Cumulonimbus

Click here for the special EnviTote GroupShop!

**This is the THIRD time I’m typing out this post after stupid Ecto ate it twice before. Anyone know how to fix this?**

Why am I referring to clouds again? Well, there are a multitude of reasons…but before I get to that, a definition:

In ordinary, normal, everyday English though, cumulonimbus clouds are those tall pouffy clouds that look like they’re sitting on something in the sky.

[source]

So much of today, I felt like I was above the clouds for, as I said, a multitude of reasons.

Reason #1: All of your kind and genuine comments on my post from last night truly uplifted my spirits! I checked my comments a few times today, and each and every time, my mood would get better with your amazing comments! Thank you SO much, and as my mom used to say, “poop on you!” to the negative commenters!

Reason #2: I made a fan-freaking-tastic dinner! I started out with something I’ve been thinking about since I made it last: Gina’s raw sushi rolls with cauliflower “rice”. They were just as good as last time, and I filled them with cucumber, avocado, and some shredded crabmeat.

I continued with a delicious spinach salad with a pan-roasted Ahi tuna filet. I bought the most amazing-looking tuna filets at Trader Joe’s yesterday, and I’d been thinking about them all day, so I knew they had to be on the menu. I whipped up a quick salad dressing with:

1 Tbsp. dijon mustard
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. minced garlic
1 tsp. oregano

I shook them together and then set the dressing aside while I pan-roasted the tuna filet in a super-hot skillet with some olive and sesame oil. I over-cooked it slightly, but it was still delicious! While it cooked, I cut up my cucumbers, dressed the salad, and then sliced the tuna. The whole darn thing got sprinkled with sesame seeds.

Reason #3: Lemon Vanilla Cloud Cookies

After last night’s coconut clouds, I knew I had to perfect the recipe. I hesitate to call these meringues because they’re lacking the sugar that standard meringues have, but I’m good with calling them clouds. They sound so happy!

Lemon Vanilla Clouds

Ingredients

5 egg whites, brought to room temperature

2 packets Splenda (or 1/4 c. sugar)

2 tsp. lemon juice

1 tsp. lemon zest

1 vanilla bean, halved and scraped

Directions

Heat the oven to 200*. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Add the lemon juice, zest, Splenda, and vanilla, and whip until stiff peaks form. Pipe or spoon onto a clean and dry cookie sheet, then place in the oven until lightly browned and dry (about 2 hours).

Reason #4: There’s a great thing happening on my OpenSky shop tomorrow! OpenSky has been hosting cooperative shopping deals called GroupShops and I’m going to be apart of one from 9 a.m. tomorrow until midnight on Friday. All the details will be revealed tomorrow morning, but what I can tell you is that it involves EnviTotes and will be under $25!

Click here for the special EnviTote GroupShop!

So after a day of feeling above the clouds, and then eating some clouds, it’s time for me to land and go to bed shortly…

Technorati Tags: Baking, dessert, dinner, EnviTote, OpenSky, seafood, simple, simple recipe, sushi, tuna

8 Comments

Mara @ What's For Dinner?, March 9th 2010 | Tags: Baking, dessert, dinner, EnviTote, OpenSky, seafood, simple, simple recipe, sushi, tuna
Posted in fish or seafood, simple recipe

One, Two, Three, No Tradebacks!

On Friday night, I had the pleasure of attending Lizz’s birthday party which, as usual, had a fun and interesting theme. Last year, she held a “dirty shirty” party where everyone’s shirts were inappropriate, to say the least. This year, for her 30th (Ok, her 7 and a half because she’s a leap year baby), she opted for a more “grown up” theme and had a wine and beer exchange party.

The rules were simple: come to the party with either two bottles of wine or two 6-packs of beer. One bottle or 6 pack would be opened for everyone to taste, and the other stayed on the table. Everyone’s names got put in a bucket and drawn randomly, and we got to choose a bottle of wine (or beer if thats what the guest brought) to bring home!

One of the many reasons I love Lizz is that she held off on putting any of the food out until I got there, and asked that I take some good pictures, and she didn’t want anything to be eaten or ugly when I got to take the pictures! We talked before about what a good blog post the party would be…

First and foremost, there was this incredible garlicky cheese dip that Lizz baked in a loaf of bread. I’m working on getting the recipe from her, but let me tell you, in all honesty, it was the BEST dip I’ve ever had. AND it looked good!

