The Sweatshop of Love Blog

I grew up in a house that always had food in it. My mom is an amazing grocery shopper, and she got it from my papa (who is doing much better now, thank you). We often discuss the amazing deals we found on our recent grocery trips over our Sunday meal. I suck at this game. Everything in Chicago costs so much more than in Michigan that even when I get a good deal here, it’s like paying full price for something in Michigan.

Which is why PT and I have been building our grocery list in anticipation of our trip! We leave late tonight!

Which is why PT and I have been needing to get creative with our eating this week. But when I say I’ve got no food in the house, it isn’t like when other people say they’ve got no food in the house. I’ve just got a lot of pantry staples with no way to bring them together. I’ve got a pantry full of food because my mom always has a pantry full of food, because she is an amazing shopper. And she taught me well, despite my Chicago cost of living.

Wednesday night I cooked up some potatoes in the wok to get them crispy, and I dumped in a can of corn (Forgive me. A can of corn during CORN SEASON? I wanted to cry.) a can of black beans, and some taco-y and spicy seasonings. We topped it with some shredded cheddar (stolen from my roommate) and dumped some salsa on top. Served with chips (also stolen from the roommate)! This was great! Filling and fun; kind of like eating a whole lot of corn and bean salsa, with potatoes.

Wednesday night was Toe Up Sock class, finally! I have been trying to teach this class forever, and something came up every time. So I was so happy when Tara, Gil, and Lori signed up!

But, quickly, my delight turned to their horror. Really, they are only laughing to stop from crying. Toe up socks are hard to get started, but I kept saying the more stitches you get on your needles, the easier it gets!

Yeah, it’s a lot of needles. And yeah, that figure 8 cast on is hard. But they got it! And I bet if you ask them now they would recommend the class!

… right? I mean. Probably.

Yesterday all of my meals looked like this. Random stuff mixed into oatmeal made on the stove, with a piece of toast. I love oatmeal, I do, but. But. But I’m excited that we are going to have some new food in the house real soon.

My Knit Picks order came in today! I ordered that Wool of the Andes yarn on top for the Christmas stockings I’m going to knit for PT and I. I love off color Christmas stockings, so when I saw that green I had to have it. It looks great with that Caron Simply Soft red.

For lunch today I heated up the leftover potato bean thing, and had another cucumber sandwich. It wasn’t as exciting as I’m making it sound.

Off to Michigan in a few hours! I’ve got to pack. Have a great holiday weekend!

I’ve taken a couple anti-technology days this week. It is nice out, I’ve had this eye strain related head ache for a few days, and some boy issues. I added all that up and it equalled outdoor trash reading. I finished I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti by Giulia Melucci in three days, which helped. It was silly and all about how retarded boys are, with recipes, which helped. But now I’m back and I’ve got a plethora of food pictures.

So we are going to do this quick and dirty:

Earlier in the week PT and I made homemade pizzas. We haven’t done that in a really long time and I have no idea why. We should be eating pizza every day, these pizzas are so good.

Mine was pineapple, caramelized onion, and roasted red pepper with fresh parmesan. PT’s was the same, plus olives, of course.

I’ve been craving cookies but didn’t feel like making any, so I made cake cookies and mini cupcakes using a pumpkin cake mix. I spiced them up a little and baked them up, but I  need some big chocolate chip cookies something fierce. I’ll have to take care of that, and soon.

We have been looking for ways to eat everything in our produce box, so PT found a recipe that used the greens and grapefruit in this amazing salad. It had a light citrus/mustard vinaigrette on top! Very good. And the grapefruit was outstanding.

And speaking of the produce box, I tackled the diakon Friday. It looks a lot like a huge white carrot and tastes really peppery, slightly milder than a regular red radish, but, obviously, much larger.

I thought I would potato stir fry it up, with potatoes, carrots, and onions.

I finished it with broccoli, snap peas (from the produce box), and corn. Throw a little ketchup on that and eat it outside? The perfect summer meal.

And then there was the banana. I knew exactly what to do with this beauty. But not before I peeled it slowly, smelling it, caressing it. Loving it like my own child I was about to eat.

The exaggeration thing I do is going to get in the way again from expressing how I actually feel, but this was the best breakfast I’ve had in a really, really long time. I chopped up half that banana and put it in my oats with a nectarine from the produce box. Also in the mix? Honey nut Scooters (Malt-O-Meal Cheerios), raisins, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. The rest of that banana went with peanut butter on my toast.

If for some reason I wanted my final meal to be nutritional (I always answer that question with a very particular brownie sundae I’ll most likely describe to you in full someday), it would be this meal. Banana? Let me count the ways.

