Foodie Lawyer

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

We’ve been fortunate in our current home to have a huge walk-in closet (it was a small bedroom that was converted into a master closet) and we are going to miss it when we move.  But it also was a bit of a curse, in that having so much space enabled us to fill every inch with stuff.  Several days and numerous donations to Goodwill later, the closet has been purged and is ready for listing photos and showings.  And we are relieved to have less stuff to move with us to Chicago.

Dan is working from Dallas this week, while also helping to get the house ready to go on the market.  Which means he’s also around to cook my dinner.  He made a pan-roasted game hen one night that was delicious.  He had previously read about placing bacon on top of the hen while it cooks in the oven and decided to try it.  We’re not sure whether the bacon did much, other than maybe adding flavor to the drippings for the pan gravy, which was by far the best part of the whole dish.  After the game hen was done, he spooned off most of the fat from the pan, added some flour to make a light roux, then added chicken stock and seasoned the gravy with salt and pepper.  So simple, yet so perfect.

Just in time for Halloween, the new season of American Horror Story started this week!  Every season has a different theme and storyline, and this season is “Coven” about — take a wild guess — witches.  AHS is not for everyone — the “horror” part of the name is no joke — but we love it and are super excited for Coven.  The cast is amazing, with several actors from prior seasons (including the impeccable Jessica Lange), as well as impressive additions of Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett.  If the first episode is any indication, it’s going to be our favorite season yet.  (And speaking of favorite shows on TV, “Homeland” is back and better than ever!)

Just in time for us to move away, we found a great, new-to-us taco joint called Chiladas.  It’s a counter-service, fast-food style of restaurant, but all their food is made with farm-fresh ingredients (they don’t even have freezers or microwaves in their kitchens.)  All of the tacos we tried were delicious — carnitas, brisket, shrimp and fish.  Their guacamole was good too, which is always one of our benchmarks for measuring quality Tex-Mex.  We didn’t partake on the day we were there for lunch, but they also have cheap margaritas (especially on their “Margarita Mondays”) made with real tequila (none of that wine-a-rita imitation stuff.)

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

Dan had a great first week starting his new job at Kraft Foods.  We flew to Chicago together last weekend so we could tend to some condo business, and I dropped him off at Kraft headquarters on his very first day.  The campus is beautiful and the main entrance features a cheerful macaroni statue with the inscription “You know you love it.”  They also have an awesome statue of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile!

Downtown Evanston continues to impress us with excellent food options.  We stopped at Farmhouse for a quick late afternoon snack, and almost went back there for dinner it was so good.  The “tavern-cut” potato chips with fresh dill dip and the mussels (cooked with tomatoes, bacon and shallots in a white wine broth) were both outstanding.  Plus the restaurant has an interesting hip-yet-rustic vibe that we really liked.  We’ll be back.

No trip to Evanston is complete without a walk over to the lake (especially before it gets too cold for me to leave the condo.)  Each time we visit, we feel so lucky that we will actually get to live there.

Back at the Dallas homestead, I made my favorite version of lavash pizza thus far.  I used pizza sauce (recipe in this post) thawed from the freezer, topped with a layer of mozzarella cheese and cooked for about 5 minutes until the cheese melted.  Then I added prosciutto (thin slices torn into bite-sized pieces), fresh arugula and a little shaved Parmesan cheese.  So good, and SO easy!

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

We enjoyed Monday night football on our patio with a nice dinner and a sad Steeler loss.  We will miss this spot when we move.  And if the Steelers don’t start playing better, apparently we are going to miss a winning season as well.

In case you wondered, it takes a really, really long time to drain a pool for repairs in the lining, then to fix said lining (in an unfortunate, not-even-close-to-matching way), then refill said pool with a single garden hose.  Thank goodness Dan got the brilliant idea to hook up the world’s longest hose to the spigot in the front yard, so we had two garden hoses working at the same time to speed up the re-filling process by approximately half as excruciatingly long.

We cooked amazing Korean pork belly BBQ at home this week, made possible by the awesome Asian supermarket (H Mart) that we will sorely miss once we move.  Dan marinated the paper-thinly sliced pork in a spicy/sweet mixture:  gochu jang (spicy Korean pepper paste), soy, mirin (rice wine), brown sugar, sesame oil and pear juice (from a mashed up pear.)  Following the protocol of the (few) Korean restaurants we’ve been to, we served the pork taco-style in Bibb lettuce leaves with green onion tops and a little extra marinade (set aside before we added the pork to the marinade.)  So good.  We’re going to have to find an Asian market in the Chicago area for sure.

Also on the moving front, Holy Clean Garage Batman!  We made really good progress on the de-cluttering this week, while Dan is between jobs.  That pile in the front of the photo is our eleventy-billionth load to donate to Goodwill, and if you squint a bit you can see a couple of sweet, sweet empty shelves in the back.  Special thanks to our suckers friends who are taking some of our old like-new tools off our hands to clutter up their own garages put to good use!

Who knew we had a treasure chest in our garage?!  We found a small bucket of coins from who-remembers-where, added it to the coin receptacle we keep in our closet and carted them (literally — both containers were really heavy so we put them in a shopping cart) to our local coin exchange at the grocery store.  We each estimated the amount of dollars we might receive (I said $87, Dan said $125) before we started the coin loading process, and boy, did we under-estimate.  After about half an hour, dirty coin fingers and a really patient customer service representative who cleaned out the machine for us, we left with a little more than $350!  De-cluttering for the win!

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

First and foremost, we have to say thank you to everyone for all the kind and encouraging comments about our big move.  Having so much support from family, friends and people we’ve never even met in real life makes this adventure exponentially more exciting for us.  Thank you!

While condo-hunting in Evanston last weekend, we also made time to tour the local farmer’s market, which was quite impressive.  We’re thrilled that every Saturday from May 4 through November 2, we’ll be able to walk a few blocks to the market where we can get locally-grown fruits and vegetables, farm-fresh eggs (including duck eggs!), artisan breads, homemade desserts, fresh-cut flowers, etc., etc.

We took a break from looking at condos (spoiler-alert, we found one!) to refuel and recharge with a couple glasses of wine and some appetizers at Bar Louie.  The bacon cheeseburger sliders (with fried onion strings) and the tempura shrimp were both amazing.  It’s a really good thing that Evanston is a walkable city, because with so many great restaurants there, we’re going to do a lot of eating.  So we better do a lot of walking too.

Just in time for us to move away, we finally went to a local Steeler bar very close to our current house.  Longtime family friends of Dan’s have been going there (and inviting us) to watch Steeler games for years, but we never got around to it until last Monday night.  Better late than never, we had a great time (thanks, Gallaghers!) and definitely hope to catch another game or two there before we leave Dallas.

Speaking of leaving (not every blog post these days is going to be about us moving, I promise), Dan’s work friends took him to a farewell lunch at Fearing’s Restaurant, and as a special surprise arranged for him to meet Chef Dean Fearing himself!  They’ve actually met before, since Chef Fearing judges the chili cook-off we have participated in for the last three years.  He might remember Dan because we won in 2011 (but probably not.)  There’s a better chance that Chef Fearing remembers Dan from last year, when we won the “burnt spoon” prize, after we accidentally set our table on fire.  Who knew our final chili cook-off in Dallas would be such a memorable one!  (And, ironically, we took a trip to Chicago during that same week last year, which I also wrote about in that Friday Favorites post.  At the time, I actually said “We love the Windy City, but not enough to brave it in January.”  Hmm.  Guess I better pack some courage into our moving boxes!)