The Perfect Storm

I spent last week in Lexington, KY for work, maybe you heard there was a State of Emergency declared? (fantastic). The storm of the century that made its way through the country last week hit us with enough ice that G-Bone and I were left literally chiseling our way into the car. The parking lots looked like ice rinks and while making a very slow turn, our little Ford Focus rental slipped into a curb. No exterior damage, but from then on the steering wheel had to be turned all the way to the left for us to go straight, whoops! Pete got stranded in Cinci for two days after the Lexington airport was closed without power and eventually drove in after the storm had passed. Team Flapjack finally reunited on Wed evening and enjoyed another delicious dinner at Murray’s on Thursday night before heading back to the Cleve.

View from our window. There are icicles on the power lines, awesome.

Absence certainly makes the heart grow fonder and this is especially true of my kitchen. Nothing makes me long to cook more than traveling for work and eating every meal out. Blaze sent me two recipes to try, the first of which I tried on Sunday. The individual components of this meal are ok. But with their powers combined this recipe is AWESOME! (and healthy) CC and I cleaned our plates and I enjoyed the leftovers for lunch yesterday, mmmm. Perfect to beat the winter blues – its light, vibrantly colored, and full of intense flavors. I highly recommend it, thanks again B!

Mahogany Broiled Chicken with Smoky Lime Sweet Potatoes and Cilantro Chimichurri

1 cup chopped cilantro leaves

6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

3 large cloves garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon salt, divided

1/4 teaspoon pepper, divided

5 tablespoons dark brown sugar

3 tablespoons Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons bottled hoisin sauce

2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup plus

1 1/2 teaspoons lime juice, divided

1 1/2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast halves, cut in 1-inch cubes

2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut in

1/2-inch pieces

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 teaspoon chopped canned chipotle pepper

1 teaspoon adobo sauce (from canned chipotle)

3/4 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon lime zest

Cilantro sprigs, for garnish

In a small bowl, mix together chopped cilantro, olive oil, minced garlic, 1/4 teaspoon of the salt and 1/8 teaspoon of the pepper; set aside. In medium bowl, mix together brown sugar, mustard, hoisin sauce and vinegar. Reserve 2/3 of this mixture. To remainder, add 1/2 cup lime juice and stir in chicken; cover and refrigerate.

Place sweet potatoes in a heavy saucepan and cover with boiling water. Cook, covered, over medium-high heat until tender, about 15 minutes. Reserve 1/4 cup cooking liquid, then drain potatoes in colander. Return potatoes to reserved cooking water and add butter, chipotle pepper, adobo sauce, remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons lime juice, cumin, lime zest, remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and remaining 1/8 teaspoon pepper. Mash potatoes. Preheat the broiler. Thread chicken on 8 bamboo skewers that have been soaked in water for 30 minutes. Broil about 6 inches from heat, basting with reserved mahogany sauce until done, about 8 minutes. To serve, divide potatoes among 4 plates; top each with 2 skewers of chicken and drizzle with cilantro chimichurri sauce. Garnish with cilantro sprigs.

My only change to the recipe was that I did not have any bamboo skewers. I just put the chicken on a baking sheet and flipped/basted halfway through.

Love it

As a follow-up to the last post. Just saw this picture of Michelle at the Presidential inaugural prayer service on Wednesday. Love it. I am so looking forward to the next four years for an abundance of reasons (fashion being near the top)

Dahlia Dahling

On my flight to Florida I read the latest issue of Vogue cover to cover and have become completely brainwashed by everything it had to offer. Article on Dolce & Gabanna's new make-up line and I now daydream about applying lipstick. Red lipstick in a gold tube that smells like roses, Dahlia! Article on Isaac Mizrahi's Spring line for Liz Claiborne and I daydream about wearing high-waisted pants and a lime green jacket. Article on Blake Lively and I now daydream about being one of Manahattan's elite. Brainwashed I tell you. I look terrible in lipstick.

Speaking of fashion, what did everyone thing about Michelle Obama's fashion choices at the Inauguration? Am I day late on this? Is she America's newest fashion icon? I sure hope so. I can't get enough of the coverage on it and adored both the lemongrass ensemble and that gorgeous ivory one-shoulder dress. However, I hope all this press for J.Crew doesn't make for even higher prices. Who is your fashion icon?

