Holiday Glory

As promised, here's my holiday style post:

This year was a little different from previous years since I'm married now.  Instead of Elle and I going our separate ways and being apart for four or five days, I split time in Cleveland and Memphis (since she was in Cleveland for Turkey Day).  I didn't feel right not going home since my mother's bday is on Christmas day.  So, I flew home first thing on the 23rd and spent the day with my mom.  A few highlights:

-This is how I started out.  We only left 40 minutes late, which makes me very lucky, but it was definitely a bad omen for the rest of the Christmas travelers:

- My sister bought me a Calvin Klein giftcard a year ago not realizing that you could only spend it at the outlets.  Well, outlets aren't that convenient without a car living in Chicago.  Since I arrived in Cleveland at like 8:30 AM, my mom and I drove straight to Aurora Farms and i used that gift card like SNAP.  It was good, I got a bunch of good undershirts and a black skinny tie that I badly needed.  It was practically xmas before xmas. 

- As you may know, we have a variety of wildlife populating our back yard. Well, it wasn't deer this time, it was gigantic squirrels.  These things were HUGE thanks to their winter stashing:

You can't see it very well, but that thing was enormous.

- For my mom's birthday, we gave her the royal treatment on the 23rd.  We picked her up in a limo, went out for steaks and drinks for dinner, and topped it off with the Rockettes show downtown.  It was AWESOME.  Even better, an ice storm moved in during dinner and since we had the limo all night, we didn't have to worry about any of it.  I dressed up super fancy since I'll take any excuse to:

Happy birthday Mom!

- That night I decided to sleep at my sister's place because my brother had been staying there.  All us kids got to hang out and drink a little more.  I passed out on the couch for the night, but luckily woke up to this:

Why do I love Anne Curry so much?  I don't know, I just do.

- Christmas Eve was much more tame.  My brother and his kids came over for dinner, which was my mother's amazing lasagna.  Highlights of the night?  First, my brother brought along Kona, his awesome black lab, who I hung out with all night.  Second, Braeden, my nephew.  This kid is pretty bright for a two year old.  He was placing pieces of lasagna into this water bottle like it was no problem.  The kid is two!  Should his motor skills be this advanced?

Gross, but okay since it's a kid.

- Christmas Day started out not so great.  I got to the airport at 6am for my flight, and it ended up being delayed for about two hours.  Sitting in the airport on Christmas morning is not cool.  I caught up on some reading and listened to music.  Once I got to Memphis it was AWESOME.  Elle's whole family gave me the greatest away from home Christmas I could imagine, complete with hot toddy's and lots of presents.  I was pretty tired all day, so no pictures from that day.

- Day after Christmas was cool.  Went to an NA meeting with Elle's sister, which was pretty powerful.  Really gives you good insight into everything addicts go through.  Honestly, I don't think I could do it.  

- Volunteered to make dinner that night.  It turned into an all afternoon/night affair, but went over well.  I got a new book from my mom, so I cooked almost straight from it.  Here's the hits:

1. Tyler Florence's garlic bread recipe is AWESOME.  Take a loaf of bread, cut strips into it without cutting all the way through.  Food process a stick of butter, six cloves garlic, half bunch basil, and quarter cup of parmesean cheese until well blended.  Spread it through the bread, then bake at 325 for 30 minutes.  This stuff was just unreal.  And way too easy.

2. Rosemary-Garlic Mozzarella Balls with Roasted Cherry Tomato Dipping Sauce - Like really really really really really good cheese sticks.  Alexgood was a lot of help with these.

3. Veal Piccata with Lemon, Capers, and Parsley-Butter Sauce - I overcooked the veal just a little bit, but I thought it was a success overall.  The hardest part?  Cooking for 8 instead of 2.

4. I also made some amaretto brownies, but the pan I cooked them in wasn't big enough so I ended up with a really dry top that we pretty much picked off in one piece.  They were still pretty good, but pictures were not flattering at all.  I'll make them again someday.

- Another great part about Memphis: the dogs.  I don't have any pictures of Monty, but Moe is pretty much the greatest dog ever.  If I had the time and space to properly train one, I'd get a pit bull right away.  How can you not love this beautiful sweet dog?

Sitting pretty.

When I show up in Germantown, the first thing this dog wants to do is play rope toy with me.  And it does not stop until I leave.  This is 10 minutes before we left for the airport ride home. And it's like 6 in the morning.  Limitless energy.  

