Easter Weekend

We had a great time this weekend! I had to work early on Saturday, so we kept Friday night low key. The first disc of season 4 of  Big Love finally arrived from Netflix, so I convinced Joe we needed to watch all three episodes within a single evening. It's such a great show! Now I'm checking the mail everyday to see if the next disc has arrived yet.

Saturday night we went over to Julie and Jay's condo, to eat tasty Mexican food and help them brew their first batch of beer. Really, mostly Julie and I sat with our beverages and talked nonstop, while the guys did most of the brewing. Their equipment and supplies were a little different than what we're used to, but I think the batch should still be a great success! It was fun chatting with them as we did the brewing, and I can't wait to try the final product. Also, I'm constantly amazed at how well Joe understands the brewing process. He is able to answer so many advanced questions in a really in depth way. Maybe after he makes his millions in finance (a girl can wish, right?), then he can open a brewery of his own!

I was lucky to get Easter off from work, so we planned to spend the day with our good friends Jess and Henry. We've done multiple holiday celebrations with them before, and now that they are talking about moving, I wanted to make sure we spent Easter together.

We decided sleeping in was important, so we didn't meet up until the 11:30 mass. It was a lovely service, with a full choir and not too many loud adorable children. I love how joyful Easter is, after the somber time during Lent.

After church we went home and made a huge brunch, with amazing coffee cake, fresh fruit, bacon, sausage, and an asparagus and red pepper strata. It was a feast! At this point we added some mimosas into the celebration, too :)

Joe and I had planned on brewing on Sunday afternoon, since it was a rare weekend day that we were both home all day. Jess and Henry couldn't resist the fun, so they stuck around and helped with the Belgian Tripel that we brewed. Besides the wort chiller shooting out boiling water as it was sanitized, the batch seemed successful, and I'm pleased to report it was fermenting away by the next day.

It was a pretty beer centric last couple of days!  I can't wait to taste the batches that were started this weekend, and I'm glad we're reinvigorated after a couple slightly frustrating batches of beer. We have to brew a lot in the next couple months, because by later summer it gets too warm in our condo. Hopefully we can stock up by that time!

Just can't fight it!

wan·der·lust (wndr-lst)     noun.
A very strong or irresistible impulse to travel.
---------------------------------------------------[
German : wandern, to wander (from Middle High German) + Lust, desire (from Middle High German, from Old High German; see las- in Indo-European roots).]



Prague



I have been feeling a MAJOR case of wanderlust lately! Joe and I have gone through spurts of traveling, crossing the country to visit friends and family. We got to visit my parents in The Netherlands three years ago, and spent a few memorable days in Paris during the trip. We've been to Mexico a couple times, spent time on the beach in California, and explored our Nation's capital.



Bonjour!



I can't say we're not lucky, and I can't complain about the experiences we've had. But I can say we went to Washington D.C. last May... and have only been to Missouri and Kansas (multiple times) in the 10 months since that trip. Oh, and we've toured Iowa on some of the drives back and forth! I'll let these facts speak for themselves...


Thankfully, this travel drought will hopefully be coming to an end relatively soon! I'm going to try to be really responsible with my spending, and to budget accordingly, and then hopefully all these trips will become more than just ideas.  Here's what we're currently looking forward to:



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April-- Kansas City for our nephew's baptism. A great chance to see family, and hopefully catch up with some friends too! We're Liem's Godparents, and are really excited about this honor.



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July-- California! My cousin and her family are headed to Europe for a month, and offered up their great house in LA. We'll just have to buy the plane tickets and groceries, since the house and cars will be there waiting for us. I can't wait to hang out at the beach, and to catch up with my relatives out there.

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September-- NYC. This is just a dream at this point, but Joe and I are dying to get out there. My good friend Danielle is a VIP lawyer out there, and I am hoping to get to catch up with her over a long weekend!I haven't even consulted with her about this idea, but I sure like the idea :)



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November-- Cabo San Lucas. Another good friend from college is getting married, and we're going to help them celebrate! This will also be a trip to celebrate our anniversary, since we will have been married for FIVE years in December.

So no more complaining for me! These are some great goals for us to work towards, and even when Lent is over and I can shop again, I'm going to remind myself of these potential great vacations that I should be focused on. I can't wait to see so many of my friends and family during these trips!

Merry Christmas!

We went to St Louis to spend Christmas with my family this year, and it was so much fun! We hadn't spent Christmas with my family since 2006, when we attempted to celebrate Christmas in our small apartments in Kansas City just days before our wedding. Being at my parents house this year was just like old times, with a couple sorta crazy husbands joining the mix (see below for kiwi juggling proof of the crazy husband issue).

The main focus of our holiday weekend was food and beer, obviously. The apple didn't fall far from the tree on this matter, and my whole family tends to focus on these two elements at any get together. Sadly, our holiday beer wasn't fully conditioned in time, but Joe and Dan took a trip to the grocery store to make sure we didn't get too thirsty! I also shared some of my pickled vegetables from this summer, which everyone gobbled up. I think the dilly beans were the crowd favorite, and I really loved the dill carrots, too.

