Category Archives: food

FCN, Part 2: Food Fun!

And now…the rest of the story.

As I mentioned, the convention this weekend was quite a different experience for me. For one thing, I learned something that apparently other people do when they go to conventions. Yes, I…left the convention! I actually set foot outside of the hotel while the convention was taking place. This was a new and fascinating thing for me, something that I very rarely have had time to do when working Anthrocon or Midwest Furfest. So what did I do?

It all gets summed up in four words: I am Zingerman’s bitch. You’re going to be hungry after you read this…

California Birthday Trip: Days 3 & The End

The last day’s pictures are here.

Monday was The Big Day, my birthday. Honestly, I couldn’t think of anything we could do to top the two days prior, but I was looking forward to seeing what was in store. The day’s plans were a mystery to me, (except for dinner), so I had no idea what to expect.

The first stop of the day had us up and out of the house by 9 AM. Following a 45-minute drive to Santa Rosa (and a little bit of confusion in directions), we arrived at our next stop, one that was a genuine surprise to me: The national headquarters of Canine Companions for Independence. linnaeus‘ mother has raised several puppies for CCI, so when he found out we would be nearby, he suggested a tour there. Really, this was a most amazing and humbling experience, and I am so glad that we went there.

CCI trains and provides assistance dogs to disabled children and adults, all at no charge. They use black labs and golden retrievers exclusively, and the level of care and training that goes into each dog is simply astonishing. We got to take a tour of their grounds and offices, and see how they train the dogs after the puppy raisers initial training, lasting
6-8 months. This is followed by 6-9 months of training at the CCI facility before the dogs are paired with a client, either as a service or companion team (opening doors, picking up dropped items, etc.), a hearing team (alerting the client of a ringing telephone, etc.), or a facility team (therapy dogs). I was extremely impressed with the facility and with the friendly people who worked and volunteered there.
After the tour it was back to Napa. We grabbed a tasty lunch at a local burger joint then it was on to the next surprise: a day spa! It was quite delightful: I got a 75-minute massage followed by a pedicure; takaza got a facial, roho and genet each got pedicures and Lydia also got a manicure. Even Paul, who got pulled away by work for a few hours, was able to get a nice paraffin hand treatment. My massage was divine, and when Paul rejoined us he brought a bottle of wine for everyone to enjoy as well. Our manicurist, Babs, was delightful and we had a lot of fun bantering and hanging out.

After everyone was properly relaxed and such, we stopped by Oxbow Market to search for some good local olive oil. We found a couple bottles that were quite delicious. We also stopped by a very nice wine and cheese bar and had a couple pints of beer, which were quite tasty. We were quite amused to chat with the bartender there and find that she was from the south side of Chicago.

We ended the day with dinner at Bouchon Bistro. My food was quite outstanding: I started with an appetizer of cassoulet with duck confit and garlic sausage, followed by the Gigot d’Agneau (roasted leg of lamb served with flageolet beans and a thyme jus) and for dessert a delicious creme caramel. Brendan’s boudin blanc was excellent, and the desserts, especially Dan’s dark chocolate mousse and Lydia’s blood orange pot de creme, were outstanding. Unfortunately, the service was only mediocre (long waits, confused orders), and Dan and Lydia’s steak frites were quite lacking for the cost. Still, it was a great experience and I am glad we went. It was a wonderful way to finish off my birthday.

Alas, all good things must come to an end. Yesterday (Tuesday) we packed everything up early, leaving the house at 7 AM, and drove down to San Francisco International (by way of the San Mateo Bridge, on Babs’ advice, which I’m sure saved us some headaches). We made it there in plenty of time, though our flight turned out to be two hours late departing (one hour of that spent sitting on the tarmac). We got into O’Hare at about 7 PM, and picked up our luggage just in time to miss the Metra train home. Rather than waiting the 90 minutes until the next train, we opted to catch a cab, and I’m glad we did. We saw Brendan and Lydia off at about 9:30 PM, and got to bed at 11 PM.

So here I am, back at work, and quite exhausted. I’m told we have one more experience this evening, courtesy of a certain panda. That should be quite fun as well!

Hooray for Half-Pony, Half-Monkey Monsters!

It’s Friday and I’m feeling random.

So it appears that we’ll be going to Furry Connection North (April 11-13, Ann Arbor, MI). It will be the first convention I’ve been to in a long LONG time where I haven’t been on staff, so it should be an interesting experience. Once we get our rooming situation sorted out I’ll go ahead and buy sponsorships for takaza and me. If things work out, it appears that there may even be a Fine Potables Party there!