All in all, it was a good holiday.  Wasn't as relaxing as I might have hoped, but I think that had to do more with the traveling than the people.  Getting on a plane every two days is exhausting, but it was all worth it.  

the catch up game

After a fair amount of wifely nagging, I'm back on the blog wagon.  I'll start with the 25 random things post, and then follow up with my Christmas.  Here goes (this feels like one of those old school chain letters, but whatever):

1) I do actually have glasses, although I rarely wear them.  If I am wearing them, it probably means I'm writing a lot at work or not getting much sleep.

2) Over the course of seven years, I played football, baseball, soccer (three different positions, including goalie), hockey, volleyball, track, and cross country.  Cross country was by far what I was best at (hence why I still actually enjoy running long distances), and the last thing I discovered.  All the previous sports were really just me trying to find something I really liked.  

3) Up until the age of 21, I was an altar boy, cantor (read the readings), and eucharistic minister in various Catholic churches.

4) I contemplated becoming a priest in grade school.  Seriously for about two years.  

5) I'm an atheist.

6) I have hearing loss in both ears: moderate to severe in my left and moderate in my right.  At one point it was deteriorating so bad they thought I was going to go deaf, but it stopped getting worse.  I have hearing aids, but rarely wear them.  I don't HAVE to have them, but they actually help, especially in crowded places.  

7) I graduated 7th in my high school class.  Yeah, I was a nerd, and as a consequence had no friends leaving high school.  Let's just say I never miss my high school days.  They sucked.

8) Since turning 18, I have not lived in the same place for more than one year.  Chances are I will make it a full 10 years, since elle and don't really like were we live right now.  

9) When I was a kid, my father convinced me that Wendy's hamburgers tasted so good because they were kangaroo meat.

Yeah, I thought I was eating these delicious creatures.

10) I was a fat kid.  Like as in I wore "husky" pants.  Puberty + cross country leaned me out significantly.

11) My mother almost bled to death when I was 13.

12) I have a serious travel bug and no finances to try and satisfy it.  I still have a goal of getting to every continent except Antarctica before 30, but I doubt I'll get anywhere for another 4 years.  It also doesn't help that elle doesn't enjoy traveling nearly as much.

13) I wonder almost weekly if I would have been better off never leaving Hopkins.

14) I rarely dream (like once every few months).  I know we dream every night, but I rarely wake up saying "I had a dream last night."  

15) I love cold weather.  Something about walking around when it's ridiculously cold out, I don't know.  

16) I love cigarettes.  If smoking didn't cause lung cancer among a thousand other things, I'd smoke a pack a day.

17) I've never taken a single illegal drug in my life.  Nope, not even weed.

18) I have a soft spot in my heart for Tegan and Sara, Dido, and Sarah McLachlan (Fumbling Towards Ecstasy will always be an awesome album).  That will come as a surprise to those who know who I usually listen to.

I think this makes me emo before emo was emo.  Or just the reason every girl I knew in high school thought I was gay

God I love The Con

19)  I am a big big fan of the NFL, especially the Browns.  The Browns are by far my favorite team, but I can watch any game at any time (ask elle, she'll tell you)

20) I didn't watch Disney movies as a kid.  Don't remember Bambi, Snow White, any of that stuff.  What I do remember is Inspector Gadget and Looney Tunes.  Oh, and Animaniacs.

21) My dad raced supermodifieds every Saturday during the summer for the first 15 years of my life.  It's some of the best family memories I have

22) I grew up a quarter mile from Lake Erie.  I don't feel right unless I'm living near a real body of water (sorry St. Louis, thank you Baltimore and Chicago)

23) I find cleaning somewhat therapeutic (lucky for Elle.  Please remind her of this)

24) I LOVE video games, but just don't really have time to play.  I used to be a huge Final Fantasy guy

This brings back actual good memories from high school.

25) Since moving to Chicago, I rarely drive.  I don't miss it at all.  

I don't know how much of this is unknown to the readers, but I guess I'll find out. 

