I neglected to mention yesterday that I actually won something! One of my favorite food blogs is Serious Eats. Every so often they have giveaways to promote various cookbooks or vendors. I've been entering for months, but never was the lucky name drawn...until Tuesday, when I entered to win Artisanal Chocolate Eggs from John and Kira's, a chocolatier out of Philadelphia. I seem to have won a box of 36 chocolate eggs. Um, wow. A note to all of my friends in the area - hit me up, because it would probably be better if we didn't eat all those ourselves :-) (As an aside, today Serious Eats linked to a recipe I'm tempted to try: Cadbury Creme Eggs Muffins!)

Meanwhile, I've been working with my shiny new laptop. You're right, kellicjtiger, I wouldn't say it's flat-out pink; after looking at the possibilities, I'd say it's a more light Thulian pink. I'm having fun shifting all of my files from my old laptop, and now that I have space, I'm starting to copy our MP3 library on there too. It's so nice to have a laptop that runs fast and doesn't have to shift into high gear when I click on a YouTube video, for instance.

And finally, it looks like we're in for something like 5-7 inches of wet, heavy snow starting tonight into tomorrow night, with possible thundersnow. As this morning's forecast discussion says, "Happy Astronomical Spring."

It's the start of a new week, which means it's time to look back at the weekend that was.


We were both pretty worn out after last week. It had been a rough final week for takaza at his old job, though he received some really nice going-away gifts from his boss and cow-orkers, including $120 in Best Buy gift cards. Dan slept in on Saturday and I slept rather late for me (8:30!). We finally got motivated at around 1 PM and decided to head up to Milwaukee. After a bite to eat at a nice little burger joint in Spring Grove, we headed off to Mukwanago, Wisconsin, home of the Elegant Farmer.

( Saturday: Fun in Southeastern Wisconsin )

On the way home, we stopped at Best Buy in Gurnee to pick up ( a shiny new toy for Takaza! )

( Sunday: Recipe testing, homemade soup, and great company! )

This week is looking to be pretty crazy again. I've got all-day training on Wednesday and Thursday of this week and next week (a fascinating refresher of statistics, which I detested when I took it 13 years ago), and somewhere in there I need to wrap up my current project by Friday. It's all part of the job, though.

And now, I'm off to bed!

It's been pretty quiet over the last few days, which might explain the lack of updates - not a lot of exciting stuff going on.

takaza and I had a pleasant weekend together at home. On Friday Dan was feeling like a bit of retail therapy and between gift cards and Reward Zone credits we had $75 of credit for Best Buy, so we headed down to the BB in Mundelein. We stopped by the Gamestop there to look at their used PS2 games and I picked up a couple of games I hadn't played before: God of War and Destroy All Humans! (I'm about five hours into God of War and it's a whole lot of fun. A little more gory than a lot of games I've played, but the puzzles are fun and the action keeps things interesting.) As for Best Buy...well, we never did find anything that looked interesting. On the bright side, the next item that comes up on sale, we've got a $75 discount waiting to be used.

On Saturday, we bummed around the house most of the day, except for a run to the grocery store. Sunday I made Dan the chicken and dumplings I promised him for Valentine's Day (a few days late), as well as the delicious semolina bread from Cookwise. Mostly we just sat around the house and enjoyed doing gloriously nothing.

This week has been pretty interesting. Dan will be transitioning from his old job to his new job until the end of the month (gotta love those internal transfers) so he was at the old location in Mount Prospect Monday, Tuesday, and this morning, then he'll be at the new location in Buffalo Grove this afternoon and for the rest of the week. As for me, I got a couple of important reports turned in and I'm at a momentary lull until everything gets signed off and we're working against the clock to finish a couple of projects. In the meantime I'm catching up on accumulated Midwest FurFest correspondence, and trying to resolve an annoying lingering issue with the house rental out in California (they're trying to charge us for damage that we're not responsible for).

Looking ahead to this weekend, we'll be going by the MFF storage locker on Saturday to try to track down some convention assets and answer a couple of questions. Since we'll be out and about, we'll probably make a couple of stops (I want to swing by Ikea) and maybe even be social. No plans yet, but we'll see what happens. Sunday evening is the online MFF staff meeting, and we also need to put together all the numbers for the Point of Sale hardware and software for Anthrocon's Artists Alley. Oh, and speaking of conventions, congratulations to tozier_wah for signing on to run the Information Desk at Midwest FurFest. We own your soul I'm sure you'll have a great time!