We need to make a couple of side dishes for a birthday party this weekend. Because I’ve never really cooked with Jerusalem artichokes (and because everything is better with bacon) I’m going to try making Warm Salad with Jerusalem Artichokes, Bacon, and Radicchio, a recipe from Jamie Oliver’s newest cookbook. I don’t have a lot of use for Oliver, but hey, the recipe sounds tasty. I just hope it scales reasonably.

Speaking of food-blog related stuff, I’m sad that I didn’t win anything in the Menu for Hope 4 raffle results that were announced today, but they did raise over $91,000 for the United Nations World Food Programme. That’s just amazing. I look forward to participating in Menu for Hope next year! (and I’ll probably mention it more next year because not only is it a great cause, the prizes they were raffling off were extremely nifty)

Finally, yesterday I introduced a cow-orker to the amusement that is Jonathan Coulton. That reminded me to go back and listen to some of his songs I haven’t heard. My new favorite of his is Skullcrusher Mountain, a tender tale of an evil overlord attempting to impress his less-than-willing female captive:

I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don’t like it
What’s with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies
Maybe you don’t like monsters so much
Maybe I used too many monkeys
Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?

Cheeseland, Indian Food, and Lots of Driving

Goodness, I guess I’ve been a bit quiet of late. We’re dealing with some health issues reasonably well, which makes me feel a lot better. So. The weekend…

Saturday morning I woke up on the early side and was feeling…spontaneous. Yeah, this is surprisingly rare for me, sadly enough. Anyway, I decided to make a quick run up to Milwaukee to check out the Milwaukee Public Market, since I’ve heard good things about it. Plus, Milwaukee is all of an hour from our house yet we never go up there.

Well, I discovered one good reason not to go up there: I-94 is under some serious construction by the IL/WI state line, then again in downtown Milwaukee. I navigated around that, though, and found my way down to the market. Wow, that place is pretty darned nifty! I picked up a number of interesting cheeses (including litteria, a Romano-like cheese native to Wisconsin, as well as Juusto, which I’ve been curious about. I also got some fabulous homemade pasta, a tasty loaf of asiago-garlic bread, and a couple of other goodies. When I finished at the market, I ventured further north into downtown to The Spice House, where I picked up some spice blends we had run out of (apparently my timing was off; if I’d been around earlier I might have run into the Furconsin crew!). I finished off the visit with a trip by the lakefront location of my drug dealer coffee purveyor, Alterra Coffee. I found that 1.) their parking lot is wholly inadequate, 2.) the only thing worse then stupid people is stupid people in groups, and 3.) I want to have Alterra’s triple latte’s babies. I had fun getting lost as I left town (I’m sure I went right by rolliebear‘s place, though!) and avoided the worst of the construction on the way home with some judiciously-timed detours. Dinner for takaza and I was an alfredo-esque sauce made with the litteria cheese over fresh pappardelle. Delicious!

Sunday found me driving allover Schaumburg and Rolling Meadows finishing off gathering data for the Midwest FurFest Restaurant Guide. We dropped about 10-15 places (closed, have closer locations to the hotel, etc.), but we picked up a couple too, including Pierogi Place, my new favorite place for a quick bite anywhere near Schaumburg. When I was done, I met up with steviemaxwell and midwestcougar for a truly delicious lunch buffet at Gaylord India Restaurant. I’m pleased to say that the restaurant is everything that the effusive Restaurant Guide review that I inherited promised that it is. The northern Indian cuisine was a wonderful contrast to the southern Indian of Bombay City in Gurnee both were good in their own way, but very different flavors. I’d love to go back and order off the menu!

And here we are well into the week already. The great news is that it looks like the River Trip coming up this weekend is still on, and the weather is going to be fabulous. takaza and I will be joined by linnaeus and daveqat. Our itinerary is (loosely) going to include spending Friday night in Moline, IL, then Saturday night in Decorah, IA. Sunday, we’ll probably skim southeastern Minnesota (sorry, foxfeather! We just won’t have time to visit this time around) and either head up to La Crosse, WI and then down on I-94 (boring!) or head due east from Prairie du Chien, WI (and with a name like that, how could I not go there?). The latter route would take us through little towns like New Glarus, WI. Now whatever could we find there, I wonder?

And now, back to watching Heroes!

So Tired…

As I have noted in the past, insomnia sucks, and insomnia on a Sunday night when you’re trying to readjust to a work-week schedule and went to bed late…Ugh. Needless to say, I’m dragging a good bit this morning. I have a whole lot to write about the weekend, though!

