Dessert - Roasted Marshmallows

The weather has been so great that I just want to be out in it as long I can. Tonight we had our first fire pit time.  I bought it last year and love sitting out in front of the fire.  There is something so relaxing and enjoyable about sitting near a fire. The smell, the heat, the light....everything is perfect when you are sitting in front of a fire.

We had HUGE marshmallows (have you seen these extra large marshmallows?  You can find them at most grocery stores.) and our son went to the trees to cut off branches to use to the roast these white cylinders of perfection.  Who doesn't love a marshmallow roasted over a fire?!?!  Warm, gooey, crispy, sweet.....need I say more!!! Some of you out there would say - hey what about a s'more??? Sure, I have everything to make a s'more and some people in our family like them....but I am a purist.  Just the marshmallow - thank you.  What I really like to do it roast it, then put it in my mouth and pull off the crispy outside layer, put it back in the fire, pull off the crispy outside...and over and over until the marshmallow is done.  Such simple and complete joy!!!!

My life - Happy dog, happy day

It has been such amazing weather!  It actually concerns me when I think about it...why?  Why so warm? Why almost no snow? What will this mean to my plants? What will this mean to the heat this summer? What will it mean to the bugs? Ughhhh.....I just have to stop thinking.

Being with my dogs are the best way to just stay in the moment.  They are such great reminders of how lucky we are and how wonderful life can be if we just focus on the now and not worry about the past or future.

A great thing you can do for your dog is to give your dog raw bones.  NOT COOKED BONES!!  Only raw bones.  You can get these from your butcher.  I get them from the butchers in the grocery store I work at and keep them in the freezer for days just like today.  I only give them to the dogs when the weather is perfect because the raw bone cannot be in the house.  It is SO good for their teeth! Scrapes away yucky stuff and exercises their gums.

Here is our Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, Jake, enjoying his bone.  You can see my new composter in the background. I go out and spin it every day.

So....knick knack patty wack give your dog a bone!!!!

Dinner - Corned Beef, sauerkraut, swiss cheese and thousand island dressing

WARNING - YOU MIGHT WANT A DROOL RAG WHILE READING THIS....

This time of the year is great because corned beef is on sale.  Yum! I made Boar's Head corned beef.  I just followed the directions.  You put the meat in water with the spices from the packet and let it first boil then simmer for about 3 hours.  That's it!!  I made enough corned beef for us all to eat as well as left overs....for only $14!!  Are you kidding me?!?!?  To buy it from a deli, it would be TONS more money....and all you have to do is boil meet with spices.  And it is SO much leaner than anything you can get a deli.

I made a bread-less reuben.  I cut up the corned beef, put some swiss cheese on the meat, put a pile of saurkraut on it and dipped each yummy bite into thousand island dressing.  I found a sugar free, very low fat thousand island dressing and it was delicious.  Having the left overs are great to have!

Lesson here - Make your own corned beef....you will not be disappointed and you will save money also!

SPECIAL EVENT - International Home and Housewares Show MORE.....

I thought I would show more pictures for the Housewares show.  I just keep thinking about all the great stuff I saw there and want to keep sharing it.....

Le Creuset cookware....what is your favorite color?  I think I would just take one piece from each  color to have a very colorful kitchen.  That was one trend I saw A LOT of.....color, color, color.  A lot of color on everything...plastics, pan, glassware, serving pieces....color, color, color.  Maybe all these bright colors are a reflection of how dark others parts of the world have been lately.

This was awesome.  My Drap is the name of the company.  These are linen or cotton placemats or different size napkins (cocktail, dinner, etc), depending on what size you buy.  You just tear them apart like papertowel.  But in no way can you tell they have been torn apart.  They told me you can wash these up to 6 times. There is this nice, crisp white line on each piece.  The one here is a placemat size.  VERY cool!!!!

This brings me to the next big show in Chicago - the Restaurant Show.  I am looking for tickets to this....can anyone hook me up?  I REALLY want to get to this show and do a full run through of it for all of you.  Thanks and I will soon write about some of the products I got at the show....keep your eye on my blog......

SPECIAL EVENT - International Home and Housewares Show

Thank you to our friend, Stephen.  We went to the show and had an amazing time.  Oh...what I saw.  All kinds of amazing products for the kitchen and house.

And we also got to try different food.

Here is gnocchi that Sarah Grueneberg from Top Chef Texas (runner up - but she should have won - in my opinion!) was demonstrating.  I just wrote her and will be getting the recipe.  I'll make it and write it all here.  It was SO light and tasty.  She was doing her demonstration with the Top Chef products.  Then we were shown a couple of prototypes of tools they were working on.  One was a salt and pepper grinder and one was a wine bottle opener.  Both were good looking, but the wine tool was my favorite of the two.  It not only had a cork opener, but the other end of it had a vacuum pump to keep your wine fresh.  I gave them my information and was told that I will be put on a list to try new products.  I will keep you posted on that...how cool would that be?!?!?

Here are some more great products I saw....

Aren't these beautiful?!? They were made by Amoretti Brothers.Their studio is in Mexico City.

How odd and funny are these knife holders?

This was gorgeous.  It wasn't to purchase, but wow....imagine this in a kitchen.  And I don't think it would be that hard to make.

Now this was one of the most clever things we saw.  See all the different size pots?  All you need is the set of pans, one handle (on right) and one grip (on the left). How simple would that be? The grip and the handle just hook onto the pans.  SO cool!!!!