Most of the other food is self-explanitory, and the one picture that looks like a bunch of jam in the middle of a plate of crackers? That’s some slightly spicy jam atop cream cheese… also quite delicious!

Soon, all the guests had arrived and there were two tables of liquor set out, one of wine and one of beer. I brought the wine all the way on the left hand side of the wine table. It’s a 2008 Szoke Matyas & Zoltan Matra Irsai Oliver. I have no idea what that means, but I know that it’s a DELICIOUS Hungarian wine that smells a bit like roses, yet tastes like butterscotch.

Each beer and wine were opened and poured for each person to taste. The wine bringers got wine, and the beer bringers got beer. Lizz had fun playing sommelier

That was Fünf Riesling, which was one of my favorites, but alas, I didn’t get to bring it home… but I’ll get to that in a minute. Skylar was on hand doing her job being cute and eating Almond Roca

Soon, a few people needed to start leaving, and the executive decision was made by Lizz’s mom that we needed to light birthday candles ASAP. This amazing cake is called the Queen Elizabeth cake, and it featured ladyfingers, pound cake, strawberries, bananas, and buttercream icing from Deerfield’s Bakery:

The candles were lit

And huge slices were enjoyed by all. It was literally impossible to have a small piece, so I’m blaming the sugar for making me not take a picture of the sliced cake… once we all had a nice sugar and wine buzz, Lizz started drawing names from her basket of wine labels. My name was drawn next-to-last, which meant I had only two options of wine left to choose: the one I brought or a red that I didn’t like. Lucky me got to bring home a bottle of wine I KNEW I liked! There was a no tradeback rule (well, an unspoken one) so I was “stuck” with it!

I’m most definitely having a party like this sometime soon… it was a lot of fun trying wines that I’d never think to try, and it gave a common thread of conversation for people who didn’t know each other that well.

So Happy Birthday Lizz!! I’m thankful every day that you are my heterosexual life mate, and love you dearly!!

A little blog news:

* Make sure you check out the Cute Food Cutiversary Contest and vote for your favorite reader-submitted cute food using the poll on the right. Comment votes won’t count!

* I’ll be working to organize my recipes in the coming week. Expect to see more links in the Recipes tab!

* Fun stuff from my OpenSky Shop is coming on Tuesday!

I have a great chili recipe coming tomorrow, as well as my first foray into Indian cooking on Wednesday! Also, a HUGE thank you goes out to Ashley from Edible Perspective and Alice from Eat A Duck I Must for the heads up about the amazing photo-editing program that is Lightroom. I’m obsessed… as if I needed something else to occupy my time on the computer!

Have a great Monday!

Technorati Tags: birthday, cheese, dessert, Drinks, friends, fun, poll, wine

13 Comments

Mara @ What's For Dinner?, February 28th 2010 | Tags: birthday, cheese, dessert, Drinks, friends, fun, poll, wine
Posted in friends

Do You Fondue?

Happy Valentine’s Day! I hope you all had a wonderful day, whether attached or not… After being surprised with a mani/pedi from one of my favorite spas, Adam and I spent a relaxing day at the public library and doing our taxes, and then got going on tonight’s special romantic meal.

It’s such a stereotype: the newlywed couple spends their first Valentine’s Day as husband and wife over a lovely slow meal of fondue… and it’s a stereotype Adam and I were thrilled to indulge in!

When we were first together (Winter 2004-2005), I used to make us pots of cheese fondue for dinner. We’d go through a good 2 loaves of French bread, and probably 2 lbs. of cheese over the course of a night. Things have certainly changed, though my fondue recipe hasn’t! We so rarely indulge in food such as cheese fondue, so we figured Valentine’s Day was the perfect opportunity.

Adam cut up some fluffy French bread:

and a crisp Fuji apple:

as I stood at the stove and made my favorite cheddar-beer fondue. I asked around about what I should make, Cheddar or Swiss fondue, and while the response was overwhelming towards Swiss cheese, I just couldn’t do it. The intent of staying in on V-Day was to save money… and spending $30 on enough cheese and liquor for white cheese fondue defeated that purpose! Instead, I went with Cheddar. For those of you without a fondue pot, never fear! A small sauce pot and hot plate work just fine. In fact, this is the first fondue set I’ve ever had!

