Are you guys related? No...YES!!!! part 2

Oh how I love food. Another place that Chris fell in love with on his last visit was the Barbeque Joint. It is a crazy kind of little place. From what I understand it has the best Carolina BBQ around. Even better than the famed Allen Bros. Knowing this, one would expect that they would have little to offer a veggie like me. Nothing could be further from the truth. Along with their amazing traditional southern foods and BBQ they have a gourmet selection of vegetarian dishes. Weird, right? I usually get their eggplant but they were closing for renevations for a couple of weeks so they were running down the kitchen. I had to make due with their homemade rosemary mac and cheese. It was fantastic. Another night, another set of wonderfully, over full bellies.

Matt and I had decided long before they arrived that we wanted to take them to one of our favorite local eateries, Buns. I'm pretty sure I've posted about Buns before. They use all local ingrediants, bake their buns fresh daily, and have really delicious dipping sauces for their fries. I'm a creature of habit and I always end up getting the veggie burger with goat's cheese and a balsamic reduction. Pretty fancy for a burger joint, huh? I think Matt tried the chicken breast this time which we've heard was really good. It didn't disappoint. Do I need to addthat we went home with happily full tummies? I think its a theme for their visit.

I don't want you all thinking that we only ate out during their visit. Michelle and I are very good cooks and we managed to turn out a couple of good meals. We had a large Christmas Eve dinner, consisting of turkey breast, mashed potatoes, candied yams, gravy, and stuffing. It turned out pretty darn awesome, if I do say so myself. Michelle offer to make one of her's and Chris's favorite dinners, tomato and red pepper soup with grilled chesse sandwiches and a carrot salad. I helped by making a rosemary olive oil bread for the sandwiches. The salad was really good. So good that even Matt liked it despite the fact that it was made with ranch dressing and baby carrots. Moe is definitly an excellent cook. For Christmas day Moe and I prepared a buffet for everyone to graze on throughout the day, a tradition stared by my mom, Debbie. There were several kinds of dip and cream cheese spreads, two sweet cream cheese spreads, some cold cuts, a veggie platter, and of course, a cheese array consisting of no less than six kinds of cheese. It was a good day. And in case any of the moms are still unsure, our rag tag group still made it to midnight mass, full tummies or no.

We were sad to see them go. I love having my family around, even my crazy brother ;) teehee. We had a ton of fun while they were here. Even though Chris tried to pretend that he didn't like going shopping with Moe and I. Matt and Chris played a couple of games of Heroscape which Chris, or really the Hulk, won. We watched a couple of movies and took a lot of naps. It was a lovely weekand I wished that it could have been longer.

The night before Thanksgiving and no one was stirring not even the puppy

Its the night before and we have things a rollin.  I baked up the pumpkin this morning but I haven't gotten around to the seeds yet.  I baked the pumpkin pie already and it looks delicious.  I still have to make the apple pie in a little while.  The cheddar cheese ice cream is getting frozen right now.  I tasted teh base though and its amazing.  I love cheese.  I think its going to go wonderfully with the apple pie.  I also already baked the yams so that I only have to mix them up tomorrow when its their time.  Zelda has been lending me her support all day by sleeping for most of it.  When we took the turkey out of the fridge it was still frozen so we are doing what Alton Brown suggested and it seems to be working.  I still don't fully trust him but he's on a trial period now.  I'm not really in charge of the turkey though, thats all Matt's work.  I'm just here for moral support.  I think it'll work out just fine.  Its going to be a low stress day tomorrow.  At least thats what we're hoping for.  Hope you all have a great day tomorrow!!!

