I want rainbow pancakes for breakfast – at least four times during PRIDE month (which is June for you non-queer calendar folks.) These are the best PRIDE pancakes EVER. I know, June is really very far away but I’m cold and I’m ready for warm weather. And rainbow pancakes. Maybe TW should do a trial run this weekend, just to make sure she can do them in June?
PRIDE Month is Coming – Make Pancakes! Read More »
Cleaning the kitchen last night, I opened the refrigerator to put something in… and this is what I discovered.
She had some weird explanation, related to 50lbs of cheese and her mother’s inability to eat (or drink) anything that came from the refrigerator due to cheese. Whatever. It’s just weird.
Who keeps newspaper in the fridge? Read More »
Years and years ago, TW’s mom sent us a huge box filled with spices. It was an odd gift, probably brought on by some phone call between TW and her mom where TW talked about not having spices she needed to make some odd dish or another. I dunno. The box just appeared and inside was the oddest mixture of stuff.
More cupcake/cookie sprinkles than we’d need in a lifetime.
A huge bag of cinnamon sticks (always needed in our house.)
Some weird thing called “cheese powder”
No salt seasoning
lemon seasoning
I could go on and on and on but I won’t. Instead, I’ll just link you to the site where this huge box of seasonings came from: Bulk Foods. Click through and imagine a box with dozens of this stuff. That’s what the gift contained.
Since then, we’ve ordered from Bulk Foods a few times, did I mention we always need cinnamon sticks? And cloves? We’ve always been very pleased with our order and I’ve mentioned them several times in message boards when I worked for WebMD’s old diet program (the Weight Loss Clinic.)
We were in serious need of cinnamon sticks and I kept meaning to order some but put it off and put it off and put it off. Instead, just buying a bottle at the commissary when I remembered that we needed some.
Finally, I got on the ball and ordered bulk cinnamon sticks from Bulk Foods (along with some other odds and ends that we needed.) I ordered it on a Saturday night and the darn box appeared on our doorstep on MONDAY.
Now I know shipping for us is quicker because they are in Ohio and we are now in Illinois but even when we were in Florida – shipping was QUICK.
If you’re looking for bulk spices (or any of the other bulk they sell) give them a try. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. That cheese powder stuff though, that was kind of weird and I’m not really sure what we ever did with it. Sprinkle on popcorn maybe? I don’t know – maybe TW remembers?
I’m not being paid to talk about Bulk Foods. I just really love them and thought it was time for me to say so on my blog.
Yes, that’s me making yummy sounds about chocolate. Yes that’s me behind the camera begging for chocolate. Yes that’s me stealing the chocolate covered ginger from TW’s SharffenBerger gift basket.
People. This non-chocolate lover LOVES their chocolate covered ginger and their sea salt almond milk chocolate. LOVE.
When Alanna published her round up of best recipes of 2008 I thought it would be fun for ME to do this… even though I’m totally NOT a foodie and I rarely cook. I can’t give you a super complete list of my faves because I don’t think TW has blogged them all (because they weren’t all “retro”) but she’s probably blogged enough of them that I can post a decent sized list.
So here we go, in no particular order:
1) Baked Butternut Macaroni (this is from Elaine Magee’s Food Synergy cookbook)
2) Explosively Good Chicken – this is more of a fave of the kids than me, but it resembles Chicken Adobo so I do like it quite a bit.
3) Polenta Lasagna with Bechamel thank you Crescent Dragonwagon.
Slimmer pickins’ from the blog than I originally thought. Darn. Oh well. I remembered three dishes – and that’s pretty good, for me. Maybe next year I can come up with five.
Best Recipes of 2008 Read More »
RJ was given the choice of where to go for her “birthday breakfast” and she chose Krispy Kreme. For a few moments, I thought she might choose Cinnabon. I’m very glad she didn’t. I don’t like Cinnabon but I do like Krispy Kreme – even if it means a longer drive.
Liz was excited about the Halloween offerings – until she saw them and then the only one she selected was the boring Halloween “topette”. Prince J, on the other hand, ordered both the pumpkin and the spiderweb. RJ didn’t order any of the Halloween specialties.
Another Krispy Kreme birthday breakfast Read More »
I know, I’m sorry, I came home to a ton of work and have had absolutely no time to blog more about our trip north. I still don’t have a lot of time and I’m working on a series of posts about moving that won’t come ’til next month – hopefully this will tide you over for a while.