The process and recipe is easy, as taught to me by my mom:

Ingredients

14 oz. extra sharp cheddar cheese

1 12 oz. bottle dark beer (I used Negro Modelo)

1 Tbsp. dijon mustard

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 Tbsp. olive oil

flour for dusting

Directions

Grate 14 oz. extra sharp cheddar cheese. Dust lightly with flour. Set aside. Heat the olive oil and garlic in your fondue pot (or other pot). Add mustard and stir well until lightly browned. Add the bottle of beer and cook until reduced by about 1/4. Whisk in handfuls of the floured cheese, stirring until fully melted. Add handful by handful until all the cheese is added and the fondue is thick. Simmer on low heat a few minutes. Transfer to your fondue burner (or hot plate) and enjoy!

Originally, this was going to be a two-course fondue meal with a meat/seafood cooked in broth course… but we got too full! (Don’t forget to SpringPad the fondue recipe!)

We finished off the carbo-loading meal with decadent chocolate lava cakes from Jenn! She was kind enough to get us a kit with ramekins and the mix as a wedding gift, and we’ve been saving it since! I had every intent of doing the double dessert thing I spoke of yesterday in Cute Food Saturday, but we both wanted chocolate… so chocolate we had!

These were supposed to be inverted onto a plate and served out of the ramekin… but this is what happened when I did one of them:

Big gooey chocolatey mess… with a curved divot in it from where the ramekin fell. It was still amazingly decadent and delicious, and I now feel like I have a brick in my stomach. I think I’m going to have some tea while we watch a movie… there’s cool stuff coming to our house this week that I’m SUPER excited for, but I’ll save the surprises. You may have noticed the OpenSky picture in my sidebar…that picture will bring you RIGHT to my shop, where you can buy all sorts of amazing kitchen goodies. Check them out!

Hope you all had a wonderful Valentine’s Day!

Technorati Tags: Baking, cheese, dessert, family recipe, fondue, holiday, simple, simple recipe, vegetarian

17 Comments

Mara @ What's For Dinner?, February 14th 2010 | Tags: Baking, cheese, dessert, family recipe, fondue, holiday, simple, simple recipe, vegetarian
Posted in Baking, family recipe, simple recipe, vegetarian

Spring it and Win It (Giveaway Post)

There are just good things happening like crazy over here at the What’s For Dinner “headquarters”! First, we had the iHerb.com $50 shopping spree contest (which you can still enter), and then the announcement of the opening of my OpenSky shop, and today even MORE cool stuff!

I’ll get to the cool stuff after I show you my quite boring dinner. It tasted fantastic, but really, it wasn’t anything exciting. At all.

That would be steamed brown rice, steamed broccoli, and pan “fried” cube steak. The cool part: I steamed the broccoli in the steaming basket of my rice cooker while the rice cooked! Very convenient! The cube steak was floured, egged, then bread-crumbed, and cooked in a couple teaspoons of olive oil. Delicious? Yes. Pretty? Not really…

Now comes the good part. While I was waiting for the State of the Union to come on, it became increasingly obvious that there was NOTHING on TV. Some of you would’ve taken the opportunity to get an extra workout in. Some of you would’ve found SOMETHING to watch. Some of you may have done what I ended up doing: cleaning the kitchen and then baking brownies.

If you know me at all, you’ll know that me cleaning ANYTHING is a huge feat. I’m a very very very messy person. I was always that kid in school who had the locker that exploded whenever it was opened. My roommates in my favorite college house (kindly known as “the Blue House” because well, it was blue) had to get me a separate Rubbermaid tub for my dirty dishes because if it wasn’t there, they couldn’t get to the sink! Adam and I are slowly working on getting our house looking like grown ups live here, and just the fact that I cleaned is miraculous.

You’re probably wondering now “WHERE ARE THE BROWNIES?!” Ok, ok, here we go. After the brownies I posted on Sunday, I have been bound and determined to make a relatively healthy yet still fudgy brownie. I believe I have succeeded. This started as a vegan recipe in my head, and realized that not only did I not have any non-butter fat besides olive oil, nor did I have enough applesauce to completely sub it out, I used the butter. So they’re vegetarian, but can easily be made vegan with a couple small substitutions (and not the ones you’re thinking!)

