The opposite of a rant

I know, I haven't posted anything on this blog for months and months. And the other one's been fairly neglected too. This whole taking care of a kid business interferes with blogging. And then there's my recently acquired Facebook addiction...but that's another post. In any case, I thought I'd post the rare positive rave, instead of rant.

T & I were in Chicago this past week (he was there for work, E & I tagged along to hang with my mom and visit friends). Our trip conveniently coincided with both Valentine's Day and our anniversary, so we decided to celebrate by going to a fancy schmancy dinner at a relatively new restaurant called L2O. Yes, I'm secretly a wannabe food critic, although probably lacking in proper credentials.

Anyways, here's the wrap-up. I meant to take pictures, but I got a little intimidated. Or, to be more accurate, I didn't want to make an ass of myself and seem like a total tourist. But I found a Flickr pool of pictures, as well as a wealth of info on the L2O blog, and I've included links where applicable. I'll probably insert more actual pictures when I'm feeling less lazy, but for now, you'll have to click. Sorry.

I'll confess, we picked this place after seeing it on TV. But I figure that Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert probably know what they're talking about, so after seeing them rave on "No Reservations," I made one. The restaurant was located inside the Belden-Stratford building, a luxury hotel/apartment building in Lincoln Park. The space actually used to be another restaurant (Ambria) and there's another restaurant across the hall (Mon Ami Gabi). Interestingly, these are/were all Lettuce Entertain You restaurants.

When we pulled up to the valet parking, they actually already had our name down on the reservation list, so no ticket was needed. Same for the coat check. Nice touch. When we went into the restaurant itself, the entrance area was a bit dark, with dark wood columns, leading to a brightly lit tree-like decoration in glass, similar to but not exactly like these: http://www.flickr.com/photos/18805923@N00/2497682336/in/pool-759455@N23

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lesleyk/2588613935/in/pool-759455@N23
I read somewhere that the glass case decoration changes weekly, but I'm not sure if that's true or not.

The decor was overall very modern. There was no formal hostess stand, but someone greeted us and showed us to the lounge to wait for our table (we were a bit early for our reservation).

The server for the lounge poured us some water (from their own custom logo'd bottles, of course) into pretty blue stemless Reidel glasses and gave us the cocktail menu. T and I choked a bit on the idea of ordering an $20 cocktail, but I guess it wasn't that outrageous given the setting. We did skip the caviar service though. Heh. I finally settled on a glass of Riesling and T went with a Hefeweizen beer. Both were very good and I think we could have both swapped drinks and been happy, which is odd to say since I'm not a beer-drinker, and he's not a wine-drinker.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/18805923@N00/2496918631/in/pool-759455@N23

Again, the setting was very ultra-modern. White leather furniture, white lucite table, frosted glass divider separating the dining room, very cool. When they showed us to our table, they had us leave all our drinks and brought them over for us after we were seated, which I always love. The dining room was not very big and mostly divided by these big 'screens' of thick wire that you could still see though. There were also private rooms which we saw later during a tour.

Before our menus came, we had two Amuse Bouche:

The first was a small piece of smoked salmon, covered with a salmon foam and served with a clear disc of salmon gelee placed at 12 o'clock on the rim of the plate. Everything was clear or white except for the fish itself, but it all still had very strong salmon flavors. Very savory.

The second was a mussel encased in a coconut curry gelee with green apple essence and tiny discs of cucumber & jalapeno. That one was fantastic. I especially liked how you could actually taste the jalapeno, but not the heat. I loved the little dish it came in too.

When we got our menus, we were told that there are a few options for dining. There was a four-course prix fixe menu, where you got to select from a number of options for each course (Raw, Warm, Main and Dessert). Then there was a six-course "tete-a-tete" menu where each course focused on just two ingredients with very simple preparations. Then there was the twelve-course tasting menu that just listed the main ingredient for each course, but you could see some of the descriptions since some appeared in the prix-fixe option as well. After a short discussion, T and I decided we didn't want to mess with choosing and worry that we'd picked the wrong things, so we went for the tasting menu. Hey, you only live once, right?