Major decisions

As you all may know, I've been dealing with a certain amount of issues with school and my life.  Things, to say the least, have been tough.  However, I have a decision I need to make in the next seven days that makes my life troubles pale in comparison:

I have to pick a new phone

My T-Mobile contract is almost up, and the wife is making me switch to AT&T so we can go on a family plan and save some money (I agreed to it months ago, but I bitch nonetheless). I'm down to two phones, and I'm truly torn.  Now, I know when most of you hear AT&T, you think one thing:

Yup, the iPhone.  It's a great phone, and has surpassed the Razr as the best selling mobile phone.  It's got all the cool Apple based features, apps, and the music player built in.  But I just don't know.  Something about it just doesn't sit well with me.  I really can't explain it.  

So here's the other phone I'm thinking about:

The Blackberry Bold.  I've owned a Blackberry Pearl for the last year and a half, and I've loved it as a phone.  I could get another one since it's so popular and still sold, but I don't want another Pearl for the next two years.  I've moved on.  However, this new Blackberry is definitely sexy and it has all the good Blackberry stuff that goes with it.  And a full keyboard.

Part of the lure of the Blackberry might have to do with the fact that it's a little more grownup than the iPhone.  I'm sure lots of important businessmen have iPhones, but when I imagine myself hustling to my job on LaSalle street in my nicest suit, good shoes, and skinny black tie, I imagine having a Blackberry on my ear (sell my JP Morgan stock now!), not white Apple headphones in my ears (unaware of the pummeling my best mutual fund is taking).  

Now, if AT&T had the Storm, it wouldn't even be a question.  This is why I get to bitch about the Family Plan.  Ugh, this decision is going to SUCK.

capellini with tomato and peas

As promised, here's some pictures of the pasta I made two nights ago.  I don't give recipes because I don't believe in poaching other people's stuff.  The only real problem I had was tossing the pasta.  I ended up with a pile of peas on the bottom of the bowl.  I think a bigger bowl and some better forks would probably help, but it was still really good.  Reheats damn good too:

Choppy chop chop

Good one elle.

The finished product.

Best part about this meal was that Elle LOVED it.  Better yet, it's really healthy.  It's nothing more than some olive oil, veggies, and spices.  That and I used whole wheat pasta. Booya!

I also made some chrismahanukwanzika cookies tonight, but they weren't that good.  I need to pull out my mom's old recipe in the next few weeks and make some REAL cookies.  

buy this book....

So finally tried a recipe from a book we got for our wedding.  Everyday Pasta by Giada DeLaurentiis (elle, if this was your original last name I wouldn't have LET you change your name).  Oh man there are some good dishes.  Tonight I made some capellini with tomato and peas, but there's a few creations in there that I will probably spend days making and enjoy every second of it.  A few examples:

Linguine with Turkey Meatballs and Quick Sauce

Cheesy Baked Tortellini

Angel Hair Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Goat Cheese

Eggplant Mezzaluna Ravioli

That doesn't include all the seafood and red meat stuff that elle won't eat.  

Pictures of the pea pasta will be coming soon.  But for now, if you want to learn good good pasta, buy this book.

My picture does not do this woman justice.

Did I mention it comes with recipes for basic sauce, pasta from scratch, chili oil, and italian wine pairings?

long time...

Yeah, I know, it's been a while.  I was going to a vlog about all the good reasons I haven't been around, but it's too late and I'll have an angry Elle on my hands if I start talking in my loud, booming voice and wake her up.  Okay, maybe not booming, but my voice carries and I talk loud.  There's a reason for that, maybe I'll blog about THAT someday (ooohhh, ideas).  

Anyways, here's a couple of reasons I've been gone:

1) I haven't been cooking as much - Since the blog is the epicurious alchemist, I don't want to inundate you with my normal life stuff.  My normal life stuff is pretty boring, so there's not much to talk about.  Why is my life not interesting, and why haven't I been cooking?  Funny you ask...

2) School/work is sucking bigtime - Long story short I get an email from my boss telling me I need to be more dedicated in my work in order to get things done.  Now, there's two things that could be going on here: 

a) I'm actually falling  behind and he's noticing

b) I'm not falling behind, just working a little less (maybe because I just got married and had to move a month after my honeymoon), and my boss knows if he writes me a three sentence email I'm going to go off the deep end and work really really hard.  

Guess which one I think it is.  Good news is I have been getting a lot done at work, bad news is it hasn't left time for really much else.  Thanksgiving was a welcome break, but I still read a bunch while at home.