We went out to our favorite pizza place, Pi, on the 23rd, courtesy of my grandma. It was a delicious meal... I love their deep dish! It's always fun to hang out around the Delmar Loop area in St Louis, where this pizza place is located. We got a little silly waiting for our table, though...

Brendan & Colleen, in the cozy waiting area at Pi.

We got a little picture happy!

My parents enjoying the Schlafly Christmas Ale.

We got dressed in our Sunday best on Christmas Eve, and went to Mass. Then we came home to eat a fantastic Italian feast. Christmas morning meant TONS of gifts to open, then some lazy time in our pajamas while we checked out all our new goodies. We ate some more, had some drinks, and just soaked up a relaxing day together. What a great Christmas!

The guys cleaned up pretty well, huh?

Rockwell Brewing: Winter Spiced Beer

Merry Christmas!

We decided a little late to take a stab at making a Christmas beer, so this batch has officially been renamed as a "winter beer". We've only tasted an early bottle or two, because the bottle conditioning is still underway. The added carbination will make the final product more balanced, but it seems like the tastes we've had are very promising. We wanted it to have lots of spices in it, and the orange peel added a great citrus note. This will be an enjoyable quaff for the bitter winter months ahead.

We found the recipe on brewmonkey.com, a website Joe found recently. The site is full of great sounding beer recipes, contributed by homebrewers from around the country. Santa also brought Joe multiple beer books this year, so expect some tasty batches from us this Spring!

Here's the link to the recipe.

Thanks for helping us with the bottling, Henry!

It's important to enjoy a brew while doing your own homebrewing... and this batch's beer of choice was Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA :)

Soaking up the holiday season

I've spent today getting ready to head down to St Louis for Christmas, and I couldn't be more excited! Christmas is my all time favorite holiday, because it ends up being a full month of celebration with friends and family. When you toss in our anniversary (4 years on Dec 29th!), and New Year's Eve, it ends up being a really fun and social time of year.

The kick off to this season is of course Thanksgiving, which we spent in DeKalb with Joe's family. The star of the weekend was Liem, our little nephew. He was a lot of fun to watch and snuggle with, and has already changed a lot since we first met him in September. His parents are doing great, too, and it was fun to catch up with this side of our family!

The new mom!

Oldest & younger brothers... forever bonded after a summer of living together in Kansas City :)

Post-turkey poker playing. Joe kicked ass!

A few days after Thanksgiving, we were back home and I was craving leftovers. So I decided to roast a turkey breast, bake some stuffing, and have a second Thanksgiving dinner just for Joe and me. It was a feast, and the leftovers kept us happy for days!

Attempts at Urban Gardening

For the last few years I've been talking about attempting to grow some herbs on our back porch, but for one reason or another we've bailed on the plans each summer. This time we were out of excuses and decided to bite the bullet and give urban gardening a try! I love cooking with fresh herbs, and was excited at the idea of having them available to me right outside the door. Also, to know that I've grown a part of the food I'm eating is an exciting concept that I wanted to try.

We decided to get our garden started on Memorial Day, when Joe and I were both home from work. Unfortunately, this ended up being a relatively rainy day, but I refused to wait any longer! So we got soaked while wondering around Gethsemane Garden Center, and them embraced the rain while planting at home.

This is a Czech Bush heirloom tomato plant. They recommended it for our small space, because it grows like a bush and doesn't need the typical steaks for a tomato plant that grows up. I also couldn't resist the cute little gnome to watch over our plants!

We bought two kinds of basil. Typical sweet Italian basil, and also lemon basil. It has already been growing a ton, and I used some of the basil in a pasta sauce I made last week. We also are growing French thyme, which I added to the quinoa loaf that I blogged about. The herbs taste fresh, and it's wonderful to just cut them straight off the plan while I'm in the midst of my cooking. Below is the final product. The tomato plant is already sprouting some small green tomatoes, which we've been checking in on every day. I can't wait to taste them!

Let the blog begin!

New year, new blog. That works, right? I'm going to start this one off slowly, because I still want to focus my effort on Cooking and Eating in the Windy City for the time being. But this blog is something I hope will evolve, into a food, beer, and life blog for Joe and I to share. So I'll be doing some posts that show up on both blogs, and also sharing a little more about what we're just up to in our everyday life here in Chicago. If you made your way here, I hope you enjoy & stop back again!


This New Year's Eve was one to remember. We did an impromptu Spanish tapas dinner with our friends Nasser and Christie. We had tortilla, goat cheese in spicy tomato sauce, a caramelized onion and mushroom tart with chorizo, and some (slightly Italian) white bean and rosemary dip. It was a delicious spread, and we had a great time hanging out at home before the night got a bit crazier!


Next on the agenda was Girl Talk, a DJ show at the Congress Theater. We had a group of about 15 people all meeting up there, and we rocked out and danced like fools. It was a blast! We had so much fun dancing, laughing, and catching up with friend who were in from out of town. Being on the older side of the crowd, we decided to stay towards the back, and we had a great view of the whole floor. Such a fun time!


We ended the night at a friend of a friend's house, with more dancing and catching up. As we walked through our door around 4:00 am, we decided it had been a successful night. We also agreed that we're getting to old for this, and next year we'll be hosting a small house party or dinner or sorts :) It was a NYE that I'll remember for a long time, though! Thanks friends for making it a great night!