Who doesn’t like a good stir fry now and then? Seriously, it’s so easy – If you think you can’t cook, try stir-frying. It’s really just throwing some stuff in a pan with some soy sauce and waiting for it to turn color, haha. Okay, I would pay a little more attention than that if you don’t want to end up with salmonella, but that’s pretty much how it is.
Bonus points if you have a rice cooker. Ain’t nobody got time to cook rice on the stove.
Yum, the food of my people…Enjoy!
~Tina
Hello digital friends and happy Monday! Sorry I have been MIA from the blog lately. I’ve been telling Tia that I’ve been doing this all last week:
Okay, that’s kind of an exaggeration, but I have been pretty boring. You would have heard a lot of about eating boring pasta and rewatching House, so I really just saved you a lot of time. You’re welcome.
Onto exciting things that picked up over the weekend! Chris and I had our 4 year anniversary dinner last month and finally booked our annual comedy event celebration, which we went to last night. We started out the afternoon by trying Blaze Pizza, first, best described as the Chipotle of pizza. You build your own pizza from a huge variety of sauces, cheeses, and toppings, and they cook it for you in about 5 minutes…
Aw yeah, that’s the stuff. We got ours with spicy tomato sauce, mozzarella and goat cheese, bacon, pepperoni, ham, garlic, basil, and mushrooms. A fantastic lunch eaten outside!
Then we were off to Second City! This is one of my favorite activities to do in Chicago, whether you’re just visiting or have lived here for years. I have gone to 4 shows, including last night’s, and have yet to be disappointed. Here is a review of the show we went to, Depraved New World, in case you’re in the area and want to check it out.
Here’s to a more eventful week this week 😉
~Tina
Happy Monday! Hope everyone had a good weekend and is looking forward to a short week this week 🙂
Chris has had a bottle of red wine vinegar sitting in his fridge for forever, so we try using it up whenever we can. It’s very potent, though, so a little goes a long way. We may need more recipe ideas soon, but one way we used it was in a chicken marinade last week.
I mixed soy sauce, olive oil, minced garlic, red wine vinegar, and chopped onion, and poured it over 2 well-seasoned (salt & pepper) chicken breasts. Also added some dried parsley from my spice rack to make it look fancier than it is. I threw it in the oven at 450F for about 40 minutes and then chowed down.
The chicken breasts I used were pretty hefty. In hindsight, I’d butterfly them or use smaller pieces of chicken to absorb more of the marinade flavor. Very yummy, though. If I make this a few dozen more times, maybe we’ll finally get through that bottle of red wine vinegar.
Do you guys ever need to get creative to use up your leftover ingredients? If you’re interested in exact measurements for the above recipe, let me know!
~Tina
Last week, Chris and I celebrated our 4 year anniversary! That’s as long as a presidential term!
For the past 3 years, we’ve always ended up going to a comedy event of some sort. We’ve seen Second City, Aziz Ansari, and Russell Brand so far. We can’t find anything that looks good yet (mostly due to the unfortunate hiatus of Just for Laughs, which usually rolls through Chicago this time of year), and in the interest of keeping the streak alive, we’re going to celebrate in 2 parts this year 🙂
Part 1: Food!
We took it back to Seasons 52, which we both really enjoyed during Restaurant Week. And it did not disappoint again!
Filet mignon for the gentleman and Alaskan salmon with sweet corn risotto for myself. We also finished the evening off with these bad boys:
Seasons 52’s famous “mini-indulgences”! We got a s’mores and almond amaretto – Delicious!
I also want to give a shout out to the Chicago location we went to. When we first arrived, there was a networking event finishing up in the bar area, so we had to wait a few minutes for a table. As guests from that event were leaving, the hostesses were giving them $25 gift cards. Good-naturedly, I joked to Chris that we should pretend like we were at that event so we could get a gift card, too. Anyway, I think one of the hostesses overheard me, because as we were leaving, she recognized us and pulled me over to give me a gift card (with a wink)! Great customer service, haha!