After all that hemming and hawing about what to serve on Saturday, we wound up punting and changing the proposed menu completely. takaza got up shockingly early (9 AM) and by 11 AM we were on the road running errands. We decided to make a big ol' pot of chili and supplement it with tasty accoutrements like rice, queso fresco, and chopped onions. I made a batch of homemade cornbread that unfortunately not only turned out dry and flavorless but, when I was trying to get it out of the Pyrex glass pan, the pan slipped and landed on the inside of my forearm, giving me a large, nasty-looking burn (fortunately, it only looks nasty - it's about as painful as a sunburn).

We wound up with 12 guests in attendance, including Dan's family. We had a really fun time, and there was good food, good beer, good wine, and good company. The evening seemed to fly by. We finally said good night to everyone by midnight. As usual, we didn't get to play as many games as Dan would have liked - next time, we need to focus less on the food and more on the games.

Sunday was delightfully lazy. We snacked off leftovers, and finally got around to watching the Super Bowl about an hour after it had started, Tivo-style. That made the game (and the commercials) much more enjoyable, and since I didn't really have a favorite to win, it was nice to just watch and appreciate some good football.

This week has been crawling by, as I knew it would - don't the weeks before vacations always slow down? I fully intend to take some work home with me this afternoon, though, since the forecast is for 8"-12" of snow up here, with the worst of it falling between 4 AM and noon tomorrow. If it's really bad, I have no intention of trying to get in to work. That's fine, though - I have a stack of about 50 SOP's I need to read by the end of the week, and I can do it at home or here.

By the way, on a complete tangent: Does anyone else use Del.icio.us? I can be found on there under the username DuncanHusky. I tend to use it to bookmark good recipes that I want to come back to, funny comics, and other random things (random example: the amusing comic "I Am a Host at The Olive Garden").

None of this makes a coherent single entry, so you get a bunch of random stuff:

I just finished a quick meeting with my boss. Granted, he technically only had two months of me being an employee of $employer (in addition to the nine moths prior working the exact same job as a contractor), but he gave me an excellent annual review and is very happy with my work. This makes me positively giddy :-) Speaking of work-related things, I had lunch earlier today with tozier_wah, which was very cool since he just works across the campus from me. We need to make that a weekly thing or something. We had a great discussion about Midwest FurFest and I think I might have something to keep him busy during the con this year :-)

Yesterday I was all virtuous and stuff and went ahead and got my voting for next week's primary out of the way. It was very cool that the Lake County website had a sample of the exact ballot that I would be presented with so I was able to do a little research on the local candidates and make some informed decisions. Plus I had a nice chat with the poll workers, who were very nice folks.

We're having takaza's family over on Saturday evening, along with some friends, for a night of gaming. I'm working up a nice menu too - maybe French Onion Soup, and roasted chicken. I think we need some more wine - perhaps a trip to Wine Knows is in order. We also need to do some thorough cleaning of the place, which is pretty standard before company. It's one of the reasons I like to have company over with some regularity: left to our own devices, we keep the clutter to a minimum, but I need a reason to get really motivated to deep clean and take a toothbrush to the baseboards :-)

Apparently, I'm going on a trip in a week and a half. I say "apparently" because, well, I don't know where I'm going. You see, Dan has put together some kind of trip for us to celebrate my fortieth birthday, and all I know is that we're flying off...somewhere (he won't say where)...for a four-day vacation. About all I know is that it's domestic, since neither of us have valid passports, but other than that I have no clue. I also know that no amount of begging for clues from Dan will yield any further information, so I probably appear annoyingly incurious, but I'm very content in the knowledge that Dan knows me well, and whatever he has put together will be truly amazing. And whether it's amazing or not, I'll have my love there with me, so that makes it amazing in itself. (I'm sure he's made all kinds of posts in his journal about this that I can't see, and all of you who have read and heard about this from him are dying of laughter. Hey, I'm OK with that. I'll just sit here in quiet anticipation :-)

Oh, and one last note: I would note that one of my favorite coffees, Dark Roast Sumatran, from one of my favorite coffee providers, Alterra Coffee, is on sale at 10% off. With shipping by Priority Mail only $4.60, if you order a couple of pounds (like I usually do) it's comparable to buying coffee off the shelf from some of the higher-end providers. (I also recently discovered the Brazil Traditional Dry, which is simply outstanding as well).

