Second Class Menu with First Class Taste

Last night, Trae and I went to a Titanic Memorial Dinner at a local Irish pub. This Irish pub is great at having a special themed dinner that is  pre-priced with a pre-set menu once a month. (And the price is great for the amount of food you get. You could go to a chain restaurant and not get the same quality or same quantity for the same price!) So far Trae and I have participated in three of these dinners: A Murder Mystery, Shakespeare Abridged, and the Titanic Dinner. Each time we have met new people and have enlightening conversation to go with a great meal.

The Titanic dinner replicated the second class menu shown below. Each course on the menu was served, and was paired with a wonderful wine. I honestlly don't think I even ate that much in one sitting on our cruise honeymoon!!

 

The pub encouraged period dress, and I took that as a chance to see if I could still fit into my prom dress from junior year. Now, to date myself, my junior year was around the time that blockbuster movie Titanic came out. Prom dresses that year were modeled after Kate Winslet's costumes from the movie, and my dress looked just like one the from the dramatic scene were Kate/Rose almost thrusts herself over-board but is convinced by a handsome Leo/ Jack not to.

 

A miracle occurred and the dress fit! I then made an awesome hair piece to go with the dress with the help of my trusty glue-gun.

 The complete picture:

Trae didn't dress up, but he was excited to escort his fancy lady to dinner. We were some of the first to arrive, and the staff at the pub was very excited that someone had dressed up. Overall out of the 50 dinner guests, only three people dressed up, and I have to brag...my outfit was the best!

The meal was amazing, and everything was cooked from scratch at the pub. I never would have put tapioca in a beef broth soup. I only think of it as something sweet for pudding or bubble tea. The sweetness added a whole new level to an ordinary broth soup. The cranberry sauce was divine, not the average Turkey Day stuff. I also never expect an Irish pub to make a curry chicken that rivaled any that I had at an Indian restaurant. Wine jelly with the coconut cookie topped with ice cream is a triple-flavor combination is astounding. The smoothness of the wine jelly mixed perfectly with crunch of the cookie, and made a fruity topping for the ice cream.  Each course was served with a tasting of a different wine that had been carefully paired to compliment its course's flavor. Overall, this dinner was a foodie's delight.

The owner of the restaurant got all of the recipes from this book: Last Dinner on the Titanic: Menus and Recipes. He told me about how he and his wife tested all of the recipes out before making them for the dinner. (Apparently it took his wife three tries to get the wine jelly right! I hope I have luck when I make it!)
I know that once the cookbook arrives at our apartment, I will be writing a lot about  my Titanic trails and errors! I love when a dinner not only makes a great memory, but also leads to memories to be made. Now Amazon, hurry up and bring me my book!! :)

Romantical Me

I love romance. Anyone born  and breed on Disney loves romance, and I love Disney. I might be an English major but some equations are simple. Disney + Fanatical= Hopeless Romantic.

However, I do not need dancing candlesticks or jazz playing alligators to have romance, but I do require a bowl of pasta and candles!

Around April the weather started to warm up, and it made me eager to get outside. (I also have retained the Disney child-like glee and have been known to run happy circles in warm weather!) My desire to be outside mixed with my craving for Chinese food (lo mien noodles, yum!) made for an impromptu romantic setting.

I picked up the food before Trae got home from work, and went to work on sweeping the porch. I  put together our two mismatched TV trays on the porch, and then threw a black table cloth over them. I put out my black and white Chinese inspired tea cups on the porch railing and inserted tea lights into the cups.

Trae knew I was picking up Chinese food, but he was very surprised that our porch has been turned into an outdoor Chinese bistro!

Romance doesn't have to be time extensive and even expensive; it can be creative and fun! I hate the fact that people automatically associate romance with money. Romance comes from the heart, and not the wallet. And I love romancing my husband, especially at the spur of the moment!

Even the kitties got in on the outdoor action:

See the tongue? It is ready for some whisker licking good food!

Where's the Colonel?

Apparently, the Colonel is in Corbin, Kentucky after you turn at light number seven.

The first weekend of April was a wonderful mini-vacation in Louisville, Kentucky for a friend's 30th birthday. The weekend was stupendous! We saw Churchill Downs, played with an interactive art instillation, heard Glee renditions, and debated Dante/ Carson McCullers on the street at 2am.

