The Sweatshop of Love Blog

I’ve been slaving away every night cooking PT meals, so Tuesday night I put my foot down and told him he is making me dinner or else I was walking.

PT Checking His Recipe

For some reason he took me at my word and came home with bags of groceries! Delicious groceries. Perfect, amazing groceries.

PT Being PT

For some reason PT’s first instinct when I am about to take a picture is to give himself a beard or mustache. Today’s mustache is made of fennel fronds!

His menu? Herb and sesame scallops with fennel and orange salad with a side of roasted brussel sprouts. Holla!

Scallops A-Cookin'

This Dinner Called for Candles

It was amazing! The scallops were cooked perfectly, the brussel sprouts roasted while we made everything else. The fennel salad was great, and I’ve never even had fennel before.

So sure, I make Roasted Potatoes, Veggies, and Beans, and Homemade Tuna Helper, and he makes fancy scallops and fennel salad. He is always outdoing me! It would be annoying if I wasn’t reaping all the benefits.

That isn’t what my grandpa thought, though! I told him about the meal PT made me for dinner and, you guessed it,  he laughed, ‘Well, I’d leave that table hungry.’

What? Scallops and fennel aren’t for everyone?!

I also have to leave you with a couple Pudge Rodriguez pictures.

Pudge Under the Tree

Pudge loves hanging out under the tree. She also loves to eat the tree, and pull the ornaments off the tree and eat them.

Guess what is in that blue box!

Pudge in a Bag

Pudge wanted to come with me to knitting class! She was in one of my many bags I use to teach…

Doesn't Look Too Comfortable, Pudgey!

… for a really long time! Crazy kitty!

Ok enough about Pudge. She is just so cute it is hard not to take pictures of her!

Stupid Tote

I have been working on this mesh bag for a couple days now and I feel like now I can safely say I hate it. Not the bag, the pattern. The bag is cute, so I’ll give it to Elisa; she wrote a cute pattern. But GOD I had to rip this thing out twice. Granted, one of the times was because I was too stubborn to look at the pattern once I got going, but still. The numbers never worked out, I was constantly counting and you know how much I hate that. Granted, I added like 20 stitches to the pattern because I wanted a wider bag, but still! It is supposed to be a 2 stitch pattern over four rows. That should still work with 20 extra stitches!

SOO Messed Up!

So, close up you can see how messed up this pattern is. It should be in nice little rows, all the mesh working out and being stripey and cute. Not. Gonna. Happen. I don’t mind, of course, it is just a bag I’m going to have over my shoulder when biking, it is the principle of the matter.

So you are supposed to knit a big rectangle, fold it in half, and crochet-seam the sides, which ended up looking crappy and I wish I would have just stuck to my gut and knit this thing in the round from the top down, ending with the three needle bind off. Am I right?!

The handles are amazing, though. Along the top of the bag you work the i-cord while picking up stitches along the top, so no handle seaming. And I love the i-cord!

Beet, Carrot, Diakon Salad with Pecan/Garlic/Grapefruit Dressing

Almost as much as I loved this salad from last night. Yes, you read that right. This was a beet, carrot, and diakon salad with a pecan, garlic, and grapefruit dressing. Sprinkled on top? Some fancy Irish cheese. Serious love.

It made up for the bag it was so good. Stupid bag.

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:

Homemade Personal Pizza

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.

Seriously? Seriously.

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

Pumpkin Cookies

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.

Grapefruit, Shrimp, and Avocado Salad

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.

The Diakon

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.

Potato Stir Fry

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

Outdoor Stir Fry

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.

Drool

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.

Oats and Toast, Banana Style

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.

French Toast with Raspberries

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.

My friend Colleen lives in St Charles, which is F-A-R. I don’t have a car so the only way we see each other is if she drives the hour through ridiculous traffic to Chicago or if I bike/train downtown then hop on a metra for an hour and 15 minutes.

Metra Whoo Hoo!

1 hour and 15 minute train ride it is! I brought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and read over a hundred pages round trip. I’m loving it! It is so funny and violent! And the integrity of the original isn’t lost of made into a joke. It is exactly what I wanted when I imagined one of my favorite books being laced with zombies.

Mushroom Omelet, Potatoes, Toast

Colleen met me at the train at ten to ten; perfect brunching time! We have a tradition of going to Nosh in Geneva, which is very close to St Charles, apparently. I’m suburb racist (they all look exactly the same to me!), so I never know where we are.

Usually our friend Shawna is with us and the three of us go, but Shawna is summering in Italy. Boy did she miss out on a delicious breakfast! Who would rather be in Italy when you could easily be in Geneva, IL?! Eating at Nosh?!

Certainly not me after I ordered the mushroom, caramelized onion, and herbed goat cheese (man I ate a lot of goat cheese this week) omelet, served with potatoes and multi grain toast. One of the great things about having a place like Nosh you have been to with your girlfriends a million times is that between the three of us I’m pretty sure we have ordered everything on the menu. There is no guessing! Everything is amazing, and this omelet didn’t disappoint. Caramelized onion in an omelet will be making an appearance in my home made omelets very soon.