Hmm, so it sounds like most people will be getting a check for $600 from Uncle Sugar Daddy. Politics aside, about all I can see is that for us, it's $1,200 that's going to Visa. As I said to takaza, "Fiscal responsibility is boring." But hey - less debt is a Good Thing. I still want to buy something frivolous, though - like maybe a sexy new dual-core laptop or something.

Cook's Illustrated is looking for recipe testers. Heck yeah, I signed up! While I often have an idle yen to cook many of the recipes from their pages, this gives me the impetus to actually get off my butt and do it. Of course, I may need some help from friends in evaluating the finished products. Hmm.

It was a screwy morning today. As we approached Dan's usual train station there were cars streaming out of it - never a good sign at 6:50 AM. Dan checked and Metra's website said that a freight train had derailed in Antioch and no trains were running (which was not really the case). Well, phooey on that. I dropped Dan off at the Round Lake station and he wound up having to take an expensive cab ride to work from Glenview. Then, as I was getting some cash from the ATM on the way in to work I notice (after my transaction, unfortunately) that the lock on the ATM was half-open (it's the type where when unlocked a faceplate pops out, then you unscrew it). I called the bank branch when they opened and they assured me that if the ATM had been opened an alarm would have disabled it. I'll keep an eye on my account just in case...

I started the day feeling completely out of kilter. Long lists of stuff to get done for MFF and for work, weaving in and out of each other, all seemingly insurmountable. After spending the morning across the campus and having gotten a very tasty chicken avocado wrap for lunch, things are looking much better. There's still a ton of stuff that I have to get done, but it's no longer quite so scary.

We had a very enjoyable weekend. Friday evening we had a lovely dinner with genet (unfortunately, roho's soul was still being consumed by his employer), then got to relax and unwind a bit. Following a lazy Saturday morning, takaza and I did a bit of cooking for daveqat's birthday party - Dan made cheezy mashed potatoes with bacon, and I made a warm potato-bacon salad (which was supposed to be a warm salad with bacon and Jerusalem artichoke, but alas, Garden Fresh had no Jerusalem artichokes in stock). For the bacon trifecta, I made pig candy, which was served with brie and sliced pears. Most people who tried it really liked it. The party on Saturday night was quite a lot of fun, and much booze was consumed.

On Sunday we met mirkowuff and perro for lunch at Osteria di Tramonto (yum!) then gave Perro a tour of the new MFF hotel. As he mentioned in his entry today, it's going to be tricky: we have more space to work with, but the way that the space is divided up makes things rather tricky. I think that Perro will do a great job. By the way, Perro has also been named my Vice-Chair for this year. While traditionally that has been a role for the next chairman, in this case I don't care about that. I'm more interested in making sure that we have someone who can reliably answer questions and act in the chairman's role when I am unavailable.

Next up was the first MFF staff meeting of the year. I didn't quite get it in under an hour, but I was close. We covered a lot of ground, and got a lot accomplished. Staff members, if you didn't see the minutes on the staff mailing list, they have also been posted to the staff area of the Midwest FurFest forums. Sunday evening I got a bit of unwelcome news that is going to take some time to figure out how to deal with. Part of the fun of being con chair, I guess.

Finally, I just finished registering for Furry Connection North. We're still working on the accommodations, but we should have that nailed down in the next few days. Woohoo!

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?

So after lounging around all morning yesterday I decided to get a start on the cooking for Wuffmeet. The plan was to make Curried Lentil, Tomato, and Lamb Stew. After some annoying issues that included having to buy the lamb sirloin bone-in (and subsequently getting about 2 pounds of lamb from a 7-pound hunk of meat, bone, and fat after butchering it myself), I got a later start than I would have liked. By 11 PM, the stew was done cooking, so I packed it off and put it down in the garage. I figured that the low temperature was going to be in the teens so it would chill quickly, a tall order for eight quarts of stew.