Raw

1st course: Shimaaji (mackerel), served with baby radishes & thinly sliced daikon(I think?), red miso and soy salt, dehydrated from their own homemade soy sauce

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3064111590/in/pool-759455@N23

Very light and clean-tasting. The shimaaji was white-fleshed and tasted nothing like the mackerel you normally get at sushi restaurants.

2nd course: Tuna Tartare, served as a grid of cubes with various sauces in gelee form and lightly drizzled with olive oil. Similar, but not exact pic:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lesleyk/2589457822/in/pool-759455@N23

I can't remember what was in all of the sauces except that one was black squid ink, which was suprisingly tasty. This was one of my least favorite dishes though. I thought the tuna on it's own was bland and the olive oil was overwhelming. After eating this, I felt like my mouth was coated in oil and had a hard time getting the taste out.

3rd (I think - may have been the 4th): Homemade tofu, in a white ginger-miso sauce, topped with thinly sliced scallions and flakes of something akin to bonito (can't remember what it was called).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lstolpman/3243899109/in/pool-759455@N23

The texture of the tofu was outstanding - so silky it was like pudding, and the sauce was also very very tasty. But I thought the scallion was just a bit overpowering and the fish flakes didn't taste like anything to me, but they did add nice texture.

Oh, at this point, I should also mention the bread. They had the most wonderful selection of in-house baked breads, all miniature, and all absolutely amazing. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but there was a mini-baguette, a crusty wheat roll, mini rosemary croissant (my fave), a square milk bread whose name I can't remember (but it was T's fave), a kalamata olive roll, a caramelized onion roll, and then slices of some other bread (rye, maybe?) I didn't try. These were served with a small dome of homemade, lightly-salted butter, also to-die for. I told T at one point that I could have spent the whole evening eating croissants and butter and been pretty happy. They came around and refilled as we pleased and we probably got a little piggy with bread, but it was SO good.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lstolpman/3244686370/in/pool-759455@N23

4th - I'm not sure if this still falls under raw or was a transition to the "Warm" menu: Cold-smoked Escolar (I think, can't quite remember the name of the fish and I'm sort of relying on Flickr descriptions), served with thinly sliced hearts of palm and crystal ice lettuce. Our server recommended that we roll it up and eat everything together.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3064111590/in/pool-759455@N23

This dish was also excellent. The fish was very tender and you could definitely taste the smoke. I thought the texture was almost akin to lobster. Although I didn't like having to use my hands to tear up the lettuce and roll the fish up. I preferred to just pick the whole thing up with chopsticks and shove it into my mouth. I know, I'm a class act.

Warm

5th course: Kampachi with served over tapioca pearls and and drizzled tableside with an yuzu sauce.

This dish was more than just warm, it was hot (as was the plate it was served on, which I love), and it was probably my favorite dish of the night. I wanted very badly to lick the sauce off the plate, but I had to settle for using my spoon to scoop up as much as possible. The fish was cooked absolutely perfectly.

6th (I think): Arctic Char poached in a champagne butter sauce, accompanied by a square of zucchini emulsion, topped with a thin sheet of gelee and squares of zucchini skin arranged on top:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3063291189/in/pool-759455@N23

There were also dots of a basil pesto on the plate. This dish was also to-die-for. A close second for fave of the evening.

7th: Lobster dumplings served over a lobster broth and topped with black trumpet mushrooms.

Similar pic, but not quite what we had:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3063295885/in/pool-759455@N23

Simply amazing. The texture of the dumpling was much softer than you'd expect for a normal dumpling, almost gelatinous, but totally smooth and creamy, and SO lobster-y. T kept asking me how they did this - distilled so much lobster flavor into one small globe - and I have no idea. I think this was one of his favorites of the night.

Main

8th: Black (Striped?) Bass topped with brioche toast, sitting on a bed of shredded daikon and something else, surrounded by saffron-infused mussels with red-veined sorrel, served with an orangey shellfish(?) bouillon/sauce, poured tableside.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3064128532/in/pool-759455@N23

I loved the bass and the brioche toast, but I did not care for the mussels. I thought they were a bit overkill and took away from the fish. I actually gave the last couple on my plate to T. Then again, I'm generally not a giant fan of mussels. I'll eat them, but they're low on my list of seafood. I thought the sauce was a bit bitter as well, but it did sort of grow on me. T liked this dish quite a bit and thought I was being too nit-picky.