Colleen and Her Polenta

Colleen ordered something that we always order, the pear polenta, which is always delicious. Nosh has a nice outdoor seating area that we took advantage of, hence Colleen’s hot shades.

Colleen and I, despite the heat, hit up Geneva’s Swedish Days, which was basically a huge sidewalk sale with food stands. Then we walked along the river where we made some new friends.

Make Way for Ducklings

And we hit up a St Charles staple, Gramps Frozen Custard.

We love Gramps. We love Gramps so much that we walked like two miles in 90+ degree heat there and back.

Cookies and Cream, Peppermint

Gramps always has vanilla, chocolate, and twist, but then they make 4 or 5 special flavors of the day, which Colleen and I took advantage of. Her cookies and cream was amazing, my peppermint was delightful. We ate slowly to put off our steamy walk home.

Beautiful Dinner Spread

Cooking with Colleen is like what non-cooks want cooking to be. Every time I make food with this girl I don’t even realize I’m doing it. It’s what I picture Joan Cleaver was like in the kitchen. She chops, she mixes, and out comes an amazing meal.

No kidding, she whipped up this dinner in 10 minutes. That is a strawberry, cranberry, avocado, toasted almond, blue cheese, balsamic vinaigrette-y salad and avocado soup. I’m a cooking dawdler, apparently, because I know that would have taken me half an hour to put together. Colleen mashes some avocados and asks me to chop up some strawberries and I turn around and everything is done! She can whip up a mean pasta dinner in about 7 minutes, too.

We took that salad to town. I could have eaten it straight out of the bowl and never looked back. I make salads and they are chocked full of veggies and for me there is no other option. Strawberries? Duh! Cranberries? Allyson, get it together. Embrace the possibilities!

After dinner I read about zombies while getting very sad Tigers updates (1-8=OUCH) on the train back to the city while watching black clouds roll in. My tummy was full of amazing food, though, so that cut the pain of the Tigers loss and the potentially stormy bike ride back to Logan Square. I made it somehow, dry but for the sweat rolling off my upper lip. I knew a nice Saturday night in was exactly what I needed, so I watched the storms roll in. Me and the zombies.

PT and I were feeling pretty Asian-centric this weekend, what with all the cold Asian noodles we were eating (shit I seriously almost wrote DEVOURING! Damn you, Sex and Bacon!) and the… ok so the noodles were the only Asian part of our weekend, but as you know food plays a huge roll in our lives so I guess Asian felt bigger.

Aloe Drink - Looks Cooler in... Korean?

We rolled over to Joong Boo Market Sunday on Kimball to take a look around. Joong Boo Market is packed full of Asians, hipsters, and food labeled only in Asian languages. We did our best, picking out a huge bag of bean sprouts, 16 oz of button mushrooms, snap peas, two different kinds of noodles, three different oils and sauces including a bottle of sesame oil, and a bag of the same almond cookies you can get at Chinese restaurants!

We grabbed this bottle of weird aloe vera drink that I’ve tried before and really loved but have only ever seen for $4. $1.75 at Joong Boo! And just as delicious as I remember. Very refreshing on a warm day.

I was very annoyed at the end of this trip. Joong Boo is TINY and there are no baskets, you have to use a cart. All the Asians were looking in our cart and judging our choices. One woman even pointed in our cart to the mushrooms, maybe? and asked if we knew how to cook them, laughing. Back off, bitch! Can’t you just pretend we don’t exist like white people do? You can run into someone at Jewel with your cart and they still won’t make eye contact with you. America!

Kimchi

PT also picked up some kimchi (or gimchi, kimchee, or kim chee). I had the tiniest nibble because it is so pretty! But it’s seriously spicy.

All that? $20.45. I’ll be annoyed for all that savings. That would have been at least $40 at jewel, and where else can you find those almond cookies?!

Looks Can be Deceiving

Needless to say, PT and I were really excited to get home and cook up another batch of cold Asian noodles using our new sauces and veggies. We cracked open the cookies and the aloe vera while we chopped vegetables, mixed up the dressing (with the new sesame oil!), and cooked up our buckwheat noodles. Just like whole wheat noodles, right? … right?

NO. There were too many variables to pinpoint the problem, but this meal had the funkiest, mustiest smell and taste! I’m thinking it was the noodles (only like $2.50 so I’m not too upset about it), and PT thinks we got a weird kind of bean sprout, or they were bad (only $1 so I’m not too upset about that, either). You couldn’t even taste the dressing with the new oil in it! The musty taste took over everything.

PB & J on Stupid Bread

After picking out the vegetables we were still hungry, so we supplemented dinner with more almond cookies and PB & J on my stupid bread.

Simple Oat Bowl

It was a crushing blow. We were trying to remember a failure like that and couldn’t! Which I guess is a pretty amazing average, but it still hurt. Yesterday I kept it simple, a little gun shy! I had oat bowls with fresh Michigan strawberries I picked up at the Logan Square Farmers Market and stupid bread with peanut butter on it.

Huge Amazing (and Simple) Salad

I mixed up this salad last night for dinner. Snap peas, tomato, asparagus (from the farmers market!) hard boiled egg, mushrooms, romaine, and cucumber with thousand island free.

No cooking, just delicious. A place I’ll be for the next few days.