The Great Black and White Cookie Hunt of 2014

The Husband and I just celebrating six magical years of marriage this past Saturday. We didn't save the top of our wedding cake for our first year (first, it kind of grosses me out to have old frozen cake, second, the cake was so good, there wasn't any left over!). So instead to celebrate, we got a Black and White cookie; they were the favors we had at our wedding. We were fortunate while we lived in Chicago, we had found this adorable grocery shop in our neighborhood, Olivia's Market, that got Black and White cookies shipped in from New York every day.  For our first five years, I didn't think a single thing about our tradition. Every April 26th, I went to Olivia's and picked up a cookie for us.

Now that we live in Pittsburgh, Olivia's Market isn't right down the block. So a few weeks before our anniversary, I started hunting for Black and White cookies. I called our friends here, asking if they knew great bakeries, I drove all over the city (I went to a northern suburb and a southern suburb in one day...we ate a lot of baked goods that day), I called every bakery in and around the Pittsburgh area, and either they didn't have them, they weren't good, or they weren't real Black and White cookies (one place had a chocolate chip cookie with black and white frosting!).

The Peanut Butter Crazy Train

I apologize for not posting as much. Since the new year, I've been on a eating healthy kick, and while eating healthy is really good for you, it doesn't exactly give you the exciting recipes to post about. I mean, would you rather read about foie gras or vegetable soup? Don't get me wrong, I love a good vegetable soup, but it's not nearly as crazy as making my own Cadbury- Creme Eggs.

Two Tacos and a Mexican Coke!

Lucy ordering tacos from our mudroom. She's obsessed with them

As you have seen from my many recipes, I have a love of all Mexican Foods. Back in June (a lifetime ago!) The Husband and I had some friends over as a Good-Bye Dinner. I decided I was going to make tacos. As we have a few vegetarian friends, and I can't just make one dish, I decided as our final time hosting a meal in Chicago, I was going to go all out. Guacamole, Cojita cheese, Crema, Picked Cilantro, Warmed Corn Tortillas ect. The dinner was a total hit, and I've gone back to those recipes more than a few times here in Pittsburgh.

And of course, each time I do something more elaborate. Most recently I made two different salsas (Verde and a Roasted Tomato), pickled my own red onions  and made "Big Star Sauce" which is essentially Crema mixed with Sriracha. Yes, it is as delicious as it sounds, and so easy, I don't even need to give you a recipe. 

So Much Delicious Chocolate

I should start this post with a disclaimer: All of the items I am speaking about in my post today were given to me by Hotel Chocolat.

I have a good friend from Business School, I've written about her before, she is the genius behind my Buffalo Mac posting. The Ex-Pat lives in Scotland and does Marketing for a fancy company, who works with Fancy Companies. One of those Fancy Companies just so happens to be Hotel Chocolat. A bit back, she asked me if I would be interested in testing some of their products and then writing about them. Of course, being a lover of Fancy Companies AND Chocolate, I couldn't resist.

A Little More Thomas Keller in the Kitchen

A few weeks ago The Husband sent me a link for Buzzfeed's Roast Chicken Tournament. They started with eight Roast Chicken recipes, and as with all Tourneys, there can only be one winner. In this case, it was Thomas Keller. To make it easy for everyone,  they gif'ed snip-it's of him trussing the chicken.

I'm always looking for new recipes, and this one looked delicious and amazingly simple. The key, is a roasting pan and rack. Oddly enough, for all of the kitchen gadgets I do have, a roasting pan/rack was never one of them. We've never had enough people for Thanksgiving over to warrant more than a few Cornish Game Hens, and none of my other recipes made it abundantly clear that I needed one. But if I wanted crispy, delicious chicken, I was going to have to get one.

A Spicy Broccolini Fettuccine, eh!

I've been trying to make less pasta recently; I realized that we have a whole lot of it. It's such an easy fall back, and really it's comfort food. I say that, with the follow up of, but I found this great new recipe and The Husband and I both love it.

I was on the hunt for some new soup recipes and I came across a Food and Wine recipe for a Spicy Broccoli Rabe pasta. Of course I went to the store and could not for the life of me find any broccoli rabe. So I did what I do best, and improvised. I picked up some broccolini and made adjustments. My final dish wasn't really much like the original recipe, other than a few basic ingredients. But it turned out really spectacularly. To the point where The Husband requested it again, soon. It's really easy and just involves a lot of chopping more than anything else. 

Sugar High

The Husband and I are staying in PGH for Christmas. He has to work in the Cardio-Thorasic ICU and our families have too many moving parts to be able to get out to us. So, since we weren't celebrating with family and we were in a totally new place, I decided that I was going to make this the most Christmasy-Christmas yet.

