Foodie

Is there any better combo than chicken & waffles? I don’t think so unless you toss in the exactly right sweet tea and one of the best biscuits on the planet.

And that’s what happens when you go to Chicago’s Home ofChicken and Waffles, in Evanston.

This has become our favorite restaurant and as TW said today — we’ll miss it when we move away. That’s saying something because there’s not much we’ll miss when we leave here.

The people are nice, the atmosphere of the restaurant is wonderful, the patrons always look like they’re enjoying their meal (and the company they’re with) as much as we do. And, there’s always a diverse crowd. That’s our favorite kind of restaurant and we’re thankful that they opened this branch in Evanston.

We bought a pineapple last week at Jewel and brought home fruit flies with it. When I finally cut the darn thing, the fruit fly colony exploded all over the kitchen. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many fruit flies at one time before.

The pineapple is good but it will be better if TW’s fruit fly trapping concoction works. Please tell me it’s going to work and tomorrow morning all of the fruit flies will be gone so that I can be thankful for the inexpensive fresh pineapple and my fruit fly free kitchen.

TW put a package of Chewy Chips Ahoy Brownie Filled cookies on my desk right before my last conference call. I didn’t know whether to thank her or yell at her. It was lunch time and I wasn’t getting lunch but Chewy Chips Ahoy Brownie Filled cookies aren’t really lunch now, are they. Heck, they aren’t even as good as you might think they’d be. They’re certainly not as good as I thought they’d be. I was feeling bad because Jenn had shown interest in them while she was here and we never opened the package for her to try them — now I don’t feel bad because they’re such a let down.

Maybe my standards for cookies are too high?

I won’t eat raw cookie dough, which annoys TW quite a lot. We got three free packages of Nestle cookie dough at Target awhile back and she was annoyed with me because I ruined the dough by baking it. Turns out, I probably should have just let her eat it raw because the oatmeal butterscotch flavor wasn’t as good as I thought it would be.

I thought I might ruin the last package of the cookie dough by baking it, since it’s just plain ole Nestle Tollhouse flavor, that should be good, right? I’m not going to find myself let down by another cookie, am I?

What the hell is wrong with me and cookies right now? So weird. I never used to be this picky (or was I and I just didn’t realize it?) Or maybe it’s just that I should stick to Oreos. Oreos haven’t let me down yet — even the birthday flavor Oreos (in both chocolate and golden cookie variety) have been just as yummy as I expected them to be.

Maybe I should make a few of my old favorites — snickerdoodles, no-bake chocolate oatmeal, coconut macaroons, just to be sure I still like those? Or maybe I shouldn’t… just in case my cookie taste buds have died or something.

It’s kind of scary to think about.

I did win a $100 gift card at BlogHer ’13 but am not required to blog about my experience with Peapod — I’m doing it because I want to!

So remember when I said I should have ordered from Peapod for the post-BlogHer 13 mayhem but since I didn’t, I was totally gonna do it when JMP came to visit.

Well he’s here and I placed an order a couple of days ago for pick up today.

I chose pick up because I wasn’t 100% sure what would be going on at the house and it might have been really crazy to have delivery people arrive and get the dogs wound up and out of control. Next time, I’m going to have the order delivered because the pick up location isn’t in the greatest of locations — too much construction between here and there.

I wasn’t really sure what I should order so I grabbed a mix of things we needed and things that were on sale. I threw in a couple of coupons (that should be doubled) for the junk in a can that Elly likes sometimes.

I’ve probably got too many ears of corn and too many jalapenos and I might even have too many heirloom tomatoes. But… the prices were pretty good and I wanted to see how the produce was since it’s probably what I’d be most likely to order regularly.

Not bad — the grapes are JMP approved.

It was convenient to be able to order a cheesecake for Jenn’s birthday cake, too. Very convenient.

Thanks, Peapod!

We received a gift card from Plated at BlogHer 13. I’ve not been asked to blog about their product by Plated or by my employer (which happens to be BlogHer). The opinions below are purely my own — and that of my family members who ATE the food. Heh.

I figured what the heck, right? We have these gift cards sitting here, might as well use one… so on Saturday night, I peeked at the menu and decided to order a flank steak and a chicken dish. Except by the time I checked out, the flank steak was no longer available. That made me sad. I didn’t really want any of the other options but I picked the one I thought looked most interesting….

So on Tuesday, the ingredients for Grilled Chicken with Balsamic Peaches and Quinoa and Arugula Salad and Pork Tenderloin with Watermelon, Mint, Feta and Cucumber Salad (this one was the one I chose when the flank steak was not available.)

KarenLynnn was right about the packaging. I think they need to use those Styrofoam packing containers that TW’s mom’s insulin is shipped in.