Louisville is a quaint little place with snazzy shops. I loved seeing where my friend was getting her PhD at the University of Louisville. Trying on hats at the Kentucky Derby gift shop was great. (I am going to try make a cuff from my "Lucky Penny" smashed penny I got at the gift shop using tips from Epbot's blog!)  The birthday girl took us to the best places to eat, and to a great show. I even through my first White Castle drive-through. When we went out for girl's night, the birthday girl had on a rockin' hot pink leather dress with fabulous gold sparkling shoes! As a whole, we were all an odd pairing of people, from Goth, Prep, Vintage, and Unique.

Well, the drive down was very long; however, with only four hours of sleep, the drive back was even longer. Around two pm, my tummy and my travel companion's tummy started to rumble. We had already decided that for some reason, greasy food just sounded wonderful.The call of grease appeared to be answered when a huge billboard said ORIGINAL KFC THIS EXIT.  Upon exiting, we say sign that said "Turn right at light number seven" plastered with the Colonel's smiling face and black tie.

We started counting. 1.2.3.4.5.6. Seventh red light we turn. Bumpy roads took us into the abandoned town of Corbin, where more side streets led to trailers and small mill homes. People looked at us from their porches with smirks. They knew what these two out-of-towners had done. They had counted. After many more wrong turns and asking a native female with a faded Looney Tones t-shirt driving a yellow hotrod for directions, we too realized our mistake. We had counted.

Apparently small rectangular green signs hang from Corbin's stop lights. The sings have numbers adorned on them. So, if you ever go in search of the original KFC, do not count. Read the signs. Within minutes of following the nice lady's directions, we were turning at sign-identified light number seven. Moments after turning, the Colonel's smiling face was seen in the sky, guiding us to our destination. After over thirty minutes of rambling, we had found our way.

(I could easily make a Biblical spin off about finding our way...
The Colonel is my chicken; I shall not want.
He maketh me to drive to light seven;
He leadeth me down the still streets;
He fillith my belly;
He leadeth me into the consumption of calories for His name sake.)

Sorry! This little parody came into my head and since the husband laughed, I felt I should share!

Anyways, back on track...In this blog, I talk about how memories and relationships are built around food. Hardly ever when you bite into something do you think to yourself, "I will remember this moment every time I eat blank." Well, biting into that KFC, I knew that whenever I ate KFC in the future, I would be tasting Victory! That's right....VICTORY, and let me tell, Victory never tasted more like chicken....delicious delicious chicken.

Please ignore the messy hair...It is lack of sleep, long car ride hair.

Overall, my Kentucky mini-vacation was a wonderful time! It was great to show how even though we scattered after graduating, we value friendship so much that we are willing to drive to random locations to spend time together.

Wil Wheaton Effect

I have a confession to make. This confession may come as a shock. Everyone who reads this blog knows I am a Disney fan and book nerd, but few know that I am also a Trekkie. Next Generation Trekkie to be precise. (And while I am on the confession train, I am a Star Wars nerd and a Gleek!) Whew, those confessions felt good.

My Trek-dom began at an early age. I use to watch Star Trek, Next Gen. with my father, and we went to see all the movies together. I still go to the the movies with my dad and let my husband, also a Trekkie, go with a friend. Dad/ Daughter Dates are important! However, since I no longer live at home, my Star Trek watching partner is now my husband, and we have AT&T U-verse, with the BBC America, which loves to play Next Gen thanks to the British hunk Patrick Stewart.

Last week was a long...very long and stressful. Saturday night found me not baking, which I normally do for church, but instead on the couch with Trae watching Next Generation. I was feeling guilty about not baking, but my bum clad self was highly enjoying the couch. The episode we were watching was Wil Wheaton joke-heavy. Poor bloke; he got the short end of the stick a lot, and this episode was no different. Long story short...he literally got banana split all over his face. (I have no idea why space aged banana splits are blue)

Well, the Whil Wheaton effect happened around 9:30 pm. At 9:45 pm, I am melting vanilla ice cream in the kitchen. I was going to make a banana split trifle for church! Who knew that Whil Wheaton would inspire a dessert!