5 Minute Blog Post

I am officially a negligent blogger. Work is busy, but I can spare 5 minutes. Here we go, 6 Quick Updates:

1. I was sick of my long hair so I cut off 10 inches and donated it to Locks of Love.

Here is my new 'do. It saves me a little time in the morning. New glasses, too.

2. I made Ina Garten's Wheatberry Salad - healthy and yummy. Rae Rae didn't enjoy, but I did!

3. I used the 5 clemintines I had left sitting in my crate to make the clementine cake recipe that Smitten Kitchen posted. It is super healthy and all the kids at work liked it. Beware, cake is a bit of a misnomer, this is brain food.

4. I booked a flight to visit my roommate Emily from college in LONDON!! Booked completely on a whim when she called on Saturday. The flights were so cheap I couldn't resist - $558 total cost! Blaze is also making the trip with me, I can't wait!! We will be there for two glorious weeks. Cheerio!

5. I am in Florida for work this week. It is a chilly 55 degrees - haha see ya suckers in Cleveland, minus ten degrees.

6. I hope everyone watched the Inauguration today - AMAZING! History in the making. I will always remember watching it in a classroom with relative strangers in Florida, where were you?

In the spirit of resolutions

I am making my third attempt at infomercial shopping. A quick recap for those of you who have not been paying attention: (1) Bare Minerals – great success, using for three years and counting and (2) Meaningful Beauty – failure, I think I am allergic. Which leads us to numero tres: Power 90X. Now technically I didn’t watch an infomercial and get suckered into buying this. I heard of it through word of mouth and have given it a lot of thought and determined that this should be a good investment.

So here is why I have decided this is a good idea, and if you know me, this reasoning should sound familiar. And for those of you who don’t know me, in “real life” I am in public accounting. I am an auditor. Please don’t stop reading my blog. I swear I am one of the nice ones! I have had people hug me at the end of an audit! And for those of you who don’t know much about public accounting, I don’t know junk about taxes. I get very busy in January through March because this is when most companies issue their financial statements and that is what I audit. Man, are you still reading about this? Imagine doing this every day, boring I know. So don’t be asking me any tax questions, we cool?

I have a point, and I am getting to it. Ok, so the dreaded busy season is fast approaching. I already feel chunky and with the exception of last year, I tend to pack on some serious pounds during busy season. It is long days of sitting, late nights of ordering in food for dinner, and leaves little to no time for a personal life let alone work outs. But this year I have a plan. And I think writing about it in my oh-so-public blog will keep me accountable. The evenings are unpredictable, which leaves me with the morning for working out. I have never been able to get myself out of bed, out into the cold, and into a car to drive myself to the gym in the morning. I hold those who can do this in very high esteem. But really mornings are about my only option during busy season. So here it is my grand plan: work out in the morning in my apartment. Easier said than done, I know. But these Power 90x workout dvd’s have 12 different discs so it shouldn’t get monotonous and it guarantees I will be ripped in 90 days.

Ok here is the kicker: I took “before” pictures! I will never ever share these photos, unless I turn out to be totally ripped at the end. Maybe you will see it in 90 days! Ha!

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwanza, Festivus, and HAPPY NEW YEAR! Since my last post, I have done a lot of relaxing, eating, and catching up with friends and family. It's been fantastic.

My brother's favorite Christmas gift was having his parody of Beyonce's Single Ladies video featured on yahoo! entertainment news and as a result, getting over 230,000 hits and becoming the 39th most viewed video on you tube for one day! Quite the accomplishment, my little blog is oh so jealous. Inspired by his video, my sisters and I spent Christmas morning trying to learn the real Beyonce's dance moves in our pj's - three white girls in plaid, sexy! My new years resolution: learn this dace, perform at parties, become coolest girl at middle school.

Ruby's mama (mentioned two posts in a row) was kind enough to share her peanut brittle recipe with me and has given me permission to share it with you! I love this recipe because it does NOT involve a candy thermometer. If you don't cook the candy long enough, the texture will end up chewy and very hard to eat. But if you cook it too long, the sugar burns and the whole thing is ruined. This recipe is done in the microwave and gets it just right. My only caution is that if you make batch after batch consecutively, the microwave will heat up and the candy will burn using the same microwave times. Last year I made a hazelnut variation as well that turned out really nicely.

