Super Cool Party People

Typical Saturday night in this great urban city. Trying to get into super cool sounding lounge downtown for a friend's birthday. "Did they make a reservation? Are they inside? Maybe you could text and see where they are..." Clearly, unless we want to purchase an overpriced bottle of liquor, we're standing out in the cold for a while....ok 5minutes tops but it was cold! It felt like we were outside FOREVER! 

Enter 2 more friends & their SOs. Surely a group of 3 girls and their boys can get in? Nadda. Even when the less sober of us ladies tried to sweet talk the girl with The List. Sigh.

Side note: this is one of my biggest pet peeves now that I am married why do bars.clubs.lounges have to hate on the guys so much? group of girls gets in ASAP, but throw a boy in and BAM!  DENIED! Give the boys some love!!

With Guest of Honor still in transit, where to go? 

Ahhhh Giorgione of Spring Street. Restaurants usually are not that happy when a large party comes in and just wants to have drinks but I think the late hour of our arrival helped & we were all promptly seated & got a waitress too. Yippies. 

I added my review already on Yelp, tho sadly I didn't get to try any of the really delicious food nor did I have a camera to take a few pics of the really fun dining area or chalkboard menus of coffees, cheeses & desserts. Or the awesome wine storage on the exposed brick walls. We had wine, the other girls had very dirty martinis & the boys had some mixed drinks. It was great to be all together at a table! I really cannot wait to go and try some of the food. 

Super cool party people indeed...

Remind me to get better @ talking with the door people....

WS Wish List

The Clean Plate Club is giving away a $50 gift card to Williams-Sonoma. All you have to do is post about it on your blog about it and leave a comment for them with your info. 

My high priced dream purchase would be the KitchenAid Stand Mixer. Oh and ah. I love it. 

But that's a bit much for my needs right now. On a more economical side, I love the Bumble Bee Glasses & the Fruit Crate Glasses. Everyday yet a little fancy. 

Or the Cow Creamer - sooooo cute! 

Monogrammed bud vases? 3 for 29 - one in the bedroom, one in the bathroom and one on the kitchen sink!

We had this high shelf in our kitchen right up by the ceiling where my grammy kept her fancy cake pans & jell-o molds and any fun bottles, like the log cabin our syrup came in. Anyway, I would love to start my collection, even if I'm not doing a lot of baking right now with the Fleur-de-Lys Bundt Pan

Go enter! 

Peculiar Peppers

I'm missing my medium sized great for everyday use cutting board. WTF? 

Last week I got a trio of sweet peppers and they were delish. The orange one however, had a little something extra inside for me. LOL 

Weiiiird. 

I just bought some fancy herb/seasoning mixes from a local store. While I've yet to cook anything with them yet it got me thinking. Or rather wishing. How I wish I had a small herb garden to grow my own fresh herbs. Basil. Fennel. Parsley. Mint. Those would be my pics. Basil & Parsley bc I love to cook italian food. Mint bc it's just so fun to put in freshly brewed tea or decorate a plate. And Fennel bc it tastes SO much like licorice. My daddy grew some in our garden growing up. It was delicious & always my favorite. 

If I had better sunlight in the apt I'd get this...from Red Envelope. The Organic Herb Growing Kit with parsley, chives & basil. Oh to dream...

chirp chirp

You hear the crickets too??

It's been slow here recently food wise. Some eating out at our favorite sushi places. A celebratory dinner at Rock Center Cafe, not a lot of at home cooking. We had great seats at RCC, wish I had my camera. We were right along the windows looking at The Rink and it was pouring down rain. The twinkle lights were still on some trees on the other side of the rink. It was pretty awesome. 

I have however, started to brown bag it again for lunch during the week. I was on a frozen meals kick, Amy's Organic & Healthy Choice pasta steamers mostly, but have started to make my own again. Salads mostly. Good greens, grape tomatoes, mushrooms, a small amount of cheddar cheese and a small chicken breast. Wish Bone's Salad Spritzers are my current dressing of choice. I bring along the bottle in my lunch bag (yup I'm a dork) and spritz away then shake up my salad. Yumma. 

Dear Husband has a new job - soooo I'm not sure how much at home cooking I will be doing at home for a while until he's settled. But I will be sure to post fun things I find on the web & whatever dinner for 1 I make pour moi! xoxo

What's in a Name?

I really love personalized items with a monogram, initial or full first name. The stationary studio includes the standard items to personalize like note cards & labels and adds a kitchen & entertaining element with products like cookie jar, popcorn bowls, platters and paper products. I love the personalized paper napkins! My parents had them from way back in the day :)

Let them eat cake!

I really love to bake. There's just something about the sweet smells and tastes of baking that I have always loved. Nothing like flour -sugar- eggs- The KitchenAid stand mixer- greasing cookie sheets- icing cupcakes - the warm oven- and lacing long pieces of pie crust into a lattice. I've said it already on this blog but Grandma taught me to bake. She loved it. In fact she baked so often, usually for other people, that my Grandpa learned to ask "Is this for us? Or are you giving it away???" before indulging in one of her sweet treats. I remember standing on a kitchen chair, pulled up to the counter top, and leaning over the back of the chair to see what was being stirred about in the big white mixer. Oh wonder of wonders.

