French Breakfast Puffs of Heaven

Recipe Club is exactly what you think it is.  It's a group of ladies that get together about every six weeks to drink wine, eat good food, and exchange recipes.  It's basically a book club, because we all know that that's exactly what happens at book clubs after the first two months when everyone quits reading the book and just shows up to eat, drink, and gab.  (And I am certainly not finding fault with this.  In fact, if anyone knows of a good book club in the Twin Cities I'd be happy to join.  We're just cutting to the chase.)  Each time we meet there's a different theme.  It might be appetizers, soup, pasta, Mexican, Asian, pie, or any number of other things.  Since I enjoy cooking and discovering new recipes I generally use Recipe Club as an opportunity to make something new.  So far I think the best thing I've taken was a homemade red velvet cake, straight from the cookbook I picked up in Hershey, PA while on a road trip with the Spain girls this summer.

This month the theme is breakfast.  Missy gave me a fantastic (inscribed!) cookbook called The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes From an Accidental Country Girl for Christmas and the first recipe I tried from it (a pizza crust) turned out great, so when I found the recipe for French Breakfast Puffs I decided they'd be a fun thing to try for Recipe Club.  (If you're not familiar with The Pioneer Woman, she's famous for her blog and I'd definitely recommend checking it out!  I respect her for living a lifestyle I could never live!)  Anyways, I've just finished making the French Breakfast Puffs, and I've decided to re-name them.  Henceforth these shall be known only as French Breakfast Puffs of Heaven, because they just might be the most delicious thing I have ever made.  Ever.  And they were SO easy.  The next time you have overnight guests I highly recommend whipping up a batch of these.  Did I mention how easy they are?  They take maybe ten minutes to mix up:

Then they go in the oven for about 25 minutes, giving you plenty of time to wash up your dishes and get the coating ready:

And when you're done they look like this:

I'm hoping you all made it this far and didn't leave me for The Pioneer Woman.  She IS kind of addictive...kind of like the French Breakfast Puffs of Heaven!  Here's hoping they're a hit at Recipe Club tonight!

White Bear Surprise

If you've been on a road trip with me (Beth, Colleen, Eva, Missy, Nancy, Ryan...) you pretty much know what to expect.  If you haven't, you probably haven't seen The World's Largest Chocolate Moose, The Land of Make Believe, The World's Tallest Land Structure, The World's Largest Ball of Twine, a family of hamburger people in tribute to A&W Root Beer, a tennis shoe bigger than a Cadillac, or a 15-foot tall swan.  I have seen all of these things, and many, many others.  In fact, spotting these random roadside attractions is one of my favorite activities, and when I spot something I didn't expect to see there is generally a lot of giggling and clapping of hands followed immediately by shrieking at the driver to pull over while I dig furiously through my purse for my camera.


I generally try to have an idea of which major roadside attractions are in my immediate vicinity, but Julia and I ventured into new territory in the Minneapolis metro area today and I was not prepared for what we discovered:

Isn't he great?!  Now Julia and I haven't had much experience traveling together so this was her first roadside attraction spotting with me, but fortunately I was pretty calm about this one and didn't start screaming about pulling off the road the second I saw it.  (I think it was because I spotted it from a ways away, giving us plenty of time to plan our attack.)  I think she was pretty entertained by my reaction to it, and she quickly pulled into the parking lot of this Chevy dealership and then drove all over the parking lot to allow me the best shot of him.  And, as if this isn't great enough, in talking to a local about him we found out that they dress him seasonally (swim trunks in the summer, etc.), so guess who'll be returning to White Bear Lake, MN four times a year?!

Spinning My Wheels

I went to a spin class this morning that I haven't been to before.  I'm trying to get back into going once a week, and in the past I've always gone at 5 or 6 in the evening.  I didn't want to find myself making dinner at 9 o'clock tonight so I went to class this morning for something different.  And boy, was it!  First of all, there are something like 60 bikes in the studio and there wasn't a single one empty.  It's a 60-minute class and the instructor was 10 minutes late.  (Don't worry, he kept us late to make up the time.)  When he arrived he just sort of swept into the room without acknowledging that he had 60 people sitting there waiting for him.  Kind of rude, right?  The lady next to me leaned over at one point and said, "Geeze, he's always late, but he's not usually THIS late!"  So apparently it's a pattern.  Too bad you have to show up so early to claim a bike!  Anyways, we started cycling and in case I wasn't already sure (and I was), I knew I was in the stay-at-home moms class when Wilson Phillips came on.  And everyone rocked out.  I guess he knows his audience.  The instructor spent a lot of time posing on his bike and eventually he unzipped his 1/4-zip top (slooooowly) and announced, "I've EARNED the right to do this!  Yeah!"  At another point he accused the whole class of eating the entire bag of Cheetos last night.  Then he kept yelling at us to talk to him.  I was like dude, I'm spinning here.  If you're doing your job I shouldn't be able to talk.  Then he was all, "You hate me.  You hate me, don't you?  Yeah, you hate me.  Well I'm transforming your body."  I can't decide if it was the best spin class ever or the worst.  He simultaneously cracked me up and irritated the daylights out of me.  I was like, dude--just shut up and give me more hills!  It'll be interesting to see if I go back next week.  If nothing else, it was nice having my workout in before noon!