9th: Slow-braised Pork Belly, seared before serving to crisp up the skin, served with a black truffle sauce and yukon gold potatoes 3 ways - a thin sheet & a cylinder that had a bit of creamy mashed potato in the center:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3064142360/in/pool-759455@N23

This is they type of dish that I would normally never order since it's so much pure fat, but I have to confess, I'm a convert. It was very flavorful, and the crispiness of the skin provided just the right textural counterpart to the fat. I wanted to take a bath in the sauce.

10th: Shabu Shabu - Slices of Medai fish, trumpet mushroom, napa cabbage, and a shizo leaf, that we dipped in hot kombu broth, served with a white ponzu dipping sauce.

This was nice, but didn't knock my socks off. The fish was very good, sushi-grade but better cooked than raw, but I wish we could have actually drank the broth at the end. I didn't care much for the dipping sauce either. I will say, the presentation was gorgeous.

Dessert

Chocolate Soy - basically explained as a soy paste, almost akin to tofu, that was infused with chocolate and then sprinkled on top with chocolate salt. This had the look and texture of a truffle and was so chocolatey good. I never in a million years would have guessed there was soy in it.

Floating Island - a take on the traditional "Isle Flotant" dessert (that I made in cooking school, ha!) but with a limoncello cloud, a pistachio sauce and a pistachio crisp.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3063311371/in/pool-759455@N23

This is not my favorite kind of dessert, but it was good. I think T liked it better than I did.

Exotic Fruit Consumme - Mango Sorbet topped with lemongrass marshmallows, passionfruit seeds & mint, sitting on brunoised pineapple, mango and passionfruit, and a passionfruit consomme, poured tableside.

I did not care for this dessert at all. It was easily my least favorite dish of the evening. I thought there were way too many flavors, components and textures and it was overall too tart. The lemongrass marshmallows didn't taste like much (I could detext a hint of lemongrass), and I thought the texture they added when you ate everything together was icky.

At this point, I thought we were done. We'd long since lost count of courses and assumed that 3 desserts were about it. But I'll confess that all evening, I'd been seeing these gorgeous, PERFECT souffles coming out all evening and was secretly bummed that we weren't going to get one since I think they were on the prix-fixe menu. But then imagine my suprise when we each got one!

Praline Souffle - with Frangelico base and rum sauce.

To. Die. For. This was sooooo good. But by the time it came, we were already pretty full. And for EACH of us to eat our own not small souffle was kind of crazy. I struggled to finish mine, and only because T pushed me to do it, saying I'd regret wasting it.

At this point, I thought I was going to burst. T and I started making jokes about how we wouldn't have to pull through the drive-thru after all. And then our server told us that while technically, that was the last course, there was still a Mignardises. *groan* She actually offered to wrap them up for us, but after convincing us that they were just two very small bites, we went with it.

Served together: Macaroon cookie sandwich with salty caramel filling and a Canelé Bordeaux cake. Here's a pic of the latter, which is kind of a custardy cake covered with beeswax to give the outside a crunchy texture.

I'm normally not a huge fan of macaroons, but this was like a heavenly little pillow, filled with caramel goodness. Despite being stuffed, I probably could have eaten another... or six. The canelé was good also, but I just couldn't finish it. Honestly, I was a bit OD'd on soft custard-y textured things after the souffle.

After dinner, we got to take a tour of the kitchen. Of course, it was now about midnight and service had long since officially ended, so most of the staff were cleaning. I was a little bit sad that we didn't get to see it in action, but it was still amazing. The kitchen was HUGE, I believe they said slightly more than half the space of the entire restaurant, which is crazy. It was amazingly clean, which I imagine it is even at the height of service, and there were separate stations for everything, as well as lots of cool machines to make all the various components. There was even a separate fish kitchen where I guess the chef himself breaks down the fish that is flown in every other day from Japan. Crazy. Here's a link to a pic from someone else's Flickr, just to give you an idea:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3064166838/in/set-72157610262028662/

So this was definitely the meal of a lifetime...but I'm already thinking about how/when we can go back. I'll also add that despite the fact that this place was insanely high-end, our server was fantastically warm and friendly. I never felt like she was looking down her noses at us, especially when we decided to forego wine and drank water the rest of the evening after we finished our pre-dinner drinks. And it goes without saying that the service was overall impeccable. Beautiful table service, presentation, all-new appropriate silverware for every course; we never had to ask for a thing. An amazing meal, in every sense.