Ohhhhh, this was tasty!  It adds carbonation to juices.  This one was a pineapple/lyche juice with a coconut foam.  The foam was made with coconut milk with some gelatin.  Then it was put into a into the Twist and Sparkle. 

This was Nambe.  They have this new line and it was SO beautiful .  This isn't your mom's Nambe anymore....remember when you were registering for your wedding and your mom kept asking if you had registered for a piece of Nambe yet.  These wood and metal combos are gorgeous.

Here was the best part of the time at the show......

This is the Fissler Blue Point Pressure cooker.  It was demonstrated by the Voltaggio brothers - from Top Chef.  They cooked ribs and BBQ "Baked" Nuts.  All these were made in around 15 minutes.  Amazing and truly something that every family should have.  I am working on getting one and hope to cook like crazy using it. I'll keep you posted.

In this picture, The Voltaggio Brothers from Top Chef.  WOW!!!  Michael was talking and Bryan was smoking ribs, right there on the stage with a "smoke gun" he called it.   They were so entertaining and SO full of knowledge.  I loved listening to them.  And boy oh boy, do they know this pressure cooker.  I was SO excited about this product.  

Here is a piece of the smoked ribs and the hazelnut bbq baked beans.  YUM!!!!

It was a great day!!  My feet were tired but I had all kinds of images in my head.  I love food and everything that comes along with it!!!

Dinner - MAJOR FLOP and beautiful flowers - what a combo!

Ok...I tried something different.  I feel like I am cooking in a rut....if you have read this blog you see how I don't like that.  Also - when everyone is running around and need to eat at different times, dinners get tougher and tougher.  So, I tried something new....

Nacho night.  Sounds good right...NOOOOOO!  Partly because I feel like I need to make things healthy, so I use baked chips. BIG NOOOO in nacho world.  I tried not to use minimal cheese to keep things healthy.  Another BIG NOOOOO in nacho world.  UGHHHHHH.....

Going right to left on the extra stuff....guac, black beans (plain), salsa, sour cream (fat free), and queso sauce (fat free).  Oh well....again, I tried.  Cross another idea off the list.

To bring something good to the blog - here is a picture of some gorgeous daffodils I got from the education director at our temple.  I tell you...interesting things have been happening at temple.  We have this new education director and with that is coming a new and fresher culture.  Some people handle that well, some people don't.  And those that don't, aren't grateful for even the attempt to help their children.  All they want to do is yell and complain.  Why complain if you don't try to change things?!?!  Step up if you don't like something.  Complaining only adds negativity to the world and goodness knows there is enough of that in the world. So look at these flowers and remember the good that is out there and the good you can do......

Restaurant review - Asian Noodle House Hoffman Estates, IL

On Man vs. Food (on the Travel Channel) there was a guy who finished a bowl of 5 pounds of pho in 10 minutes. Have you ever watched this show?  You see all these people finishing HUGE amounts of food in CRAZY short periods of time.  Don't ask me why we were watching it.  We happened upon it once and got hooked.  One of the few shows that whole family watches without someone stomping out of the room angry. Oh family...can't live with it, can't live without it.

Anyways, it got me stoked up for eating noodles.  I looked on Yelp (one of my favorite sites for finding places to eat) and found this place.  Great reviews....no website = had to go there. Off we went, kids in tow to find the Asian Noodle House in Hoffman Estates, IL.

We got there around 6p which was just in time.  This place fills up!  When we got there, we were the only caucacians - always a good sign when going to a ethnic restaurant.  The interior and exterior are nothing to write home about.  Plain, kind of run down.  The kids were a bit put off by this, but we kept encouraging them to hang in there and don't make decisions until you eat the food.  Luckily - we were right.

We ordered some hot tea.  It was brought to us in the same thick plastic cups that the water was served in.  Made it a bit tricky to drink it right away - too hot to handle.  Oh well....it's more about the food.....

We ordered spring rolls and egg rolls to start with.  The egg rolls were ok, not worthy of a picture...but the spring rolls were very good.  They had thin rice noodles, lettuce, carrots and shrimp in them.  Cute presentation, but this picture doesn't how the chips and discolorations of the "boat".

I had braised noodles with BBQ pork and shrimp dumplings.  The dumplings were so nice and light. I love when the wrappers are almost paper thin. The noodle dish was delicious, though there was a slight seafood/fishy flavor to the noodles.  Not enough to go yuck, enough to go hummmm.  It went well with the sweet BBQ pork.  Everything was served on the thick plastic blue and white dishware. Fine....

One of our daughters had chicken fried rice - no vegis (this is her favorite go to dish).  She didn't like it because the chicken was dark meat.  We all ate it instead.  I thought it was good.  My husband had a soup that was just like my dish, but in a broth.  He said it was good....not full of flavor like he had had at other noodle places.

My husband ordered shrimp udon for our other daughter.  WOW....great thick, chewy noodles!!  See them....so good. And the flavor rocked!!  HUGE portion too....had left over - yeah!

Our son had chicken with thick noodles.  It wasn't on the menu - all that was on there was beef and thick noodles, but they did it with chicken when we asked.  His was delicious too!  Thick rice noodles.  Again huge portions with left overs.

We will be going back here.  The prices were VERY affordable.  The service was excellent - we never will leave with an empty water glass - a fancy place like Flemings (see restaurant review) can learn from a small place like this.