Category Archives: grilling

Recap-o-rama: The 2nd Annual Midwest FurFest Summer Picnic

Whoa, am I falling behind!

The most notable event recently was the second annual Midwest FurFest Summer Picnic, which took place on the weekend before last. We welcomed Gir, Nik, Cadyr, and Eddi over at our place that Friday night and did some prep work for the picnic (including Genet making five gallons of simple syrup for the sno-kones!). We packed it in on the early side, then it was up relatively early on Saturday. Picnic prep went quickly, though we were late leaving the house.

The picnic was amazing. We had over 150 RSVP’s, though the actual turnout was probably more like 135 or so. It was a beastly hot day, in the 90’s and humid. We set up two grills, one for Midwest FurFest and one for Furry Connection North. In the time leading up to dinner I was in charge of making appetizers, which I did with copious help from Linnaeus, Aureth, Genet, Roho, and Cadyr. Appetizers included grilled pineapple with cumin, quesadillas, grilled plums, grilled baby bok choy in a light peanut sauce, and grilled jalapeno peppers, stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon. This was supplemented by an inspired addition on Dan’s part: he rented a sno-kone machine, which was perfect for the day. We went through about 80 pounds of ice, providing sno-kones for everyone (even bacon and peanut butter flavors!).

The main event came down to Furry Connection North’s Guacamole Bacon Bomb Burgers (secret ingredient: chopped bacon and scallions mixed into the burger!) versus Midwest FurFest’s Killer Bacon Cheeseburger (secret ingredient: 7-year-old aged cheddar cheese!). They were part of a delicious dinner buffet that included green salad, steakhouse potato salad, baked beans, and several trays of tasty dessert pastries. We had more than enough food (as always), but everyone seemed very happy with dinner and no one walked away hungry. I’m pleased and proud to say that Dan’s bacon cheeseburgers won the day, though Gir’s burgers were mighty tasty. Perhaps a rematch is in order?

The only downside is that the heat of the day and the hot grills took their toll – Gir, Dan, and Genet all had to take breaks because of the heat, and honestly early on I felt a little dizzy myself. Fortunately with lots of water and some time in an air-conditioned car, everyone bounced back and was able to return to the fray. Overall it was an excellent event, and I think that we succeeded in our goal to maintain awareness of Midwest FurFest during the summer months, recruit new volunteers, and increase community goodwill toward the convention. Certainly a worthwhile event!

Speaking for me personally, I’m wondering if the picnic isn’t getting a bit too big for us to be doing all the cooking (or any of the cooking, really). I’ve got some ideas for next year, but if we’re back to grilling for crowds again, I wouldn’t be too upset about that.

More about recent events in another post…

A Perfect Fourth of July Holiday

Right, there was a holiday weekend back there. We were still dragging from Anthrocon going into the weekend, so keeping things laid-back was definitely on the menu. On Friday night, roho and genet stopped by and we made fajitas, then just hung out. Saturday was a lovely day of relaxing, then Roho, Genet, and linnaeus came over and we made steaks Argentinean style. OMG SO GOOD! This is a method described in the latest issue of Cook’s Illustrated: you coat the steaks lightly with a salt/cornstarch mixture, then place then in the freezer for 30 minutes. You build a hotter-than-heck charcoal fire and put a couple of wood chunks around the perimeter. Then you season the steaks with pepper and put them on the grill, 2-3 minutes per side, flipping twice. They came off perfectly rare/medium-rare. Oh, wow! Those were excellent – a nicely browned crust and suffused with hickory smoke. So good.

Sunday was another day of lazing about in the morning, then chanur2000 came over and he and takaza went to work reconciling Anthrocon’s finances. As they did this, I caught a ride from Roho & Genet down to justincheetah and calapurr‘s for their “Red White and Gin” party. It was an awesome party – great food, tasty drinks, shameful performances on Rock Band, and the evening was capped off by watching the town’s fireworks from their back deck. Awesome. I was also quite pleased that the gazpacho I made seemed to go over well. Since a couple of folks asked for it, here’s the recipe

Memorial Day 2010-palooza!

I need a vacation from my vacation!

It all started so long ago…Friday, I think it was. That night, what was going to be a small pre-party get-together swelled to 11 people getting together for “tapas” (as in “we only serve a bunch of appetizers, so let’s call it tapas”) at Rugan’s in Antioch. The company was excellent, the beer tasty, the food OK, the service disastrous, and the sound level inexcusable. We had a good time anyway.

On Saturday things got rolling early as folks started to arrive for our big Memorial Day Party. The cast of characters from the previous night, plus, um, a lot of other people – I think we had 25 people in our place at dinner time. I smoked a bunch of chickens in the smoker, Dan grilled up some bacon cheeseburgers, and everyone had a great time. Little-known fact: “Mai Tai” is Polynesian for “express train to drunkville” 🙂 Everyone brought an amazing array of food and drinks and we had a fantastic dinner.

On Sunday morning we made the requisite pilgrimage to Las Vegas Restaurant for their tasty brunch, then retired back to our place for chatting, relaxing, and gaming. As the day wore on we broke out the leftovers (of which there were copious quantities) and Dan got to try out a couple more drink recipes. Drunken Malarkey was played, where we learned that Bill Hep may or may not have been a hep cat, toothpaste magically regenerates itself, and popping movie theater popcorn has been outsourced to China.

Monday brought breakfast fail, as I somehow failed to comprehend that bagels, lox, and cream cheese requires bagels and cream cheese. Um, whoops. Thanks to Mirko, at least, for importing salmon from Seattle! We recovered, though, and headed out en masse to take over Whirlyball in Vernon Hills! We had 23 people in all there, including 11 fursuiters. The Whirlyball marketing guys loved us, taking pictures and video of the fursuit Whirlyball sessions (our picture gallery is here). We played for two hours, and I think everyone had a pretty darned good time!

Afterward, we adjourned back to our place for lunch with a few folks, then saw our last guests off at 4 PM. Dan went to bed not long after that, and I took a nap myself, then enjoyed a quiet evening, just me and Buddy.

As always, this was a terrific weekend, and I want to thank all of the great folks who were able to join us at some time over the course of the weekend: Aerofox, Aiden Dingo, Aureth, Bacon, Baja, Basil, Croc, Delmir, Drake, Eddi, Ford, Genet, Gir, GrayWolf, Hartree, Hegdish, Jenne, Linnaeus, Mirko, Nik, Perro, Quasi, RB, Rex, Roho, Rusty, Stevie, Street, Ted, Theome, Tozier, Vish, and Woody (I think I may have missed a few – if so, I apologize!). As tired as we were at the end of it, I know I felt it was all worth it, and we’re already thinking ahead to New Year’s Eve and other fun events in the future!

Smokin’ Up A Storm!

So, life has been interesting at work, though it’s not much I can comment on in a public journal entry. The good news is, I have a job, it’s not in danger of going away any time soon (as far as I know), and I’m keeping busy. Let’s leave it at that.

So last week takaza and I spent a little more time doing some housecleaning and dealing with some of the spring cleaning we had so artfully avoided the weekend before. This was because we were welcoming company. Plonq and Atara rolled in mid-afternoon on Saturday as part of their epic drive from Winnipeg to Ohio. We put together a nice dinner for them, inviting roho, genet, aureth, and jenwolf (alas, linnaeus‘s car blew up and he had to spend the day dealing with that and couldn’t make it). Genet made a tasty Asian slaw and banana pudding, and Aureth made a delicious (if sloppy) cherry pie. Dan made some killer macaroni and cheese with bacon.