All is right with the world

Congratulations to Stephanie, the hometown winner! Lisa can suck it. That is all.

Words fail me.

I thought that I'd have more to say after sleeping on it, but Lisa making it to the final three...I still can't believe it. She is so awful. I told my sister-in-law last night that I hope she's like Wendy Pepper in season one of Project Runway; she clearly didn't deserve to be in the finals based on talent and everyone knew it, including the judges, who dismissed her pretty quickly.

If Richard or Stephanie don't win this, then there is something seriously wrong with this show.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I saw a commercial for Hell's Kitchen last night and thought, "oh yeah, is this show still on?" I still don't really get the timing of when they started this season. It's usually a summer show, and I know Fox was probably hurting for new content after the strike ended, but I don't think I've watched even one full episode, so I couldn't care less now that they're down to the final five. I know Top Chef is on cable, but why in the world would they go up against it? It only makes their show look all the more pathetic. If they'd used even the tiniest bit of common sense, they would've started Hell's Kitchen NOW. I probably would've watched it. I'd feel dirty about it, but I would've have watched anyways just to get my fix of cooking and crappy reality.

And no, I won't be watching the Next Food Network Star. That show is beyond awful. The whole debacle last season with the guy who lied about his resume...lame.

Six of one, half dozen of the other

I thought about titling this "Goodbye to another Ugly Hat man," but I have to say I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. Spike is gone. And deservedly so. But now that means that Lisa is in the finals. Ridiculous. As the episode got down to those last few minutes, I was really really wishing that they'd just ax both of them. I am so sick of even looking at Lisa...but Spike's smart mouth (well, those scallops were in your walk-in...gah!), not to mention idiotic choice of the aforementioned frozen scallops...blech. I'm really really happy to see that Stefanie and Richard made it into the finals. I think it's going to come down to those two, unless one or both of them managed to choke big time at the end, which I hate to admit, may happen with Stefanie. I love her because she seems like such a nice Midwestern girl, but sometimes she does some goofy shit. For some reason, I'm just not a big fan of Antonia. Something about her...it just puts me off. Honestly, I think this contest is Richard's to lose, much like Hung last year.

I also have to mention that I really like how this season, they've done more challenges that were about basic skills. Butchering meat was an excellent idea for a quickfire, especially in Chicago. I'll confess, we spent maybe 15 minutes talking about butchering when I was in cooking school (they gave us some lame excuse that it's rare to need that skill), so I can't butcher a damn thing. But I totally wish that I could.

It's about frickin' time!

Let's just cut to the chase. Nikki is finally gone! Hooray! I'm sorry, but she was clearly the most useless person, not just in last night's episode but in at least the last 2 or 3 episodes. All she's done is talk about how she's Italian and she makes comfort food, and then when the judges don't like her stuff, she says that she's not doing it for them, she's cooking "for the people." Pfft...whatever! Something about her has just always rubbed me the wrong way, and her food was never spectacular. Goodbye, you won't be missed. (And before you get your panties all in a bunch, no it's not a real mugshot - it's from some lame event.)

I think T is planning on writing another "guest blog" but in the meantime, here are my thoughts. Last night's episode was pretty entertaining. I liked the idea of doing Wedding Wars instead of Restaurant Wars. It's a pretty mean bait & switch to pull though. Catering a wedding is really nothing like working in a restaurant, and to have to pull an all-nighter with no warning - rough. Especially having to make wedding cakes.

Nikki's team had disaster written all over it from the start. You just knew that Dale was going to clash with everyone. And he had every right. Most of those people were morons. I mean, they took what should have been a super easy theme (Italian food) and totally screwed it up. And not to keep bashing Nikki, but way to step up as leader. I mean, if you're connecting with the customer on what he's into, and you have the most experience with the type of food he wants, then WHY would you shirk the leader role? Again, have you not watched this show ever? I understand not wanting to take the bullet if things go south, but you'd at least get props for taking on the challenge! When she flat-out said, "I was not the lead in this effort" at Judges' Table, my jaw about hit the floor. I think you could see the shock and disappointment emanating from Tom's bald head.