On Saturday I met neowolf2 and linnaeus at the Midwest FurFest storage locker to pick up a few things and get a feel for the state of the locker. It could use some organization, but it’s not an utter disaster. I wonder if it would be worth it to steal an idea from Ohana House and assign each department a color (Registration=red, Operations=green, etc.), with every item that department puts into the storage locker labeled with a piece of tape of that color. I’m not sure how helpful that would be, but I imagine it would make sorting what goes where when we bring stuff to the hotel a lot easier. Just thinking out loud here…

After Neowolf got the Registration server from the storage locker, the three of us had lunch at Chowpatti, a vegetarian restaurant in Arlington Heights, not too far away from the storage locker (or the MFF hotel!). The menu – all 26 pages of it – is quite overwhelming; it’s sort of a vegetarian Cheesecake Factory. I opted for the Pav Bhaji Uttapam (an thick pancake made using a batter of rice and lentil topped with seasoned potatoes, green peas, cauliflower, tomatoes, garlic, onions and cilantro, covered with cheese). It came out looking quite like a pizza 🙂 It tasted excellent, though, and the fact that it was vegetarian was completely obscured by the riot of flavors and textures. Delicious! My only complaint was that the service was a bit slow, but I would be very happy to go there again.

Afterwards, I started my reconnaissance for this year’s Restaurant Guide. I had forgotten how slow the process can be; in an hour I had only covered Algonquin Road from Arlington Heights Road to the Alumni Club, just past the Motorola campus, as well as McConnor Parkway and a small part of Meacham Road. In that stretch there’s been a couple of closings (Sal e Carvao, notably) and several new additions (including a Jewish deli, a Malaysian restaurant, and a fast-food pierogi place). I’m hoping that this weekend takaza and I can do a bit more information gather either before or after the MFF staff meeting on Sunday. After an hour of driving, the food coma from lunch was catching up to me and I just wanted to relax a bit, so I headed home. Dan and I did a bit of grocery shopping, and he grilled up some tasty steaks later in the evening.

On Sunday, perro came up to hammer out MFF programming room assignments with Dan, then steviemaxwell and magicpaw joined us not long after. A delicious meal ensued which I will detail in a later post, because it was all about testing out recipes and preparation techniques for this coming weekend’s LAFF Softball Steak Dinner. The recipes were a success, and we wound up chatting until late about con related stuff. It was an extremely productive evening, and I went to bed with my brain buzzing about plans (which probably explains the insomnia).

More anon…

Midweek Stuff

It’s a typical week, which is to say not too exciting.

nymphara is crashing at our place for a few days, as she is in between apartments. Various errands have kept her busy all week, though, so we haven’t seen much of her!

I thought that we were going to a party this weekend, but apparently not. This means we actually don’t have plans for the weekend. Shocking! I’m sure something will expand to fill the available time, though (like maybe a lunch trip to The Firkin in Libertyville. Hmm…). Pretty much the most exciting thing is that I picked up some pre-marinated skirt steak from Garden Fresh Market the other day; I’m really curious to see how it cooks up tonight, but if the small of our refrigerator is anything to go by, it should be quite tasty!

Among other errands I need to run is a stop by the Round Lake Park District offices to drop off our entry form for the Spring Stampede (pdf link) that we’re going to do with linnaeus and mirkowuff. The tentative name for our team is “Hungarian Soup Orchestra”, something that will make no sense to anyone who hasn’t watched the last few seasons of The Amazing Race 🙂 I should check out their gym facilities while I’m there, too.

On the topic of Anthrocon, I got a happy surprise yesterday when I made some lists of who I have for help and I actually have more people than last year. Awesome! We were stretched pretty thin last year, so the extra person will make a world of difference. Right now, I’ve got danruk, linnaeus, Grandma & Grandpa Kage, bullethc, woodychitwn, frostyw, nymphara, and rooth for my staff, with additional help from datahawk, roho, and genet for payout each day. With takaza‘s staff of daveqat, jimcyl, and wild_rhythm, we might be able to make it through this year without completely falling apart (though if anyone feels the need to demand that I spend a half-hour on the massage guy’s chair again, I’ll be quite OK with that!). I’m always looking for a bit of additional help, though, so if you’re interested, let me know. I took some time yesterday to update the staff instructions for Artists Alley and Con Store; I’ll be sending those out sometime next month, I expect. I’ve arranged the signup room and times with kuddlepup, so that all seems to be in order. I need to make a list of forms I need to print and info I need to get from Kage, then I’ll be pretty much good to go.

Oh, I almost forgot! Many of you have heard me rant and rave about Intelligentsia’s Black Cat Espresso. I’m afraid I have a new love in my coffee life, though: Alterra Coffee’s Delta Mud. Oh man, is that stuff good! And their prices are much more reasonable than Intelligentsia’s, even with shipping included. I still like Intelligentsia’s stuff, but unfortunately it’s just a pain to get out here in the burbs.

Back to work for me, now!

Well, That Bowl Wasn’t So Super (But Who Cares?)