This morning I checked the internal temperature: 86 degrees F. That would mean that it spent 8 hours in the "danger zone" of between 140 and 40 degrees F, providing a fertile breeding ground for bacteria. And after some online research to confirm my suspicions, I found that even if you kill the bacteria by reheating to 165 F the toxins that the bacteria generate will still be present. And as much fun as it would be to give all of our friends food poisoning, I think I'm going to take the safest course of action and throw it all out. It sucks, but I'll chalk it up as a learning experience. Besides, the overwhelming flavor of the stew was curried carrots, which...well, it's not what I was going for. So I think I'll be making something else in its place, though I'm not sure what just yet.

Tonight's entertainment: Cooking up the Chili Con Carne (and then properly cooling and storing it!). The recipe looks delicious, and I have a couple of tweaks that I am sure will be very good.

I made this for a potluck at work tomorrow and I wanted to go ahead and commit it to LJ where I can find it again easily (and share a dynamite recipe!) I made this for unclevlad's birthday party a few months back and it was a big hit.

( Click for the recipe )

Well, the snow came and went, as predicted. I think when all is said and done we got about eight inches up here. It's not too big a deal, but the roads were pretty sloppy this morning. It took me twice as long as usual to get to work - 15 minutes! Man, I love living nearby.

So takaza is still off in Detroit training, which means one more night of living the bachelor life. Last night was terribly exciting: relaxing on the sofa, reading the paper, chatting with folks on the muck and by IM, and listening to a good net radio station. Woo, life in the fast lane! :-) Tonight may be a bit different, though. Now that we have a little extra freezer space to work it, it occurred to me that the dinner that we traditionally cook for the first night of our New Year's shindig could be made in advance and frozen. This would take a lot of pressure off me right before the party, which is always a Good Thing. I'm thinking about making a curried lamb and lentil stew tonight. I also want to make a tasty chili, and Dan will be making a beef stew. How crazy will we get? Who knows. This adds an extra bit of flexibility, though, and I love the idea of being able to offer a couple of different dishes.
I expect I'll be stopping at home after work to track down the recipe(s) I want, then it'll be off to the store to pick up ingredients.


Hm, need to make some plans for the weekend, too. I'll work on that.

Well, as lazy as weekends can be, given the proximity to Midwest FurFest.

On Friday, takaza and I had talked about possibly going out for a quick and simple dinner. Dan lay down to relax a bit at 7 PM, and long about 9 PM I went up and tucked him in for the night 'cause we weren't going anywhere. Eh, I'd had a big lunch, so I had a little cheese and crackers and called it dinner. At least I got caught up on South Park and Drawn Together.

Saturday, I helped Dan with the MFF pocket program and con book, then ran out to do a little shopping. Dinner was tasty homemade buttermilk fried chicken with mashed potatoes. Dan worked hard on the con book into the evening until I suggested he take a break; we relaxed a bit in front of the Tivo then went to bed.

It was more of the same on Sunday, except that while Dan put the finishing touches on the con book and the room setups (since he's Hotel Liaison, too), I worked on dinner. perro and foxpaws came over and Perro and Dan hammered out the last of the Programming details while I was all domestic in the kitchen and Wolphy noodled on his laptop. For dinner we had baked polenta (imagine lasagna made with strips of polenta instead of noodles, layered with a Bolognese meat sauce and béchamel sauce, with a sprinkle of freshly-grated Parmesan. For dessert, we had hot fudge pudding cake with vanilla ice cream. Yum! Once the programming shop talk was done, there was a lot of good conversation about MFF '08, and general chatting. It was a lot of fun, and it was a real pleasure to hang out with those two!

Then came this morning. I slept poorly, and Dan had to wake me up when the alarm went off at 5:30 AM (he usually sleeps until 6 AM). In spite of dragging a bit this morning I'm doing a lot better now. After work I'll be heading down to our usual staff badge engraver (the shop right around the corner from our house quoted me a price twice what we usually pay, so back to the old reliable). We should be getting a ton of packages this week, from sponsor goodies to A/V equipment to credit card terminals. Somehow our house became Midwest FurFest Package Central! We're going to need to figure out where to stick everything around the house for a few weeks, but we'll make it work.

OK, back to work with me!