Maybe I have a soft spot for Dale since he's Asian and from Chicago, but I think he was a bit unnecessarily villainized by his teammates too. There was a lot of grumbling about how he was doing things wrong or whatever, but no one actually wanted to step up and correct him or offer to take over. I hate that attitude. It's like when you're trying to decide with a group of people what to do on a Friday night, and someone sits there in the corner and says nothing while the decisions are being made, but then once you get to the bar, they're like, "This place sucks. Why'd we come here? I wanted to go to this other place." Well why the hell didn't you say so? It's so easy to complain about decisions after they've already been made.

I thought the smacktalk between Dale & HatBeard was dumb. I understand that at this point, they'd probably all been up for well over 36 hours, so tempers were flaring. And much as I like Dale, it's obvious that his fuse is shorter than most. Punching the locker because they lost the Quickfire...kinda pathetic. But I do think HatBeard was just baiting him. In case I haven't mentioned it before, he REALLY annoys me. Way to cover up for your own lack of work by trying to point the finger at the guy who did the most. Yeah, that made sense. For once, Lisa did the smart thing at Judges' Table and just kept her mouth shut. She knew that her cake, ugly as it was, was going to keep her out of harm's way, and chiming in on their pissy little fight was only going to draw unnecessary attention to herself. Of course, I wonder if part of the reason that she didn't say anything was because she'd fallen asleep standing up. She looked exhausted! Way more so than her teammates, almost to a scary degree.

Not a lot of comments about the other team. It was another lovefest, led by once again by Richard, who I'm begrudgingly beginning to like and root for. I'm with T about the faux-hawk though - it's lame and needs to go. I did think it was pretty cool of him to share his win with Stephanie. And I guess TweakBeard must not have packed enough speed in his bag that day because he was strangely quiet through most of the episode. Although his comment about the "culinary boner"...well, I could've done without that.

A Top Chef Birthday

One episode in and I'm already hooked! Although I'll confess, I'm a little bit predisposed to like any show set in Chicago and seeing the montage of the city in the beginning made me miss living in a real city all the more.

It's always hard to pick out favorites this early in the game. There's just too many people for them to focus on more than 2-3, and they obviously skew the "story" quite a bit. About 10 minutes into the show, I turned to T and said, I bet Nimma's out. For one thing, it's never a good sign when someone decides the first night that they're going to bed when everyone else is drinking champagne because they're "not here to make friends." I had a feeling she was going to be the weepy isolationist and I wasn't too far off.

Then, the first quickfire. First of all, I was a little disappointed by the quickfire. Making a deep dish pizza was a little lame; yeah, you're at Uno's, could you be more predictable? And on the scale of difficulty, pizza ranks pretty low. I mean, last year, they had to make dishes out of the buffet without knives! Despite the ease, some of the cheftestants managed to find a way to screw it up. Good gravy people, even if you've never eaten a deep dish pizza in your life, you had to know not to fill the whole damn pan with dough! Come on! You have had pizza before, right?

Nimma popped up again (in a bad way) with her underseasoned pizza. OK, I'm going to kick into culinary school food snob mode here for a moment. Underseasoning your food is like, THE lamest, most amateur rookie mistake there is. It is something that is pounded into your head over and over and over again in cooking school. At my school, underseasoning a dish was a major loss of points. I also just went and looked at her bio, and she went to the freaking CIA! She definitely should've known better. Then she had to go and overcompensate by OVERseasoning her dish in the Elimination Challenge. All I could do was shake my head. Again, amateur time. And that cauliflower flan thing....egad. Even if that part had turned out, her dish looked and sounded sooooo boring. A shame, because there's a million things you could do with shrimp scampi.

I've also got to freak out momentarily over the two people who ended up having to make souffles. Ok, again, basic stuff if you have been to culinary school! Not to mention that if I knew I was going on this show, I would have spent weeks memorizing and practicing baking any and everything I could think of. Time and again, people have gotten slammed for tanking a simple dessert. A souffle is really not that complicated for people operating at this level of the game, and the guy who dumped all the crap on top of his souffle? I was speechless.

