Stir fry

Leftover Meatloaf

Meatloaf gets a bad rap, and I'm not really sure why. The wife makes a really good meatloaf from a pound of ground beef, some onion, garlic, milk, ketchup, and salt & pepper. It's tasty, and the recipe is included below. When we first cooked the meal, we steamed some broccoli and cooked some long-grain brown rice along with it. A pretty simple meal, but healthy and delicious!

Mom's Meatloaf


1 lb lean ground beef
2/3 cup milk
1/4 cup ketchup
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
3 cloves garlic, diced
Ketchup

-Preheat oven to 350 F
-In a mixing bowl, combine the ingredients, mixing well. Form into a loaf in a greased baking pan. Top with a zig-zag of ketchup.
-Bake for 1 hour at 350 F. (This tends to be a fairly juicy recipe, so we pour out excess liquid about halfway through. It makes the edges a bit crispy, and probably cuts down on the fat content too.)

Chicken Tortilla Soup & Guacamole Bruschetta

I recently began renting space at a co-working location called the Coop. Today, one of the gals from the design firm that owns the space, along with her fiance, cooked lunch for everyone in the office. This was the result. The soup was good, and would have been perfect with some salted tortilla chips. However, the blue corn tortillas were low-sodium, and so the soup wasn't quite salty enough.

The guacamole bruschetta, on the other hand, was perfect. The Italian bread was sliced thin and toasted til it was crunchy. The guacamole was just chunky enough to be bruschetta-like, without feeling like you got a mouth full of avocado and nothing else. Thanks to Tessa and Dorian for their great cooking!

First Grill-Out, Continued: Dessert at Hot Chocolate

Sorry, the quality of these photos is not up to par. The lighting was quite low at the restaurant. As soon as I get a chance, I will tweak things in Photoshop and hopefully you'll be able to see the dishes!

After eating such a great steak, we both agreed that such a fine meal was almost too good to not be followed by dessert. It was early enough that we decided to go out to one of Chicago's hottest dessert restaurants, Hot Chocolate.

We started off our dining experience with some wine and a cheese plate. Specifically, I had the Artizuri Garnacha (another Spanish red!), and the wife had Fritz's Riesling, a semi-dry Austrian riesling. Both paired well with the cheese plate, which had Manchego Grand Reserve, Dunbarton Bleu, and Grand Cru Gruyere, along with some candied nuts, plain crostini, shortbread cookies, and a baby green salad.

After our cheese course (because, after all, we were making this the continuation of our dinner!), we ordered our desserts. I had the Poppycock dessert, which is quite possibly the most delectable thing I have ever tasted. It is a pecan pie square with caramel corn ice cream on one side, and the other side is a piece of shortbread with caramel corn ice cream, topped with a drizzle of honey, tangerine, and vanilla bean cream. Oh, and there is some poppycock (think Cracker Jacks, but better) on top of both sides that just completes the dish. It was unbelievable.

The wife had a creme brulee that was nearly perfect: creamy, sweet, caramelized, and had a hint of citrus to it. I much preferred my dish, but hers could not be ignored either.

First Grill-Out of the Year

My parents-in-law, with some health issues and general concern for eating wholesome foods, are fond of purchasing grass-fed antibiotic-free beef from their local Amish butcher in Kentucky. It so happens that said butcher only sells entire sides of beef or whole butchered cows. And thankfully, my parents-in-law recognize they cannot eat a whole cow in a year, and are generous enough to send us home to Chicago with a cooler full of various roasts, steaks, and ground beef.

In celebration of the first truly sunny day we've had in a while, I decided to grill some of that beef. Specifically, four T-Bone Steaks that I've been itching to eat since we trucked them up to Chicago from Kentucky over Christmas. A simple garlic salt & pepper rub was all they needed for flavor before they went on the grill. A few minutes on each side, and we had perfect medium steaks.

Meanwhile, the wife was inside sauteing red, orange, and green bell pepper, sweet onion, and sugar snap peas along with some herbs. We opened a bottle of 2001 Sierra Cantabria Rioja, a spicy Spanish red wine that had mellowed a couple years in our wine rack. It was about the best first cook-out of the year that I can recall having.

The moral of this story is simple: When you get married, find a spouse with in-laws who buy too much grass-fed beef and will give it to you for free so you can enjoy it.

Or, put another way: when you get good ingredients, don't mess them up by trying to be overly fancy.

Eggs Benedict and French Toast from Jam

In honor of Casimir Pulaski Day, or rather, in honor of the wife having the day off work due to Casimir Pulaski Day, we decided to have a late breakfast at a local place we've been waiting to try. Jam is that restaurant, and what a place! Their focus is on brunch, and I ordered the Eggs Benedict. Now, I'm a big fan of the Benedict in general, but this was something special. The eggs were perfectly poached and looked like domes of glistening white savoriness; crisped pork belly replaced the traditional Canadian bacon; and instead of slathering the whole thing with fatty hollandaise, the beet flavored hollandaise was used as a decorative garnish with enough to provide flavor while letting the other components stand out on their own merits.

The wife had the Malted Custard French Toast. This photo really doesn't do it justice. It was magnificent--light, creamy, fluffy, and savory all at once. The menu says it has 'macerated rhubarb, lime leaf cream, and pink peppercorn' as flavoring, but really it was the rhubarb that stood out.

Jam gets a great recommendation from us. Cash-only, but there is an ATM on the premises.