Another busy weekend passes by…

You know folks who say they’ve lived someplace for years and are still unpacking from moving? That would make me insane. On an unrelated note, we invited a small group of friends over to watch the Super Bowl. Couple the desire for getting the place unpacked and into some semblance of order with a mania to have the house look perfect when company comes over and you get a sense of urgency that just won’t quit. (This is the part of the entry where I nominate takaza for sainthood for putting up with me when I get like this 🙂

On Saturday I was up far too early (before 6 AM), and by 11 AM had run various errands, including a sizeable grocery store run. We spent the afternoon putting up blinds in the kitchen and living room and I am pleased to say that we now can have privacy in our house. Hooray! We finished out the day with a little more unpacking and sorting. We briefly considered going out to check out a little Mexican joint in Round Lake I read about but instead ordered pizza and salad in because neither of us wanted to face the sub-zero temperatures and wind.

Sunday I was up early again and doing some preparatory cooking. After making too darn many crepes, I took a break from the kitchen and Dan and I cleaned the house from top to bottom, stowing any remaining boxes, vacuuming, and generally whipping the place into shape. We finished right as folks were expected to show up. I was expecting a night of food and boozing, but it was a lot of the former and not much of the latter. The amount of food we had was crazy: cheeseburger dip, monkey bread (both herb and cinnamon sugar), guacamole, and chicken tenders. My contribution was a pair of baked crepe dishes. One was crepes stacked with béchamel sauce, spinach, mushrooms, and Parmesan cheese and baked together, the other was similar only with a fresh tomato and garlic sauce, prosciutto, Parmesan, and fresh mozzarella cheese. We finished off the meal with a pair of homemade frozen treats: Dan made cinnamon ice cream, and I made a green apple sorbet (aka “booplesauce!”). Though good individually, the two combined to be quite yummy.

Oh yeah, and there was some football game on, and the Bears lost. Eh. Nobody was particularly upset about the loss, and watching the game on TiVo made the game move SO much faster. Of course we watched the commercials, and though there were some funny ones, overall we were generally unimpressed. We sent folks on their way on the late side, and as a result I’m dragging badly this afternoon, something not helped by the fact that I’m fighting off some kind of upper respiratory ick. I’ve got an appointment with the doctor at 5 PM today, and even if she can just treat the symptoms, that will be an improvement.

datahawk spent the night last night, with the intention of just heading to work from our place this morning. As cold as the night was (-12 degrees F), it’s no surprise that her car didn’t start this morning, and as far as I know hasn’t started yet. She’s instead suffering through the torture of relaxing in the living room and cuddling up with our TiVo. It’s a tough life 🙂

It was lovely having folks over and getting the house into shape, though we still have some stuff that we need to figure out where it goes (mainly that’s all in the garage). Dan and I are thinking about throwing a housewarming party sometime in March; we’ll be sure to give plenty of notice once we figure out a date.

Quiet week, and planning ahead

Just some random bits of goings-on this week…

takaza‘s glasses broke (the bridge snapped at one of the lenses) on Friday morning, which is a bit problematic. He made many calls all over and the bottom line is that, with the eye care insurance we have, you get a choice of about 20 frames and it takes no less than a week to get new glasses. One-hour places? Sure, if you want to do it on your own dime. Now, it’s worth noting that if you’re OK with these limitations, you can get a new pair of glasses for about $30-40. Dan opted for anti-glare coating as well, so his will be $60, and they come in (hopefully) on Friday. This tells me that it would probably be a good idea for me to get a new pair of glasses sooner than later, too, since mine are about three years old and pretty scratched up anyway.

In the meantime, since he needs his glasses to drive, we’ve been car-pooling every day. This adds about 20 minutes to my commute each way, which isn’t too bad. There’s also the added benefit of time spent together, which is really pleasant. It’s especially nice on nights like tonight, when we don’t really have any dinner plans. We can get dinner anywhere we want and don’t have to rush home, then head back out (if you live in a city, you understand, I’m sure) if we so desire.

Last night’s dinner was quite tasty: rigatoni with a bacon-tomato sauce, baked under lots of mozzarella. Yum! We’re definitely going to have to make that again. Not sure what we’ll be doing for dinner tomorrow, and it sounds like we’ll be going out with friends on Friday; I predict many brain cells will be killed before that night is over 🙂 The weekend will be spent taking Dan’s mom out to lunch for her birthday, then it’s over to Antioch, with tasty grilling and other fun stuff going on there. I’m thinking about making a dessert involving strawberries for that – we’ll have to see what recipes I can find.

Finally, looking ahead two weeks, I see that Milwaukee Irishfest is already upon us! mirkowuff may be coming up for the fest; anyone else interested in joining in? I intend to go up on Saturday the 19th (yeah, it’s the day of LAFF softball, sorry). With any luck the weather will cool off by then.