As far as the cheftestants go, so far, T has a soft spot for the Kiwi, but I think it's only because he reminds T of his friend from New Zealand (aptly nicknamed, Kiwi). That guy, I think his name is Spike? He already annoys the crap out of me. When he said "Padma was like, Casa, m*f*s!" I could only turn to T, slack-jawed. I am also thoroughly over anyone who is into "molecular gastronomy." Seriously people, move on. Ferran Adria has. So should you.

The only guy I like so far is Erik, and that's only because if he wins, he wants to take the money and open a hut on the beach in Hawaii. Sweet.

Oh, and last but not least, I have to comment that the fact that Anthony Bourdain and Rocco DiSpirito were on the same judging panel together cracked me up to no end! If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go back and read some of Bourdain's blogs from last season. He is waaaay harsh on Rocco (and deservedly so after that whole debacle with The Restaurant). It's hilarious. I'm really hoping that he blogs again this season.

I'm already looking forward to next week!

RIP Rice cooker

My rice cooker died last week. Actually, to be more precise, it went out in a literal blaze of glory. T was outside grilling Korean short ribs for dinner and the rice cooker timer had popped and was happily keeping our rice all nice and warm when it suddenly started popping and sparking like an insano indoor fireworks display. I make light, but it was actually a little scary. I'll admit, I screamed a little when it first started, but otherwise was just frozen by fright.

Turns out, the cord, which was admittedly not in the best condition was a teeny bit wet. OK, so it was a really frayed and chewed up looking cord sitting in a very small puddle of water. Shoot me. So all told, we're actually really lucky that it wasn't much much worse, and also that nothing else caught fire, like the cloth stand mixer cover just a few inches away.

I'm so bummed though as I've had that rice cooker forever. I actually swiped it from my parents' house when I went away to college, so it's got to be at least 15 years old...although eek, now that I think about it, probably more than 20! Gosh, I'm old. Now I have to decide whether to replace it with one of the shiny new expensive Japanese models that most people swear makes perfect rice (but nothing else) or stick to the old school and get a replica of what I had. I haven't priced them out yet, but I'm leaning towards replica. I'll have to checkout the selection at the local Chinese grocery stores.

Oh, and despite the drama, the rice inside the cooker was just fine. There's a little char mark on the counter though.

Chicken and Dumplings

IMG_2591.JPG
Originally uploaded by craftyasiangirl

This is our dinner from Wednesday night. It's a really terrible picture and you're going to have to trust me that it looked and tasted much better in person. It's adapted from the recipe in The Best Recipes cookbook, which is one of my favorite cookbooks of all time. For those unfamiliar, it's put out by the same people who do the Cook's Illustrated magazine and America's Test Kitchen on PBS. They do tons of testing of variations of a recipe, looking for the "perfect" one. This is damn close.

My main complaint about this recipe is that it's completely from scratch, and thus, very time-consuming. This is one of the few times that I did indeed start with raw chicken parts and make stock, etc., but usually, I cheat big time and use a store-bought rotisserie chicken and some organic chicken broth.

I've been trying to incorporate more veggies into my cooking, so I added fresh green beans and frozen peas this time. I don't think T cared for them, but that's too bad. Oh, and one minor thing: I usually do the dumplings by rolling them out and cutting them into little rectangles, but I was too lazy this time and just took gobs of the dough and rolled them into little balls. I think I like the little rectangular pillows better as they cooked faster and more evenly.

blech

I have a confession to make. Both T & I are obsessed with the McDonald's Monopoly game that is going on right now. In fact, I'm too embarassed to admit how many times we've eaten Mickey D's since the game started a couple weeks ago. Let's just say, way more than is healthy. Which leads me to the title above. I feel disgusting. I think I've totally OD'd on McDonalds. I actually hadn't been eating fast food at all lately, and now every time I drive past McDonalds when I'm even a little bit hungry, I think, hey maybe I should see if I can get some more pieces. It's a sickness, in more ways than one. The saddest part of all this is that while both T & I are equally fixated, we've never really gone there and eaten it together. We've both been stealthily hitting the drive-thru on our own during the course of the day. And we only discovered this when we both coughed up the treasure trove of pieces that had been hiding in our respective cars. I know, we're sad.