For my part, I smoked a bunch of chickens in the smoker. Two of them I soaked overnight in a bourbon/honey brine, and two of them in a soy/ginger brine. Once I got the smoker up to a proper temperature, they smoked beautifully with some apple wood I had leftover from last year. Just perfect! The bourbon/honey brine was definitely the lesser of the two – some definite sweetness, but no real bourbon flavor. Everyone agreed that the soy/ginger was the real winner. We whiled away the night chatting and drinking some of Aureth’s excellent homebrew, but unfortunately I conked out earlier than I would have liked.

On Sunday, Atara and Plonq spent the day with Atara’s sister in Chicago, so Dan and I just hung around the house and relaxed most of the day. Roho and Genet came over in the evening and we watched the season finale to The Amazing Race (still not happy with how it ended, but it could have been much worse). We reheated the leftovers from the previous night, and I whipped up a simple Alabama white BBQ sauce that was absolutely divine with the smoked chicken. Atara and Plonq got home part way through the show and we spent the balance of the evening chatting and poking at our laptops – companionable geekery 🙂

On Monday morning we bid farewell to our Canadian guests as they continued their trip eastward. Looking ahead to the coming weekend, we have more company coming, as well as the Midwest FurFest staff meeting. This should be a fun one – it’s an in-person meeting at the Hyatt O’Hare in the middle of Anime Central, a 12,000-person anime convention. If anyone is at ACen and wants to stop by to say hi, we’ll be in the Hartsfield Room at the Hyatt from 2 PM until around 4 PM!

Spring Has Sprung, The Grass Is Riz…

Spring continues apace! Last weekend we had considered doing some Spring Cleaning, but after thinking about it, takaza and I decided the weekend was better spent doing very little 🙂

Friday night after work, we decided that we really wanted to see How To Tame Your Dragon again, this time in 3-D. We bought tickets at Gold Class Cinemas in South Barrington, and we were joined by roho, genet, justincheetah, and calapurr. Yes, the tickets were a bit expensive at $17.50 apiece, but considering we were originally looking at the IMAX in Lincolnshire ($17/ticket), it was a very good deal indeed. Gold Class is a “premium theater”, one of the more over-the-top examples. There are (I think) ten auditoriums, the small ones having 22 seats and the large ones having 44 seats. And what seats! Comfy electric recliners with lots of space all around, and pillows and blankets provided on request.

We decided to try the whole deal and ordered dinner and drinks before the movie, to be delivered during the movie. Dan ordered the Wagyu beef burger duo (which unfortunately turned out to be served with mustard – not to his liking at all). I had the Cuban pork sandwich, which was delicious. Also, they have a fantastic drink called a ginger collins (Hendricks gin, Canton ginger liqueur, fresh strawberries, Pama pomegranate liqueur, sweet and sour mix, and ginger). SO GOOD. The prices were sky-high, though, and although the food was good, we could have had an amazing dinner at a fine steakhouse for what we paid. We won’t be doing dinner there again. Fortunately, there’s a Cooper’s Hawk Restaurant and Winery right in front of the theater, so I can see a nice combination of dinner and a movie right there.

Oh, and the movie? Really great, even the second time. The 3-D did add to the experience, so I’m glad we saw it that way. We’ll be buying the DVD for sure.

On Saturday, we did nothing. And it was good.

Sunday, I got a little more motivated. I took Buddy for a walk at a local forest preserve, then did some shopping at Garden Fresh, our local grocery store. Why do I love this store so much? They cover the basics, but also have a wide variety of ethnic foods. It’s a wonderful mix of foods and cultures, and I was amused when I stopped by a sample table and had to help a Korean woman explain to a Middle Eastern woman what was in the kim chee dumplings (tasty, too!). Roho and Genet joined us for a dinner of bacon cheeseburgers, grilled asparagus with rosemary, lemon, and goat cheese, and a dessert of grilled pineapple. Somewhere in there we attended the online Midwest FurFest staff meeting and watched an episode of Glee, too.

This week is going by pretty much as usual. One bright spot is that with a nice influx of reimbursements from various sources we’ve paid our credit card off. Looking ahead to this weekend, the Spring Cleaning will kick in in earnest. After that, our weekends are claimed through the beginning of June. Yikes!

Updata

Whoa, what a crazy week. Work has had me slammed all week, and it will probably be more of the same into next week. Still, it’s manageable, just doesn’t leave a lot of time for things like LiveJournal updates.

Waaay back on Friday we met up with daveqat, linnaeus, perro and darkwolph to see the Pride Edition of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. It was a fun show, though not one of their best overall. We still had a good time. Afterward we walked over to Big Jones for what turned out to be a really enjoyable dinner. We worked our way through their cocktails menu, and my shrimp and grits was fabulous (if this sounds weird, imagine the grits being served more like polenta). Dan’s country fried steak was tasty as well, up to Heaven on Seven standards.

Saturday was pretty low-key. I went in to work in the morning, then that afternoon we had Paul, roho and genet over for dinner. We grilled up some steaks, chatted a good bit, sampled some mighty fine beers, and played the new Boom Blox game. And Sunday? On Sunday we didn’t do anything – just stayed in and relaxed. That was nice.

This week has been busy on the housing front. The home inspection for the new place was on Tuesday, and everything looked pretty good. There are a couple of exterior GFCI outlets that need to be replaced, but we’ll have the seller take care of that prior to closing. I’ll be meeting with our mortgage broker today at lunch to sign off on paperwork and hopefully secure as good a rate as possible.

Last night we got the letter we’d been expecting, a Notice of Motion to the Court of Lake County setting a trial date for the foreclosure of the townhouse we’re living in. The good news is that this is just another step in a long process, and the bank won’t take over the property for at least another four or five months – we’ll be long gone by then. The other good news is that in lieu of refunding our security deposit, our landlord told us we don’t have to pay rent in August. This is awesome!

In the meantime, planning is still going ahead full steam for the Midwest FurFest Summer Picnic, which right now has about 100 RSVP’s. Yikes! We’ll definitely have free strip steak for everyone (and some chicken breasts for non-beef-eaters); I’m working with a local caterer to figure out what the sides and desserts will be. I’ll be posting the menu next week as soon as we get it locked down.

And finally, there’s Anthrocon looming large on the near horizon. I need to deal with some items on my to-do list for that this weekend, and make sure that everything is ready to go. One advantage to having done this for so many years is that I’ve got lots of notes about things that need to be done before the convention. That will definitely save my sanity (what little I have left). OK, back to the grind!

End of the Week Wrapup Before the Week Ends!

Right. Friday. Where did the week go?

We’ve got a busy weekend ahead, but before that happens I wanted to post about the past week. On Saturday, we were joined for dinner by linnaeus, hegdish, drakeduck, and baconcoyote. We grilled up some very tasty bacon cheeseburgers and had a lovely evening of chatting and catching up. We don’t get to see the Milwaukee folks too often so it was a lot of fun to hang out with them!

On Sunday we did some work around the house, though takaza was feeling a bit iffy. I wound up going up to roho and genet‘s for dinner and The Amazing Race by myself. Unfortunately, Dan’s illness carried over into the next day, when his boss sent him home because he was running a mild fever and had a slight cough (OMG SWINE FLU!). Even after he saw a doctor (who diagnosed it as your basic virus-caused upper respiratory ick), he didn’t go back to work until Wednesday.

My week at work has been pretty busy, wrapping up a final report and starting in on my next project. It has kept me hopping (and extremely stressed on Monday), but it hasn’t be too bad.