When we arrived in Chicago and had that weird automatic that expected me to shift, we took a quick driving tour of houses we were interested in seeing – we started with a house in Lincolnwood then hit two more in Glenview. From there, three houses in Wilmette and then onto five in Evanston and then finally two in Skokie. By the time we hit Evanston, TW was ready for a pit stop so she said “if you see a McDonald’s, I’d like to stop” (code for I have to use the bathroom.)
This caused me to realize that we’d been driving for a very long time, covering a lot of territory and I hadn’t actually seen a McDonald’s or any type of fast food besides Dairy Queen, Jimmy John’s and Einstein Bagel – all in strip malls. We’d also seen Starbucks in strip malls. But no stand alone McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell etc… hmmmm
I kept driving and finally when we hit Dempster, I knew we’d find some because I had heavily researched Dempster because I was SURE we were going to rent a house on that street. (We didn’t.) I pulled into McDonald’s – TW raced for the restroom – I pulled out my phone to call Michelle. I also ordered a coke and while I was ordering, I said to Michelle “Well, it took us two hours of driving to find a McDonald’s.” The woman who had just ordered in front of me turned around and burst into laughter. I thought for sure we were going to see ourselves on Overheard in Chicago. heh
A lot of you have asked “So, what’s it like in Evanston/Glenview?”
It’s hard to describe, particularly if you’ve never spent much time in Indiana or Illinois. It looks like THAT. I think we boiled it down to “Evanston looks like Chicago but without the stuff that makes Chicago cool.” and Glenview looks like a suburb of Atlanta would look if Atlanta was in the midwest. Does that help?
Let’s see… what else can I tell you?
I finally ate at Cheesecake Factory. I’ve never been – I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. I’ve always wondered why people go there for birthdays and make a big deal of it. It’s a chain, what’s the big deal. I see now. It is a chain but it’s a specialty chain. And I enjoyed it.
We went to Trader Joe’s, finally! Yay. There’s one around the corner from where we will live. No more care packages from California are necessary (though I have greatly appreciated the ones I’ve been sent.)
Also, The Blind Faith Cafe in Evanston was awesome. I had this Shiitake Gorgonzola Biscuits thingy and it was awesome. I said awesome, right? We also hit the Cafe Express on Dempster and the chick working was very nice, coffee was good, too.
What else do you want to know?
More from the great north Read More »
We got serious about this de-clutter thing and got busy in the Florida Room and the garage, yesterday. But first, we hit The 43rd St Deli (on 13th) for breakfast where I had – gasp – oatmeal. Steele cut oatmeal, pan-seared w/a balsamic vinegar reduction sauce topped with bananas and dried berries (and walnuts too but I picked around those, yuk.) And that pan seared oatmeal – really good. (Do not tell anyone from my “old life” that I ate oatmeal!) (Also, the photo is from the iPhone so not great and I don’t have time to do any editing and photoshopping, sorry.)
Anyway, the clean up. Crazy.
Really crazy since much of what we were de-cluttering had BEEN de-cluttered a few years ago and we broke the biggest de-clutter rule of all… when something is set aside to leave your house, it needs to LEAVE YOUR HOUSE! Bags of old kid clothes, old toys, stuffed animals and just plain JUNK that should have been gone were still there. ugh.
Every car driving through the neighborhood stopped to take stuff from the curb. Many people got out, walked up the driveway and sifted through the piles of stuff. Many, many more people wandered into the garage and attempted to remove items before we’d sorted through them. Many, many people wanted things we were not planning on parting with. I surprised TW by saying I was ready to let the “grandma headboard” and the “grandma radio” go. (The headboard is at the curb, come get it! It’s orange! The radio was sold and the nice man is coming to get it tomorrow.)
We found some other stuff, well a lot of other stuff. But this is the stuff that I was most amused by and can actually share here…
Yes, that’s a record of Nazi marches and speeches. Yes, that’s a flash cube. Yes, that’s an Atari tape cartridge. Yes, those are dressmaker’s matches.
Oh, the skink… it was dead and I did not kill it.
Tales from the dark side, errr, the garage Read More »
I’m willing to take responsibility for a lot of things that go wrong around here. I’m also willing to take the blame for stuff. But damn it. Not this time. I do not get blamed or held responsible for the Gator Food issue. That was completely TW’s doing. COMPLETELY.
Do NOT let her fool you into thinking it was me. You know me, I’m perfectly happy not to eat any dinner at all.
TW’s fault. Completely.
TW has mislead some people Read More »