I regret that this first baking experience here at the Whisk was not very worthy of the loving way in which I was taught to bake. It was borderline disaster. Mostly just another less in the powers of ingredients rising as they cook. I'm afraid I forgot about that very important rule. I blame the cake mix really. The chocolate goo of Duncan Hines blurred my vision and my thought process. I filled the mini-cake pans too full and there was a big mess in the oven. I took everything out, still half raw and decided to start over again. I cleaned up the mess inside the oven I thought, poured less batter in the pans, closed the door, started the timer and crossed my fingers. Smoke began coming out of the oven as some left over batter burned. Lovely. I suppose I should count my blessings since the smoke alarm didn't go off, by the grace of god no doubt.

The second batch came out delicious. After cooling they were promptly frosted. And devoured. 

Co-Op

The word co-op send a shiver down many a spine of those looking to buy an apt. But this is a different kind of co-op.

I was flipping thru the online version of a local paper here (i love the rss feed!!) and came across and interesting entry. "The Norwood Food CoOp is currently accepting applications" Hmmmm I had some idea as to what a food coop was, thanks to a random episode of Law & Order, but I was curious as to how it might work here in the city. After further examination, I think we may purchase a half share of the fruit share. I just don't use veggies as much as I'd like. Fruit I think would be easier to grab and go in the morning or as a quick snack even when we're home. Sadly, even when I have grand intentions of making salad to take to work for lunch or as a starter for dinner, some or all of my selections go bad before I can use them a second time or even once. So fruit I think is the way to go. I have a sweet tooth afterall and this would be a healthier way to soothe that than sweets. 

Pics from a pick-up day a few years ago look...hippie. And I think a lot of ppl assume it will be that way. But I can deal. Fresh apples & berries yummma. Seeing that my dad grew up on a dairy farm upstate, I guess it's only a matter of time before one of his 3 daughters goes back to her roots. I don't think any of us are about to give up the Vanilla Soy milk we love so much, so this may be the next best thing. The Veggie farm is from about an hour east of where he grew up. And the Fruit Orchard is a about an hour and a half north, up and over to the next lake. Beyond the geographic connections, I think supporting what's left of our small local farms is SO important. 

I cannnnot wait!

Macy's

I have now been in Macy's twice this week - yesterday and today - thanks to jury duty only being a half day thing, yet getting credit for the whole day. Love that.  And both times I've had Starbucks (there are 4 inside Macy's btw) . In honor of my favorite drink, tall iced caramel macchiato, btw, here's a Starbuck Blog for you to enjoy. 

Besides my fun afternoons of browsing, I of course had to make a stop in The Cellar to check out the kitchen & dining products. And who's there? Martha. No, not in person, the celeb. sightings were yesterday (for those curious I saw commissioner of the NBA at the building where the offices are, and more importantly it's the fact that I knew who I saw since I never spot celebs) But seriously Martha. Her stuff is EVERYWHERE. It's almost nauseating being bombarded with her happy pastel colors everywhere. Her line of kitchen gadgets & tools has just about replaced my beloved Calphalon, KitchenAid and Good Grips. Sad. I know she's Martha but what are we afraid of a little competition people? What happened to America land of many choices?!?! I'm only half on the soapbox here, as I really do love her. Mostly I'm just sad for the pretty pink Calphalon baking tools I saw in a pile on top of the pink silicon baking pans. They deserve to be hung on a rack just like Martha's stuff! Fair and equal treatment people! 

Note - I really do love her. I use to wish we didn't leave so early for church on Sunday mornings so I could watch more of her show. I'm not hating, just...venting.

Did I buy anything down in The Cellar? But of course. Anolon's 5 piece mini-bakeware set. I am hoping, fingers and toes crossed, that these will work in the convection toaster oven I have used for so long. I reeeeaaaaly want to bake something other than cookies.  It's a mini-bread pan, mini fluted mold (for mini jellos too??),  mini tart pan, heart shape cake pan, and a 6 piece muffin pan. Love it. We had some small pans when I was growing up and I LOVED using whatever was left over to make my own creation. Can't wait to use these! 

Happy Shopping! 

Free Cookbook!

There's a few causes near & dear to the heart of the Whisk, as listed over on the sidebar. City Harvest is one of them. And now, thru March 31st you can get a free italian cookbook & they get a little more financial support.  Barilla pasta is responsible for all this celeb cookbook, with $1 going to City Harvest for every download. Click here for info 

It's about 32 pages long in Adobe. Lots of pretty pictures. Celebs include Debra Messing (love her!!) Marisa Tomei, entertaining expert David Tutera and chef Mario Batali. 

Mangia Bene! 

In Like a Lion, Out like a Lamb

March is the signal that Spring is almost here. Hopefully sooner than later! I took advantage of the beautiful weather today and stopped in to Columbus Circle's Wlliams-Sonoma. I swear, even in a big city where I could shop at a different store every day, I love my routine stops :)

There's tons of pretty new things for spring! This wreath with robin's egg truffles is online/catalogue only. What a beautiful gift to send a head to a hostess or send as a gift. The cool cookie cutters are available in store. I looove them!! They look really fun :) They press into the dough with the spring loaded stamp. Kinda involved for a cookie cutter but whatev. The website also has a few menus & recipes for both Passover & Easter meals. I love that. Sell me stuff and tell me how to use it, especially when it comes to all things food.This Brisket looks sooooooo good. 

Oh - new bright fun apron colors & prints incase anyone needs one. I'm kinda sad I have 2 already and clearly do not need a 3rd.

Happy Spring Shopping!