State Fair, 2009

Ah State Fair, how I love you.  It never dissapoints.  Matt, Steph, Linda, and I took off early to the fair on Friday afternoon and met up with Jess and Jacob.  I'm putting up a slideshow of this year's highlights because otherwise there'd be too many to pick from.  The major part of any State Fair, at least to me, is the food.  This year's new additions were fried HoHos and chocolate dipped bacon.  We didn't manage to get around to the HoHos but the bacon booth was near the front of the line so we headed there right after we got our corn fix.  I'm a vegetarian but chocolate dipped bacon was so insane that I had to try it.  I'm not sure I even need to say it but it was fantastic.  I think its probably hard to go wrong with bacon in general.  But yeah, chocolate on bacon with a little bit of sea salt, mmmm.  I only had one bite but felt it was necessary to do it it in order to faithfully describe the fair experience.  Along with the mandatory fried veggies and fried cheese, this year Steph and Linda had ostrich burgers and Matt tried his very first corndog.  We also made sure to get a cup of the NC State ice cream that they make on their campus.  As always the fair food was both amazing and unsettling at the same time, in the best possible way.  As it turns out a friend of ours won several of the crafting competitions at the fair this year.  Tony Perdue is in charge of the very expensive microscopes in the biology department.  He also grows his own cotton, spins his own yarn, and then knits beautiful pieces out of it.  The little old ladies who are in charge of those competitions were all a flutter when we told them we were friends of his.  Looking at some of the entires this year has inspired me to enter a few of the contests myself next year.  I'm pretty sure I have the skills to at least place in some of the competitions.  This year we made sure to get to the pig races a good 45 minutes early to get seats.  I think that the duck racing portion is actually my favorite part but they're all pretty cute.  To sum it up the NC State Fair delivered once again.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

All about Zelda

You would think that not working would leave me lots of time to update the blog. However, I have chosen to clean and cook and nap instead. I have been told that I am sorely lacking in Zelda updates. I have lots to post but I'll start with that. Zelda is now 5 months old. My hands and arms were incredibly thankful that she had stopped biting for a while. Sadly, now that she's teething she has started biting again. *sigh* So I'm working all over again to break her of it. I think its starting to work. Her coat is coming along nicely, her little tail has a line of fur like a long flag. Zelda hasn't been eating much lately because of the whole teething thing. There is supposed to be an all natural version of baby orajel that I can give her but I can't seem to find it. In the mean time Matt figured out that if we give her one of her frozen teething toys to play with for a little while before meals she'll eat more. This past weekend we took her to the Durham dog park for a play date. We joined a meet-up group for owners of dachshunds. It was really cute to see them all playing together. It turns out that Zelda is very submissive. She didn't know what to do with the other dogs but she managed to have every person there rub her belly. Some of them picked her up and gave her kisses as well.
We've signed up for senior puppy classes at the local ASPCA and they start tonight. The first class is just an orientation for the puppy parents so Zelda is hanging out by herself tonight. But starting next week she's going to be socializing and professionally training once a week. They offer lots of different classes there so we'll see how we like this one first and then maybe continue on with some of their more advanced classes.
As I said in the beginning I've been doing a lot of cooking/baking lately. I've been making my own pizza. I started off just using the premade dough from Trader Joes but I decided to go more adventurous and make my own. Matt will tell you it wasn't the best consistancy but the flavor was fantastic. So I need to work on that. I want to experiment with some other toppings as well. I've been making BLTs too. Or FLTs for me. We used up the last of our home grown tomatoes so I'm back to using bought ones. I am making my own bread to make the sandwhiches, Matt loves the rosemary olive oil bread. I think he's right it goes really well with the other flavors. I've been making these restaurant quality salads too. Matt gets chicken with his, I get blue cheese, mmm cheese. I've been experimenting with that too. I think so far the best chicken I made was the tequila lime one. I make nachoes for us sometimes. I've been making the beans from scratch because not only is it like 50x cheaper that way, its also 50x better tasting. I'm making my own pasta this week too. Tomorrow actually. I'm kind of nervous but the internet and Nigella Lawson tell me that its no big deal. So I'm going for it. I'll let you know how it comes out. Last night's dinner was pumpkin pancakes with (f/b)acon and an egg scramble with sauteed mushrooms, onions and tomatoes. Pumpkin pancakes are one of the best things ever invented.
On the baking front, I've been into cakes lately. A couple of week's ago I made a modified version of Nigella's quadruple chocolate cake. Tasty. Last week I went with a chocolate stout cake and homemade frosting. Also delicious. Today I'm going to make what I'm calling a strawberry lemonade cake. Its going to be a twist on a recipe that my Tia Joann gave me a while ago. The regular cake is phenomenal so I'm hoping this will be too. You're probably thinking, "maybe you should be eating all those sweets" and you're probably right. So to keep that from happening Steph and I have started a weekly baking exchange. That way we don't have too much to eat. Steph has recently taken up baking in an attempt not to bug Linda while she's studying. The cookies she gave us last week were amazing so I fully encourage the new hobby. I'll try and do a craft update next time but I want to eat my lunch (leftovers, yum!) I'll post pictures too once I get my cord from upstairs, the layer of the beast.