However, I will say that yesterday, for the first time ever in my entire life, I won something! And no, not a small fries or a $1 coupon at Toys R Us like a million other people already have won. I peeled the two pieces off my McMuffin yesterday morning and found both Baltic and Mediterranean Aves., which is worth $50! I think that might almost cover how much I've spent eating there. Once I fill out all the requisite paperwork and mail it in, I think I can expect my check sometime around February. I'm only sort of kidding.

So my winning has actually only exacerbated the obsession since now that we've one something, we really want to win more. After I emailed T that I won, he felt compelled to hit McD's for lunch, certain that he could outdo my paltry $50 (yes, we also have a somewhat unhealthy competitive aspect in our marriage). And I had to try again today, thinking that maybe I could have a lucky streak. I even got a Big Mac meal, even though I never eat Big Macs, because the sandwich box has pieces on it, and I supersized it for the extra pieces on the fries. Yes, insert comment about my sanity (or lack thereof) here.

I think today's value meal did me in. The Big Mac was okay, mostly because I don't think I've eaten one in years, but I couldn't even bring myself to finish the fries. And then later, the smell of the stale fries in my car just about made me sick. I don't even care that there's still 10 days left, I'm done. Screw this game.

Net winnings (in descending order of value):

$50 cash

$10 in Toys R Us "bux"

(2) 20% Off coupons at Foot Locker

(2) coupons for free small coffee/soft drink

Coupon for free small fries

Coupon for free small McFlurry

50 points added to my cholesterol

1 bad case of indigestion

A lot of general disgust with my own behavior

ETA: I forgot to mention that I AM still playing the online game, which thankfully, only requires me to enter the codes on the already collected gamepieces. They only let you enter ten per day, so I have a good stockpile to keep me going for a while. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for one of the fat AmEx prepaid cards. I could really use a new iPod.

what's for dinner?

(Not the best picture, but I didn't get a chance to take one of an individual plate.)

Tonight I made Chicken Stew with Onions, Tomatoes, and Dijon from the Simply Recipes site. I had to make a few adjustments to the original recipe since I didn't make it to the store to pick up all the ingredients, but it still turned out really great!

First off, I only used 2 1/2 yellow onions instead of the six red onions called for in the recipe. I also was too lazy to deal with roasting garlic, so I just chunked in about 6-8 whole cloves of garlic with the onions and let them kind of "roast" in the pan. I didn't really miss the extra onions (in fact, I think six would have been excessive), although I do think that using red onions instead of yellow would have added more sweetness. I probably also would've let the onions sweat for a bit longer before chunking everything else in, but I had a crying baby to contend with so there wasn't time today. Oh, I'm not much for measuring so I kind of eyeballed the wine and the dijon.

All in all though, it was a very easy recipe to throw together and I love that it's all done in one pot. I made it early in the afternoon, and turned off the heat and just let it sit on the stove till dinnertime. I waited to reduce the liquid and add the dijon till the last minute (after reheating) though because I was afraid the mustard might break if it boiled. Hmmm, what else to say? I cut up a whole chicken this time because that's what I happened to have on hand, but I will probably just do drums and thighs next time if I find them on sale. I served it over steamed rice.

It got good reviews all around, and both from Meighan, T and myself. In fact, T has declared that it should be added to the regular rotation, which is pretty high praise. I liked that it was tomato-y, but not in a 'red sauce' kind of way. And I also liked that there was a good amount of sauce to mix with the rice. To me, sauciness is a key component of any good comfort food. I was also initially worried that the mustard would be overwhelming, but it really wasn't. Definitely will be good when the weather gets colder.

a new topic?