Crunch time is upon us for Midwest FurFest. This past weekend was spent preparing several different orders for sponsor and Registration items, gathering information, etc. I won't bore you with the details, but that pretty much ate up most of my Sunday. Saturday was a lot more fun, though! While takaza slaved away on the Con Book and hotel issues, I made a savory sweet potato casserole which was simply divine. I figure anything that's made with half a pound of bacon and three-quarters of a pound of cheddar cheese can't be bad! I'm not a huge fan of sweet potatoes, but this was just delicious! I was fascinated by the way the sweet potatoes added a complex, almost curry-like flavor to the dish. The dish was my contribution to unclevlad's birthday party; once it was done I packed it into a cooler with layers of towels to keep it warm and drove on down. The casserole was a hit (yay!) and the party was a blast. I was able to chat with perro, darkwolph, and linnaeus about con stuff (sorry if the smoffage put everyone else off!) and had a great time chatting with all of the other folks there.

On top of all of this we have the preparations for Midwest FurFest 2008. I was vastly relieved to get confirmation of our second (of three) guests of honor yesterday. The third slot will probably remain open until early next year. A theme has also been chosen, so we can go ahead and add those to the promotional materials for next year. (What's the theme and who are the Guests of Honor? Come to Closing Ceremonies and find out!) This is a nice weight off my mind, though.

Unfortunately, Dan's health issues continue, with good days and bad days. I worry about him a lot, and it's frustrating that there's really not a lot I can do to help. We'll muddle through this somehow, but I do hope it passes sooner than later.

In happier news, a couple of nice things from yesterday: 1. My Aeropress came in the mail. I may make my first cup of coffee with it tonight (early in the evening, though!). 2. With CBS canceling the apparently-execrable "Viva Laughlin", the gap in the schedule opens the door for the premiere of the new season of The Amazing Race on Sunday, November 4 at 7 PM CT. Yaaaaay! Anyone interested in making a social event of the premiere?

Well, something about being wrist-deep in garlic will do that to you, I suppose. Last night's kitchen adventures included preparing the Asian peanut dressing for the grilled zucchini (easy enough - dump a bunch of stuff into the food processor and puree). I also made the rosemary-garlic oil for the potatoes grilled in foil, which consisted of 50 garlic cloves and 30 sprigs of fresh rosemary pureed with three cups of olive oil. Let me tell you, it's a pain in the ass to peel 50 cloves of garlic. Still, I'm happy with the results.

Then came the main event: dinner rolls. Very exciting, no? Well, baking 96 yeast dinner rolls is a bit of a challenge. takaza was kind enough to borrow a number of muffin pans from his cow-orkers (some of which were best described as "vintage"). I made the rolls in two batches of 48 (actually 45 in the first batch and 40 in the second due to vagaries of portioning). Blessings upon Dan for reminding me that our square Cambro containers are awesome for holding rising dough and perfect for determining when the dough volume has doubled. I'll post the recipes after this weekend, but everything came out reasonably well with only a couple of rolls getting a bit overdone and having to be eaten/discarded (most of them from one of the "vintage" pans). They're all nicely bagged up in one-gallon Ziplock bags and ready to go; the plan is to put them into foil and briefly throw them on the grill (maybe with a quick spray of water to moisten them) so they can be served hot.

Tonight's entertainment? A run to the butcher immediately after work to pick up 20+ pounds of New York strip steaks, then an evening spent making apple slab pies (mmm, 20 pounds of apples to be peeled and cored. What fun!).

Incidentally, if anyone is going to be at the game on Saturday, isn't going to be playing, and would like to lend a hand, we will probably be able to put a few folks to work as we prepare dinner. Dan and I will probably be on site and setting up between noon and 1 PM. Also, note that if I understand things correctly (and I hope steviemaxwell corrects me if I am wrong), although we will still be in Madison Meadow Park in Lombard, we won't be at the usual field (the ones at Madison and Ahrens) but at the ones near Harding and Fairfield. Here's a map to make things a bit clearer.

Well, that was fun! Yesterday after work (which was, by the way, interrupted by a 4-hour power outage. For those of you familiar with such things imagine the fun of extended power outage + cGMP-compliant contained environments. Fun!) I headed over to the final Grayslake Farmers Market of the season in hopes of buying the majority of the produce I needed for the laffsoftball Picnic (or Steakball, as I've taken to calling it) this weekend.