I divided the carton into three equal portions and flavored two of the portions (chocolate and strawberry). I then made the three flavors into ice cream bread (recipe at end of entry). While the bread cooled, I braved the monsoon-like rain, and went to get bananas and more strawberries. When I got home, I made homemade whip-cream and prepped the layers. The bread got cubed and then a trifle was assembled!

The bottom layer was chocolate bread topped with strawberry pie filing, banana, and whip-cream. The next layer was strawberry bread topped with pineapple, banana, and whip-cream. The final layer was vanilla bread topped with chocolate ganache, banana, and whip-cream. I topped the entire thing with cherries, because every banana split deserves a cherry on top!!

Overall, the dessert was good. When you got a bite of all the elements, the thing really tasted like a banana split, which was honestly, was a little weird to be eating bread, but feel like you are eating ice cream. Not overly sweet, but room for improvement is obvious. The chocolate bread needs tweaking, and the whole thing needed more whip-cream. Still, for a Star Trek inspired dessert, I would give it a thumbs up. Guess you just never know when and where or what will inspire a dessert! Therefore, Live Long and Bake!

Ice Cream Bread

• 2 cups ice cream, any flavor
• 1 1/2 cups of self rising flour
  
  Mix 2 cups of semi melted ice cream with 1 1/2 cups of self rising flour. Put the mixture into a greased loaf pan. It wouldn't hurt to flour the pan, but you do not have to. Bake at 350 for 30 to 40 minutes. Makes a great loaf of bread to eat plain or to transform into many delicious goodies, such as bread pudding! (Butter Pecan Ice Cream Bread Pudding is wonderful!) 

Paula Deen Cried

I burnt "burnt butter sauce." I mean really burnt "burnt butter sauce." Two sticks of wasted butter with garlic carbon bits and charred capers. I know somewhere Paula Deen felt the butter's pain and cried. With the burnt-ness I got on that sauce, the two sticks deserve a memorial service. The bottom of the pan was a harden shell of crusted black butter.

Yet, since the sauce foams as it cooks and I could not see to the bottom of the pan, I was in happy land because the foam was a golden amber color. I started to mentally pat myself on the back for turning my cheap SAM's Club gnocchi into a delightful, late night meal as I poured the sauce on to the gnocchi. Then the blackened garlic remains stuck to the gnocchi, as a warning sign of a plagued sauced.

I panicked. Trae tells me to wash off the gnocchi. The Good Eats worshiper is telling me to wash a pasta.

Alton Brown would not be amused by this idea. Starch is the binder that holds together the pasta party. But I did have black death infecting my pasta party. I took the chance. I washed the pasta.

Then I pulled out the last clean pan in the kitchen, and quickly whipped together a sauce of butter, marsala wine, balsamic vinegar, dash of white wine and flour to thicken it. I always keep marsala wine and balsamic vinegar in the pantry. The last tablespoons of butter had a prayer said over them as they plopped into the mixture, that were christened with the white wine. Topped the sauce and salvaged gnocchi with parmesan cheese. The result was good...surprisingly so and tasty!

Moral of the story: Sometimes you can do everything wrong and yet still come out right, or at least with a good pasta dish.

Up Up and Pixar

My husband and I are kids at heart. I can any song (out of tune) from any Disney animated movie, and Trae went to school to learn animation arts. Our kitchen is adorned with a movie poster of Pixar’s Ratatouille. Yet, despite our not-so-secret love of Disney and Pixar, I would have never guessed the role that an animated movie would have in our relationship, as well as our decision to get married. In May 2009, Trae and I went to see Pixar's Up, and in December 2009, we became engaged. Our relationship, even before Up, was already “tangled” up with Pixar movies: Cars, Wall-E, Ratatoullie. We loved going to see them together and relished being children together for an hour and half in a darkened theater. Yet, Up didn't move us backwards into childhood, but instead moved us forward to where we are today: married.

For those who haven't seen the movie, I don’t want to give it away. All I can tell you is to go see it now; I do not care if you claim that animations are for kids. Go See Up…Now! The movie is based around Carl’s love for his wife, Ellie. The bulk of their relationship is presented in the most touching tribute to silent films I have ever seen. Pixar captures the depths--heart aches and joys-- of a relationship in a five minute montage, enhanced by a waltz titled "Married Life." I am including two versions below of it:

The scene from the movie with music


The music without the movie scene

After leaving the theater, we realize that while we were never going use balloons to fly our house, we could still get over all the trials that marriage had offer. We didn't have to talk about it; we didn't have to express it. All that happened was that Trae squeezed my hand at the end of the five minute waltz as I wiped tears from both our checks with my other hand.

