Chicken Salad, Yogurt Biscuits...

I really do not like when I get excited about a new recipe (or two) and they end up tasting blah... totally mediocre, so-so, a dud. Case-in-point, the chicken salad and yogurt biscuits I made last night to bring to work for lunch this week. Recipes/ingredients sound good, not difficult to put together... taste... meh. I'll say it again, mediocre.

I've desperately trying to find a good chicken salad recipe that isn't hosed in mayonnaise (I'm seriously not a fan of mayo, it kind of weirds me out. The only way I enjoy it is homemade on my grandmother's potato salad that would be strategically situated near me on any Thanksgiving/Christmas table if I could make it happen.) This chicken salad is just missing something... there's no zing, nothing that makes you go "hm... that is so good!" The recipe consisted of chicken, 1 tbs. each mayo and Dijon mustard, olive oil, red bell pepper, green onion, salt, and pepper.

The yogurt biscuits. I love biscuits. They are not exactly a health food so any recipe that can lessen the buttermilk/heavy cream/real butter is worth trying if that means I get to eat more of them. I think part of the problem with this recipe is that I might have over-kneaded the dough. But that's secondary to the main problem... again, nothing that made me go "wow, these are so good!" I think the recipe needed more salt and maybe a brush of melted butter over the top to enhance the flavor.

Ah well... the search continues. If you have a good chicken salad recipe... pass it on, I need new brown-bag lunch ideas. I'm a huge fan of bringing my lunch and turkey sandwiches can get boring so I'd love to substitute some days with something easy like chicken salad. No links to the recipes today since they were duds!




In totally food-unrelated news, my parents visited for Memorial weekend again this year. These are my favorite types of visits as I do not have to make the long drive :) We went to a Frisco Rough Riders baseball game (they actually won in extra innings!), had Fireside Pies and got their outfits for the wedding squared away! Over the past week, Mike and I also ordered our wedding bands and have scheduled all of our vendors visits to be done in August. I also have been picking up outfits for showers. On deck this week - Mike's suit and continuing to work on the music for the ceremony & reception.

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.)