so if you're going to be in the neighborhood, please feel free to stop by!

After I got home from the game, Carrie and I feasted upon leftover homemade chili in homemade bread bowls. The bread didn't turn out quite like I'd hoped--all four bowls mysteriously shrunk just before I put them in the oven, but they were delicious nonetheless.

Depths of January

I know I'm a wimpy Minnesotan, I know that the weather in NYC/NJ is nothing compared to what it has been in the Midwest, but I'm officially tired of winter. And I didn't even stand outside in it for 3 hours today like Becky did. But I'll let her tell you about that insanity. This has probably been the snowiest and coldest winter since we moved here (and this is our fifth, believe it or not!) Something about the combination of the snow strategy here (pour an ocean of salt all over everything, let the cars create huge slushy puddles to get rid of snow bulk) and our lifestyle here (walking to public transportation, on-street parking, me walking all over the place for my job) makes the tropical NYC winter still feel unbearable.

Friday night we hung out at home and watched Inception from Netflix. I liked it a lot, but probably not as much as I thought I might, based on descriptions I've read referring to it as a mix of Memento and Eternal Sunshine. I've been thinking about it since then and I still don't understand why Cobb and Saito end up in the same place in the end, nor do I understand how they managed to get back to "reality." And pretty much the entire winter wonderland 3rd level scene confused me. But I love both Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page, so two thumbs up from me.

Saturday we avoided moving the car, and hence dealing with the aforementioned annoying weather and parking situation. How did we do that you ask? A seemingly too-good-to-be-true coupon from Fresh Direct! Fresh Direct is one of those grocery delivery companies, which of course we are usually way too cheap to consider utilizing, even on frigid days. Apparently they are hard core trying to push their service in this area, because they sent us a coupon for $50 off a $125 order and free delivery - and we can use it two times within 60 days!! So I spent way too much time on the eternal grocery list and now some poor Fresh Direct shmuck has to carry our milk and soda and 8lbs of meat through the cold and up the flights of stairs. I'm sure they anticipate I'll get addicted to these amazing benefits, but between the extra cost and not having a lot of the exact products we like, I think we'll only be using it for the two awesome deals.

We went to see The King's Speech on Saturday night (go indoor entertainment!), which was also fun. I'm glad none of my clients are royalty; that sounds hard. Scenes of the commoners when the air raid sirens were going reminded Becky and me of the children of war exhibit that we both loved at the Imperial War Museum of London.

Today I'm relaxing as a bachelor with my Sam Adams blackberry witbier, my pizza rolls, and my televised football game. Yes, that's right, I am watching a football game alone. I know this sounds seriously crazy to any of you who know me. But I wanted to know what happened! Sorry for the lack of live blogging, I know how you all love a good live blog!

Happy Snow Day Recipe

We did not actually get a snow day today here--all the dramatic lead-up (and New York does drama and anxiety in preparation for snow like nowhere I've ever seen before), and then we only ended up getting around 9 inches. And after the disaster that was the snowstorm a few weeks ago, city governments apparently figured out how snowplows work and got things cleaned up. But it did snow, and therefore it was a perfect day for making soup!

Wild rice soup is a favorite of both Carrie and me, so I thought I'd share our recipe with you. Both of our moms had slightly different recipes, and we've incorporated bits from each into our version.

Note: if you don't live in Minnesota or Wisconsin, wild rice may be tricky to find or obscenely expensive at your average grocery store. But I have good news--Trader Joe's sells it for a completely reasonable price! As an alternative, you could wait to see if Carrie's mom brings you some the next time she visits, but I think that's probably not the most reliable plan for most of you. If you don't have a Trader Joe's near you, I am truly sorry.

Wild Rice Soup
Makes 4-6 servings

2 cups cooked wild rice (2/3 cup uncooked)
5 Tablespoons butter
1 small onion, chopped
1 cup grated carrots
1/2 cup flour
4 cups chicken broth
pinch of pepper
pinch of turmeric
2 bay leaves
1 cup diced ham
1 cup half and half

Cook the wild rice first; it takes about an hour total, so you'll want to start this a little in advance of the rest of the soup. I generally use about three parts water to one part rice, so 2/3 cup rice and 2 cups water (this leaves a little extra water in the pan at the end, but you can either drain it off or just pour it into the soup with the rice). Put rice and water in a pan and heat to boiling. Reduce heat to simmer and cover. Cook for 45-55 minutes or until most of the rice kernels have popped.

Melt butter in a sauce pan and sautee the onion and carrots until tender. Blend in flour. Slowly add broth stirring constantly (A whisk helps at this point to keep the flour from getting lumpy). Keep stirring until mixture thickens slightly. Stir in pepper, turmeric, and bay leaves.

Add ham and cooked rice. Simmer for about 5 minutes. Stir in half and half and heat to serving temperature. Don't forget to remove bay leaves before serving!

We usually make a double batch of this--the leftovers are delicious! If you double it, make sure you use a stock pot or dutch oven because it's a lot of soup.