(Note: I did not take the photo above.  I found it at www.nymag.com.  I felt the need to share the caption, because it was probably the best part of the photo: "A normal, sedate spin class. The type that could go to hell at any minute."  Which is pretty much how I feel about spinning.  It's a love/hate relationship.)

Baby Steps in a Long-Term Project

Since I moved into my condo over two years ago my office has been full of textbooks, ugly company-issued furniture, and not much else.  I painted it when I painted the rest of the place (a year and a half ago) but this room has never been what I envisioned when I moved in.  Since I packed up the company furniture and textbooks and shipped it all away I've realized that I now have the opportunity to start turning this into the room I've been wanting...and maybe even one that I'll use!  Since I'm going to need to buy furniture it's going to be a process, but there are small things I can start working on now.  My first project was a small but important one: transforming my bulletin board into something useful.  I'm really pleased with how it turned out!  Here are the before and after pictures:

Before

After

Quite an improvement, huh?  While seeing my photo with the girls in (old) Yankee Stadium and my ticket stub from the New Kids on the Block concert make me smile, I think I can find other places for them.  A little paint and ribbon and I now have a cute, functional calendar!  And yes, I'm available for hire.  (Kidding!  Kind of...)

World Domination

Okay, so maybe I'm not out to rule the world, but on the list of things I dominate, I've decided that roasted chicken with carrots, potatoes, and herbed cream sauce should be at the top.  Seriously, I make a mean roast chicken.  If you don't believe me, just take a look:

Kinda makes your mouth water, doesn't it?  Tell ya what--the first person to visit me in Minnesota while there's still snow on the ground gets a roast chicken.  (And for the record, I never, ever serve this meal without wine--even if I'm eating it alone.  So just in case that sweetens the deal, there will be wine included in your prize.  Wait, wait...okay, so I have never before found myself in a situation where it actually made sense to say this, but since it does I just can't resist: WINNER, WINNER, CHICKEN DINNER!)  Seriously.


Now don't worry--I perfected this meal a long time ago, so you don't have to lose your job to learn to make it.  In fact, to prove it my mom made it for Ron for the first time just a couple of days ago!  I always make it for them when they visit, so I gave up the recipe and now she's making it herself!  And she's still working, so there's your proof.  Hopefully they'll still visit...


Oh, and the best part?  The leftovers make a delicious chicken pot pie!  Yum.  Time to pour a glass of wine and enjoy my dinner!  Wish you were here!

Happy Holidays!

As usual, Christmas 2009 came and went in a whirlwind of carols, gifts, delicious home-cooked meals, family game nights, and a whole lot of hours on the road.  We're fortunate that we still get to have my brother and his family (wife Paula and step-daughter Amanda-16) for Christmas each year, so we all meet at Jan & Ron's house in Chicago for the festivities and some much-needed quality family time.  Since they say a picture's worth a thousand words I think I'll post a few photos and let your imaginations fill in the gaps.

There was a family dinner with Tyler and Debbie (Ron's son and his fiance):

There was family caroling on Christmas Eve:

Some of us caroled in our pajamas:

We admired the snow and scoped out the gifts while we waited for Jan & Ron to make their Christmas morning debuts:

There was a lot of coffee:

And then there were the annual family portraits in front of the tree:

We got a little silly:

And then we opened gifts:

There was a blast from the past:

And people plotted how to get their hands on other people's gifts:

There was roast beast:

There was primping:

There was hijacking of cameras:

And on the way home there were snowflakes that actually looked like snowflakes:

And before we know it we'll be doing it all again.  Happy Holidays!