Fun Flax Brownies

Ingredients

1 stick of butter, softened

2/3 c. sugar

4 oz. unsweetened natural applesauce

1/4 c. whole flaxseeds (I used Tropical Traditions Golden Flaxseed)

1 1/2 c. water

1 c. whole wheat flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill)

3/4 c. cocoa powder (I used Now Foods organic)

1/4 c. milk (I used skim, but was out of Almond milk)

1/2 c. white chocolate chips (optional)

Directions

Pre-heat oven to 350*. Add softened butter and sugar to mixing bowl and cream until light yellow and no longer grainy. While that mixes, place flaxseeds in your blender. Grind thoroughly. Add the water, and blend for 2 minutes until the mixture is foamy and is of egg-white consistency. (This is a vegan egg replacement for 2 large eggs. Feel free to use real eggs) Allow to sit a few minutes while the butter and sugar finish creaming. Add the applesauce to the butter/sugar mixture and mix well. Add flax “eggs” and mix well. Slowly add in the cocoa, and mix well. Add flour, mix until incorporated then add the milk. Gently mix in the chocolate chips and spread into a pan. I used my brownie pan, but an 8×8 would’ve been perfect. Bake about 25-30 minutes.

Remember that fudgy brownie texture I was looking for? Oh yeah, these have it… the flax and whole wheat flour along with the applesauce makes these a higher-fiber and healthier recipe than your typical egg/white flour/lotsa fat recipe, and honestly, the flax makes a great little crunch in there!

Do you notice that cool little button up under the recipe title? That button will soon become your new best friend! See, that button is from SpringPad, a very useful website which, once you have an account, can save recipes for you with just a click of a button! A few of my recipes (the most recent ones) have already been entered and will soon have buttons too. SpringPad is FREE, and the best way I’ve found to catalog all those recipes I come across that I want to try, but don’t want to print out. Or those ones that I go “OOH! I want to try that” and then forget where I saw it. Now, I can add a Web Clip button to my browser toolbar, and click it when I see a recipe I like. A window pops up, I hit save, and then all the recipes are in one place.

Now for the giveaway part (I know you love these!) MONTHS ago, I got a bag of Tropical Traditions golden flaxseeds sent to me to try. I hadn’t been able to think of anything to make with them until now, so now’s your chance: You can win one 16 oz. bag of whole organic golden flaxseeds from Tropical Traditions!

Again, I’m going to go with the multiple entries thing! You MUST choose ONE of the options to be entered. Each additional method will earn you one additional entry. You must comment for each method. 4 methods = 4 comments = 4 entries. Get it?

Method 1: Leave a comment on this post about what you’d do with the flaxseed

Method 2: Tweet about the giveaway “I want to win flaxseed from @imadedinner and @troptraditions http://bit.ly/a9jk7f”

Method 3: Join SpringPad and Spring! my brownie recipe. I’m notified when you “Spring” but a comment is needed anyway

Method 4: Subscribe to the Tropical Traditions newsletter

Happy Springing and good luck! Winner will be announced Friday evening, January 29.

*Disclaimer: Tropical Traditions provided me with a free sample of this product to review, and I was under no obligation to review it if I so chose. Nor was I under any obligation to review or sponsor a giveaway in return for the free product.

Technorati Tags: Baking, beef, dessert, food, giveaway, product review, recipe, simple recipe, Tropical Traditions

45 Comments

Mara @ What's For Dinner?, January 27th 2010 | Tags: Baking, beef, dessert, food, giveaway, product review, recipe, simple recipe, Tropical Traditions
Posted in Baking, beef, contest/giveaway, giveaway, simple recipe

Veggie-Ful Day

I have to admit something to you all: I’ve been a veggie slacker lately. Seriously, it’s become a problem. Dinners will have a handful of veggies a serving, and lunch will usually have the same. It’s no wonder I’ve had such little energy! I started today with my first in a while green monster, and you’ll all be happy to know that the Cuisinart Blender crushes ice like a champ! Hopefully it’ll be in my OpenSky shop soon!