Seriously, though, it was a really nice, totally unexpected gesture and we will definitely be going back again soon (we would have even without a gift card!).
Anyone experience any random acts of kindness lately?
~Tina
Tia and I, and the rest of our NU crew, were so excited when our friend Joyce announced her upcoming visit to Chicago from Florida. We knew the weekend would be full of good company and, of course, good eats.
We started out at Caffe Oliva, a cute, outdoor, beach-side restaurant. We got some drinks and apps, served by a questionably chipper waiter – like, I’m fairly certain he was under the influence of a little sumpin’ sumpin’, if ya know what I mean, haha. Or maybe he was just super relaxed, who knows? Anyway, it turned out to be gorgeous and warm that day, so it was hard to get us down when we could finally enjoy the outdoors in the Chi.
Next stop was second lunch at my apartment building’s annual resident (and guest) party! Chris and I have been out of town the past 2 years for this, so we were psyched we could finally attend (we’re big fans of free food). Can’t say no to a good cookout.
Then we decided to stop eating…haha, just kidding. We headed over to the Taste of Randolph for some more grub, including this bad boy from the Publican booth:
Delish. Some of our group were not so lucky to find food they wanted, so we grabbed some other options on-the-go, and ended our night with some rousing games.
On Sunday, we wanted to see if we were sick of BBQ yet, so we got the whole gang together at Lillie’s Q.
Uh, yum. Wouldn’t kick that out of bed.
I know this post was all about food, but it was so great catching up with Joyce and having her as a pseudo roommate over the weekend 🙂 It was awesome having her unique personality back in our lives again (maybe one day you’ll find out about her crazy food scale!)…
Who else uses hosting visitors as an opportunity to eat a ton? It’s like a bonus to getting to hang out with your pals!
~Tina
Tia and I were lucky enough to attend the 2nd Annual Taste of CISC last night, held by the Chicago Interactive Social Club on the roofdeck of Presidential Towers, right downtown!
This was my first time attending a CISC event – Tia has been a few times before – and I was impressed by the turnout and, of course, the free food and drinks. This organization is a great way for professionals in Chicago to network and meet each other in a casual environment, although Tia and I ended up hanging out with each other most of the time (Doesn’t that always happen at these things? Haha.).
Anyway, a sampling of what was available there:
Those green syringes up there are jello shots from Howl at the Moon and they were very, very strong.
Happy Weekend! Who has fun plans? Our good friend Joyce is visiting and, per her request, we are going to be “eating our way through Chicago!”
~Tina
Here’s a weird thing about me: I like to eat ice cream, even when it’s cold out. I have many fond memories from college of making the long, snowy, and windy trek to Cold Stone Creamery with Tia and our roomies, and stuffing my face with a Cookie Doughn’t You Want Some. Excuse me while I wipe the drool off my face.
There isn’t a Cold Stone near by me in Chicago (a shame!), but I did come across this interesting flavor from Dean’s at the grocery store the other day and couldn’t resist picking some up for later. This “Chicago Brick” flavor is served Neopolitan-style, with blocks of vanilla ice cream, caramel ice cream, and orange sherbert. I was intrigued.
The verdict? I was most concerned about how the caramel would taste with the other flavors. It’s not bad, but not my favorite combo. I say take out the caramel and make this an orange creamsicle. But I can’t say no to ice cream, in any case 🙂
Another weird thing about me: You’ll notice that I eat ice cream out of a cup, not a bowl. I remember the first time I was about to scoop out some ice cream with my friends and they were wondering why I pulled out my mug instead of a bowl. My family always ate it this way when I was growing up and I guess I just carried on the tradition! Hey, think of it as portion-control.
Who loves ice cream? Man, I would really kill for some Cold Stone right about now.