Food

Yes I'm sitting here in the dark, again. While I would like to be writing, it is really too dark in here to do it without straining my eyes. Believe me, I've tried. I was trying to think about things I could do but there are only so many recipes I can look at so now I'm still here so I thought of something else. I have recently had a lot of conversations with my friends about things that I love to do. I realized that as much as I love to cook, I don't talk about my creations that much on here. So I'm going to tell you about some of my recent culinary attempts.
Lets see...
Last week I made his awesome chicken/tofu dinner. I dipped each of them in egg and then a "breading" made of things I had in the house. It was matzo meal, crushed French's fried onions, garlic salt, lemon pepper, and freshly shredded Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. I fried the tofu and chicken (separately) in a little bit of olive oil. When those were almost done, I boiled some soba noodles and then put them in a pan with more cheese, garlic salt, and a little more olive oil. We served it with the chicken or tofu on top of the noodles. It was fantastic. I didn't have any of the chicken but it smelled good and Matt assured me that it was very tasty.
When I first moved to Chapel Hill I bought myself some spring form pans with the intention of learning how to make cheesecake.  Well its nearly three years later and they hadn't been used yet.  This month in Bon Appétit had a bunch of delicious looking desserts, including a lemon cheesecake with brownie bottom.  I learned many things Easter weekend:  sometimes Alton Brown knows what he's talking about because to date none of my cheesecakes have cracked, my spring form pans are cheap and leak when following Mr. Browns directions, I'm really good at making cheesecake, sour cream mixed with sugar and baked is actually tasty. Don't worry about the leakage though, Matt saved the day by getting oven bags for the next cheesecake attempt.  At some point, I will get a nice pan from Williams Sonoma that won't leak when put in a water bath.  Since then I also made an Oreo cheesecake for Steph's wine party because I had a ton of Oreos left over from Catarina's going away party.  For that I made these Oreo truffles.  You grind up Oreos, mixed them with cream cheese, then dip them in chocolate.  MMMM, very good. This time I made three different kinds: regular Oreo, mint Oreo, and ones that were half regular Oreo half Nutter Butters.
Matt bought me an ice cream maker for my birthday, which I have been wanting for a long time.  I've made three batches of dark chocolate ice cream.  The most recent batch also had bits of reeses peanut butter cups.  I haven't really played around with it yet but I did make a mango lime sorbet that was pretty good.  I have plans to make Mexican chocolate ice cream next.  I think it'll be really good.  I have the base recipe down so now its just up to my imagination and Matt, Steph, and Linda's stomaches to come up with new ones.
I know I never talk about it, but I love cheese.  I made these really good bread thingys that were small slices of baguette topped with either goat's cheese and sauteed mushrooms or a mixture of fresh basil, blue cheese, and cream cheese.  This is bad, now I want cheese.  Well, I leave you with something that I learned yesterday while reading wikipedia entries about various cheeses that I like.  Yes I realize that is a pathetic sentence.  Apparently Spain and several Latin American countries like to put small chunks of white cheese in their hot chocolate and then when the cocoa is gone they eat the cheese.  I'm really excited to try this.  Spain generally uses manchego which is great because I love it.