In any case, I followed up my breakfast of champions with… pizza. Yup, there was free pizza from my favorite local place at work, and I just couldn’t turn it down! No worries though, Adam had a wonderful suggestion! We’ve been desperately looking for a new coffee table for our living room for months now, and he’d been doing some shopping on his own during the day. There were none that really caught our eye that fit our measurements, so we decided to go to the “Mother Ship”… IKEA! We talked about just eating dinner at IKEA, but opted instead for Sweet Tomatoes, which is about 30 seconds away.

First and foremost, when we go to Sweet Tomatoes, I do my best to fill up on a complex and colorful salad, and have a couple spoons of the special side dishes they have on the salad bar.

Tonight’s mix was romaine lettuce, spinach, jicama, egg, green peppers, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, a few blue cheese crumbles, a tablespoon of sunflower seeds, and a sample of the whole grain “fiesta” couscous and the curry wheatberry salad. I had a small cup of blue cheese dressing for dipping. QUITE delicious, and very veggie-ful!

Next, I had a bowl of the low-fat turkey and 3 bean chili with a little cheese and sour cream. Sorry, this doesn’t look terribly appetizing:

Along with that I had a few slivers of the sauteed vegetable focaccia with mushrooms, onions, and parmesan cheese:

Then, I had to have dessert. I always get dessert at Sweet Tomatoes! BUT rather than going with the chocolate muffin/nonfat fro-yo and chocolate syrup, I went with a small (literally, it was like, 3/4 c.) bowl half full of oatmeal-crumb topped apples with a little non-fat no sugar fro-yo:

We left satisfied, and headed to IKEA where the scents of cinnamon rolls and Swedish meatballs filled the air, and laminated furniture called to us… we ended up with this lovely $20 table

We got home and Adam put it together, and we promptly put the beautiful woven metal basket we got for our wedding from my mom’s friend and Cubs coasters on it! It’s really starting to look like actual real grown-ups live here… I like it!

Don’t forget to enter the iHerb giveaway, and check out my OpenSky Shop!

Happy Hump Day!

Technorati Tags: date night, dessert, dinner out, fun, salad

9 Comments

Mara @ What's For Dinner?, January 26th 2010 | Tags: date night, dessert, dinner out, fun, salad
Posted in dinner out

On A Pedestal

Last night, Adam and I decided that it was time for an old-school “dinner and a movie” date night. Well, it ended up being “movie and dinner” as we went to the movies first.

Since we were away right after Avatar came out, we finally got on the bandwagon and contributed to its billions-of-dollars success. We saw it in Real 3D which was truly remarkable. I felt like we were there, and I actually found myself swatting away a bug that I thought was in front of me…and it was on the screen. I really loved what a beautiful movie it was, and the story wasn’t bad either! I’d highly recommend it!

By the time the movie ended, it was after 9 p.m. and my after-school snack had long since worn off, and I was super hungry! There is a new restaurant near the movie theater that I had read about on Biggest Diabetic Loser over a month ago when Biz got to visit the restaurant pre-opening. Any place that has pizza and great burgers is good with me, so Adam and I decided to try The Lucky Monk.

We walked in and I was quite impressed with the decor. It was cozy without being stuffy and trendy without being obnoxious.

We perused the menu, and while The Lucky Monk is a brewery in addition to a restaurant, we declined to get beer. I’m not a huge beer fan, and Adam wasn’t in the mood for alcohol. Adam quickly decided on a 12″ New York Style four-cheese pizza, and I went with a burger. I really appreciated that the burgers came in two sizes: a “normal” 6 oz. burger and a HUGE 9 oz. one. I wanted to feel OK about indulging in some fries, so I went with a 6 oz. “Farmhouse” burger.

Since it’s a new restaurant, the service doesn’t quite “have their stuff together” yet. It took a while to get drink refills, and our server barely checked back, but once the food arrived, I didn’t care!

Adam’s pizza was crispy, chewy, cheesy and delicious:

And my burger, a 6 oz. griddled patty with lettuce, tomato, red onion, dill pickle, Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese, and 2 slices of applewood smoked Duroc bacon was so fantastic it deserved to be put on a pedestal. As a matter of fact, the burger was on a pedestal! It gave me somewhere to set it down between bites and still be able to pick it up. The hand-cut french fries were actually well-done and crispy.