Living in a one bedroom loft in Chicago, we didn't have space for a Christmas Tree. However, now that we live in a house, we do. So while The Husband was working one of his many, many, many long days, I went out and picked us a tree. Our car isn't the most reliable, so he requested no farms out in the country since he worried that the combination of the tree of top of the car and the mountains in this weather wouldn't be the safest for me. Begrudgingly, I agreed. And as it turns out, I got lucky and while I went to a place in the city, it did snow a fair amount while I was picking the tree. So that made up for the lack of farms and hot chocolate.

Naughty and Nice

I am terrible. I realized that it's been nearly two months since my last post. It's not for lack of food stuffs, we had a fantastic trip to Chicago, another trip to New Orleans and I've been baking and cooking up a storm. I have about 5 posts started, but haven't been able to find time to finish them.

However, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I thought I would post a recipe that I just made for an Apple Cake covered in Salted Caramel. I made it for Thanksgiving and our guests couldn't get enough. You can add raisins, walnuts, dried cranberries, you can top with with caramel sauce or powdered sugar or leave it plain. We served it alongside Tiahetian Vanilla Bean gelato, and covered it with some additional Salted Caramel because, why not?!

And as a side note, this cake is kosher. I found the cake recipe on  Food 52 and made a few modifications.

Check Out These Mussels!

My First Attempt!

So, growing up, I dislike seafood. As a matter of fact, I hated it. It drove The Parents insane. They couldn't understand it. Which says something, since each of my siblings and I have issues with what many people would consider "normal" foods. I LOATHE ham, as in the stuff you eat on Christmas, with the spiral and the cherries and the pineapple...not the expensive stuff like prosciutto, which drives The Husband insane (obviously) and smoked turkey. I hate smoked turkey so much that if I get a sandwich and it's on there, I'll pull off all of the turkey and eat the bread and the toppings. It's disgusting to me.  

My middle sister, The Lawyer, hates tomatoes and sausage. My youngest sister, The Dental Student hates beans and sausage and had a phase growing up where she put yellow mustard on everything. And I mean everything (corn, green  beans, salads) and my brother The Beer Geek had a phase where no one was allowed to touch his food. If it happened, he would pitch a fit and wouldn't eat it.

A Cure For our Wednesday Evening.

Guys, I have been TERRIBLE. And I'm so sorry. The month of September was a bit of a mad house. I was gone 15 of the 30 days for either work of personal travel. And when I was home, I was working like a maniac. BUT I have tons of great recipes that I've been working on and food that I've been eating.

The Husband had his first of two vacations this past week and we made it a point to go play in our new city. And boy, did we play.

On Wednesday evening we went to Cure, a restaurant in our new neighborhood that has been getting rave reviews since it opened in 2011.  The Chef/Owner Justin Severino was in a New York Times piece about reviving the Rust Belt, Bon Appetit nominated him for one of the 50 Best New Restaurant in 2012 and he won the Pittsburgh Magazine's 2013 Star Chef award.  And from eating at his restaurant, he deserves it.

The restaurant is small, it only seats about 44 or so people at a time on the floor, with an additional four seats up by the kitchen. The menu changes regularly, depending on what meats and vegetables they are able to locally source and the charcuterie is no joke. Everything but the bread is made in house and everything was awesome.

Spicy and Smokey Mac

So as you can tell from previous posts (Mac Attack!) , The Husband has a thing for Mac and Cheese. And as this past week has been rather challenging for him, he took his Internal Medicine Boards (he has spent all of his free time since starting Fellowship studying) and is on call for the fourth weekend in a row. So, when I came across this recipe I thought "Self, you should do it for The Husband!".

It also helped that there was some Habanero up in here; and we all know how much I love me some spice. When I told The Husband about it, he was a little worried at first, but I assured him that it would all work out well and that he would not have a five alarm fire in his mouth.

Hotspacho!

Last summer there was this hilarious iPhone commercial with Samuel L. Jackson. He was having a lady friend over that evening for dinner and was making a list of things he needed to do for his date night.  One line item was to have Siri set a reminder to put the gazpacho in the refrigerator, unless she liked Hotspacho. I found this hilarious, I’m fairly confident I must have walked around for months telling The Husband we didn't want Hotspacho! See the commercial here, maybe you’ll find it as amusing as I did…maybe not.

I’m also the person who goes into a fit of giggles when I hear this joke “Two peanuts were walking through a park; one was assaulted!” Seriously, I’m laughing as I write this.  For those of you who are disappointed, I never said I had a highbrow sense of humor, just a taste for delicious food and drink.

One of My Many Addictions

As many of you may have seen from my wildly excited Facebook postings, I recently won an Ice Cream recipe contest.  I’ve only won one other competition in my life and that was for paper I wrote in college on the history of 19^th century English Church bands (entitled “Wake Up and Hear the Music” I was so cleaver, even back then).  So with this excitement,  a few people had requested that I post a recipe I had alluded to in my Cinnamon Ice Cream post about making a Deconstructed S’more.