I thought we’d make the first dish on Tuesday night… but we didn’t because, errr, I don’t know why. We just didn’t. So Wednesday night I made the Grilled Chicken. It was a hit but boy did it use a lot of pots, pans, and bowls. Also, I should have used fewer greens — we’d have liked it better with a smaller green to quinoa ratio and I’ll remember that for next time.

You should also know that I ordered 2 plates of each dish but I was feeding three adults… TW didn’t think it was going to work out but it did. Perfectly.

And, tonight I made the Pork Tenderloin which was also a hit and EXACTLY the right amount for the three of us. (It also used fewer dishes, heh.) One problem — I should have read through the recipe before I started (hahaha, yea yea, I know.) After putting the pork to marinate and making the salad, the next step called for grilling the pita bread. Fine except the pork still needed 20-30 minutes so if we wanted warm grilled pita, we were screwed. I ended up wrapping it in tin foil and leaving it on the hot griddle. The pita was barely warm when the pork was ready. No big deal and it really was my fault for not reading through and thinking about how this might work out.

One other thing to note — Karen Lynn was also right about the timing. The cucumber for tonight was just about done. If I’d waited another day, there’s no way I could have used it. So next time I order, I’m going to have to be really conscious of our schedules and make sure that we really DO make these dishes on the first two days after the ingredients arrive.

And yep, I’ll order from Plated again. It was nice to have everything ready and not have to PLAN something or look around to see if we had all of the ingredients for a real meal. Very convenient. Easy recipes. Win-win!

There’s an art to choosing the right bunch of bananas. They can’t be too green (because I won’t eat them if they are AT ALL green) and they can’t be too NON-green because then nobody else will eat them and I can’t eat an entire bunch of bananas all by myself before they get so ripe that the skin is falling off of them — unless of course I choose a bunch that only has like three bananas on it. Which is silly. Who can buy just three bananas?

So yea. Lately I’ve not been doing a very good job of the banana choosing or the banana eating. I threw three bananas into the trash right before BlogHer ’13 and I swore I wouldn’t do that again when I bought this last batch. But, apparently I bought too ripe bananas because nobody ate them except me and by the time there were three very ripe bananas left, I was all banana’d out.

Which means I moved on to saying, “I’m going to make banana bread with those, before they turn into liquid banana goo all over the counter.” But errr, days passed and the banana bread didn’t get baked.

So I said, “I’m going to make banana muffins in the Ninja Cooking System! (And a loaf of banana bread the regular way!)” I was sure this would inspire me to get off my ass and just use the bananas.

Except it didn’t. Yesterday was go ninja or go to the trash bin with the bananas.

Since Skye says I am ninja, I had to make it happen even though I had no damn time to make banana muffins or banana bread. Mondays are usually slow work days for me (when I’ve worked four-six hours over the weekend) but they aren’t usually slow enough for baking. I bit the bullet and made the time.

Which was hard since I had absolutely no freaking clue as to how to make these banana muffins in the Ninja Cooking System.

The little cookbook says something about adding X amount of water for every 10 minutes. Which umm didn’t help because how long do you cook mini one bite (not two bite) banana muffins for, anyway? It also said something about using less fat. But how much less? I shrugged and guessed. I also turned to the back of the cookbook and found some recipe that looked like mini chocolate cupcakes and used those instructions.

Errr except I over-filled the little tiny one bite (note two bite) silicone muffin pan. And also, I have no idea if I picked the right amount of time to cook these things.

They turned out … fine. Not exactly like a normally baked banana muffin might turn out, but close enough. They certainly tasted just fine. They just didn’t really brown like a normally baked muffin might brown, (which is really a good thing for me, since I don’t really like muffins that are too “brown” on the outside.)

The biggest issue is that good grief, do you know how long it would take to turn the entire batch of banana bread batter into little tiny one bite (not two bite) banana muffins? HOURS and HOURS. Who has the time or patience for that?

I do, however, think this is going to come in handy for those times when you’re making muffins or cupcakes or brownies and you have just a wee bit of batter leftover that is too much to fill another full muffin tin or will only fill a couple of tins in your muffin pan so you either eat the batter with a spoon or throw it out rather than make another muffin tin dirty for no really good reason. (What? Am I the only one who has that issue?)

I’ve been thinking about trying Peapod for quite awhile and just never make the time to do it. The thing that really pushed me to want to try it is that not only do they take coupons, they double coupons (in my area) up to .99. Cool, right?

I told myself I’d set up a delivery for right after BlogHer ’13 — a time when it would be super convenient to have groceries delivered since I’d be too tired and too busy to grocery shop.

But, I didn’t do it.

And who was in the expo hall at BlogHer ’13? Peapod. Gah. Made me want to try it all over again.