Last night was a fun change to the usual routine; we met up with aureth, jenwolf, and moryssa for dinner in McHenry at the decidedly pedestrian Bambino’s (so-so pizza and $5 bottles of Guinness? Seriously?) before walking down to see Star Trek. On a scale of 0 to 100, I’d give it about an 85. Entertaining, pretty to look at (though as Dan and I said on Twitter, you can make a drinking game out of counting the lens flares, and be very drunk by the end of the movie), though ultimately lacking in…something. It was amusing to see them follow the “Star Trek checklist”, though: Bones says “Dammit Jim, I’m a doctor, not a *”, Scotty says he’s “giving her all he’s got”, etc. I absolutely got my six dollars’ worth, so I have no complaints.

As for this weekend, we’re going to stop by Anime Central briefly tomorrow, then either go for some tasty BBQ or a wine tasting for a great cause, the German Shepherd Search and Rescue Dog Association. As for Sunday, I have a list with a lot of tasks to complete before we open up our house for Memorial Day, mostly stuff that no one would notice if we didn’t do them, like cleaning the windows in the stairwell and such, but I’ll feel better once they’re done. Hmm, Sunday is also the finale for The Amazing Race. We (or someone) should do something for that. We’ll have to work on that 🙂

Lots of Grilling, and a Very Busy Week

Holy cow, it’s been a while since I updated. Last weekend was a real hoot. Saturday was roho‘s birthday, so we got together with a bunch of friends and first hit Brightonwoods Orchards, then went back to Roho and genet‘s place for a tasty dinner of grilled meats and some excellent cupcakes make by takaza, including carrot cake cupcakes and my favorite, Boston cream cupcakes {drool}.

Sunday, we were joined by linnaeus and headed north to Milwaukee, first to Sprecher Brewing to stock up on cherry cola for Midwest FurFest, then a quick stop by Alterra Coffee to feed my filthy caffeine habit. Once done there, it was off to hegdish and drakeduck‘s place for a very enjoyable shindig featuring more grilled meats and some excellent company. It was great to meet some of the Milwaukee furs we hadn’t seen before, as well as some old friends we hadn’t seen in ages (hi Mistletoe and Tremaine!). Wonderful company, and Hegdish and Drake were excellent hosts. I look forward to seeing more of them!

Most of this week has been slow at work, which is good since that let me catch up on some MFF business. I’ve been very busy coordinating between departments, making my credit card squeak with a good bit of ordering, and working with some fine crafters out in California on some fun “spiffy” projects. Evenings have been spent enjoying the autumn chill by snuggling up with Dan on the sofa and catching up on Tivo’d programs. Some TV notes: Heroes is definitely getting better. The Amazing Race bummed me out by eliminating my favorite team. Survivor:Gabon is still in the early (boring) stages where the majority of the show can be watched on fast-forward. Chuck is fun, though we still have a couple of episodes to watch. Also sitting on the Tivo: Life on Mars, Toughest Race on Earth: Iditarod, My Own Worst Enemy, and the balance of Reaper from last season. As much as I wish we could keep up with Pushing Daisies, we’re too far behind. Shows that are falling into the “Ain’t gonna watch it” category: Prototype This (so much potential, but so much suck), Knight Rider (too dumb for words), and Fringe (just can’t work up the interest).

As for plans this weekend, I may have to go in to work tomorrow morning for a bit. Then tomorrow afternoon Dan’s family is coming over – I just don’t have the motivation for cooking for a crowd, so we may just order pizza. Sunday I hope to do as little as possible, though we have an MFF staff meeting online in the evening. Just about a month to go until the con! Gah!

Right now, though, I’m listening to some excellent blues, Dan is cooking up a delicious dinner in the kitchen, and I have a very tasty beer in front of me. Life is good. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Oh Yeah, Updates…

It’s Wednesday already? Wasn’t it just Wednesday last week? Man, someone should do something about these calendars.

So last weekend was halfway stress-free. On Saturday we had takaza‘s family over to celebrate his mother’s birthday, albeit belatedly. We all went together and bought her a Wii. She’s a big fan of old-school games like Zelda and Final Fantasy stuff, so the online purchase thing is nifty for her. Plus, we played Boom Blox and I think we sold his mother on the game as well as his brother on buying a Wii period. The damn game is like a virus, I swear.

On Sunday I carpooled with roho and genet down to meet with a prospect for our charity for Midwest FurFest this year (Dan went to see The Dark Knight with his family and worked on Anthrocon tax stuff). The meeting went extremely well and I hope to have an announcement on that front later this week. They’re very excited to work with us and I think we’re going to have a lot of fun and make them a lot of money. From there, we drove over to Linnaeus‘s place where we were joined by siriuswolfstar, simbalion, feren, and lady_curmudgeon. We all enjoyed an excellent dinner of burgers and tasty sausages (mmm, andouille!) and some excellent beers. It was a very enjoyable evening!

Work has been more than a little crazy of late. I just wrapped up a big project yesterday which is a big relief, though I’ve got another project next week that will take up all of my time for the first three days of the week. We’ve also had a slew of new hires and I’m helping out occasionally to get them settled as well.

This weekend should be fun – I’ll be at LAFF softball on Saturday to hang out and chat with folks. Not a lot of plans on Sunday, but we’ll wing it and see how things go.

I’ll leave you with two interesting links: If anyone is in Los Angeles and likes food and The Amazing Race, well, the Food Network is looking for you! Granted, being the Food Network, I’m sure they’ll take a good idea and screw it up royally.

Also, it’s about damn time. Anthony Bourdain has been touring around Chicago as he finally films an episode of No Reservations here. I don’t know most of the places he mentions, but I’m glad to see that one of the highlights will be Hot Doug’s, a true Chicago original. (Though I wonder about his choice of local guides. Mancow Mueller? Really?) Anyway, it should be a great episode when it airs.

The Calm Before The Storm

Before the craziness of this week’s preparations for the upcoming Memorial Day weekend, we had a very nice weekend. On Friday we met up with linnaeus, roho, and genet for dinner in Antioch. We had originally planned to try out a BBQ joint I had read about, except we found that it was not only closed, the space was vacant and available for rent. Well. Instead, we walked down to the little Italian place a few doors down, Petrucci’s. As we were standing outside debating, one of the employees came out to cajole us into coming in. After she went inside, Linnaeus took a deep whiff and said, “Smell that? That’s Calvin Kline’s Desperation.” We shrugged and went inside.

After being seated, the waitress asked what we wanted to drink. I asked what beers they had on tap, and she…didn’t know. The manager came over and told us the beers they had: Michelob, Heineken, and Moretti (sure, they had a Peroni neon sign out front but they didn’t actually, you know, carry it). Evidently the three-beer beer list was too much to remember. Drinks arrived, and many giggles were had as we admired the Dunkin Donuts straws we were given. That was when I started pushing for just getting appetizers (a selection of fine frozen, fried cheese sticks, onion rings, etc.) and getting dinner elsewhere. I got outvoted, but we ordered the simplest possible thing we could: one sausage pizza, and one pepperoni pizza. To their credit, the pizza sauce wasn’t bad, and the toppings were OK. The crust, though, was terrible. It reminded me for all the world of cheap frozen pizza. Needless to say, we won’t be going back.

Saturday saw me at work in the morning while Dan slept in. He was awake and showered when I got home, and we headed out to run some errands. We happened upon a local coffee house now in its third incarnation since we’ve been in the area, and had a very tasty lunch there (they carry Intelligentsia Coffee! Yay!). Then it was up to Antioch Packing House to gather information on buying a side or quarter of a cow to fill up our freezer. We also picked up some excellent bacon and a couple of fantastic steaks. Once we got home we were joined by tozier_wah for the evening, and introduced him into how we have a small dinner for company: grilled NY strip steaks, baked potatoes with Monterey Jack and Parmesan, and grilled asparagus with rosemary and goat cheese, all accompanied with an excellent Australian shiraz blend. The evening ended with me nodding off on the sofa while Dan and Toz played Mario Kart Wii.