First up: apples! For the Apple Slab Pies (I decided to make three of them), I needed 10.5 lbs each of Golden Delicious and Granny Smith apples. I checked with the apple seller with the widest variety and he cut me a deal on Golden Delicious and Cortlands (which I prefer to Granny Smith anyway), $1.42/pound. If I'd haggled I could have gotten it cheaper, but OK. Alas, they were out of the monstrous zucchinis that would have made life so much easier. On my way out, I passed a vendor who had a nice variety of potatoes. A little discussion and some digging in his truck netted me 30 pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes for $0.50/pound. Score! Yukon Golds hold their shape much better than Russet potatoes, and have a nice intrinsically buttery taste. Usually they're a lot more expensive, too, so I was happy with this find.

Then it was off to Garden Fresh for the rest of the supplies, including 22 pounds of zucchini and 8 heads of garlic. I wrapped up in time to pick up takaza from the train station, and even to surprise him with a small root beer shake (his favorite). After a short break at home, I left him to work on con book stuff and struck off to Sam's Club, where I picked up the last few things we needed (like powdered drinks and foil pans). The real find was a large pack of ready-to-roll crusts, just what we need for the apple pies, at half the price it would cost to buy them at Jewel. Woo!

So now we're stocked and ready to roll. Tonight I'll be making the Asian peanut dressing for the zucchini, the garlic-rosemary oil, and nearly 100 yeast dinner rolls. Tomorrow will be the really busy night, with 21 pounds of apples to be cored and peeled (fortunately, I picked up a little help for that) then making three 13" x 18" apple pies. Dan will be a big help with those!

It's funny - this seems a lot of hassle, and I sometimes wonder why I put myself through this kind of stuff. Last night, though, while relaxing with the knowledge that everyhting was falling into place and things are shaping up to be as good as I hope they will be, I realized that's the key - that sense of accomplishment. It takes a lot of effort to get there, but it's a really good feeling.

...and that evil is...Paula Deen!

Why is this, you ask? Four words:

Deep Fried Butter Balls

She must be stopped.

Yeah, it's another food-related post from me. Little-known fact: my LJ posts are 1,200 calories per serving, but low in saturated fats and sodium!

( Click for lots of chatter about cooking for large groups! )
Still to do tonight: finish laying out all of the tasks required, scheduling them, and figuring out who's going to be doing what.

And you know what? This is fun! :-)

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!

For the record:

Chocolate Chess Pie
1 oz. Praline Liqueur
1 oz. Stolichnya Vanilla Vodka
1 oz. Heavy cream
1 Tbsp. Hersheys Chocolate Syrup

Shake with ice, then strain. Serve in martini glass as is or in old fashioned glass over ice.

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1" thick New York strip steaks are on the grill cooking. Oven fries are in the oven. Friends are having fun. All is right with the world.

Edit after dinner: I neglected to mention the 2005 Marquis-Phillips Shiraz. That stuff is heaven in a bottle. I will now go die a happy man.

So as I mentioned yesterday, I planned to make Chicken Tikka Masala for dinner.

( Here's the recipe I used. )
Duncan's comments:
Since takaza detests onions, I pureed the onions first, then browned the resulting paste. I had to add a little water from time to time to account for the additional surface area. Other than that I pretty much followed the recipe as stated. The results? Mighty damn tasty, I think! It's not exactly what I've had at Indian restaurants, but it's a good start and clearly all of the flavor elements are present. The next time I make this (and I will be making it again!), I'll double the amount of spice mixture going on the chicken breasts and make sure to distribute it a bit more evenly (this time the chicken is mostly bland with pockets of WHOA!). I'll also up the heat a bit by leaving some of the seeds and ribs of the chile in, though it could maybe even use an additional chile. The sauce was a little too tomato-y, but the cilantro and ginger gave it a nice kick. Also, I need to make sure that the chicken breasts are a bit more even in thickness - one of the breasts needed some extra time under the broil because it was so thick, but the thin part got dried out. Pounding the thick part down a bit before the spice rub will help with that. Oh, and while sushi rice is tasty and our usual staple, this recipe really needs some nice basmati rice to go with it. Overall, this recipe was a real winner!