Christmas Tree: 8, Trish: 1

Since I grew up in Michigan, land of the Christmas  tree farms, I'm a real Christmas tree kind of girl.  Now I will agree that there's a time and a place for fake trees...but my home will never be the place.  I love the way they look, the way they smell...and I don't have room to store a fake tree.  I haven't had a Christmas tree in three years because I always end up traveling for a full month between mid-December and mid-January, so I decided that this is the perfect year to bring my first Christmas tree into my first real home.  Part of the whole Christmas tree experience for me is bundling up and going out in the snow to pick one out, so I headed over to the Boy Scout tree lot on a cold, snowy evening playing Christmas carols on the radio the whole two miles.  When I got there the boys kept exclaiming about how they didn't understand why anyone would buy a Christmas tree on such a cold night, but I just smiled and told them that it was part of the total experience.  They helped me find a beautiful scotch pine (the kind my family always had) with a straight trunk and I wrote them a check.

Then it was time to load the tree onto my (new) car.  I wasn't about to let them cram it in the trunk (bad for the tree AND the car), so I explained that I'd like it tied on top.  They weren't too keen on the idea, but I expressed my confidence in their abilities, produced a blanket to keep the tree from scratching the top of my car, and they set to work.  Now when I think of Boy Scouts I think of two things: camping and tying knots.  So imagine my reaction when a scout took a piece of twine, tied it to the handle inside the back seat of the car, wrapped the twine loosely around the top nub of the tree, and loosely tied the other end to the handle inside the back seat on the other side and pronounced it perfect.  Thankfully their scout leader was a little more concerned about my getting out of the parking lot with the tree still on top of the car, and he spent the next fifteen minutes wrapping twine around the tree and tying it down securely.  I thanked him profusely, then walked around to the front of the car to discover that my entire windshield was covered by the bottom branches of the tree.  "Um, excuse me?  I'm really sorry--I hate to be picky...but I think I'll get pulled over if I try to drive home like this.  I won't be able to see out.  I only live two miles away, but...can we move it back a little bit?"  He agreed completely and seemed a little embarrassed at this oversight as he moved the tree back and re-secured it.


I got the tree home, cut the twine, and unloaded it from the top of my car with no trouble.  My friend Julia and her puppy Zoey (in a festive ugly Christmas sweater) met me in the parking lot to help carry it in and put it in a stand, because while I'm a pretty self-sufficient single girl, putting a Christmas tree in a stand is simply a two-person job.  I had already moved the furniture so we carried it right in, plopped it in the stand, and I spent the next three hours lying on the floor under the tree trying to screw it in while Julia held it upright.  Mid-way through the (incredibly frustrating) process Julia discovered that she had a rash growing up her arms, so we took a break and she scrubbed her arms up to the elbows, then covered them in hydrocortisone cream.  So apparently Julia is allergic to pine, which was news to both of us.  But bless her heart, she donned a fleece and a pair of gloves (with the fleece tucked into them) and powered on.  After three hours we had a wobbly and crooked but more or less upright tree.  It was 11 p.m., so she went home and since I wasn't convinced it was going to stay standing I opted not to decorate it quite yet.  I did take a quick photo for proof that it was standing, though.

The next morning when I woke up and wandered down the hall I discovered that my tree had indeed fallen over.  Over the course of the next week three more people came over to help and no one was able to get the tree standing.  Just as I was about to give up on Christmas entirely and chuck the tree off the balcony my next door neighbor showed up with a hacksaw and a huge pair of clippers.  (We like the image of him standing in the elevator holding these tools and wearing a pea coat.  Not creepy at all.)  He sawed off the bottom layer of branches, the tree sunk a couple of inches further into the stand, and in ten minutes' time he had the tree standing firmly on its own!  I popped dinner in the oven for both of us (since the least I could do to thank him was feed him) and we decorated the tree while it baked.  I couldn't believe that after eight days of having a heap of pine tree in the middle of my living room someone was able to transform it into a Christmas tree in just ten minutes!  It turned out beautifully, and now I almost never turn the lights off.  After nearly not having a tree at all I want to soak up every minute I can enjoying it!

Getting in the Holiday Spirit

As soon as I got home from Thanksgiving I started getting into the Christmas spirit.  I started decorating, baking, and putting off writing cards.  The first thing I did was put up my nativity, which I absolutely adore.  My mom started giving me pieces of the set for Christmas two years ago and I get really excited to set it up each year.  Beautiful, no?

The next thing I did was get the tree, but that story is going to get a post of its own, so for now just know that I got the tree.  Up next: baking!  I've always wanted to do a cookie exchange and this year I was invited to participate in two!  I ended up bailing on the second one because the first required that each person bake 15 dozen cookies.  (Yes, 15.  Originally it was 18, so we were pleased when it was "only" 15!)  My friend Julia and I agreed that we neither wanted to bake 15 dozen cookies nor have 15 dozen cookies in the house, so we went halvsies.  We each made seven and a half dozen and we bagged 6 of her cookies with 6 of my cookies.  Since Julia has a Kitchen-Aid counter-top mixer she was kind enough to host a day of baking, thereby saving me a lot of time and effort at home.  Julia made cherry chocolate chip cookies and I made oatmeal scotchies.  Yum!  I didn't get any photos at the exchange, but imagine a pool table completely covered in heaps of cookies.  That should give you a pretty good idea of what it looked like.

