Ouch!

All this time I've been bragging about my kitchen gear and cooking skills.
Well last night I was put in my place.
Although it my sound impressive that I was cutting a chiffonade on some rolled collard greens, I also cut a nice clean slice through my finger. Luckily I live in walking distance to an emergency room and have health insurance. Six stitches and in and out by midnight. Not too bad for a Thursday night.

Best present

Even though I own a ton of food processing equipment now. The dusted gray Kitchen Aid stand mixer that Sarah got me for Christmas was hands down one of the best Christmas gifts ever.
All I've made so far was a pretty lousy loaf of bread and a batch of Pizzelle dough that I never used but you got to start somewhere.

proud owner of monstrous industrial ice cream making equipment

For those of you that have been inquiring about the progress of my ice cream business adventures, I do have a few updates. Though we know we are in a little over our heads we went ahead and purchased two pieces of industrial equipment. A 4 quart Taylor batch freezer will be our ice cream manufacturer and we also got with the deal a blast freezer which hardens ice cream down to 20 degrees below zero. We haven't tried either yet because they were a real trick to transport from Teaneck NJ into my house. We hope to get production up and going by the end of the week. 

Ho Ho Ho!

I just wanted to tell everyone Merry Christmas and all that Jazz! I feel fortunate to have such a great family and wish I could spend the holidays with all of you. Here's to a healthy and happy new year! Wishing you all the best! Much LOVE!

Uproar on the Lakeshore

The first weekend in November Connie and I made a trip to the windy city to watch the National Flat track roller derby championships. First we noticed it was 40 degrees there, but then we started drinking and it turned into a really fun weekend.


For the most part is was a lot of this... watching teams from all over the country compete for the title. No Connie did not skate in this event- it was for flat track not banked track teams. Denver ended up victorious. They beat Olympia, Washington by one point. A very exciting ending to a lot of blow-out matches.

It was a really really nice venue. And if you happen to be in Chicago you can catch Connie skating here on December 11th for a Red Bull event.



I took these photos on my walk to the train. I journeyed up to Lake Bluff on Saturday to say hi to Uncle and Aunt Jeanette, the Freeds, and Karla. It was a really nice afternoon. Made me wish I lived to closer to the fam as well as have the opportunity to use a train. Trains are so easy.


More photos of the city- we wandered looking for deep dish pizza.



And of course it took a couple tries but we managed to find time to find the latest local brewpub in Logan's Square Revolution Brewing. The beer was great- atmosphere was chill and the waitress was a great sport to put up with a bunch of crazy derby girls.

Weekend Trip to New Hampshire and Maine

We took a long weekend trip to New Hampshire and Maine. Flying into New Hampshire we visited a long time friend that I hadn't seen in over 3 years who now has two cute, hysterical boys. We then drove up to Portland, Maine to enjoy it's "best foodie small town" status and visit a colleague that had just moved up there. The highlight was probably the gorgeous bike around Peaks Island. I had a feeling I would fall in love with Maine and am hopefully going to be able to get back up there again sometime soon to do some more exploring.

See my facebook photo albums here and here  

Birthday Weekend

I had a really great birthday weekend. 

It started off with me playing an extra in a friends indie-movie. On the way there I passed this building which I really love. 

On my birthday I made Memphis style ribs. They took a long time but tasted even sweeter as we watched the Phillies victory. 

The next day Mom and Eleanor came to visit. We went to the Wharton Escherick Museum in Valley Forge. It is one of the coolest small museums and the weather was absolutely beautiful. 

Afterwards we had lunch in Phoenixville, a cute little town. We at at the Iron Hill Brewery which was pretty good. 

Then we went to our favorite store: Terrain. They were having a fall apple festival. 

We had a disappointing dinner but the atmosphere and company were great. 

Sunday we didn't do much but did watch the Phillies win again.
Cole Hamels is so dreamy. 

Getting Serious - rebate breeds ambition

So around mid-summer I got pretty excited about making home-made ice cream.  I made a batch or two with a friend and starting shopping around for an ice cream machine. I found out about this one through a Williams-Sonoma eblast which was 20% off with a $25 rebate. 

I got the rebate just in time to start the 6 week cooking class I'm taking through the restaurant school at Walnut Hill College and bought this knife caddy.

More on home-made ice cream flavors coming soon.

Fun Philly Weekend

Though we had some threats of hurricane Earl the weekend weather could not have been anymore beautiful. We started out the weekend with some intense Philadelphia Live Arts/Philly Fringe performances including a one man Beckett performance, a acrobatic-furituristic dance piece, a and comic submarine play. Sarah saw 7 performances total, while I passed on the ones I could live without seeing and got a lot of work done in the basement. We still had time to also take tour of the Philadelphia Brewing Company brewery with a friend that was in town to see some shows. This took us outside of our normal city confines and got to seem some new architecture. 

A building I saw a few weeks ago that I thought was really beautiful. On the PBC tour I learned it was once a brewery. Or at least it looks exactly like a picture I saw of old breweries in Philly. 

Multi-million dollar home in a neighborhood that's part old school row homes, part urban jungle (chickens and junk yards), part new green housing projects. 

Lady Gaga Concert

Last night Ken and I went to the Lady Gaga concert here in Phoenix. As I expected, full of energy and excitment! Arizona doesn't need to be so worried about the "illegal aliens" here, but they need to be more concerned about the "little monsters" that live here and came out last night.

I have never seen such a large crowd expressing their individuality. Scary in some ways, but mainly very intriguing. And everyone was smiling and having a great time. Part of the fun was getting there early and looking at everyone's "costumes." As you can see, I didn't really didn't go crazy, although the headband and earrings were from 1993, when I bought them to wear to Jessica's bat mitzvah party. First Madonna - twenty years later - Lady Gaga - guess I'll save them and who knows who'll carry on the legacy twenty years from now. Oh god, that will make me a seventy year old at a concert. Hope they have matching support stockings by then!