Sunday was the Midwest FurFest staff meeting. It was lightly-attended, as expected, but we got some good stuff done. perro has done a great job of fitting all the major events into the allotted space; now he can start thinking about the smaller panels. Afterwards we went over to Cafe Mistiko, a curious “European sports bar” that I really wanted to like more than I did. They made killer smoothies, and the saganaki was quite tasty. My crepe, “The Zembekiko” (Loukaniko [Greek sausage], tomatoes, peppers, and feta cheese) was only so-so, though. I’d be willing to go back and try something else on the menu, though. And lest you think of crepes as dainty little things, these suckers were huge, taking up three-quarters of the plate. I did also pick up a copy of the menu for the Japanese sushi joint next door and it looks like that may be next on the list of places in the area to try.

This week, we’re cleaning and shopping in preparation for the coming weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing some of our out-of-town friends, and hopefully repeating the fantastic time we had last year. Never a dull moment!

Early Spring Weekend, Take 1

What a great weekend! The skies were sunny, the temperatures were above 60 degrees (F), which made it cause to at least open a few windows and air out the house a bit to celebrate the impending spring (geeky meteorological note: This was the first weekend in Chicago in six months where the highs on both Saturday and Sunday have been over 60 degrees, according to Tom Skilling).

As I mentioned on Friday, takaza and justincheetah attended the Cubs game while I slaved over a hot computer at work (there’s some neat tales to be told from that, but I’ll let Dan tell that story). After work, I drove down and met them and calapurr, then from there we met up with perro and darkwolph, then headed over to kodi_pup‘s swanky new digs, where we were joined by invncble.

After some hemming and hawing (and being assisted by Cheetah’s forethought to bring his EVDO-equipped laptop with OpenTable bookmarked), we decided to head down to Emmett’s Ale House. Tasty beer was had, and my burger with portabellas, sautéed onions, and Boursin was divine. The company was excellent as well! Afterwards we retired back to Cheetah and Cala’s to watch Ratatouille, but Dan and I had to bow out early due to the long drive home. What a great evening, though!

On Saturday we celebrated the weather by getting out and indulging in some retail therapy. Highlights included some wardrobe expansion at Berman’s, some tasty ice cream, picking up some lovely rosemary-mint bath products, finally spending my Williams Sonoma gift card (thanks colliedoc!), and making our second round of purchases for a certain party next weekend. Oh, and getting sleazed on by the used car Sleep Number bed salesman. I’m afraid it will take more than just sweet-talking to get us to buy at $2,500 – $3,000 bed.

We were tired after all that running around, so we opted to go home and crash in lieu of further socializing. Thanks to tozier_wah and Perro for the invite, though!

The weather on Sunday was every bit as lovely as Saturday’s. Following a nice and relaxing morning and a quick grocery run, roho, genet, and linnaeus came over for some very enjoyable grilling. Nothing complicated, just burgers and brats and grilled veggies, but it was all delicious. The evening flew by and we had a lot of fun. It’s so nice to know that the grilling season will soon be on us. My to-do list for smoking includes ribs, pork shoulder, brisket, and chicken or turkey. I can’t wait!

This week is going to be pretty low-key. Since we’re heading out to Ann Arbor on Friday, we’re going to stay in, keep costs down, and get ready for the weekend. I’ve got a couple of statistics classes on Wednesday and Thursday, so this is effectively a two-day work week for me, which is quite lovely. I’ve got a rather extended to-do list of stuff for MFF tonight, though, so there’s plenty to keep me occupied at work and at home!

First of the Season!

This afternoon the temperature soared into the mid-fifties, which means that it was time to roll out the grill for the first time since last fall. takaza picked up a couple of excellent steaks and I made foil packets with thinly-sliced potatoes, olive oil, salt, pepper, and sprigs of fresh thyme. I grilled it all up over charcoal and it was absolutely fantastic. Sure, there may still be more snow coming and the temperatures are going to drop back down, but it’s a nice reminder of warmer days and fun times ahead.

(steak) LAFF (steak) Soft (steak) Ball (steak)!

So we’re a few weeks out from LAFF Softball, which is on Saturday, October 6 at Madison Meadow Park (Madison and Ahrens Ave, Lombard, IL). As many of you already know, takaza and I will be grilling up steaks (NY strip steaks, baby!) after the game. We will also be serving apple pie and some delicious side dishes as well (possibilities include grilled asparagus with a lemon-rosemary dressing, grilled potato packets with fresh herbs and butter, or something similar, depending on how I can work the budget). All this for only $10! This is going to be a whole lot of fun and even if you’re interested in playing there will be good food and good company. Yes, even at a LAFF event. Trust me on this.

So, who’s interested? If possible, we’d like to get RSVP’s by noon on Friday, September 21 (this Friday), though if you decide that you’re interested after that you can let me know and we can probably squeeze you in. If you’ve already RSVP’d to steviemaxwell or on you don’t need to RSVP again, but otherwise you can either leave a comment here or e-mail Stevie at his account at gmail.com with the username steviemaxwell@. When RSVP’ing, please respond with: attending softball or not, attending picnic or not, wanting steak or not. Any response of “N, N, Y” will earn a boot to the head. The final deadline for RSVP’s is Friday, October 6.

Appley Doux? Don’t Mind If I Do!

That was the weekend that was. On Friday, takaza and I went out after work for a quick trip to Sam’s Club to price out some shelves that he had his eye on so we could bring some order to our garage (and hopefully other areas of the house as well). We didn’t buy anything while we were there, but we had some better numbers to work with. On the way home, we decided to try one of the family restaurants in Grayslake, the Hillside Restaurant. While Dan’s meal was pretty blah, my Reuben was excellent, with some of the better corned beef that I’ve had in a while. Afterwards, we stopped by the Prairie Croissant Cafe and picked up some coffee beans (they get theirs from Metropolis Coffee in Chicago, my second-favorite roastery there 🙂

On Saturday, Dan had to go over to his mom’s place to hook up her new DVD recorder and show her how to use it. I struck off on my own and joined roho, genet, feren, lady_curmudgeon, and colliedoc for brunch at Las Vegas Restaurant in Antioch. Afterwards we walked around downtown a bit to fight off the inevitable food coma and we were joined by linnaeus. The lot of us headed north to Brightonwood Orchard, home of Aeppeltreow Winery. We sampled some of the new wines for 2007, but I wound up buying a bottle of the very tasty Appley Doux sweet sparkling cider and a bottle of Pommeaux apple dessert wine (fortified with apple eau de vie). Then it was over to the apple barn where we checked out some of the wonderful heirloom varieties. My favorite, Northern Spy, wasn’t in yet, but I picked up some Northern Greening and Gravenstein apples.

After returning from the orchard, Straif and I headed south and picked up Dan, then stopped at Garden Fresh to get some dinner fixins before returning to Antioch. Roho grilled up some delicious burgers and sausages from Antioch Packing House, then I went to work on the grill, test-grilling a couple of different things to see how they might work for the upcoming picnic. The verdicts:
Grilled Butternut Squash: Delicious, very potatoe-y when grilled. This begs the question, though, why not just grill potatoes, which are easier to deal with in quantity?
Grilled Honeydew Melon: The grilling didn’t really add much to the flavor. Maybe good for a garnish in a salad? Probably won’t pursue this for the picnic.
Grilled Honey Crisp Apples: Excellent! Nicely caramelized, very tasty. Might be a bit too expensive, though (there’s a reason the orchard nicknames them “Money Crisp” apples)
Grilled Nectarines: No verdict, since the coals were dying and I never succeeded in doing much more than warming the nectarines.