3) Major mid-graduate school crisis - It's year three of my second go round at the Ph.D. in chemistry, and I'm starting to realize that I really don't think I want to do this for the rest of my life, or really at all.  Problem is, if I quit school AGAIN, I become a two time graduate school dropout.  I may as well poop on my resume and hand it in.  Talk about an ENORMOUS red flag (wow, this kid can't commit to shit).  Another little roadblock has been my burgeoning interest in all things economics.  Like so burgeoning I want to get an undergrad degree in econ and go work as a peon at The Fed burgeoning.   This is totally unrealistic; I'm 26 years old, married, and have to do something with my life.  Now, elle has been enormously supportive, but I'm not going to let her support me for the rest of my life while I go and get eight different degrees.

What does this all mean?  I have to eat shit for the next 2 to 3 years, get this Ph.D., and figure out how to use it to get a job not related to chemistry.   It's not all that hard, but I just want out now.  I have that horrible fear that I'm going to leave a bitter, angry person that has no faith in people or himself.  Grad school is just a bunch of discovering that you know absolutely nothing about what you're doing.  You just get torn down over and over and over.  I think I've just been torn down one too many times.  

I hate you and all your friends.

4) The Move - See here.  That basically took up most of October.  You know,  finding the place, packing, buying new couches, changing addresses (I get like 10 magazines a month, so that actually takes a while), renting the truck, finding help, etc etc etc.  What a waste of a month. More specifically, the month after getting married and traveling halfway across the world for two weeks.  All I wanted to do was sit on my ass for six months, gain like 20 pounds, cook a lot (blog just as much).  You know, typical post wedding stuff.  Nope.  

I'll leave it at that.  I think I had 5 earlier today, but I worked out tonight so I'm tired and can't remember what the 5th thing was...

Anyways, I have plans to do big things over the next 20 days, so hopefully some more blogging will be a part of that.  What I do know, for sure, is that I'm making holiday cookies this weekend, cookie press and all.  Something should be sure to follow from that....

"Waldorf" Risotto

Tonight, I feel as if I crossed a culinary mile post.  As the title suggests, I finally tried to make a risotto dish.  It actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, which was nice.  Either risotto isn't really that hard or I'm a better cook than I think (I'm gonna go with the first one).  

The recipe is courtesy of Jamie Oliver's website.  This guy rocks when it comes to the instruction.  The details of the recipe are great, and made the risotto really easy to make.  This is essentially a waldorf salad with risotto, complete with walnuts, apples, and gorgonzola cheese.  I love how creamy this turned out.  Here's pictures:

The very messy setup.  I love my new knife and board.

I cooked in scrubs.  Actually, I spent the whole day in scrubs.

I think I made enough for about 8 people.  Oops.

The finished product. 

Based on that last picture, I now understand why whenever I get served risotto, it's in a nice dish with a deep well.  This looks like barf on a plate.  I promise is tasted better than it looks.

More recipes later.  I need to make my orange chocolate chip cookies soon and post those.  That's still my best dessert.  

Catching Up

This week was weird.  Although back to the states and back to work, my mind and body were just a mess (which you read before, about my body anyways).  It's only been later this week and into this weekend that I really started to feel settled again.  A few things helped:

- Eleven hours of sleep on Tuesday night.  Not even kidding.  Not only did I pass out in my group meeting, but promptly came home, ate a salad (see, I did try and eat better), and went directly to bed.  I had hoped to read a stack of magazines for about an hour, then go to bed.  That idea lasted about ten minutes.  Suffice to say my body had not quite adjusted to Chicago as fast as I had hoped it would.

- Some relaxation.  Thursday night, the wife was getting drinks with a friend, so I came home to a dark and quiet apartment.  I took full advantage of a cooler night and got out on the balcony:

Assorted reading included The Atlantic, an awesome CB2 catalog, and some work reading that I felt obliged to plow through.  Oh, and a beer.

- Some good food.  Eating better really did make me feel a lot better.  More vegetables here and there and some homemade food really helped.  I made this dish Thursday night after the wife got home, and it's one of my favorites (courtesy of Bon Appetit).  Not only is it fun to make, but the colors are just awesome:

I find stir fry almost soothing.  Just crank up the heat and fry the shit out of everything!  I usually add about double the recommended amount of spinach, just because it's so good wilted and soaked in soy sauce, and it's good for you anyways.  