So here I am thinking about it again and it hit me — Jenn and JMP and a whole lot of other people are going to be visiting me in August/September and I’m not going to have nearly as much time to grocery shop as I usual do.

So — Peapod to the darn rescue!

I’m totally gonna do it and let you know how it goes.

PS. I did spin their prize wheel thing at the conference and they did say I won a $100 gift card but I really have no idea how that’s going to work. The possibility of receiving a gift card has absolutely nothing to do with my decision to place an order this month. And, if I do end up with a giftncard from them, I’ll let you know.

The folks from @ninjakitchen sent TW a Ninja Cooking System, for free, after BlogHer Food ’13. They did not ask her to write about their product. They did not ask me to write about their product. I work for BlogHer but was not asked to write about this product by my employer. I’m writing this because I feel like it. That’s all.

Y’all know I’m not the one who cooks around here. I cook so rarely that the little kids act like we should stop the presses and get the story on the front page of the Tribune or something when I do cook. This causes me to roll my eyes and bite my tongue lest I tell them how idiotic they are being because I USED TO COOK FOR THEM ALL OF THE TIME. Apparently they do not remember all of the days/nights their mother was in bed, ill? Whatevs.

I don’t cook very often and I certainly don’t use the slow cooker when I do cook. OK Maybe a couple times over the last ten years. Once for greens (which I did not know how to make) and once for something else TW forgot to put in the crock-pot, so I had to do it. And, that’s probably pretty much it.

I thought the Ninja Cooking System looked cool and sounded pretty nifty when I talked to the @ninjakitchen folks at BlogHer Food ’13 but I was more taken with their deep fryer… because for me, it’s all about the clean up.

I’ve never had a real problem cleaning the crockpot – particularly since we have the kind with the removable crock part. I hated TW’s crockpot that was all one piece. But my old one — and the one we have now, I had very few clean up issues with them. Until I broke the crock a couple of weeks ago and had to order a new one. Sigh. That was annoying.

That’s the worst thing about that crock-pot. The insert is heavy as a …. yea, I curse too much, whatever. And I’ve chipped them and broken them too many times to count.

Now here’s the part about Ninja. Holy heck this sucker is easy to clean. It’s light. It pretty much just wipes right off. No scrubbing. It’s just wonderful. I’d be happy if TW cooked in this thing every night because clean up is so damn easy.

(The food she’s cooked in it has been good, too. Also um, fewer pots/pans to clean.)

Which brings me back to the Ninja Deep Fryer. I think we’re gonna have to buy that.

Now that I’ve experienced clean up with the Ninja Cooking System, there’s no way I’m going to want to try and deal with the clean up of our blechy deep fryer. No way in heck (look, I didn’t curse!) TW wouldn’t be unhappy if I got her a deep fryer for her birthday, right?

I have a love/hate with the Kitchenaid Stand Mixer.

The biggest problem is that I don’t really understand why the average person needs a stand mixer at all, much less a Kitchenaid that weighs a gazillion pounds.

My mom did not have a stand mixer when I was a kid.
I did not have a stand mixer until I moved in with TW and discovered she had her mom’s old white Kitchenaid.

And then I cursed that thing like crazy for a good five years, at which point it tried to kill me. (Fine, that’s what I get for storing it on top of the refrigerator.)

Just a couple of years ago, we threw away that old Kitchenaid stand mixer because the thingy that holds the bowl in place was worn out and the goo being mixed kept flying all over the place. Sometimes the entire bowl flew across the room. Stupid machine.

I’m thrifty and don’t believe in stand mixers so when I bought the replacement, I picked a Mixmaster. TW didn’t seem thrilled with it but she didn’t really complain either. The Mixmaster mostly just did what it was supposed to do while I cursed the fact that we have a stand mixer at all because those things take up space that we do not have.

At least this one isn’t heavy.

And yet, we are both drawn to the Kitchenaid Stand Mixers when we go to the Navy Exchange. Or when we’re in any kitchen department. It’s the color. The color lures us in. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve fondled a Kitchenaid Stand Mixer in red. In green. In orange. In yellow. Even in pink.

So it makes sense that I fondled the watermelon Kitchenaid at BlogHer Food. I fondled it quite a bit. And then TW won it and I cursed because we have a Mixmaster, for goodness sakes. We don’t have room for a Kitchenaid! That thing will probably try to kill me just like the white one did.

Then again, this one is new. And fresh. And has all of the instructions. It has the splatter guard. And the meat grinder. And the grain grinder. And the pasta thingy. How cool is THAT?

Sure enough, when it arrived yesterday… I fondled it. I cannot walk past it without petting it.

It’s so damn pretty.

I really hope it doesn’t try to kill me like the old white one did.