Sunday got a lot crazier than expected. First, we were surprised by a call from our landlord wanting to come in and change the furnace filter (read: “I want to come by and make sure you guys aren’t destroying my place.”) That’s cool, though – this was the first time he’s been out since we moved and, and I can understand his concern. Fortunately, we’re good tenants and he seemed happy with what he saw. We also talked about re-upping our lease and he seemed very amenable to that, so we’re covered for next year, it appears (thank heavens!). After he left, we drove back to Sam’s Club and bought the shelves we had looked at on Friday. We rearranged some of the stuff in the garage and put the shelves together, then Dan started replacing the various boxes on the shelves. Dan’s mom showed up to start work on a slipcover for our sofa, and I went to work in the kitchen making the aforementioned Apple Slab Pie. That sucker took seven pounds of apples and four pie crusts, but it came out well and I’m very happy with the results. In the midst of the chaos, luckytheevildog showed up and Dan helped him install a new hard drive on his computer. I whipped up dinner for everyone, a simple fettuccine with a modified pesto consisting of olive oil, garlic, fresh herbs (basil, oregano, and parsley), and Parmesan cheese. I cooked up some Italian sausages to serve on the side, and I was very happy with the results. The pie definitely passed muster; I’ll be posting the recipe in the next few days, since Dan’s mom wants a copy.

The alarm went off far too early this morning, and I’m dragging a bit now. Coming up this week…um, beats me. I know I have a lot of work to do for Midwest FurFest, though, so that will probably be my primary non-work focus. For now, though, I’m going in search of caffeine!

I Don’t Think Marble Slab Makes Rogan Josh Mix-Ins…

Now that was an entertaining weekend! First off, the week was instantly made better on Friday afternoon when takaza returned from the wilds of Indiana. Of course, not an hour after he got home we had to leave again, but it was for a good cause: dinner with friends at Bombay City Indian Restaurant. We had a lot of fun seeing familiar faces and meeting some cool new folks too (who I hope we’ll have a chance to see more of!). The food was, as always, fantabulous, though I have learned my lesson: while tandoori stuff is tasty, the sauced dishes are where it’s at. Fresh naan dipped in the chicken tikka masala sauce…heaven! Unfortunately, we’ve been there three times and each time the service has been sub-par. This time we waited about 30 minutes for our check once we were done. It might be time to investigate other Indian places in the area, sadly. For dessert, we went to Marble Slab Creamery with steviemaxwell, roho, genet, and linnaeus, which was a perfect capper for the evening.

On Saturday, after a very quick follow-up visit with the doctor about my toe (it’s healing nicely, thank you), I returned home and Dan woke up not long after. I knew that I needed to go to laffsoftballLAFF Softball to drop off the badge holders for Mephit Furmeet to ramalion, but it was up in the air if Dan would be joining me. Between a couple of calls to Stevie, making some lists, and having some cool ideas for grilling, it suddenly transpired that he had talked himself into going and we were going to be grilling for the picnic after the softball game. We stopped by Sam’s Club and picked up a huge amount of food (as well as a nifty new portable table) and then headed over to the softball game. Aeto was kind enough to make a quick store run for us for a few things we couldn’t get at Sam’s Club and to lend us the use of his cooler – thanks, Aeto! We watched some of the game and chatted with the various folks who were there (too many to name!). At about 4 PM we took all of the supplies over to the cooking area and fired up the (one, very small) grill and set to work prepping the food. Dan and I had agreed that we were going to make “Jucy Lucy” burgers (sic), and we set to work making the patties. Perro and Darkwolph let us store some of the perishables in their refrigerator, which was a huge help! I learned that the grill didn’t put out as much heat as I had hoped as I limped along with the first batch of bratwurst, but once we got a handle on it (and added another chimney full of charcoal!) we got things working properly. We wound up feeding 25 people or so, and even managed to break even in costs! Dan and I are kicking around ideas for the end-of-the-season picnic, possibly including steaks. We’ll see if we can make that work, though.

After grilling, we were both drained, so we drove home and crashed. We were both silly and didn’t put on sunscreen (not too bad – we were mostly in the shade) or bug spray (bad – I’ve got multiple unpleasant welts!), so we’ve got some tokens of the day to remind us to properly prepare next time!

Dan’s sister came over Sunday afternoon and they worked on her computer for several hours while I puttered around the house doing laundry and cleaning. That unfortunately meant that Dan had to stay home to work on work-related stuff while I headed out to have dinner with Roho, Genet, chebuytkin and CAJones at Dave and Busters. The company was excellent, with much smoffage and comparisons of conventions (I like the idea of road-tripping to Minneapolis next July 4 for Convergence!). The food was surprisingly good as well, as was my strawberry margarita. The games afterwards…not so much. If you like shooting or driving games, D&B’s is the place to go. Unfortunately, shooting games have zero interest for me and my passion for driving games is limited at best. I left with credit still on my card, but the night was getting late. I got home just as Dan was wrapping up for the evening, so it all worked out.

It’s a new week now, and it looks like it’ll be a busy one at work. We don’t have much planned during the week, though at the end of the week is the Chicago Air and Water Show. Also, keep an eye out here because plans are in the works for another game night at our place next week!

Great Grilling, and “Oh Yeah, That’s Why I Don’t Go There…”

So besides the weekend’s technological trials and tribulations, what else happened?

On Saturday we decided that since roho, genet, and colliedoc were coming over, a tasty grilled dinner would be in order. We laid out where we needed to go, but the circle slowly got wider. See, we needed some really good corn on the cob, and while Garden Fresh Market’s isn’t bad, I think the best corn around is from Stade’s Farm Market, so a detour to McHenry was added. And heck, as long as we were going that way, if we want really good steaks, we were going to need to go to our favorite butcher at Antioch Packing House. The farm stand was delightful, as expected, and we picked up some fresh peppers, beefsteak tomatoes, and some delicious apple-cinnamon bread along with the corn. And Antioch Packing House always has good ground beef and bacon, so we had to get some of those while we got the 1.5″ thick New York strip steaks. Stopping by Garden Fresh, I got some asparagus and some other goodies. Once the Tivo was up and running, I fired up the grill and I grilled the asparagus with a garlic-rosemary-lemon vinaigrette that was divine. The steaks cooked up perfectly, and the rest of the meal (as well as the company) was excellent!

On Sunday we unfortunately had to bow out from magicpaw‘s birthday shindig (we’ll make it up to you, we promise!). While we were out picking up the networking gadgets we needed, I wanted a quick and cheap lunch. Hey, there’s a White Castle! I haven’t been to one of those in over a decade. And after having eaten there, I can safely say it’ll be at least another decade, because that was just plain nasty. Once we got everything up and running, the rest of the afternoon was spent lazing around relaxing, and scheduling our Tivo to fill up with weird, random programming.

And now it’s Monday. It should be a quiet week, though it looks like Dan will be working late on Thursday and Friday. Hmm, maybe I’ll actually get around to start that Harry Potter book this week (sorry Roho! 🙂

But What Happened After That?

So I suppose the last substantive post I made kind of left things off around the middle of last week. The rest of the week was pretty quiet; honestly, I was so darned tired all week long that actually doing anything would have been difficult. Also, it didn’t help that the cough that lingered through Anthrocon continued to haunt me, waking me up a couple of times each night and making catching up on sleep difficult.

Saturday we finally got around to being social again, catching Harry Potter and the Moneymaking Juggernaut on Saturday afternoon with roho and genet. Order of the Phoenix was my least favorite book, between Harry’s pubescent whining and interminable scenes at the Order headquarters filled with talking, talking, talking. The movie cured a lot of that by cutting out great chunks of the story (which was needed, I think, if only to make the run time manageable). For that alone I would have liked the movie, but the casting was fabulous as well. I always adore Emma Thompson, and her depiction of Professor Trelawney is always great. Evanna Lynch wasn’t quite the way I was picturing Luna Lovegood but I thought she was a good choice. And Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge was just delicious – how she gives you the willies with a girlish giggle. All in all, a good movie, and one I enjoyed a lot.