I’ve mentioned that I’ve made this in passing and people always look at me a little strange. It’s a mixture of “That sounds DELICIOUS” and “How the heck did you think of that?” So, I’ll tell you. 

This had nothing to do with camping, or nights by the fire roasting marshmallows; this was purely a practical decision.   I’m pretty good a most cooking and baking related things, however  I am actually a really terrible S’mores maker.  I never get the chocolate soft enough; I always break the damn cracker, ALWAYS. The only thing I can do right is toast the heck out of the marshmallow.

Ours For The Taking

Three days into our stay here in PGH, The Husband and I went to the grocery store. First, I must say how amazed I am at some of the produce we get here. We purchased zucchini, squash and cucumbers that were the size (both length AND width) of The Husband's forearms for nothing--ninety-nine cents! Beautiful tomatoes and peppers for a song. They have a whole mushroom section, literally bins of Wild Mushrooms for the taking.  I forgot that Pennsylvania has the Mushroom capital of the country within it's boarders; lucky for us. And so, on our first trip to the store, we took.

We ended up purchasing a beautiful Hen of the Woods to do something with.  A week later, I found myself back in the grocery store, standing in front of this mushroom wall and thinking, I need more. So I grabbed a bunch of Oysters, some Chanterelles, another Hen of the Woods, some Trumpet Mushrooms and a few other wild varieties.

From The Horse's Mouth

There are some restaurants that people are shell-shocked that The Husband and I haven't been to.  Some places we get a loud "Are you SERIOUS?" Au Cheval is one of those places.

The Husband and I had tried two other times to have dinner at Au Cheval, both times we were told the wait would be over two hours. We knew the food was good, we knew we wanted to go, but we were too hungry to wait.

For our last week in Chicago, we were fortunate enough to have dinner with two friends who didn't mind a possible wait and were happy to join us in our Farewell Tour.  We went at 630 on a Sunday and were able to get a table for four without an issue. Thank goodness, although I was ready to wait this time around.

And we were fortunate enough to go with a couple who were more than willing to dive deep into the menu. And we went really really deep (don't laugh!).

We tried to order the 32oz Porterhouse with Foie Gras and Roasted Apples, our friend had been before and said it was amazing. Unfortunately, we were told they only have two or so of the Porterhouses a night and both had already been ordered. We've got something else to go back for next time, not that it would take us much to go back after this dinner).

Okay, We Get The Point!

After much fan fair, a fantastic going-away party, more than a few tears, a night to forever remember at The Aviary, and what can only be described as the worst move in history, The Husband and I have made it safely to Pittsburgh.

How was this the worst move you ask? Here are some bullet points:

• Black mold in our storage unit covering nearly everything, we had to clean, repack and throw away a ton of stuff
• Moving company called to confirm the truck the day before and only had a 14 foot, we reserved a 17 foot  (that we were worried would be tight). After being on the phone with the company for over an hour and being told they had nothing, we then started scrambling trying to find another truck (we found a 16 foot one for ONLY double the price)
• Our movers came and got stuck between two floors in our freight elevator along with all of our boxes
• The building management company never sent the elevator repairman (by the way, it's been a week and they've still not called me back. For all they know, our movers are still stuck)
• Our movers then shimmied out of our elevator and we had to help move all of our boxes out from a 3 foot gap and up a flight of stairs
• It torrentially down-poured for an hour as they were loading all of our stuff into the truck
• They were worried they couldn't get everything into the truck, so I began triaging our things and planning times to make trips back to get our stuff (the movers were amazing and got everything in)
• We weren't able to leave Chicago until 9pm, where we then hit traffic
• We hit three rain storms during our 3 hour drive
• I drove the moving truck and was sideswiped by a flatbed semi

So our last week in Chicago was a little rough, especially the final 18 hours. It was so bad and we were running so behind at the end that we considered spending Friday night in Chicago and leaving really really early Saturday, but The Husband felt like if we stayed any longer, some other bad thing was going to happen. Neither he, nor I, am superstitious, but I agreed. Chicago was telling us to get the heck out. Even so, there were also some amazing highlights; our dinner at Au Cheval and our night at Aviary will be two separate posts.

We've had a few people ask us where we were on our Farewell Tour. We did a good portion of it, but weren't able to hit everything. Especially since we had some issues along the way.

The bonus, I'm back for sure in September and The Husband and I are back in November, so we're going to do it up upon our triumphant return.