PEANUT BRITTLE

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon butter

1/2 cup light corn syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup roasted salted peanuts

1 teaspoon baking soda

In 1 1/2 quart casserole (8 x 8 square Pyrex is what I use) stir together sugar and syrup. Microwave at high 3 minutes. Stir in peanuts. Microwave at high for another 3 minutes. Add butter and vanilla to syrup, blending well. Microwave at high 2 minutes. Peanuts will be lightly browned and syrup very hot. Add baking soda and gently stir until light and foamy. Pour mixture onto lightly greased cookie sheet and spread out in thin layer. Let cool 1/2 to 1 hour. When cool, break into small pieces and store in air-tight container.

CC and I spent NYE in Columbus with two of my college roomies, Blaze and Snickerdoodle. It was so much fun! (Embarrassingly, too much fun. I don't think I will be invited back to Gresso's anytime soon...) Unfortunately, yesterday we diagnosed Snick's boyfriend Scooter with whooping cough, so Oregon Trail. Word on the street is that whooping cough is making a comeback. Look out!

Happy New Year to all reading this! May 2009 bring you health, happiness, and your best year yet!

Christmas Vacation

I am writing from my parent's house, relaxing and enjoying my vacation - finally. Things got off to a very rough start.

On Saturday, CC, Red and I performed Act 1 of the Couch Shuffle. First a little back story: CC is moving into an apartment and he bought a beautiful cream colored couch from the Arhaus Loft Clearance Center. This is the same place I got my couch. They have sweet deals and I love it. If you live in the Cleveland area and need furniture, I highly recommend it. So Saturday morning, CC and I picked up the couch and headed over the apartment to move it - just me and him. We only got the couch out of the bed of the truck before I decided there was no way I was going to get far with this couch. So we recruited Ruby's BF Red to help (oh lucky him).

This couch is so crazy heavy that CC and Red had to take a break after about 50 feet of carrying it. So they get it to the door and it does not fit through. We tried EVERYTHING to get it through the entrance - every angle, we took the light fixture down to get more room, and we broke two panes of glass in the door. It was a MESS. Then we realize, not only is there no way we are getting this couch through the front door - there is NO WAY it is going to make it through the apartment door. Did I mention that you can't return things to the Clearance Center? So what now?

Couch shuffle. My couch is much lighter and is in two parts - two seats and an attached chez lounge. So our solution is move the crazy heavy/wide couch to my apt and the lighter/two piece couch to CC's. Red helped move the couch into my apt and on Sat night I had two couches in my itty one bedroom apt!

Sunday morning CC and I began Act 2: Move my couch to his place. This started out well enough. The chez piece we moved with no problem. We should have known it wouldn't be so easy. Piece 2 made it to the apt door, but would not make the turn to get into the apt. Our last desperate attempt to get a couch into this apt was to take the heavyass apt door off the hinges. We still had to shimmy, but by golly it worked - a Christmas miracle! Moving this couch is up there with tetanus shots on my list of things that don't seem bad at first but end up being the WORST IDEAS EVER.

By Monday I thought I was home free to enjoy my vacation. The weather had a different idea. It wasn't bad downtown, but I drove into a blizzard in Mentor. Route 2 was a mess and I was sliding all over the place. I got off at Heisley, heading southbound and the roads only got worse. I drive a rear wheel drive mustang and I went to slow down and ended up sliding to the other side of the street and hitting a guard rail - my first car accident! No worries, I'm fine. I was going about 10-15 mph, I don't even think my seat belt locked. But I managed to do a whopping $1600 worth of damage! The cop was "nice" enough not to cite me for failure to control my vehicle, puke. Snow tires for Christmas - YES please!

My poor little stang:

Add into the mix of all this a few hours of work, cleaning my apt, a dentist apt, laundry, and an eye apt, the last few days have not been fun. I know what Ruby's mom tell me to do, "call the waambulance". Sorry, I had to vent. Moving on - its Christmas Eve. On today's to-do list - relax! And make peanut brittle - yum yum yum!