Before dinner, we decided to forgo an appetizer in favor of a dessert that had grabbed our attention: skillet s’mores. Just look at this:

This, I believe, puts Fitnessista’s favorite Pizookie to shame! It was a small cast-iron skillet stacked with layers of graham crackers, semi-sweet chocolate, mini marshmallows, and a small amount of caramel on top. It was then broiled so the marshmallows got crunchy, the chocolate melted, and everything soaked into the grahams. I can see myself dragging Adam here for dessert and coffee in the future!

I truly enjoyed our dinner at The Lucky Monk, and I love that it’s a mere 5 minutes from our house! There are quite a few other menu items I’m looking forward to trying.

Don’t forget to enter the Souper You soup and jumprope giveaway by tomorrow!

Technorati Tags: beef, burger, cheese, Chicago dining, date night, dessert, dinner, dinner out, fun, Lucky Monk, pizza, restaurant

16 Comments

Mara @ What's For Dinner?, January 9th 2010 | Tags: beef, burger, cheese, Chicago dining, date night, dessert, dinner, dinner out, fun, Lucky Monk, pizza, restaurant
Posted in beef, dinner out

Honeymoon, Take 2 or Ya, Mon! Goes International

Did you miss Part 1 or Part 2? Catch up!

On our third day, we spent a good amount of time hanging out at the main pool, which conveniently had a swim-up bar. Just check out this scenery:

DSCN5370 DSCN5374 DSCN5375 DSCN5415

It was quite possibly the most relaxing day at the pool I can remember in a long time! I tend to associate spending time at a pool with spending time with 12 screaming four-year-olds, but this was just relaxing. And it helped that we both had cocktails most of the day as well!

Our third night’s dinner was at the “Caribbean” themed restaurant where we were treated to some more “traditional” Caribbean food. It was beyond dark, and I couldn’t capture a picture of many of the dishes, but my meal included:

cod and tomato terrine
fresh vegetable salad
fish chowder
snapper and eggplant seasoned with cinnamon and hot pepper
“black cake”, a small gingery cake dotted with mango sauce

We had a fun time at this meal watching the little geckos skitter around the tables

I awoke the next morning a bit before Adam and took advantage of the light to take some photos of the view outside our window. This is my favorite:

Ok, and this one too:

I really couldn’t get over how lush and green it was there! After breakfast, we decided to spend the day at the beach and take advantage of a couple of the activities the resort had to offer. First, we chose to ride the giant aqua-trikes. What is an aqua-trike you might ask? This is an Aqua-Trike:

[source]

The one we rode was blue and green though, and it terrified the heck out of me! It worked a lot like a typical paddle boat, but made this awful clunking noise every third or fourth paddle. We “rode” out about 50 yards, then turned around and came back. We did manage to get this adorable picture though:

We then proceeded to relax on the beach the rest of the day. I finished reading Julie and Julia and now look forward to seeing the movie! Upon returning to the room, I realized that, while I applied sunscreen, I apparently didn’t apply enough… I was quite red!

Adam was calling me the reverse raccoon!! It was slightly painful, but luckily almost all the redness was gone by the next morning. We changed into nicer clothes and went to dinner at the nicer of the restaurants, and Italian-style place. We had a small wait, so we took advantage of the photo op:

Dinner was quite delicious, and I finally decided to suck it up and use a flash to capture some of the food we were eating. We both started with a ricotta and spinach ravioli with a creamy walnut sauce. I think this was both of our favorite dishes we ate on the whole trip!

Continued with a chicken and meatball soup:

Caprese salad:

Crispy snapper on fried polenta with yellow squash and garlic cream:

Adam got salmon in a tomato sauce with scallops:

Dessert was non-bruleed creme brulee:

And Adam got an apple tart:

It was a delicious meal, and while not “Italian” as I know it, the food was definitely good!

Make sure you come back tomorrow for part 4, in which we eat Mediterranean food, watch a “reggae” show, and have dinner with another couple!

Thanks for reading my spread-out recap… it’s helping me cope with going back to work!