Encased Meat and Duck Fat Fries at Hot Doug's: CHECK!
Old Grand Pappy Vertical Flight at Aviary: CHECK!
Au Cheval: CHECK! 
A Hen Fruit and Frites at Watershed: (It's off the menu, but they made it for me anyway!) CHECK
Fat Rice: UMMM CHECK and we may need to go one more time.
Grace (another time, my friends)
Alinea (another time again....)
El Ideas (adding this to the "November" List)
3 Happiness Dim Sum
Big Star: CHECK
PQM sandwich: CHECK
Bari's Italian Hoagies:CHECK
BadHappy for Poutine and Shakes
Wasabi: CHECK
Pint at Revolution's Tap Room: CHECK
Doughnut Vault 
Bernard's Bar- Blood of Dillinger
Hoosier Mama's Pie
Big Jones
Xoco: CHECK
Falafal Sandwich from Sultan's Market: CHECK
Telegraph
Longman and Eagle
Cumin

Our Messy, Messy Break-up

I apologize for not posting this last month; I actually have a ton to share and of course, not much time to share it in.We leave Chicago in nine days, NINE DAYS! So between work and packing and getting one last hang out with friends, my postings have fallen short.

However, I can promise you such things as Next's Vegan menu, a Whiskey Flight at Aviary (happening next week), the time we nearly had all of Hot Doug's menu, our dinner at Fat Rice and more will be on the way!

In the mean time, here's the updated list on where we've hit and what we have left on our Farewell Tour:

Encased Meat and Duck Fat Fries at Hot Doug's: CHECK!
Old Grand Pappy Vertical Flight at Aviary
Au Cheval
A Hen Fruit and Frites at Watershed: (It's off the menu, but they made it for me anyway!) CHECK
Fat Rice: UMMM CHECK and we may need to go one more time.
Grace (another time, my friends)
Alinea (another time again....)
El Ideas (adding this to the "November" List)
3 Happiness Dim Sum
Big Star: CHECK
PQM sandwich
Bari's Italian Hoagies
BadHappy for Poutine and Shakes
Wasabi: CHECK
Pint at Revolution's Tap Room: CHECK
Doughnut Vault 
Bernard's Bar- Blood of Dillinger
Hoosier Mama's Pie
Big Jones
Xoco: CHECK
Falafal Sandwich from Sultan's Market
Telegraph
Longman and Eagle
Cumin

Meyer Lemony Snicket!

Growing up on the East Coast, I was privy to some really wonderful foods, however because of our climate and because it was the 80's and 90's, the local/organic food craze hadn't yet started. Back in the late 90's Vine Ripe Tomatoes were still new in the grocery stores and Heirloom Tomatoes weren't in the state (or at least any of the grocery stores); even the Farmers Market didn't have "fancy" stuff like that.

When I started dating The Husband, he told me about living out in The Bay Area, and how his family had several Meyer Lemon trees in their yard. I had never ever heard of a Meyer Lemon! He tried to explain it, but back in 2003, there were no Meyer Lemons to be found in North Carolina. It wasn't until we went to San Francisco for our Honeymoon in 2008 and spent a morning wandering through the Farmers Market at the Ferry Building that I was finally able to see and taste a Meyer Lemon. 

The End of the Affair....

So for those of you who aren't aware, The Husband and I are leaving Chicago. After four years of medical school, five years of residency, The Husband will be starting a two (possibly three year) Critical Care Fellowship at The University of Pittsburgh. This is a HUGE deal, as UPMC is one of the best (if not THE best) Critical Care programs in the country.  I'm so insanely proud of him and all of the hard work he's done, and I'm really excited to start this next phase of our lives. But of course, I am going to miss Chicago so much.

The Husband and I have lived in this amazing city for nine years. We became adults (or as close to adults as we possibly can be) here,  we discovered our love of food and drink and we made amazing friends here.

As we have just signed a lease for a new home and are looking into moving companies, the realization that we are leaving Chicago has hit hard.  And as July 1st is approaching much, much sooner than any of us anticipated, we must begin to tie up lose ends and start packing.

The Hunt

As season ticket holders for Next in the 2012 year, back in December we were offered the ability to “re-up” our tickets for the 2013 dining year (I know, I know, how pretentious does THAT sound). Obviously, I couldn't say no.

And so, The Husband and I have been waiting since December for our table at The Hunt. I can tell you without a doubt that it was most definitely worth the three months of waiting.

Normally before we go into our dinners at Next, we end up making a reservation at The Office, either before or after dinner. We decided for the sake of being “fiscally responsible” that wasn't a smart idea this time. Readers be warned, we did not follow through with our attempts at “fiscal responsibility,” but you’ll have to continue reading to see where we ended up (and what we had!).

Our reservation was at 8:30 on a bitter cold Wednesday night (yes, I had the choice to pick Friday or Saturday evening, but went with Wednesday because our next Next menu falls on The Husband’s 32^nd birthday. You can’t argue with that!). We walked into the restaurant and were enveloped by a comforting aroma or rosemary.

Our Table