~Tina
Happy weekend! There will be much celebrating going on over here…Chris’s birthday was yesterday! I knew there was no better way to fete the birthday boy than stuffing our faces with BBQ.
I took Chris to Chicago q, an “urban BBQ” place in the Gold Coast of Chicago. Instead of bread for the table, they start you off with barbeque potato chips and sweet marinated pickles. Neither of us had been here before, but the Yelp reviews I read all raved about the house bacon cheddar hush puppies, so of course we had to get us some o’ that.
That’s Chris telling them to “hush.” Truth be told, I didn’t know what a hush puppy was. I thought it was some sort of cheese ball, but they were more bread-y. Still delicious, though, and they came with some sort of chipotle dipping sauce.
Then it was time for the main event! We each got a q2 platter, which comes with your choice of pulled pork, pulled chicken, or brisket, PLUS a half slab of ribs, PLUS a side of cornbread, coleslaw, and about a gazillion other options. I went for pulled pork and cornbread, while Chris got the brisket and coleslaw. Each platter was served with 4 different BBQ sauces.
Can you tell which one below is the before shot vs. the after shot?
If you can’t, it’s because THERE WAS SO MUCH FOOD!!!! I felt like I ate so much, yet barely made a dent (the second picture is the aftermath, btw). Oh well, I’m just getting my bang for the buck since I can now spread this over several meals.
Anyway, Chicago q was a great place to go for a special occasion when you don’t want to be too fancy. It’s on the pricier side for BBQ, but with the amount of food they give you, I’d say it’s well worth it.
We’ve got more BBQ-ing, of the at-home variety, on the schedule for tonight! Our buddies are coming over to grill!
Who else loves some good meats?
~Tina
I’m 2 days back from another adventure-packed trip to Michigan this past weekend. Chris and I survived an elaborate engagement party, fantastic Polish food, and a horrible bus driver. But we’re back in the Chi 🙂
Last week, we got super schmancy in the kitchen with some salmon that I had bought and was looking to use up.
That’s right, folks, we made 3 varieties because that’s how we roll.
(Actually, we had a bunch of leftover ingredients from other things we were trying to use up before our trip.)
We baked 3 filets, 1 with steak seasoning and chopped onion, 1 with cajun seasoning and orange peppers, and 1 with paprika and minced garlic.
Served up with some steamed broccoli, each version was super yummy. I think I liked the cajun/pepper combo the best, because I like a little spice. The garlic one was good, but the flavor was surprisingly not super strong. More garlic next time!
Do you guys like mixing things up in the kitchen from time to time? My dad is a big proponent of “creative cooking,” and is a whiz at throwing things together that we had on hand at home to make a delicious meal.
~Tina
Hooray for long weekends! I don’t know about you guys, but I definitely needed one 🙂
My office was awesome enough to let us out at noon yesterday, and then Tia and I proceeded to get a jump on weekend festivities with food, drink, and movies.
We started the evening off at Bellwether Meeting House & Eatery, where they have a half-off hot appetizers before 6pm deal. We got lots of different types of tacos (Fun fact: Tia LOVES fish tacos!!!!), plus chicken skewers and calamari. Chris and I also got some beers.
From there, we headed over to the theater to watch X-Men: Days of Future Past. It was super entertaining, with solid action, dialogue, and a few cameos – Chris made me stop slow-clapping after young Charles Xavier said his line that keeps getting played in the commercials and trailers: “I DON’T WANT YOUR FUTURE!!!” I embarrass him a lot 😉 Anyway, I liked how they made this movie to combine the original trilogy with the “First Class” reboot. Very creative. Good job, movie execs! Here’s my money!
After the movie, upon CJ’s suggestion, we made a quick stop at D4 for a nightcap. We had a lot more X-Men things to discuss…
For the rest of the weekend, we’ve got some BBQ’s and other fun things in store – Can’t wait!
Who else loves grilling season? So many meats to eat…
~Tina
Tina and Tia 