Technorati Tags: dessert, dinner, dinner out, family, fun, holiday, honeymoon, seafood, Tropical

17 Comments

Mara @ What's For Dinner?, January 4th 2010 | Tags: dessert, dinner, dinner out, family, fun, holiday, honeymoon, seafood, Tropical
Posted in dinner out, family, fish or seafood

Honeymoon Take 2, or This Chicken is a JERK!

Did you catch Part 1 of our honeymoon update? I’m trying to come up with more fun names for each part than “part 1″ and “part 2″, but this is most definitely part 2.

Where’d we leave off? Oh right, we’d landed in Jamaica, gotten cold drinks at the Sandals lounge, I’d changed into flip flops and we got into a bus to take the 90 minute ride to our resort. I tried to get pictures out the bus window for you all, but only managed a couple of random ones:

The bus ride was bumpy, and in Jamaica, they drive on the “wrong” side of the road, so picture-taking wasn’t faring well for my slightly travel-upset stomach. I decided to just sit back and enjoy the fact that we were finally there!

When we finally arrived at the resort, our bags were taken directly to our room, and we were asked to fill in some information on a form. We were then handed our keys and escorted to our cottage room. The resort was interestingly laid out. There were two sides: the Manor and the Riviera. The Manor was the side that had the main pool, and the Riviera side had the beach…and we were on the Riviera side! The rooms were in two main types of buildings: typical “hotel” types and the cottages. Each cottage had 4 rooms separated by hallways; two upstairs and two downstairs. I loved how tropical our room was!

We got a different towel sculpture on our bed each night, but this was my favorite. Once we got the air conditioning going, we both realized exactly how hungry we were for dinner! We quickly changed and went to the nearest and most easily accessible of the 8 restaurants in the resort. There was a little bit of a wait for a table, so we enjoyed our first piña colada and waited while watching the ocean.

Since it was 80 degrees outside, we got to eat outside by candlelight, which made for great atmosphere, but as was the case the rest of the trip, I would find, made for terrible food pictures! I had to use a flash a lot, so please excuse the über-bright pics.

The restaurant was lovely

and had a 5-course menu… but we didn’t figure out until our 3rd night that we were supposed to order one of each course for EACH of us, not to share. The appetizers were about 3 bites! We shared this shrimp spring roll:

Then Adam got soup and I got an “antipasto salad” which had one of my favorite presentations of the whole trip:

That’s onion, lettuce, eggplant, zucchini, fresh mozzarella, yellow squash, and tomato.

Adam’s entree was herb-crusted lobster with ravioli, and mine was a mini rack of lamb on ratatouille:

Both tasted quite delicious, especially in our super-hungry state! We topped off the evening with desserts. I had a piña colada cake, and adam got a pineapple upside down cake:

Then it hit us… we were exhausted! We went back to our room, and after emailing to let our families know that we’d made it, we passed out!

We awoke the next morning bright and early (8 a.m.) and went in search of breakfast. I have to say, the breakfasts were one of my favorite food things at the resort. There was a fresh fruit bar, omelet station, hot dishes, and a porridge/oatmeal bar complete with toppings. Regrettably I never got a picture of it… but trust me! It was stellar.

After breakfast our first full day, we spent most of the day outside looking at this:

and this:

And when lunch time rolled around, we were treated to a special Christmas lunch (oh right, it was Christmas day!) full of local foods, including Jerk Chicken.

That was my plate, which had (from the bottom left) jerk chicken, jerk beef roast, sweet mashed yams, chicken skewer, and this stuff called “fried festival”. It was all fantastic! Expect to see many jerk-seasoned dishes on this blog in months to come!

Dinner was delicious and served out on one of the piers on the beach. It was a Mexican/Southwestern themed restaurant, and I ordered a grilled sirloin which was cooked to perfection… but one candle on the beach didn’t make for enough light for a picture… So I’ll leave you tonight with pictures of Adam and I AT dinner on the pier:

Part 3 Tomorrow, in which we ride floating tricycles, visit the main pool, and eat Caribbean food!

Technorati Tags: beef, chicken, dessert, dinner, dinner out, family, grilling, holiday, honeymoon, travel, Tropical

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Mara @ What's For Dinner?, January 3rd 2010 | Tags: beef, chicken, dessert, dinner, dinner out, family, grilling, holiday, honeymoon, travel, Tropical
Posted in beef, dinner out, family, grilling

My Dinner With Bender

Jenn and I have been trying to get together now for quite some time. This whole “being a grown up” and “having a job” and “getting married” thing kept getting in the way. We finally were able to decide on a date and time, and last night was that date! I was so excited to see her!

