"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.