- Getting my crap in order.  Ever since we had gotten back, I had no clean clothes, old mail everywhere, and an enormous stack of magazines to get through (I need to stop subscribing to things that get delivered weekly).  Took care of ALL of it.  I can finally find all my stuff again.  I'm the kind of person that feels really unsettled if stuff is everywhere.

So (hopefully) now that I finally feel like my life is back in order, you may be hearing from me more.  I'm not promising anything though....

feeling the burn

Last night, I looked forward to crawling into bed to get another night of actual sleep.  I was still feeling the jet lag a little bit, and pretty much figured I would be fine by this morning.

Oh was I wrong.

Rough estimate of what was going on in my stomach

At about 2 am (only asleep for about two and half hours) I woke up with heartburn so unbearable that I immediately shoveled down three tums tablets and a generous swig of pepto-bismol.  What ensued was another hour of sitting up trying to get my stomach settled (which wasn't all that terrible, I caught up on 200 Chicagoist stories).  I tried water, followed that up with 7up to make me burp, which didn't work because the 7up was flat (blast!).  I finally found some diet tonic water in the back of the fridge that still had some fizz.  Good thing I like tonic water.  

You failed to meet my expectations...

When I finally managed to crawl into bed at around 330, I had a good three more hours of shuteye to get before having to get up and shower.  So, instead of feeling nice and well-rested, I'm groggy as hell and cannot wait to crawl into bed tonight, most likely at around 9 and sans dinner. I won't get home until 730 and I'm not eating that close to when I go to sleep.

Naturally, I thought to myself: "what did I eat last night that could have made my stomach upset?"  Truth be told I had been feeling some upset stomach this weekend as well, but nothing on the scale of the volcano churning in my stomach last night.  So I jotted down everything I've eaten since we left Australia.  It, well, explains everything:

On the plane: Two meals: dinner and breakfast.  What they are is unimportant.  It's airline food for god's sake.  Plus I had five gin and tonics on that flight.

Upon arriving at LAX: California Pizza Kitchen five cheese variety

Upon arriving home that night: Dona Naty's, chorizo burrito with rice and beans

Saturday: Chipotle for Lunch, followed by Thai for dinner

Sunday: Starbucks breakfast sandwich for lunch, followed by chicken wings, burgers, turkey chili, cupcakes, and beer for football. 

Monday: Starbucks coffee cake for breakfast, turkey sandwich with Hot Buffalo Wing Pretzel Pieces, and three Whole Foods chicken sausages for dinner with cupcakes as a dessert.  

All in all, I probably gained 5 pounds and gave myself acid reflux disease in five days.  Oh, and I haven't had a real poo in three days.  That's making me more nervous than anything.  I may have to resort to buying fiber.  

I think it's time I eat a little better.  Salad, tofu, real vegetables, cut down on the meat, and lots of WATER.  I basically need to start cooking again.  I'll let you know how this goes.  I promise to not let you know when I poo.  

just a little slice of me....

Since all of my wife's friends seem to be mentioning this blog, I figured I'd actually try to post SOMETHING in it.

Well, since we're back from the honeymoon, I decided to catch up on my reader feed.  No big deal, just about 5000 posts to get through.  I usually start with the obvious, the wife's, angilio, TKTC, and my other two faves, lolcats and cute overload.  If that doesn't already tell you a little about me, I'll show you just a few of my favorite posts from lolcats and cuteoverload...

One of my favorites. I had this one as my Facebook pic for about a month or so.

I think if investors knew about lolcats, they would love this.

Haha, marbles.  No idea why I find that funny.  Maybe cause it's insinuating balls.  Just maybe.

Everytime I see a white duck, I think of Aflac commercials.  

There's a similar one dealing with an emo kitteh, but this one is funnier.  Let's ride bikes!

This one I just find to be awesome (SFW).  Courtesy of cuteoverload, but actually 4 chan.  This is classic 4chan creativity.

While I'm at it, here's a few of my other reader favorites.  I think there's somewhere I can permanently put these, but I'll put it here first and let my wife tell me where I can do that once she reads this:

R.O.C.K. on the CTA

Chicagoist

Overheard in Chicago

The Caucus Blog

Technicolor Kitchen

Smitten Kitchen

Let's see where this whole blog thing takes me.  I know this is an inevitable step for me in the direction of iPhones and the dreaded twitter.