Cheese and Rice!

This past Sunday morning when I woke up and saw the lovely Facebook post on Alton Brown's page, announcing that it was national grilled cheese day!  He also shared a link to his video on making a grilled cheese sandwich.  I had seen this video once before and had wanted to try it so badly, but I did not have one of the key tools required.....a grill!  You see, Alton Brown believes that a grilled cheese sandwich should actually be GRILLED!  So, after watching the video again (Yes, I am a total nerd who highly enjoys Alton's particular brand of educational cooking) my spirit was ignited again and off to the market I went!

When The Fiance got home from work, I told him of my glorious plan for dinner!  In and effort to NOT break more of The Fiance's stuff than I already have, I do not generally touch the grill.  I told him that I would do all of the prep work, if he would do the actual grilling part. (Click here for his actual video/recipe) He, thankfully, agreed! Yay!

I grated our cheeses and added in the recommended spices.  I mixed the cheese and spices in a bowl and make 2 foil "boats".  The Fiance  filled each of the two boats with half of the cheese mixture and decided he needed to add a little garlic powder to the cheese. (Sorry Alton)

  After having warmed up half of the grill, he placed each cheese boat on the side away from the direct heat.

 After spraying both sides of our bread slices with olive oil, (I chose sourdough bread for our sandwiches) we placed them over direct heat to grill them and The Fiance ended up moving the cheese boats onto the top rack, slightly further off direct heat.

Once the bread was sufficiently grilled, he moved them pieces of foil.  Then, one by one, removed the now melty cheese boats from the grill.

 He poured the melty grilled cheese onto one half of each grilled bread pair.  He then topped each cheesy bread slice with its other half and wrapped the sandwiches in foil and placed them back on the grill for a few more minutes.

Then, it was chow time! I am not kidding, this was THE best grilled cheese sandwich I have EVER had! It was so good and smelled so good that my cat even stood like this the entire time The Fiance was eating his, trying desperately to get a piece! 

It was so good, that we both wanted a second one!  So, after having watched him make the first batch (and an official grill orientation) I decided to make us the second batch! The second batch did not disappoint either, and was equally yummy!

Apparently the "new foods" bug was burning pretty good inside me this week.  I have been wanting to make a batch of French macarons lately, but was having a hard time deciding what flavor.  But then, I came upon a blog with a recipe for "Rice Crispy treat" flavored macarons!!! I was complete;y sold and decided to try my hand at them. (recipe here)  I was slightly nervous about these because A-Its been a while since I have made them. And B- macarons can be SUPER finicky and these called for ground up rice crispies to be added to the batter, which scared me.  I wasn't sure how well this would work out.  However, they just sounded so darn yummy and I just had to give them a shot.

I mixed them all up and had them ready to go into the oven.  I watched cautiously as they started baking, waiting to see if they would develop "feet". (The fluffy part at the bottom of a correctly made macaron) Sure enough, they showed up! Yay!

I made the marshmallow butter cream and put them all together.  The Fiance asked me if these were for us to enjoy or if I had made them for someone because he needed to know how many he could eat. Haha! He was quite pleased when I informed him he could have as many as he wanted.  And....I successfully ruined my bout of healthy eating and we gobbled them up! We did box up a few  and drive them over to my in-laws, just so that we could feel a little better about not having eaten them all.

So, our happy tummies give two giant thumbs up to these two recipes! They will be going on our keeper list for sure! Try them out if you dare. I promised they are worth it! Yum!!

Birthday Plagues and Newsboys

A little less than 2 weeks before my birthday, The Fiance caught some awful plague!  He had a fever and was coughing up a lung. Literally! I was a little bummed, not just because he was feeling awful, but also because I had the sneaking suspicion that I was going to end up sick for my birthday.  Not that it would have been his fault, but no one should be sick for their birthday!

So, of course I started taking Zicam, and probably overdosed myself on vitamin C, and started drinking plenty of cinnamon tea with honey and lemon. ANYTHING to stave off the plague!! (I have been told this tea combo helps with staving off colds, not sure if it works but it sure is soothing and definitely tastes good!) It seemed to be working until I woke up with a scratchy throat! ARGH! To the couch with me!

