Chicago in 48 Hours

I had a training scheduled in Chicago a recent Sunday through Tuesday so Laura A and I took the weekend before training to run around Chicago. We had a really good time and had lots of strange/funny moments including getting caught in a thunderstorm while walking down Michigan, arrived at the Art Institute 30 minutes before closing (while running out of the thunderstorm), were hit on by a segway tour guide, couldn't find a fast food place to grab a snack at and must have walked an extra half mile even though it was 10 pm on a Friday, arrived at the hotel for training to find that none of our rooms were ready and were offered an illegal substance while at the hotel bar where we were sent to wait for our rooms to be cleaned. All of these things made us collapse in laughter more than once and made for a really fun weekend.

sausage, peppers and onions stuffed chicago deep dish

how cute is that kid?

signature room on the 96th - skyscraper martini

blood orange mojito and pork sliders with guava bbq sauce (before)

blood orange mojito and pork sliders with guava bbq sauce (after)

this yoga guy was having a photo shoot... he was crazy good

as soon as the sun came out, kids were all over the place in swimsuits...

this one was making water angels

sausage and mushrooms spaghetti at mia francesca

I really had a great time in Chicago. I got to stay at a nice apartment on Michigan across from Millennium Park, visit the Art Institute, see Navy Pier, shop, and eat great food!

Girls Dinner - Gossip Girl Style

I'm so behind with this post but here we go anyway!

I have some great girlfriends here and we try to get together every so often to do girls dinner. In general, we cook, bake and pick out a movie or tv show to watch together. This time we based the food around a Gossip Girl themed shower menu we saw online and watched a few episodes of the first season of Gossip Girl. As always, we had a really good time and good food!

I didn't do a good job capturing everyone's dishes but we had the Plaza Hotel grilled cheese with truffle oil, mac & cheese, scones, french toast/giant donut holes, tomato-basil-mozzarella skewers, pea pesto crostini, deviled eggs, popovers and crab cake sliders. The last three dishes were mine. (The crab cake sliders were created from a crab cake recipe from Big Girls Small Kitchen and the popovers were created from a recipe on the Kitchn. Deviled eggs kind of evolved from different recipes from my mom and various websites.)

Engagement Pics Preview

Mike's mom was nice enough to come down and take our engagement pictures for us a few weeks ago. We started to get worried as the weekend came closer and closer because the forecast for rain kept increasing. Luckily, the rain cleared out for a few hours both Saturday and Sunday and we were able to get lots of pictures taken.

Mike has just started editing the photos so here's how they are looking so far...

Music at Mokah

This weekend our friends JB and Doug played a show at Mokah. It was so great! Both guys are super talented and played mostly original music during the night. Mike took photos and will be putting them up on his blog and flickr. (JB's new CD is out and I'm currently enjoying "Gypsy Lady" as I write this post... look for it on iTunes soon!) Doug's band is Parachute Addams (the drummer Marc Torres also played during the night) and plays a lot of local shows so if you happen to be at Stan's Blue Note, Ozona or Patio Grill you might catch them! If you are ever down in Houston, stop by and see one of JB's shows!

Check out JB's site here: www.jbbarnettmusic.com and find Parachute Addams on Facebook for future show info!

Wishing for the Beach

Oh Anthropologie, you make me wish I was somewhere else...

Cooking with Leftovers: Rotisserie Chicken

Mike and I bought a rotisserie chicken for me to eat with my spinach pasta and with a promise that he would eat some as well so we didn't waste half of the chicken. As the week progressed, it became evident that we were not going to finish the whole bird. With that in mind, I shredded the remaining breast and leg then swung by Central Market and picked up a can of hatch chile enchilada sauce (red), yellow corn tortillas and a small container of chihuahua cheese (you could use whatever you like, this just looked interesting). One small assembly line and about 25 minutes in a 350 degree oven later and this is what we had:

Our leftover chicken + minimal ingredients made 6 enchiladas. Fast, easy and delish!

Mascarpone Cupcakes!

These mascarpone cupcakes just might be my favorite cupcakes. They are of course, a Giada recipe. The texture is really light, sort of like angel food cake but has so much more flavor and smells REALLY good. The strawberry icing is just up my alley since I do not like chocolate or things that are super sweet.

Mike's mom came into town to take our engagement pictures and wanted to try this recipe after seeing it in one of the cookbooks I had laying around. Mike loves them so I decided to surprise him and bake them before he got home from work.

The only bad thing about the cupcakes is that I'm tempted to eat every single one!

Cooking with Leftovers: Baby Spinach

I love baby spinach... there are so many things you can add this to... a sandwich, salad, quesadilla filling, lasagna filling etc. However, the bag only comes in one size, giant. Therefore, I'm constantly stuck with half a bag of leftover baby spinach that inevitably goes bad before I can use it. This issue came up again last week when I made chicken, mushroom and spinach quesadillas for my weeknight dinners. I had to use up a good amount of spinach before it went bad so I tried this Giada recipe, penne with spinach sauce.

I did make a couple of changes to the recipe... I can't really get on board with whole wheat pasta so I used Ronzoni Smart Pasta instead. I also substituted feta for goat cheese, reduced the amount by half and used no-fat cream cheese.

The pasta turned out really good! Its good warm or cold. I'm having it this week with some garlic-herb chicken!