We met at the halfway point between my house and hers, and it was (as usual) a favorite place of mine, Graziano’s.

bender 006

When the restaurant opened almost 15 years ago, it was one of the first wood-oven pizza restaurants outside the downtown area, and was always packed. They have great sandwiches, appetizers, and of course, pizza. When I used to frequent Graziano’s in high school, I was in a “no red meat” phase, so I was thrilled at some of their turkey choices. But I’ll get to that later.

We started out with some warm tomato focaccia bread and seasoned olive oil, and I added a bit of parmesan cheese:

bender 008 We also noticed a great feature on the menu that I SWEAR wasn’t there when I was younger:

bender 007 Yes, that’s a Retro Soda Fountain! I really wanted an egg cream, but the waitress wasn’t sure how to make it, so I didn’t want to risk it! Jenn ordered a black cow, which didn’t disappoint when it arrived! She was nice enough to share it with me!

bender 001 I ordered for dinner my old favorite…the Italian Turkey Sandwich. As I mentioned, when I used to frequent Graziano’s, I wasn’t eating red meat, so I always ordered either vegetarian or turkey entrees there. The Italian Turkey Sandwich wasn’t what it sounds like: a turkey sandwich with marinara and mozzarella cheese. It’s more like an Italian beef/French Dip sandwich made with turkey instead of beef. I got it with their seasoned Italian fries and sweet roasted peppers on top:

bender 002 It was just as good as I remembered! Jenn got a delicious roasted vegetable and goat cheese pizza, but you’ll have to check her recap for pictures. We had so much fun catching up, and I can’t wait to see her again soon!

We of course, took a picture, but it turned out blue…so I did a bit of editing:

bender 003

T-minus 46 hours until Jamaica!

Technorati Tags: dessert, dinner out, friends, Italian, turkey

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Mara @ What's For Dinner?, December 17th 2009 | Tags: dessert, dinner out, friends, Italian, turkey
Posted in Italian, chicken/turkey, dinner out, friends

Guest Post: Marianne at From French Fries to Flax Seeds

Hello What’s For Dinner? readers! My name is Marianne, and my blog is from french fries to flax seeds. I am delighted to have the opportunity to do a little guest post here for Mara while she’s off getting married. I thought I’d bring you a couple of my favourite, easy desserts for those evening when you want a little something after dinner, but want to keep it healthy.

The first dessert I’d like to share is a great alternative to ice cream, and a favourite of mine that my mother used to make for me as a kid – Frozen Blueberries in Milk.

I don’t know if I can even call this a recipe:

· Frozen blueberries

· Milk of choice (dairy or other)

· Splash of vanilla (optional)

· Sprinkle of sugar (optional)

The best part is how the milk forms a slush around the berries as you let it sit for a few minutes.

And don’t feel limited to just frozen blueberries – it’s also great with raspberries, or any other small frozen fruit you can think of. Switch up the extracts, sweeteners, or even add toppings if you like.

The second dessert I have for you today is great for those chilly autumn evenings, when you wished you’d made an apple pie or crumble, but sadly, you haven’t. You can satisfy that craving with my simple Faux Apple Crumble.

Again, this is a pretty basic recipe:

· 1 apple, cored and chopped (no need to peel)

· Cinnamon

· Brown sugar

· Granola

Mix your chopped apple in a small, microwave safe bowl with the cinnamon and brown sugar. Heat until the apple is warm and soft. Top with granola and enjoy.

This recipe works great with pears as well, and can be jazzed up with some dried cranberries or raisins, and a sprinkle of nuts (pecans or walnuts are my favourites).

I hope you’ve enjoyed my quick, healthy dessert “recipes”, and try them out the next time you are in the need of something a little sweet after dinner. And thanks again to Mara! Hope you had an amazing wedding.

Technorati Tags: Baking, dessert, guest post, simple recipe, vegetarian

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Mara @ What's For Dinner?, November 29th 2009 | Tags: Baking, dessert, guest post, simple recipe, vegetarian
Posted in guest post, simple recipe, vegetarian

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