Battle North East!

Well, Battle North East took place Saturday, and let me tell you, it was a blast!

The secret ingredient was revealed to us on Friday - but we had already had our line up planned as far as food went. Had it been battle grape, then we would have been a little pressed to incorporate that into our dishes, but since it was BATTLE ONION! we were ok.

So, with onions in hand, we started the tearing up our kitchen. Seriously, it was a war zone. The teams were Bailey, Sarah and myself versus Emily, Jeremy and Emma.

(more bars in more places)

Team Penrod worked up the following:

Homemade chips & salsa & guacamole dip
Chicken Tortilla Soup
Chicken Quesadilla's with Tomato Onion Balsamic Salad
Onion Infused Deep Fried Icecream(!!)

Team Carver whipped up:

Chicken Wings
Steak on a French Onion Bed
YUMMO Egg Rolls
Cheese curls stuffed with "something"

In the end - Chairman Greg consulted with the judges and the decision came back. It was a tie!

Unbelieveable! Never before had we seen such scores in Kitchen Stadium!

Team Penrod celebrated in true Iron Chef style with shots of Jaegermeister! Bailey had diet coke, btw.



I just wanted say THANK YOU to all involved! I hope that those watching this unfold had as much fun as we did cooking this up.

-m

If Memory Serves Me Right.....

well, I said it would happen. I would update at least 2 times a week. I've failed my faithful reader(s), since I don't really know how many of you there are yet.

I won't go into the reasons, but there are some - mainly time.

On to brighter things - we went out to dinner on Friday night, Sarah and myself. The place that we went to is called Twelve O'One (www.1201state.com) and it's a restaurant/wine bar. I was warned before hand to have money to stop at McDonald's afterwards as the portions were small and pricey. Pricey, yes, but the portions were very generous and we walked out being very satisfied with the food and our stomaches!

As it was a wine bar, we had a very good Riesling from Ironstone Vineyards in California. I'm looking at the markup on the bottle now - ouch! Anyway, you're paying for the ambiance.



The place is very nicely decorated, and everything there is top notch as far as craftsmanship and materials go - there was no skimping anywhere. The view in from the large windows is very nice. Very nice to look over a knife fight on the corner of 12th and State. Just kidding. It was a cold night, so there were your typical Erieites walking around, stumbling around, mumbling around in waist deep snow. Always a nice view.

We're still trying to figure out if the appetizers were better than the meal - well, in my case, I know that the meal was better. Sarah had a really good warm potato salad with chunks of lobster - and by chunks, we're talking chunks - whole claws. I had lump crab fritters that were sensational. On a side note, we had these wonderful little stuffed dates with cheese and lemon. They tasted almost like candy they were so good. Sarah was scared, but not me. I jumped right in. Wish I had saved a bite it was that good!

Dinner was what I was looking forward to - since the previous weekend, we were going up to Buffalo to see Alton Brown fell through - I was going to go for the kobe beef up there. That was what my focus was. I'd been gearing up for this all week. Sarah ended up hemming and hawing like she usually does and settled on the pan seared scallops with the yummiest little pancakes and an arugula salad. The scallops were done perfectly - done just right.

I should have taken a picture of my dinner, to remember it always it was that good. When people say that kobe beef is so good, they are not kidding - as long as it is done right. On this instance, it was done perfect. Melted like butter - hmmm... maybe it was butter painted brown it was that good.

So we called it a night and hit up our absolute favorite little restaurant Matthew's Trattoria. Mainly for drinks but we did grab a bite to eat.

Top it all off with some great basketball action on Saturday morning and it was a good weekend.





So, were does that leave us this week - short week - but it will be one of the most action packed ones yet!

Battle - North East is taking place.

Details and the secret ingredient forthcoming.

-m

been a long week

and I can't say that I really know where it went. with the running arounds, work, basketball, softball....

damn, kids take up your time!

so speaking of which, we spent a portion of the week at practice for basketball:





but the good news is that along with finding my SLR - i also found my favorite, favorite lens for it and was out taking some pics of the dogs getting crazy in the snow:







as a note - with all my pictures - you should be able to click on them and get a full photo gallery instead of 1 or 2 pictures.

tonite, sarah and I are going out to dinner at Twelve O' One for a nice dinner out. Since our plans from last weekend of seeing Alton Brown and hitting up a martini bar in Buffalo were cast asunder by that damn snow, we're going to be hitting this place up.

think i'm going to go with the kobe - to get some inspiration for the upcoming challenge
2 words.

bring it.

-m

and the snow cometh

but first, here's some pictures of the trees in the backyard.



see? nice and simple, bridge across water. awseome!



see? not so nice. smushed fence, clipped barn, smushed other fence.

it's depressing to see that.

but i digress.

Right now when I'm looking outside, I can see that the snow has finally let up! But, this doesn't mean that it's going to be business as usual. It's mucked up our plans for tonite to go see Alton Brown in Buffalo so meh. Kinda upset about that, but, what can you do? Wait I know! With the snow, and it being cold and blustery, we made us some french toast this morning.

So here's a fantastic shot of Abigail cracking some skulls, er, eggs for me:







My french toast rocks the best



Finally, a picture of Dockers getting rocked by Sammy:



So, to say that we've gotten some snow is an understatement to say the least. We've easily gotten 1 foot so far and they are calling for 6"-8" more inches easily. Since today will be a stay indoors, maybe we'll see some more postings!

Take care

-m

and boom goes the dynamite

We'll start off with that as that is highly embarrassing and will put me in a good mood - cause right now, the back yard looks like dynamite went off. We had a tree go down the opposite direction of last time.

serene picture will be here.

Now, that way creates a nice forest scene. I'm half tempted to figure out a way to leave that tree there.

There was some good ice on Tuesday night, and I'm dead asleep and dreaming away, when I hear a crash and realized it wasn't part of my dream. So I had an idea that maybe it was a large branch that had fallen. Looked outside and saw that the branch wasn't there. Back to bed.

hell tree picture will be here.

Now, from this view you can see what's happened. I woke up around 5:00 and went outside to find this.

Mind you there are no pictures here because we finally found our camera again. It was missing and now is found. You'd be amazed at the amount of panic in your heart when your digital SLR camera is missing!

Anyway, I've been a bit preoccupied with this - so that's why the posts haven't happened. But, like I did promise, I will have two posts a week.

Tomorrow is a good day, btw: