English is a bar nearby my office. I don’t particularly like it that much, but it is really close, so I end up going there occassionally. I like to drink this English beer they sell, made by St. Peters Brewery in Bungay, a town in the county of Suffolk, in England. It comes in a big, fancy bottle and you can feel good about being at a bar you don’t really like when you drink it!
I saw this recipe for lasagna cupcakes several months ago and couldn’t get it out of my mind. So, one weekend when Dallas was traveling, Jess came over and we made them. They were super easy to assemble and tasted great. We also made a BLT salad and roasted some garlic to spread on a French loaf. Great meal! I imagined making the lasagna cupcakes would be fun to do with a kid because of the novelty of it and also because the steps are pretty simple to do.
Jess brought over this bottle of Almond Creek Vineyards sparkling wine. It did have a very almond-y taste but you got used to it after a few sips. The thing is, it made my cheeks bright red! I think I was allergic. … but that didn’t really stop us from drinking the whole bottle.
One cup of your favorite pasta sauce
1 lb hamburger meat
18 wonton wrappers
8 ounces mozzarella cheese , grated
3 ounces parmesan cheese , grated
4 ounces ricotta cheese
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and spray 6 serving muffin tin with Pam
Cook hamburger meat, season to taste, drain.
Reserve 8 tablespoons of Parmesan and 8 tablespoons of mozzarella—this will be the topping. The remaining cheese will be used in the lasagnas (note you can vary the amount of cheese to taste keeping in mind that the parmesan is salty, the mozzarella is sweet as well as salty and helps to hold the lasagnas together, and the ricotta is sweet and creamy).
Start assembling the lasagnas. Line each cupcake mold with a round wonton wrapper. Put a little Parmesan, a little mozzarella, and a little ricotta into each mold. Top with a little meat and a spoonful of sauce. Repeat layers of wonton wrappers, cheeses, meat and sauce, creating 3 layers in all, and ending with sauce. Sprinkle each lasagna with reserved Parmesan and mozzarella.
Bake until the lasagnas are nicely browned, about 20 minutes.
Let cool in the pan for about 5 minutes, then run a knife around the edges and remove from pan.
In grand family tradition of playing bar games for 40th birthday parties, we all gathered last weekend to celebrate Chad’s big birthday and played Jeopardy: Chad Edition. Remember, for Brian’s party there was the Pub Crawl Olympics and for Jill’s there was Survivor Wrigleyville.
Brian setting up the Jeopardy board.
Jill explaining the rules.
Jeopardy Team Representatives: Carrie, Limey, Ted
For Chad’s 40th birthday Jen rented out the beer garden at Fizz, but since it was raining, we were in a heated tent. We paid $35 for all the drinks we could drink for 4 hours and Jen arranged for some really delicious food to be served as well. At the appointed time, we all gathered to play Jeopardy. When we arrived Jen had given us each a number: 1, 2 or 3. This was to sort people into 3 teams. I was on Team 2: Team Burrito House. We chose Limey to be our team representative. When the answers were presented, Limey had to yell Burrito House to buzz in with the correct question. The other teams and reps were Ted for Team Guthries, Team 1, and Carrie (and later Danny) for Team Syracuse.
Chad
Getting intense!
These were the categories – For the Jeopardy round there was The Man and His Bans, Potent Potables, and Movies & Music. In Double Jeopardy there was Chad’s Sports Follies, Brushes With Fame, and He’s Had a Job or Two. The Final Jeopardy category was Location, Location, Location and the question was about how many places Chad has lived in Chicago. Jill and Brian constructed the Jeopardy board. Jill played Vannah White, flipping the answers open, while Brian did his best Alex Trebec, reading the answers off. Jen was the scorekeeper.
Chad had to charade out one of the Jeopardy answers.
Jeopardy crowd.
Final Jeopardy
Chen-Je with two winning girls, Caroline & Loden
The game got really heated with everyone screaming to ring in and shouting answers. Before Final Jeopardy my team, Team Burrito House, was in the lead by far! We could not mess this up! Well, leave it to Limey…. he wagered something like $4,000 more than we even had, which seems to be breaking the rules to me, and then we lost everything, and then some, when no one on our team know how many places Chad lived in. Wah wah wahhhh…
Cousin & Todd
Baltimore Bomb
Baltimore Bombs
Jill & Dallas
Chad’s high school friend Todd flew into town from Maryland and introduced us to a new shot called the Ravens Bomb. Well, when he’s tailgating at football games he calls it that, but we were opting to call it the Baltimore Bomb. In Baltimore they drop a grape vodka shot into a cup of Red Bull energy drink. At Fizz they only had Monster energy drink, so we used that. Check out the awesome custom shot glasses Fizz had. Perfect for bombs. As for the Baltimore Bomb? It tasted awesome. The grape vodka tasted just like grape soda. Todd did warn me that they will sneak up on you if you are not careful, but I only had two. They were flowing pretty readily, though. I think they did sneak up on some people. Or… it could have been the other bombs…
Chad’s Birthday Cheesecakes
Dessert: Carbombs or Cheesecake?
Of course a night out with all these guys is not complete without Irish Car Bombs. Right as Trent was ordering a round, Jen was in the other room gathering people for cake! Ed (remember The Baked Escape) made two white chocolate raspberry swirl cheesecakes (with a chocolate cookie crust) for the party. So delicious. I’ve had this one a few times. It never disappoints. Just as the cake was being cut the Irish Car Bombs arrived. So, choose your poison: Cheesecake or booze. Or both. Why not? Actually, I only had a tiny sliver of the cake and passed on the bombs.
Todd & Brian
Dancing around the birthday boy.
After this, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel very drunk, but there was a lot of dancing. And Ed sent me photos of things this week that I only vaguely remember happening. So yeh. Kind of proud that us old people can still have a good time!
So, a couple months ago my headphones bit the dust and I needed to get a new pair. I ended up with these Sony MDR-XB40EX 13.5mm High Sensitivity Driver Extra Bass EX Earbuds (could they have a longer name!?). They got good reviews online, and were not super-cheap, but not super-expensive either. The earbud sticks out farther from my ear than I’m used to, but I’m finding them to be pretty comfortable. Also, and this may be the best part, they cord never gets tangled! They came with a little zippered case for storage and no matter how I just shove them in there, they always just come out untangled later on.
A few weeks back we went out for dinner with Christine and Adam at Cho Sun Ok, a Korean barbecue restaurant. Christine is Korean and unlike Dallas, who is half Korean, she speaks fluent Korean. Dallas only knows a handful of Korean food-related words, even though his mom was born there.
Christine ordered all of our food for us. We had a ton of Banchan, kimchi stew, and a super delicious pajeon (scallion and egg pancake). For our main entree we barbecued slices of beef on the grill in the center of our table. Everything was really delicious, even if I don’t know what it all was! Christine basically just rattled off a bunch of Korean words and food kept coming and coming to the table.
At the end the waitress took all of our leftovers and dumped it in the grill, then dumped rice on top of it and let it get all toasty. Then stirred it up to make the best fried rice ever!