Saturday, January 8, 2011

New idea


Since my life is so crazy now with two kids, I have decided to post all of my dishes for the week during the weekend. It's much easier for me since I will only have to download pictures one time. This was a good week. I have to say the first dish was phenomenal. Sausage and Zucchini Rice. This was just super delicious and simple yet full of flavor. I did a couple different things with the recipe. I cooked my 1 1/2 cups of rice in my rice cooker with three cups of the broth. Then after all the rest of my ingredients were cooked I added the rice in at the end. I never added the extra broth. I felt like it would have been really soupy. This was super moist and flavorful. I also used olive oil as a healthy substitute when sauteing the vegetables. I later decided to give it a richer flavor to add a tablespoon of Smart Balance Omega 3 butter. I must say it again, this dish was so yummy. I never wanted the leftovers to go away, alas they did, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.


The second dish was from a new cookbook I got for Christmas. America's Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook. I have only looked through a few sections of the book and have already found a bunch of things I want to make. Thanks Mom! This recipe was Vegetable Lo Mein. I did really enjoy this recipe. Jason liked it a lot too. You don't miss the meat in it at all. Would be good with the addition of tofu. You can't go wrong with shiitake.
That's all I got around to this week. Jason was off for winter break and we were eating out a lot. Went to Chicago over his break and ate at two new places. One was Graham Elliot's new restaurant Grahamwich. When we first got to the city during the lunch hour we passed by and the line was winding all throughout the place and all they had was a communal table for maybe 16 at the most. Very tight in there and not stroller friendly at all. So we decided to do XOCO. Can't go wrong there. What a gong show that was though. Me and the kids went across the street to Starbucks to wait while Jason waited in line. One feeding and one poopy diaper later we finally had lunch. It was delightful. Jason had a special of beef mole torta and I had a carnitas torta. Lucy during a bad parenting moment had only chips and a churro dipped in melted chocolate. Oh yummmm! So we ended up getting lucky that night and headed to Grahamwich around 7:30. There were only a few people in there and no line. Awesome. We could dine in. Our original plan was to take it up to the room. Jason got the grilled cheese which was insane. I swear when I saw them making it that they plopped a couple tablespoons of butter on the melted cheese inside the sammy just for funsies. I had a bahn mi. It was good. That's all I have to say really. I have made bahn mi at home that taste just as good. Not to sound full of myself. There was just nothing unique about it. Me ordering the wrong thing really. The pork belly wasn't that great on it either. We also ordered the special popcorn which made me wanna puke. Just had a pungent taste to it. Had some powdered cheese on it and truffle oil. Jason and Lucy loved it. We ordered the pickled vegetables. Those were good. I would have ate them but wanted to be nice to my breastfed child. It was a fun dining experience and I would go back for sure to order something else.
The second place we went that was just over the top good, great, excellent, amazing, I have dreams about it. Yolk. I had sent my parents there on their stay in Chicago having heard it was good and they couldn't say enough great things about it. Jason tried the same thing my dad had which was called the Tour de France. Banana bread french toast with bananas, orange french toast with strawberry sauce and a poppy seed french toast with an orange sauce. It was also served with peanut butter for the banana bread. It was so so good. My favorite was the orange bread. I had some whole grain pancakes with granola in the actual batter with blueberries then topped with bananas. Everything was quality and so so fresh and tasty. The environment was fun and bright and all the waiters were very friendly. We are thinking of driving down tomorrow just to eat there again. On the kids menu they had smores pancakes and oreo pancakes. The menu is just super unique with lots of healthy choices too.