I spent the next 3 days breezing through the awful symptoms over a matter of hours that took The Fiance several days a piece to get through.  Not that it wasn't terrible, but we were both thinking that the Zicam may have helped and that perhaps I would breeze through it all and be back to normal in time for my birthday! Well....not exactly....Just when I thought I might be starting to feel better, my throat took a turn for the worst! I suddenly completely lost my voice and sounded, and felt, like a 40 year chain smoker! Since I do a LOT of talking at my job, and obviously could not with my lack of voice, I headed to Urgent Care.  The doctor put me out of work for the remainder of the week and had me on "voice rest". I joked with The Fiance that I thought he was in cahoots with the Urgent Care doctor. "Voice rest" sounds like a ploy to give boys the ability to make their significant others shut up. Haha! Just kidding! The Fiance is actually an excellent listener and took great care of me! So did my Mother in Law who drove me to Urgent care and even stopped by later with home made Chicken noodle soup!

So, I spent a few more days living on the couch, keeping my talking to a minimum and resting.  The fever came and went and by the morning of my birthday, I was starting to feel a little better.  I still had no voice, but the fever was gone and I was determined to, somehow, make the most of my birthday!

The Fiance worked in the morning so, after telling my family to send text birthday wishes only to save my voice, my best friend picked me up and took me out for a lovely brunch at La Creperie Cafe in Long Beach.  When we walked in it smelled divine!  A delicious mixture of sweetness and garlic! We perused our menus and noticed immediately that the garlic smell must be coming from the garlic fries! We quickly ordered some as an appetizer. Boy were they yummy!! For the main attraction, I ordered the Napoleon crepe. It was filled with strawberries and a sweet vanilla creme brulee custard. The top of the crepe had been sprinkled with sugar and bruleed to a nice crunchy crust. It gave the wonderful combo of the flavor and texture of creme brulee all wrapped up in a yummy crepe. YUM! My best friend ordered an amazing savory crepe with artichokes and tomatoes and cheese. She gave me a bite and it was so good! I just can't bring myself to pass up a sweet crepe on the few occasions that crepes are on the menu.

My best friend had told the waitress that it was my birthday and shortly after our crepes arrived,and they brought over a lovely scoop of french vanilla ice cream with a candle in it.

I told my best friend that I didn't know if it was the fact that I had eaten nothing but liquids for 3 days, but this was quite possibly the best french vanilla ice cream I had ever had!

After our brunch, we headed over to my favorite nail salon for relaxing mani-pedi's! It was so nice!! By the time we were done, I was pretty beat.  We headed back to my house and she dropped me off.  The Fiance was home by then and had set up a little birthday present corner for me!

He got me this adorable sign for the gallery wall I am working on for the house. Seriously, how cute is this??

He also got be a giant basket from Bath and Body works filled with all kinds of stuff from their Hawaii scented line! (My favorite scents!) There was also some delicious Belgium white chocolate with banana chips in it. (Yum!) As well as some yummy monkey butter jam! Yes, I really like bananas! We ordered in some food and relaxed the rest of the evening. It was nice! And definitely FAR from a total loss, even with the lingering plague!

The next night was set to be the real celebration for The Fiance and I.  About a month before my birthday, I saw a commercial for the Disney musical production of Newsies and saw that it happened to be coming to the Pantages theater in LA the week of my birthday!! I told The Fiance THAT was what I wanted for my birthday!  For those who are not familiar, Newsies was a live action movie made by Disney in the late 90's starring a young Christian Bale. Watch it if you have not seen it! It is one of the few musicals that I love from start to finish.  For those of you who haven't known me my whole life, I MAY have had a slight obsession with this movie (and its star) from about ages 11-14....maybe longer...Christian Bale was a hottie OK! Anyways, I learned a few years back that it had been made into a play and I knew I had to see it. What awesome timing for it to come to LA for my birthday!

The Fiance had also seen this movie as a child.  Although, he had no where near the excitement level I had. But, he was a good sport anyway.  We got all dressed up and headed to LA. (Sorry for the fuzzy picture. Its the only one I took and we were inside the dark theater)

Luckily we were both familiar with the songs and could hide our coughing in the applause between numbers. Haha Hopefully we didn't annoy too many people.

The show itself was really well done and we both really enjoyed it!  I had actually taken my childhood nerdyness just one step further and actually purchased myself my very own Newsies hat! I mean, how could I resist??

My purchase also came with a free Newsies tote bag!! I was in nerd heaven!

Not a bad way to roll in the big "31" if I do say so myself!! AND, now that The Fiance and I have both FINALLY recovered from the plague.....its back to the creative grindstone!