After the movie, we retired back to our place where we were joined by colliedoc, who was crashing with us between weekend shifts at Bristol Renaissance Faire. Fajitas were consumed, as well as yummy artichoke dip and a caramel apple pie that was just divine. We watched some Flip This House and World Series of Pop Culture, and everyone had a great time.

Both takaza and I woke up before 8 AM on Sunday (!), so we saw Straif off for the day. After relaxing a bit and catching up on some Tivo, we headed out to meet up with justincheetah for a Top Secret Project. Not much I can say except that it was a pleasure to Mike (Calla), Cheetah’s boyfriend. Afterwards we headed home and had a quiet evening in.

On Monday, I finally got tired of the wretched cough and went to see the doctor. I explained that I had tried taking Tussin AC (guaifenesin + codeine, left over from a prescription from last year) but it didn’t really seem to help. She prescribed another cough syrup and told me to call if that didn’t help. I left a bit disgusted, hoping to have a bit more help than that, but oh well. I got out of the doctor’s in time to catch Dan on the way home on the train, so I picked him up at the Mundelein station (yay for Google Maps on my Motorola Q!) and we went shopping for the week’s groceries at Target using the $100 in gift cards we had gotten as thanks for helping out at Dan’s company picnic. While we were there, I had the cough syrup prescription filled, to the tune of $0.69. The groceries were a lot more, though we went a little nuts and bought some stuff we probably wouldn’t have otherwise, just to try out new brands and such.

That night, I took the cough syrup before going to bed and…I take back everything I said before. The doctor had prescribed Hydromet, which I thought was more of the same but is actually hydrocodone and homatropine. I knew hydrocodone affects me a lot more than codeine (following some fun in college with an abscessed tooth and Lorcet Plus; “Whoa, I think I’ll sit down now.”), but the homatropine is some serious stuff as well. Since I took that first dose I haven’t coughed. At all. Holy cats. And this after I was wracked a couple of times each day and night with a nasty, rasping cough. I took it again last night (earlier than I had Monday night, which was good since I didn’t feel quite as dopey this morning), but I’m thinking that should be all that’s necessary.

As for the rest of the week, there’s not too much going on. I have the Midwest FurFest registration database up to date now, and while we’re ahead of last year’s registrations I’m not seeing any insane explosions of growth. The fact that we’re selling out the Hyatt in July (as opposed to in October last year) is more a reflection of the fact that it costs nothing to reserve a hotel room, but actually costs money to register 🙂 Anyway, now that everything is caught up, I have about 70 or so confirmation postcards to send out, which I hope to do tonight. I don’t think we’re doing anything Friday night, but Saturday night we’re going to stay at the Amerisuites Schaumburg (thanks again, r_bear!), then on Sunday is the Midwest FurFest board meeting at 1 PM then the staff meeting at 2 PM. Lots to do before those meetings, so off I go!

Grillin’, Poker, and a Meme!

Oh dear, a meme. I’ll get that out of the way first, and I blame skorzy and atara for it:

Ask me to take a picture of any aspect of my life that you’re interested in/curious about – it can be anything from the house I live in to my favorite shoes. Leave your choice here as a comment, and I will reciprocate by taking the pictures and posting them as an LJ entry. That way you get to know a little bit about my life!

Please note that it may take a few days to get to all of the requests (if there are any), but I’ll do my darnedest to accommodate them all. Now, I reserves the right to interpret any and all requests however I like, though 😉

Now that that’s out of the way…Yesterday was rather busy. I slipped out from work a little early (considering I get into work each day 20-30 minutes early, this is no big deal) and ran up to Lovin’ Oven Cakery to pick up some tasty stuff for a certain panda’s birthday. On the way, I got a call the my new glasses were ready, so I stopped by the opticians in Grayslake (navigating through the weekly Farmer’s Market) to get them, then raced home and did some last-minute cleaning. Dan got home a little late (he’d had to drive in due to a little problem that Metra had), and were then joined by steviemaxwell, magicpaw, midwestcougar, nymphara and her new squeeze, Nick, and roho and genet. While the crowd played a couple of rounds of poker, I busied myself grilling up a multitude of brats and hot dogs and hamburgers. Everyone had a good bit of fun, and Dan had fun making appletinis. Genet and I elected to chat while everyone else played games, and that was fine – I wasn’t much in a poker mood. For dessert we had a couple of monstrous éclairs that we cut up for serving, as well a couple different kinds of strudel. Yummy! We didn’t get to bed until after 11 PM, though, and both Dan and I are dragging a bit today as a result.

Not much going on today, though I do have my annual checkup with my doctor right after work today. Tomorrow we’ll be heading up to Antioch to stock up on some important items for Anthrocon, and I may see about taking Dan’s car in for emissions testing as well.

Memorial Day Weekend, Part the First

Yep, it was a weekend so big it’s going to need two posts!

Going into this weekend, both takaza and I were somewhat disappointed. For the past two years we have hosted Wuffmeet on Memorial Day weekend, a gathering of 30-or-so friends at a local hotel for a weekend of hanging out, good food, and lots of fun. This year, between conflicting schedules, lack of money, and general lack of interest (perhaps it was too soon after New Year’s?), Wuffmeet just didn’t come together. So we went to Plan B: Hanging out at Duncan and Takaza’s. We spent a good bit of last week cleaning the house, shopping, and making plans. I’m very pleased with the way things turned out, and I think Dan is too.

On Friday, after a few last-minute cleaning tasks in the kitchen, I joined roho, genet, midwestcougar, and nyuni over at The Firkin for dinner. It was a pleasure to see Nyuni again (who apparently I had met at MFF a few years back, but it was during one of the “Chairman’s Receptions”, so I was a little hazy on that 🙂 He’s a fellow homebrewer and has a fine appreciation for beer, and The Firkin is the perfect place for that! Dinner was tasty and the beers were plentiful. It was quite enjoyable. Once I got home, I put the pork butts in to brine and put a nice, spicy rub on the beef brisket and put them all into the fridge.

On Saturday morning, I woke up unconscionably early. This gave me time to make coffee, catch up on e-mail and LJ, and generally enjoy a quiet hour, before going to work on the smoking. We had two eight-pound pork butts and a nearly-nine-pound beef brisket that needed to be smoked. After getting the charcoal lit and well-stoked in the firebox, I added chunks of hickory and apple wood. After a few hours, it looked like this:

As you can see, it was a bit rainy, but fortunately I had positioned the grill under our balcony and covered the balcony with a tarp, so the grill stayed nice and dry. I put the meat on to smoke at 8 AM and was able to follow the temperature of both the meat and the smoking chamber using a handy gadget I quick-ordered from Amazon on Thursday (bless you, Amazon Prime – I {heart} $2 next-day delivery). At 1:30 PM, I pulled everything off the smoker and wrapped each one in foil and put them into an over at 300 degrees F to finish off the cooking. After re-rigging the grill a bit, I started up a couple of charcoal chimneys in the main grill portion and then used those coals to grill 30 hamburgers and 16 bratwursts.

As expected, most of our guests showed up after the projected 2 PM lunch time, but over the next few hours we were joined by (big breath here) roho, genet, midwestcougar, nyuni, serinthia, todd_riverden, linnaeus, siriuswolfstar, simbalion, wyldekyttin, uncle_vlad, datahawk, foxish, steviemaxwell, magicpaw, rcking, nymphara, rustitobuck, Dan’s mom, luckytheevildog, and quasiskunk (I think that’s everyone).