I know that there are tons of other people out there who do this, but I'm thinking about adding a food aspect to my blog. The only question is whether or not it'd be better served to be on here or the crafty one. I'm thinking that it'd probably mostly be a "what's for dinner" type of thing. I think the shame and embarrassment factor of having to admit we're eating a bucket of KFC or frozen chicken pucks will be good motivation to cook more and cook healthy. Also, I was recently inspired by a friend's cooking blog: http://nomorecreamofmushroom.blogspot.com/

Lately I've been thinking a lot (again) about how much I'd love to pursue the whole food stylist/photography thing. But I feel so far removed and out of the game. I'm thinking that maybe spending more time cooking and taking pictures of food might help alleviate some of that.

So first up will be tonight's dinner, which is Chicken Stew.

summer reading

Despite all my complaining about how I don't have any time because of the baby, blah, blah, blah, I've actually managed to read a few books (besides Harry Potter) this summer. Even before going to cooking school, I've always been obsessed by food, and I somewhat secretly would love to be a food writer myself (if not a food photographer or stylist). So I recently finished Heat by Bill Buford, and I'm also wrapping up The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten and The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain. I know, it seems crazy that I've been alternating between reading three different books at once, but they are all non-fiction, and both Steingarten's and Bourdain's books are collections of shorter pieces that don't need to be read in any particular order.

You probably best know Jeffrey Steingarten as the occasional judge on Iron Chef America. He's the cranky old white guy who uses a lot of big words. He's otherwise known for being the food critic for Vogue. Anyways, Steingarten's book is actually 10 years old, but considered a "classic" in food writing. I happened to come across it at Half Price Books and thought, I'd give it a whirl. I'm actually not quite done with it yet, but so far, it's pretty good. I think he won me over in the first chapter, which was about how he became obsessed with baking the perfect loaf of bread, going so far as to order 50 lb. sacks of a certain kind of flour, freshly ground and directly from the mill. Sounds like something I would do, if I didn't know that Troy would freak out. The book has chapters covering all sorts of things that I'm sure were new and innovative at the time, but are kind of commonplace now. But I think that's what makes it kind of interesting since it really shows how far attitudes toward food (and particularly, dieting) have come in the last ten years. I think people nowadays are much more open-minded and interested in trying new and/or authentic things, even if they do seem weird or scary.

I have to confess, I am a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain. Kitchen Confidential is one of my all-time favorite books, and I re-read it at least once a year. The Nasty Bits is pretty much what the name implies: it's a collection of random odds and ends that he's written over the years for various magazines. Some of it is definitely repetitive, especially if you're already familiar with his general attitudes toward cooking and the restaurant business. Others are obviously newer and written during the time since he started doing his Travel Channel show, and I think those are the best pieces. I have to say, for an ex-junkie who was really only moderately successful as a chef, he's really hit the jackpot with his travel show. I wish I could convince someone to pay me to travel all over the world and eat. But I digress. Overall, I enjoyed the book, but again, that's because I thoroughly enjoy his aggressively overblown and self-important style. Oddly though, it ended with a short piece of fiction about a talented chef desperate for celebrity status to the detriment of all else. After reading Bourdain's hilarious Top Chef blog, I can't help but wonder if this character is modeled after Rocco DiSpirito.

Last, but not least, Heat, which is subtitled "An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany," was far and away one of the most enjoyable food-related books that I've read in a long time. I read it almost straight through (a rarity for me), and I was almost disappointed when it ended and I had to return it to the library. Heat is kind of starts out as kind of a cross between a biography of Mario Batali and an exploration of what drives people to become so passionate about food that they must share it with the public. But about halfway through, it turns more into a chronicle of the author's own transformation into one of those guys. I pretty much loved every aspect of this book, which is not surprising because again, the author had a certain obsessive quality that I can totally appreciate. For example, at one point, he became obsessed with finding the point in Italian history where people started making pasta with eggs instead of just flour and water. Not only did he scour through numerous medieval era cookbooks (in their original Italian, no less), but he even went so far as to contact Italian scholars and the head of the Pasta Museum (who knew there was such a thing?) trying to find the answer.

I also really liked getting to see another side of Batali other than the jovial, sanitized-for-television version that's on Food Network. Although, from what I could tell, that tv persona really isn't that different from his real life one except for maybe a little more exaggerated and a little less foul-mouthed. I'd say this book is definitely up there with Kitchen Confidential and Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman. I'm going to be keeping my eye out for a used copy (or the paperback) and re-reading it soon.