This morning I cooked up some french toast, and sprinkled some raspberries on top. Simple and delicious and the perfect Sunday morning breakfast.

So, technology, thanks for the break. I appreciated it. Now to get to my inbox.

Yesterday PT and I got up early and biked downtown to check out the new modern wing at The Art Institute. It has been a LONG time coming and we were both really excited that it was finally ready for visitors!

We biked down Monroe towards the Art Institute and right away we saw something we had never seen before; people were walking on the bridge over Monroe, connecting Millennium Park with The Art Institute! We parked our bikes and were immediately greeted by people from Target with chips, water bottles, and pamphlets about the new wing. Target was sponsoring the opening weekend festivities, including free admission, and the chips were a delicious snack.

We walked through the doors and into this gigantic room! It opened at 10:30, we got there at about 10:35 and this picture was taken at maybe 10:42. I think all of Chicago was as pumped as we were because the place was packed, and this is as empty as we would see it.

We worked our way through the first floor, which was where the featured exhibits were. By the time we got upstairs and to this balcony, opposite the entrance where the first inside picture was taken, it was hard to move around comfortably, there were so many people there. We didn’t mind.

We were here checking out some free art!

Mom – LOTS of Picasso.

To say that the setting for The Modern Wing is distracting isn’t right. ‘Distracting’ has a negative connotation that I certainly don’t mean. The way that all the outer walls are all glass keeps reminding you where you are. You are between the beautiful and historic Grant Park and the biggest rooftop garden in the country, Millennium Park. Both parks are between Lake Michigan and the breathtaking Chicago skyline. Why would you want to have walls when you can see these unique landmarks and monuments all the time?

My favorite part of the Modern Wing was the Architecture and Design exhibits, naturally. I loved this display of chairs and lamps.

I really wanted to sit on that wire chair. It can’t possibly be functional, right? And I’m pretty sure I’m going to try to give my wall blue felt cancer sometime very soon.

While we were looking for the balcony and the bridge we were so excited about walking across, we stumbled upon this terrace that everyone was very adamant no one walk on.

After some serious searching we found the balcony. We think you can only get to it by walking through the coat check and into the elevator hidden around the corner, but it could just be all the people were hiding the normal entrance.

When you walk out of the museum and onto the bridge you get the full scope of the Chicago skyline. This picture is looking north west back onto Monroe, where Target rolled out the red carpet to welcome everyone into the Modern Wing. Below are the South Shore and Metra train tracks.

You can see the balcony at the top of the museum.

PT and I kept having those ‘holy shit, we LIVE here’ moments. If the opening was in January we would probably be less amazed, but this city is amazing from May-October. It is tolerable in November, December, and April. But it is May, yesterday was beautiful, the view of the city from the balcony and bridge was breathtaking. The new Modern Wing is one of the coolest places I’ve ever been. All of these things are less than 5 miles from my house.

Despite getting yelled at for:

1) PT’s bag was too big

2) No water in the museum

3) No water on the bridge (but chips are ok)

4) No flash (that was an accident!)

and awkwardly running into a boy I kinda dated for about three seconds, the Modern Wing gets two enthusiastic thumbs up.

We took a walk over to Lake Michigan and said hello to Opera, and the fishes. I tantalized PT with stories of what Lake Michigan is like on the other side, which we will be seeing next weekend!

We were tourists in our own city, which is good for you, once in a while. To get a chance to be a tourist in the city you live in is something not a lot of Americans get to do. PT and I took advantage of it yesterday.

I finished my sock during the Tigers game last night! I got to knit happy because they have been looking great this series (told you).

I even got started on Sock #2.

For lunch we had potato stir fry with broccoli, carrots, onion, and green pepper.

To get me to not dump him after the baseball debacle this week, PT made me Avocado-Mango Chicken for dinner last night.

It was excellent! I told PT I could still dump him at any moment, and it is all resting on the next Tigers Twins series, but I appreciated the dinner.

I’ve just been notified that tonight’s dinner will have a clam element. PT discovered Mark Bittman’s blog this morning and might be getting carried away. He is talking home made pasta with spicy red clam sauce and muscles? This is going to be good.

Yes, this is my third blog post of the day. You would think I’m getting paid to blog.

Today for lunch I had a ‘what is about to go bad in my fridge lunch’:

This mush bowl was actually pretty good. I seasoned it with taco seasoning and mixed in some ketchup. I’m poor, ok? Lay off.

And don’t feel sorry for me! Last night PT and I ate like kings at Buona Terra. Thursday night they have a $22 prix-fixe menu, which to them means any appetizer, entree, and dessert on the menu. We knew it was going to be good when we got the bread.

The bread was served with this garlic, oil, and cheese spread that was out of control! We put it on everything that crossed our plates until they took it away.