I finally quit procrastinating on the Christmas cards a couple of days ago and I'm nearly finished with them.  I think I've got about 30 more to write and I'll be done.  Cards are always a huge task because I like to do something creative and this year I ended up making my cards by hand.  On top of that, I'm currently without a working printer so whereas I usually print address and return address labels, I had to address every card by hand.  I send out about 100 cards and I write a note to each person by hand, so it's an incredibly time-consuming task.  The good news here is that all of my cards are made, they're all addressed (and return addressed!), and I'm about 2/3 of the way through writing them.  My goal is to have them all in the mail by Monday and I think I'm going to make it!


Through no small miracle I finished my holiday shopping a couple of days ago.  This has never happened before.  Every year I drive to Chicago a day or two before Christmas and spend Christmas Eve running out to pick up last-minute gifts and then lock myself in a room with my mom's rolls of wrapping paper until two in the morning.  I wonder what she'll do when I show up two days before Christmas with all the gifts purchased and wrapped?!  Tonight I wrapped and packaged everything that has to be shipped out, which was a bigger task than I had anticipated.  I loaded all of the packages into my trunk already so that tomorrow I can just waltz down to the garage and head to the post office without having to think about hauling everything downstairs.  What a relief to have that project taken care of!  Now all that's left to do is wrap gifts for my family this weekend.  This may turn out to be my most organized Christmas ever!

Where does the time go?

Alright, so it's officially been a month since I blogged, and I apologize for that.  I keep putting it on my To Do List and life keeps getting in the way.  Other things take priority and I just never quite get to it.  So now I'm back-logged.  Or back-blogged, as it were.  So, back we go in time aaaalll the way to Thanksgiving.


My friend Jaime was celebrating a birthday that could be divided by 11 on November 24th, so I went to Naperville, IL and met her for a celebratory sushi dinner and martinis before heading to Jan and Ron's:

I wasn't sure how well a cake would travel seven hours by car, so I made her this pan of pink frosted brownies with sprinkles instead:

We slumber-partied that night and spent the following morning drinking coffee (once I received confirmation via text--straight to my bed--that it was ready) and watching something on the Travel Channel about fried food that made me swear I'd never eat anything fried again.  It was disgusting.  Fortunately Jaime also introduced me to the brilliance of Man vs. Food on the Travel Channel.  The host lost to a 6 lb. burrito, which was all the inspiration we needed to head to a local burrito joint for lunch.


I know what you're thinking:  What about Bella?  Well don't you worry--Auntie Trish had a little photo session with her festive friend, and to kick off the Thanksgiving holiday I got to see this:

You're welcome.


Wednesday afternoon Jaime and I fought the Day-Before-Thanksgiving-Chicago-Traffic out to Jan and Ron's, where we made pies.  It took us about three hours to get them in the oven, but that's because we were making the crusts from scratch.  Or it's because of this:

One or the other for sure.  (Thanks, Ron, for the fabulous margaritas!!  You're already hired for next year!)  We took photos so you could see the finished products.  This is Jaime's pie:

And these are my pies:

Now I don't eat pie (I know, it's totally un-American, but it's true.  I hate pie.), but no one else seemed to have any trouble eating it, so I guess they turned out alright!  We're hoping to make the pie-baking (and margarita-drinking) a new day-before-Thanksgiving tradition.


The rest of the weekend came and went quickly and I was a bit of a delinquent with my camera.  I'm sad to report that the annual Rockettes kickline did not take place in the new kitchen Thursday morning because I was so busy making the stuffing that I forgot all about the parade until about 10:30.  (I think I'm getting senile!  Who forgets the parade?!)  Dinner was delicious, and of course the company was great too.  We had my aunt and uncle from Michigan and Ron's son Tyler and his fiance Debbie as well.  For about an hour after dinner the house looked like this:

...but after a little nap Family Game Night commenced!  I can't remember who won at Balderdash, so it was probably me.  The following night we played Pit, which we haven't played in years but is definitely a favorite in my family.  Ron and I lost miserably, but got a good laugh the next morning when our waitress at breakfast delivered The Bear (the equivalent of the Old Maid) to my uncle with his eggs!


It was sad to leave after such a fun weekend, but it helped knowing that I'd be back in just a few weeks to celebrate Christmas.  And, needless to say, there would be plenty to keep me busy when I got home!