Since finding a deeper meaning in the movie for us personally, we have incorporated Up in our lives, not only by adopting "Adventure is out there!" in marriage, but also in fun, unique ways. Some of those ways are:

• Baking a fun Up cake as a surprise for Trae. (The house if fondant, with the roof having little individual shingles!)

• Giving Trae a Ellie merit Grape Soda cap badge that he kept in his pocket during the wedding.

A good motto for marriage, no?

• Doing a choreographed dance for our first dance to the "Married Life" waltz.  Everyone was shocked, surprised, and stunned by it!

Overall, these little reminders, such as saying to each other, "What would Carl and Ellie do?" help us to look at marriage as a whole. We are starting off, young, fun, and full of adventure. It is up to us to keep that adventure that going. The importance of working together and having a good marriage has become increasingly apparent to me after losing my grandmother. My grandmother and grandfather had a respect and love for each other. My grandfather adored my grandmother and did all he could to make her happy, which she was. I look at Trae's grandparents and literally my heart aches for what I use to have...a house owned by grandparents filled not only with love, but good food as well,which was  token of their love. Trae's grandparents are the kind of elderly who still hold hands, kiss, and dance, even though PaPa (grandpa) is in a wheelchair. Their adventure is still going, even at the ages of 84 and 90. Trae and I's adventure is just starting, and I pray that we too will be cutting a rug and sneaking kisses at the age of 90.

The Southern Way

Southern Women are an interesting breed. Through the generations, we have evolved, but a few things remain the same. For example, when tragedy strikes, we give it a coronary embolism with baked goods and if that doesn't work, we suffocate it with Lysol.

My grandmother (I called her Fanny) passed away today at 12:09 am. A Southern Lady who was determined to die on the Lord's Day. My mother and her sisters rushed to my grandmother's side on Thursday. While I am sad, I mainly feel relief that she is no longer suffering. Yet, since Thursday, my Southern roots have been glowing along with the shiny mopped floors. (I even scrubbed the base boards.)

I also baked a cake for the church's pot luck lunch and dropped it off yesterday...just another one of my Southern traits coming out. Southern Women keep their promises, especially if it is a promise to a church. No one is going to say "Bless her heart!" about this Southern girl!

In my manic state, I got the ingenious idea of trying something new; I was going to make a roll cake. I am not sure why. Roll cakes are normally associated with Christmas and Yule Log cakes, and my mind has been wondering back to Christmas a lot.

Christmas was always a large affair at my grandmother's house. She has the formal living room where the tree was, and my cousin Missy would play the Chipmunk's Christmas Song on the piano. Cousin Ryan is a TALL man and when the three grandkids got in front of the tree for a picture, the angel looked as if she had sprouted from his head.

I now have my grandmother's tree. She once had a fat Christmas tree, but around the time when I was in middle school, she replaced the tree with a more fashionable skinny tree. As a child, I hated--loathed even-- that tree. It looked silly and lost in her large formal living room. When the cousins stood in front of the tree for the annual Christmas picture, the tree was completely hidden. The angel became almost a blessing from God; magical suspended in air with a sweet porcelain face offering a blessing to these tree-less cousins. When my grandmother and grandfather moved to a nursing home, my aunts and mother bequeathed the skinny tree to me. Fanny was delighted that one of her grandkids was going to use her beloved tree. Me? I found humor in the situation but couldn't believe I would have to use the ugly tree! Yet, the first year I unpacked that tree (around 2005), I saw the love Grandpa had for Fanny. As branches started to fall off, he carefully whittled down pencils to make replacement pegs. Christmas 2010 was rough on the tree; Mona the cat ate through the weakened metal and ran off with a whole branch. Yet, Christmas 2011 will see that tree with dropping branches held on by pencils, and as I hang the ornaments on the tree with my husband, I can only hope that will have the same love for each other as my grandparents had for each other.  I hope that we have pencil years: years that are spent working together on making something last through the ages.