Friday Favorites

Posted By under Friday Favorites

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this week:

!Quatro de Mayo cumpleanos!

 Rare find in our area, and perfect for my birthday lunch — surprisingly decent Tex-Mex!

CheeEEEeese!

 Our favorite Evanston restaurant offers an excellent “Selection of Local & European Cheeses & Meats.”

Terrace garden

 We planted a balcony herb garden: basil, dill, oregano and thyme. Plus 2 tiny tomato plants.

Nacho lunch. MY lunch!

 Our sister-in-law cooked this amazing slow-cooker buffalo chicken for us when we recently visited our Brooklyn family. My attempt to re-create it tasted a little more like pulled BBQ chicken with a hint of buffalo sauce, but it was still delicious and the leftovers were perfect for nachos a couple of days later.

Toast of the town

Who knew how much better our favorite breakfast of avocado toast could be with the simple addition of sliced tomatoes and leftover crispy bacon?

Thai Coconut Curry Soup

Posted By under Main Courses, Main Ingredient, Recipes, Seafood

With ingredients including coconut milk, curry paste, lemongrass and kaffir (dried lime leaves), this recipe sounds a lot more intimidating than it actually is. Not only is it easy to make, but it tastes so good that you’ll want to stock your pantry with these items to keep this soup in your regular meal rotation. When we cook new dishes, we often make notes on changes we made to the original recipe or comment on how the dish turned out. The first time we made this soup, my notes on the printed recipe included the statement “holy sh*t GOOD” because we loved it that much! We adapted the original recipe a bit and followed some of the suggestions from this version, and now we have a crave-worthy soup recipe that we look forward to making at least once a month. Whenever I see a can of coconut milk (surprisingly, readily available at the grocery store), I think of this soup in the best, most mouth-watering way.

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Friday Favorites

Posted By under Friday Favorites

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:

Ceiling fan shopping sammie break

Our favorite lighting store is right next door to a lovely spot for lunch, complete with a “sun-soaked conservatory,” which is basically a glass-walled dining area where you can get the al fresco dining experience while still being protected from the wind and weather. The food is pretty darn good too.

Pretty bird

One of the few things we miss about having a backyard is a big tree where we can hang a bird feeder. Our sweet Amesbury family anticipated this need before we even realized what we were missing, and at Christmas gifted us with a feeder perfectly suited for the partition that goes around our terrace. We set it up last weekend and the birds are loving it, as are we.

Veal chop

Dan’s friend and colleague recently introduced him to a new local butcher shop that will pre-grind meat for making sausage. I’m all for homemade sausage that does not include the grinding at home step (and subsequent clean-up). Jerry’s Quality Meats also sells — you guessed it — quality meat, including these beautiful veal chops.

#nofilter

We’ve had a few overcast days here this week, so when the sun poked through the clouds one evening, we couldn’t resist a photo of the view from our living room terrace. The local Best Western never looked so pretty than when bathed in the golden glow of sunset.

 

Roasted Broccolini w/ Winey Mushrooms

Posted By under Main Ingredient, Recipes, Side Dishes, Vegetable

Broccolini is one of our (few) go-to vegetables. For me and my (child-like) palate, the beautiful thing about broccolini is that it does not have an overpowering vegetable flavor, unlike regular broccoli and other vegetables prepared in certain ways (looking at you, sauteed spinach). We have a quick and easy sauteed version of broccolini that we love so much and make so often that even I don’t need to consult the recipe anymore when cooking it. But they say that variety is the spice of life, so the time eventually came to try a new broccolini recipe. Trying new things can be difficult (says this Texas girl living outside her home state for the first time in more than 30 years), so we went with a broccolini recipe that not only incorporates several of our other favorite ingredients: mushrooms, wine and Parmesan, but also calls for the simple preparation method of roasting the broccolini. The rich flavor of the mushrooms and Parmesan pairs well but doesn’t overwhelm the fresh, light flavor of the more delicate broccolini. Sometimes change is good, and we appreciate putting an elevated, more fancy spin on an old favorite.

Continue reading “Roasted Broccolini w/ Winey Mushrooms”

Friday Favorites

Posted By under Friday Favorites

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:

Easter Vigil

Last Saturday we joined long-time friends of ours for an Easter Vigil service and the baptism of their three wonderful children. It was a special experience, and we were honored to have been part of it.

Easter breakfast

Growing up, the traditional Easter breakfast in my family included hard boiled eggs, strawberries and pineapple. Dan and I put our own twist on the tradition this year by making deviled eggs, mascerating the strawberries and pineapple with a little sugar and adding our favorite chicken sausage to the mix.

Seagull photo bomb

It’s still a bit chilly here in Chicagoland, but last weekend it warmed up enough one day for our first barefoot beach walk of the season, and it was glorious.

Peckish Me

We have a new favorite local restaurant called Peckish Pig. We love everything about the place — from the food, to the atmosphere, to the service — not to mention the adorable name and logo. Our only issue is figuring out how to try everything we want on their menu (basically the entire menu), while still ordering what we’ve already decided will be our go-to items (kimchi potato cakes and duck confit mac & cheese w/ sunny-side up egg). Not a bad problem to have.

Condo wildlife

A pair of geese stopped by the condo for a visit last week. The outdoor landing where they were hanging out is not accessible by us (no worries about goose droppings in the backyard, since it’s not a backyard), but we were able to toss a few crackers to them through a window. They reminded us fondly of the ducks that occasionally visited our pool in the springtime when we lived in Dallas.

Food for Thought

Posted By under Food Thoughts
  • In honor of the recent holiday, some Easter-themed baking and cooking failures (thanks to my brother J for the link!) I think the deviled eggs are my favorite.
  • A slideshow of cooking tricks and tips from Bon Appétit. Brown rice takes at least 45 minutes to cook in our rice cooker — we’re curious to find out whether soaking it in water first will really speed up the process.
  • We’re thinking about getting one of these tools for “spiralizing” our spring/summer vegetable bounty from the farmer’s market. Here’s a more fancy version with additional size/spiral options.
  • Anybody following the latest food trend of completely giving up sugar? This family cut out all added sugar for a year and wrote a memoir about their experience. A chef who eliminated sugar from her diet shared a couple of dessert recipes on the Today Show recently, and talked about using brown rice syrup instead of sugar because it adds natural sweet flavor, but has no fructose. We don’t often eat dessert or have much sweet stuff around the house, but reading articles and lists concerning the surprising sugar content of foods you don’t typically think of as “sweet” has me checking food labels much more than I have in the past.

Mmmmmmm, donuts