In an additional bizarre and random occurrence, I got a call from my sister that my mom, who was flying from Portland, Oregon to Greenville, South Carolina via O’Hare, was going to miss her flight and probably be stranded in Chicago for the night. Right after we had finished slicing the brisket and pulling all the pork and we were about to start setting the food out, I got the call from Mom that she was at O’Hare. I jumped into the car and about the 90-minute round trip to the airport and Mom got to hang out with some of the folks who were at the party (she mainly stayed in the garage “smoking lounge”). So it was a weird twist, but it was a real pleasure to see her again.

The rest of the evening was filled with Apples to Apples, consumption of Beverages, and general merriment. Thanks to all the folks who brought side dishes (Robert’s orzo salad was tasty!), desserts (Jaycee’s ever-full boxes of cupcakes!) and drinks. That many people in our little townhouse gets a bit crazy, but we have so much fun hosting these parties and I hope everyone had as great a time as we did.

Next post: Sunday and Monday – Las Vegas, games, werewolves, and new addictions!

Midweek Already? I’m Not Ready!

It’s been a bit crazy this week as takaza and I make preparations for the weekend. Mainly just getting things cleaned up, etc. but also running errands. yesterday I stopped by our favorite local butcher to order some meat to smoke this weekend. We’re going to have rather a lot of meat, since I wound up ordering two pork butts (yes, that’s a pork shoulder, and no I don’t understand the vagaries of butcher-ese) plus a beef brisket. Each butt is going to be 7-9 pounds and the brisket will be 8-10 pounds (with fat attached; probably more like 6-8 pounds of meat once cooked). If we see the 50% yield on the pork that I did the first time I smoked (this will be better quality, so I expect more like 75% yield) we’re looking at putting between 13 to 17 pounds of cooked meat on the table. Hope everyone is hungry! 🙂

The other big news on my mind is Anthrocon. Besides some slight changes to my staff (and welcome to woodychitwn as my second-in-command in Artists Alley/Con Store), I was taking a hard look at our travel plans. We typically leave the Tuesday evening before the convention, spend the night somewhere in Ohio, the roll into the con at around noon on Wednesday. First off, leaving Tuesday night after work means trying to leave town on the evening of July 3. I expect it’ll take at least double the usual time if not more just to clear Chicago and surrounds. Which leaves us driving way too far too late at night, or having to drive further than we’d like on Wednesday morning. Plus, there’s the expense of the gas (assuming $4-ish per gallon), the hotel Tuesday night, the tolls, the food along the way, and the parking at the Westin.

Then, the thought occurred to me: just how much is airfare? If we fly out from O’Hare Tuesday night after work, we can stay at the La Quinta near Pittsburgh International very cheaply due to Dan’s points there, then catch the express bus downtown Wednesday morning. Monday morning, it’s as simple as catching the bus back to the airport. And after totaling all this up, it’s actually cheaper to fly than to drive. Couple that with the kind offer from linnaeus to carry a few other items in his car for us (i.e. booze) and flying suddenly becomes a very attractive possibility. Dan and I will talk this over tonight and probably have a decision in the next day or two.

So, to do tonight: install the new shower head (which, according to Amazon, is currently sitting on our front porch), clean both showers (we have a stall and a tub/shower in the master bath), then start in on dinner. Busy busy busy!

Mercy Me, What a Weekend!

What a fantastic weekend! And yes, sumatrae, this is another post all about food 🙂

On Friday, we met up with roho, genet, linnaeus, feren, lady_curmudgeon, and a host of other folks from R&G’s gaming group for dinner at Bombay City Indian Restaurant in Gurnee. takaza was pushing his boundaries a bit, but I was really happy that 1.) he was willing to try it, and 2.) he really liked it! The restaurant manager(?) approached our group of 14 and suggested we try ordering family style, and since there were a number of neophytes he suggested a set of entrees, including chicken tikka masala, rogan josh (lamb in a tomato and onion sauce), lamb badam pasanda (lamb cooked in cream and nuts), chicken biryani, and saag paneer and mutter paneer (cubes of cheese cooked with spinach and peas, respectively). The nan (bread) was yummy, and I loved my mango lassi. It was a fantastic meal, and both Dan and I look forward to visiting Bombay City again soon. To answer your question from Friday, posicat, I definitely recommend this place! Apparently it’s only been there for about a year.

The weather on Saturday was perfect. I had to fire up our new grill to season the inside of it. I figured that once we had it hot we might as well use it, so we invited Roho and Genet out to help us inaugurate the grill. They were kind enough to stop by Antioch Packing House and pick up some amazing 1.5″ thick strip steaks. I picked up some yellow and red bell peppers, onions, and corn, all of which got grilled up with the steaks. I still need to work on my charcoal grilling technique (I’m sure the hair on the back of my hand will grow back eventually), but the nice thing is that the grill has enough surface area that if I keep the coals to one side, I can position the food at various distances from them to control the cooking. The steaks came out perfectly, and the entire dinner was delicious! Dan and Roho baked up some tasty puff pastry/peanut butter/chocolate thingies for dessert to cap off a great evening.

Sunday was the very-lightly-attended Midwest FurFest staff meeting. Before the meeting, though, we had to indulge in a bit of home shopping. You see, our pantry is nice, but I hated the way that our “liquor cabinet” looked – it was really just a collection of bottles that sat precariously on the wire rack. The bottles were prone to tip over, and it was difficult to see and access what we had. We also wanted to free up the space in the pantry, so we decided to go to Ikea to find a proper liquor cabinet. I’m pleased to say that we found the perfect thing. Dan did the assembly work and I helped secure it in place, and here’s the finished product:

Here’s the new cabinet. I wanted doors because I thought having all the bottles in plain view might suggest that we’re complete lushes. I love all the shelf space on the bottom.

And here it is open, showing all the boozy goodness! And hey, it’s not even completely full 🙂

I like it because it is shallower than the cart we had there before and it provides a lot more storage space – I now can have all my cookbooks in the kitchen!

So now we’re back to the work-week. We’re in a frenzy of listmaking in preparations for our Memorial Day weekend gathering (post on that to follow). That should be a blast too!

TGIF-ness

And the week has thus wound down. Hooray! It’s looking like we’ve got a lovely weekend coming up (well, Saturday, anyway – Sunday’s supposed to be colder and stormy). I’m up in the air about going to LAFF Softball on Saturday; both cars need a thorough washing inside and out, and I still need to fire up the new grill and “season” the interior before we do any grilling or smoking. So, we’ll see how things go.

Sunday will be the May Midwest FurFest staff meeting. Things are perking along there, and I feel better now that I’ve gotten the first of the confirmation postcards out. I need to sit down with neowolf2 and work out who’s going to do what this year as well. Maybe we’ll get some food afterwards, or not – we’re playing it by ear.

I’m looking forward to dinner tonight. We’re going to an Indian restaurant in Gurnee. It’s been ages since I’ve been to a good restaurant, and roho and genet tell us that this is a really tasty place. I can’t wait!

That’s it for now. It’s ice cream time!

Apple-y Goodness!