There is an update around here somewhere

I know I've been bad about the updates recently.  I apologize.  I'll try and be better, probably.  I'll update a little at a time since for somethings I have pictures.  So I'll update until that point and then I'll track down Matt and steal his sd card so I can upload the pictures.
Let me think back, way back.  Hmmm, interesting things that have happened.  Well, recruitment time is almost over with and we've participated in exactly nothing this year.  Last year it was a group effort and this year the Biology Department was left out of the whole thing.  We weren't allowed to help plan or organize and subsequently most of us didn't participate.  I don't want any of you to think that we were all being petty but we actually didn't get invited to help with almost anything and the few times we were they said something to the affect of "if you volunteer to clean or drive we're more likely to choose you to come to the event".  I thought that was kind of rude because we probably would have done it either way.  Oh well, Matt and I have been pretty busy lately anyway so I guess its ok.  Actually we volunteered to present posters on the first weekend and they never had the decency to respond and let us know if we were or weren't presenting.  Maybe next year we can do more. 
Speaking of being busy, I think I mentioned before that Matt and I have going to the gym.  I don't remembered if I said that we were going to step up our routine and start going even more often (read daily).  That didn't work out so well.  Not because we didn't have the resolve but I was feeling really run down and just sore all the time.  At the same time, meat on tv was looking pretty tasty.  It took a while but we finally put one and one together and realized that I needed to ramp up my protein intake.  I think normally the amount I eat is fine but when I'm working out and trying to build some muscle I need more.  Which makes sense.  So now that I'm eating lots more protein I feel awesome and we can now go daily without wanting to die.  I'm going to have Michelle Obama arms in no time. 
The Oscars were a couple of weeks ago.  I always love to watch them, although it was a ton easier when they started at five and ended nine.  This was the first year that we got to watch it in HD.  It doesn't help a lot of people.  The dresses looked lovely but the faces, yikes.  I made fondue for dinner.  We did a Guinness and Irish cheese fondue with this awesome dense twelve grain bread, apples, and peppers.  Yummy!  I love cheese.  Matt really liked it too, which is good.  He made us a tasty salad so that we didn't only have cheese for dinner.  It was a terrific evening, even though the Oscars website kept going down. Ok, I need to get back to reality.

Tune in next time to hear about snow and perogies.

Bi-naversary! UPDATE!!!!

I can hardly believe it but today is Matt and my two year anniversary. Wow. It has been two fantastic years with someone I really love. I got him a nifty present that I won't disclose yet because I haven't given it to him. Matt made reservations for us to go to the Melting Pot. mmmm, cheese.... *wipes away drool* We're both very excited about it. He was really surprised how much he liked it last time we went and we've both been looking forward for a sufficient reason to go.

I'm also feeling very proud of myself because we did our part to help fix the country and went to vote today. The nice kids running the Obama booth gave me a sticker and a veggie burrito from Chipotle. Voting always makes me feel so warm and fuzzy. I encourage everybody to do the same. I guess even if you want to vote for someone who thinks my job is pointless and a poor use of money. How lame is it that I study colon cancer in fruit flies, I kid you not.

UPDATE!!!! In case anyone was worried by my twitter updates. I did not intentionally stab myself with a fondue fork. I was trying to spear some asparagus while holding it and went through the asparagus and into my hand. Not too bad though, it is almost completely healed. I did give Matt his present. It was a large rectangular frame that has glass on both side and inside of it i put three vintage (ca 1920-1940) Notre Dame postcards. Two of them are linen and have that look like the old Technicolor movies since they were colored in afterward. Matt loved it. I was even more excited by his present to me. He got us two tickets to go see the Trans Siberian Orchestra just before Thanksgiving. w00t!!! I've wanted to see them for so long but it has never worked out before. Check out their website (link above) to see their awesomeness.