We tried to be adventurous, and we also wanted to get way more than our moneys worth. PT got the Carpaccio de Baebadietola, which was thinly sliced beets with arugula and breaded goat cheese, and it was awesome! I got the Zuppa di Cozze, or black mussels in spicy tomato sauce, which was also so good. It was great spreading that garlicky sauce over the extra bread we got with mine, too.

I ordered the Angelotti Zuca, or the butternut squash ravioli soaking in butter, in a good way. It was a lot of butter, though. The sage was out of control! I ate all the little sprigs.

PT was the real winner, though, ordering one of the specials. Linguine Frutta di Mare, which was delicious pasta with fish, mussels, calamari, and shrimp in garlicky red sauce. I might have eaten more of this than PT did.

PT loves Tiramisu, and this one was really good. I usually like more cake in my cake, but I had my fair share of this dessert!

In what the Tiramisu was lacking in density my chocolate pecan tart made up for! The crust was chocolaty and pecany, and the chocolate gouache filling was very creamy and really good.

Overall, Buona Terra treated us right. We would for sure go there again, after May. Because May is going to be a money saving month! No eating out just the two of us, no spending money when it is just the two of us at all. We will only spend money when other people make us. Buona Terra was a great way to kick off the money saving month, though! I miss it already.

This afternoon I baked up some cupcakes for the party tomorrow, and I kind of made blackberry muffins for muffin club this weekend. As you can see those muffins dropped like its hot. I picked at the one on the left and they taste good. So much for thinking I could leave out the eggs!

The other day a blog reader said that it was a nice change of pace reading my blog because I write about things I love and don’t really complain all that much. I do like a good complain every once in a while. I complain to my BF Rachel. My complains are just unblogworthy, like boy bullshit and the amount of puke Velma produces. Or they are just big downers, like my baby brother being in jail.

I’d much rather talk about shrimp pizza. I’ve talked about this shrimp pizza before, but seriously seriously seriously seriously this pizza is so out of control amazing it should be talked about every day.

Pizza Crust:

1 1/4 c flour

1 c whole wheat flour

Combine 3/4 c warm water, 1 1/2 t yeast, 1 1/2 T olive oil and a pinch of salt, add to flour until a dough forms, let rise for 1 hour.

Meanwhile saute 1/2 a red onion and 1/2 a white onion and 3-4 cloves of garlic up in oil. Add shrimp until cooked. Add 1/2 a can of pineapple and 2 T teriyaki sauce, stir to coat.

Preheat oven to 425. Roll out pizza crust, sprinkle with mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Add a hand full of spinach to the shrimp mixture and mix till the leaves are wilted, dump mixture over crust. Sprinkle more mozzarella and Parmesan and drop goat cheese sporadically over it. Bake for 20 minutes.

Best. Pizza. Ever. I wouldn’t lie to you. Just LOOK at it!

I love breakfast, this is not news. But I don’t eat pancakes everyday, surprisingly. I eat oats. I love them. I have a bowl of some oaty concoction most every morning, and sometimes for lunch or dinner. I found a cute food blog Carrots N Cake, and she loves oats, too. My oats usually consists of milk, oats, some fruit and nuts or cereal. This mix is 1/2 of oats, 1/3 cup of milk, an apple chopped up, a heaping spoonful of pumpkin (idea from Carrots N Cake), a sprinkle of dried blueberries and another sprinkle of GoLEAN Crunch cereal. It is amazing with the pumpkin! I’ll be keeping that idea for sure.

PT and I made bean soup Sunday afternoon in the crock-pot by just throwing in whatever was laying around. I bought a bag of mixed beans, HamBone mixed beans, to be exact. They were nice enough to include a packet of ham flavoring in the bag, like ramen noodles. We laughed and puked a little in our mouths and threw it away. Instead we dumped in water, carrots, onion, a can of diced tomatoes and some spices and got this amazing soup! I’ve been enjoying it with some homemade bread.

I have also been using the book club book for April as a napkin, as you can see. I got to the point yesterday where I would have stopped reading it if it wasn’t for the club. And I hardly ever stop reading books.

Tis the season for the huge potato and veggie stir fry! I chopped potatoes and cooked those up in the wok while chopping asparagus, (it is asparagus season! you can get it semi-local now) carrots, and red pepper. Sprinkled with a tiny bit of salt and pepper and a few squirts of ketchup and you are in healthy dinner heaven. All for like $1.

… can you tell I’m bored with the sweater dress? It looks amazing but I’m at about 4 inches still. I feel like it is easier to manage when I’m working on it in the dark so I can’t measure it every 20 minutes. I’ll have to go see more movies.