It was such a great weekend, it took me a day to recover from it before I could write this! (Or I’m lazy. One of the two…)

We had a fabulous weekend, though! On Friday I picked takaza up after work and we headed north to Antioch to hang out with roho and genet. Traffic being what it is, our 6 PM arrival became 7:15 PM, but that’s OK – we weren’t in too much of a hurry and I always enjoy the time spent with Dan. We chatted a bit once we got there and then headed out to a Mexican joint that was…well, a wee bit underwhelming. We need to take R&G to the taquiera around the corner from our place for something a little more authentic. Following a stop by Armanetti’s Liquors, we chatted for a while back at the house and tested some of the Tasty Beverages we had purchased. After a bit, I was shocked by the arrival of datahawk! Yeah, she lives there, but it’s not like they ever actually see her 🙂

The next morning was the usual slow start, but pleasantly so. Eventually we motivated enough to head down to BD’s in Vernon Hills to meet up with linnaeus, feren, and lady_curmudgeon. Tasty stir-fried food was consumed and we had a great time chatting. Afterwards, we returned to Antioch for a quick stop by Antioch Packing House for dinner grillables, then a stop by the house for pit stops. As we were leaving there, I unfortunately managed to step approximately in the same place that Feren did and twisted my left ankle. I imagine I looked pretty impressive staggering around a bit before collapsing to the grass. Ack! I was still able to walk, though, so we pressed on, though somewhat slowly.

And press on we did, to Brightonwood Orchards! This fabulous place is just north of Richard Bong State Recreation Area and only about a 20-minute drive from Antioch. When we pulled in, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the orchard also had a winery! The winery made apple wines and hard ciders, and they had a tour – well, not so much a tour as one of the guys who makes the wines and ciders who just loves talking about it and showing off their shop. I took several pictures, some of which should amuse you homebrewers out there. After the tour, we had a great time tasting their wares and picking up a few bottles of the drinkable apple-y goodness. We were joined by grabstein_69, silverwind, and their daughter Chayla right around then, too.

We walked (well, I hobbled) over to the apple barn where they had a respectable variety of heirloom apples. I grabbed a variety of different apples, though of course now I have no idea which are which but hey – it should be an unusual eating experience. As we were leaving I remembered that neowolf2 had mentioned how good Northern Spy apples were. I hadn’t seen any on display, so I asked the cashier and she said they had some in the cooler. I bought four of them and tore into one as we were hanging around while Giles fed Chayla. OH MY GOD that apple was so good! Slightly tart, slightly sweet, and nice and firm. Just excellent, and very flavorful. I’m glad I bought them!

After the orchard, we had a nice evening relaxing back at R&G’s place, enjoying grilled meat, mojitos, and good company. We capped off the night by surprising Roho with a birthday cake I had made the day before. Yay for surprises! The cake was tasty, too, though a bit dry due to a little overbaking. The dark chocolate frosting made up for that though. Yum!

On Sunday Genet made a tasty breakfast for us, then we said our goodbyes. Dan and I headed south, all the way down to Glen Ellyn, where we helped crim_ferret and wyldekyttin move some of their possessions to their new place in Naperville (if anyone wants to know where it is: Conveniently located just south of The Big N). Unfortunately, between the fact that my ankle was shot and we had an online Midwest FurFest staff meeting that night. we weren’t as helpful as I would have hoped. We got some of their bookcases over, at least. We returned to The City by about 5 PM, which gave us time to grab dinner from the taquieria before the meeting. The meeting was moderately useful and mercifully short, and we spent the rest of the evening working on con-related stuff.

And Monday? The usual – apply to a bunch of jobs, go to the grocery store, run some errands, that sort of thing. Today was more of the same. You see why I don’t write much about my weekdays? They’re boring as heck!

Another Weekend Down

This weekend was a fun one. Friday evening we opted to stay in and enjoy a nice quiet night. Then on Saturday we met up with roho, genet, skorzy, was1, and Roho’s cousin Lori at BD’s for usual Saturday lunch there (sans Feren, who obviously doesn’t love us 😉 Lunch was delightful, as always. Afterwards we retired to R&G’s place in Antioch, but not before making a stop by Antioch Packing House to pick up a huge sirloin steak and three pounds of hamburger (ground right in front of us). Once at R&G’s,we chatted for a while and generally lolled about in digestive torpor. Eventually we got motivated enough to roll out Cranium Turbo Edition, which we just picked up. The game was a real hoot, with charades, pictionary, trivia, and all sorts of other stuff. The Turbo Edition is a marked improvement in gameplay over the original version, and that made the game that much more enjoyable. After we wrapped things up (Will and I won! W00t!), we made quick trip to the local Jewel for snacks and condiments and such, then it was time for meat on the grill. Arr num num num! Roho was a fine griller, as always, and everything was delicious. Sadly, due to a nasty headache on my part we had to bow out early from the Apples to Apples and rum sampling that followed.

Sunday found us on our way up to Milwaukee for the wedding of aureth and jenwolf. The service was lovely (great job, werellama!) and the meal afterwards was good. It was a nice day and even if it got a little warm in the building we were in (un-air conditioned, ack!) it was nice to see many of our friends there. Afterwards we headed home (with a stop by the store for the week’s groceries) and takaza made some delicious mac and cheese (with BACON! yum!).

And today it’s back to work. Eh. At least with the hot and muggy weather we’re supposed to have all day I know I’m not missing anything by not being outdoors. Looking to the rest of the week, I don’t think we have a lot going on except for taking Dan’s mom to lunch for her birthday on Saturday. I’m hoping to have not one but two exciting announcements in the next few days, though – watch this space!

It’s Just Right

Some weekends are too busy…some are too lazy. This one was juuuuust right.

On Saturday I left takaza hugging his pillow and mumbling “G’way!” and struck out for Vernon Hills to join roho, genet, feren, and datahawk for lunch at BD’s. The lamb there is just delicious, and really lends itself to my favorite combination of soy, ginger, and garlic. After lunch Data and I headed back to our place where we bummed around for a bit then took the El down to the Lincoln Park Fest (which, it turns out, was right outside the Zoo. We probably still missed you by an hour or so, Quasi). We were joined by chouette and Ed and saw moryssa as well. Carbon Leaf just flat-out rocked. We were standing front and center in front of the stage and I really enjoyed the 90-minute show. There was a huge crowd of fans and it seemed like everyone knew the words to the songs, which is always cool and must be really gratifying to the band. I took some okay pictures of the show with my cell phone – at least you can make out who’s who.

After the show we repaired to the Golden Nugget at Clark and Diversey. We speculated whether this was the diner that was featured on This American Life (it wasn’t) and had a so-so dinner. At least the company was good. Linnaeus, having freed himself from his familial obligations, joined us to mill about a bit and figure out what to do for dessert, but eventually we just decided we were too tired and headed home. We watched a bit of “I’m Alan Partridge” which strikes me (like “Father Ted”) as one of those Britcoms that I should probably find hilarious but I just, well, don’t. Eh. I dozed a bit while we were watching it and eventually was ordered off to bed.

We puttered around a bit on Sunday, relaxing and watching TV a good part of the morning. Eventually we got motivated and Data and I did some shopping while Dan worked on preparations for Anthrocon. I picked up a dandy charcoal chimney at Home Depot and was able to get a lovely bed of coals going in the grill in about 20 minutes. I cooked up some delicious cheeseburgers (garlic overload! woo!), which we finished just in time for the Midwest FurFest online staff meeting to start. We’ve got a lot of work to get done in a short period time (like, before Anthrocon!), so it’s going to be a challenging week or so ahead. After the meeting we chatted and Dan and I talked out a disagreement that we had, much to Data’s amusement. Finally, laundry was folded and we were off to bed.

And so we’re at a new week. Manpower has been prodded that yes, I would in fact like a new job at the end of the month, thank you. I applied for a couple of positions on Careerbuilder, and got a call from Aerotek Scientific about a 6-12 month contract position in the O’Hare area. At this point, there’s no a question of turning down contract positions in hopes of something permanent – I’m all about the paycheck. We’ll see if I can poke this along to fruition. Additionally, I hope to be meeting with unclevlad sometime this week to work out some Registration issues for MFF. But for now I need to figure out what we’re doing for dinner and get ready to head on home. Whee!